Even though we already made four puffy painted pumpkins (one for each family member), we didn’t want Clara’s first Halloween to pass without a bit of traditional pumpkin carving. A recent trip to the pumpkin patch put us in the mood. Here’s our little queen throwing her arms out like she’s declaring, “I’m the queen of the world!”
We even let our royal highness choose her very own pumpkin. She quickly homed in on this one:
Ok, “choosing” mostly meant touching the one we set her next to, but she wouldn’t let go of that particular pumpkin, so for a mere $2 it came home with us — already showing signs of frugal instincts.
We planned a simple carving this year since our time for elaborate projects is limited. Watching Clara paw at the pumpkins inspired an easy, sentimental idea: use her handprints as the pumpkin’s face. All it took was getting her to hold her hand still long enough for a tracing.
“Good” might be optimistic, but the tracing on the left looked workable enough to become a template.
I traced the chosen handprint onto cardstock and cut it out, making a clean stencil to transfer onto Clara’s pumpkin.
The original plan called for two handprints to serve as the pumpkin’s eyes, but the fingers read like eyelashes — a happy accident we embraced. We added puckered lips for the mouth and a wavy hairline at the top to give the pumpkin a sweet, girly look. Looks like our baby girl has her very own feminine jack-o’-lantern.
After some careful cutting, we ended up with this charming face:
With a flameless candle votive inside, we had a safe, classic jack-o’-lantern with a first-year-of-parenthood twist. Simple, personal, and pretty cute.
Speaking of Halloween, here’s how we’re dressing the kids for their first holiday together — slightly embarrassing but totally adorable.
Clara’s a hamburger (a nod to her brother) and Burger is reprising his role as a hot dog to complete the theme. Both costumes are store-bought — Clara’s from Old Navy and Burger’s from Target. I have a feeling our little lady might give us a hard time about this when she’s a teenager…
Psst — we announced this week’s contest winner at the end of Monday’s original post. Ikea also surprised us by tripling the number of $350 gift cards they’re giving away. Check Monday’s post to see if you’re one of the lucky winners!