How to carve a pumpkin

First, bring your pumpkin indoors and get your hubby to hack the top off (remember to leave a notch so the lid sits properly).

Then gather your tools: scoop, tiny saw, tiny drill, eyeliner pencil (this was very important) and begin to scoop out the insides...

I had chosen particularly hefty pumpkins and the scraping took a long time! Lots of tools were employed!

You have to scoop all the seeds and stringy bits, then scrape the inside away so that it's thin enough to carve...

Then begin the delicate job of transferring the pattern onto the pumpkin. When this proves impossible resort to hand-drawing it on with an eye-liner pencil. Then you begin to carve....

I firmly believe that the people that made the patterns never had to carve them!! I have never cussed so much. I had pumpkin pieces in my hair. This was hard work!!!

I could be a brain surgeon now (if i wasn't so squeamish!) as there was precision work involved!

With the finished article!

This is what a pumpkin looks like if you spend over an hour carving it.

And this is what a 20 minute "I'm fed up and want to go eat" pumpkin looks like!!!

The overall effect!