...Extreme Pumpkin Carving.

Every year at work we have a Pumpkin Carving Contest.  Ahem, make that a Carved Pumpkin Contest.  No knives at work! Also no candles!  They give out four prizes for the best pumpkins, and everyone eats candy and pizza all day.  I look forward to it all year (update: there's no pizza this year).  Last year I brought in the exact same pumpkin that someone else carved.  A mean-looking pumpkin with a pantleg attached to a shoe coming out of the mouth, red paint for blood.  This year, I wanted to try something different.  It is time for some extreme pumpkin carving.  Instead of cutting some holes in it this time, I'm going to attempt to "sculpt" it.  Future me is laughing at myself right now.

I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into.  The only designs I can find online are extremely elaborate original pieces of art that I could never, ever replicate.  I guess at least I won't bring in the same pumpkin as a coworker this year.  It just may also be a really awful pumpkin.  Future me is nodding.

I wish I could carve like this guy.  I never had a chance.

I bought a basic sculpting kit online for about $8.00, really for only the clay loop tool.  That's what the pro's seem to use...though the one in the kit is very small and isn't going to make it go as fast as I hoped.  Not at all fast.

Gutting the pumpkin.

So I started sculpting with the tiny pumpkin knife and tiny clay loop.  It was a slow process removing the skin from the pumpkin.  It didn't just scrape off like I expected.

After like an hour of scraping.  Okay not really an hour.

I could already tell this would be a disaster.  I just wanted a cool pumpkin.  Just wanted to be different.  So I kept on scraping away the surface so I could start sculpting the soft pumpkin flesh.

Eyebrows?

No.  No eyebrows.  I tried and tried to make it look like a face.  The pumpkin did not want to have a face.  Pumpkins do not peel smoothly when you scrape them.  I kept making it more and more stringy, and I was getting more and more sad.

I guess there's a nose in there.

And then I hit this point when I was carving where I looked at the pumpkin and thought, "Wow.  This thing looking up at me is super creepy."  So I went with it, and somehow I ended up with this.

It may not have the clean lines and defined shape of the beautifully carved pumpkin above, but I guarantee this:  my pumpkin will be the only one like it.

Some creepy  hair?  Heck yeah.

And if this is not one of a kind, well then I just give up.

At the very least I hope the children are scared.

Happy Halloween, everyone!