Four No-Cut Pumpkin Decorating Ideas Meant for Kids

Since one-year-olds are not truly “of age” when it comes to pumpkin carving, we have been trying to figure out a way to involve Clara in pumpkin decorating this year. And she deserved a promotion from last year’s job as hand model:

So a few days ago we at last figured out a way for Clara’s hand to come in, um, handy again. But first – let us introduce our subjects. We will call them Big Brother, Middle Child, and Little Piggy.

On Monday night I broke out my go-to all-purpose medium (aka painter’s tape) and marked out a traditional jack-o-lantern stencil on Middle Child.

Then with an exacto knife I cut out the pattern carefully (okay, not that carefully – I sliced into the pumpkin a bit) and peeled away the extra tape.

Voila. He’s not done – simply ready to be painted. Do you see where we are going with this?

For Little Piggy I used a ruler to slice some thin strips of painter’s tape and created a stripe pattern all around the pumpkin.

And for Big Brother we chose to go with a P to represent the whole Petersik family of four (four-leggers count in our house – so this is not a baby announcement).

A few more cuts later, and our trio of pumpkins were ready to meet their artist.

And here she is now. Stripped down to a diaper and ready to make a mess.

We poured out some Crayola Washable Paints on a few paper plates and with some minor urging, Clara delicately began coloring her orange canvas.

She grew a bit tired of touching the pumpkins after the first two (she liked simply dabbing her hands in the paint instead), so Sherry took over the task of painting Big Brother. Which was likely for the best since we chose that a rough circle around the monogram might be lively (and there was no way little miss toddler hands could contain herself to such a strict parameter).

The verdict? Clara seemed to have a blast. But eventually we got the “all dawn!” signal (aka: all done) and chose to call our art session officially complete.

Not before snapping a few more cute pics, of course.

Once Sherry had whisked Clara off to the bathtub, I got to seeing what our artiste had accomplished. Yup, it was tape-peeling time…

I carefully peeled of the painter’s tape to reveal our final result (with the paint still wet, since we feared that peeling it off once the paint was dry would result in the paint peeling off in chunks). Behold: Psychedelic pumpkins!

Sure, they are not über sophisticated – but they were lively. And we think white pumpkins + a more refined color palette (yellow & gray? emerald and navy? teal & grellow?) could be truly lively instead of the rainbow-inspired color scheme that Clara chose. Oh and we sprayed them over with a sealer (we had Aileen’s Gloss Spray Acrylic Sealer around, so hopefully that’ll do the trick) because this paint is washable, so we do not want a rainstorm to send colors bleeding all over our bench (hopefully our porch awning + sealer = sufficient protection).

And on the subject of pumpkins, let us take a walk down memory lane. You’ve already seen our handprint-eyed jack-o-lantern from 2010 (first pic) but that was in fact in addition to the crazy puffy painted versions that we also did last year (without Clara’s assist). I think they are our go-tos of all time – and they could be lively to do with kids too.

In 2009 we went the creepy route and painted insects on white pumpkins (and yes, monograms or initials tend to be a theme for us – but kids could have lively painting these too).

You can even watch that pumpkin project on time lapse video:

And last but not least, here is one where we in fact cut our pumpkins. In 2008 we tried our hand at intricate carvings – only one of which truly worked out that well, if you ask me. Which one? The monogram of course. Wow, we truly do like to see letters on pumpkins do not we?

So, with all that said (and shown) – what are you folks doing for pumpkins this year? We’d enjoy to see links and photos if you’ve got ’em. Or if you have any strong pointers for including kids and toddlers in the festivities, I am sure Clara will thank you when next Halloween rolls around…

Psst- We had some fall lively this past weekend (more over on the house Life).