Pumpkin Snowman

My sis posted back in October about how to preserve pumpkins to make a snowman in December (actually she didn't know how and questioned how to keep them from either rotting, or  being smashed by local bratty hoodlums haha click here for that post). She also (heavily) hinted at having someone else (me) make her said snowman from pumpkins. Even tho her begging annoys me, I did (sigh)  make her a pumpkin snowman (you knew I would) using - wait for it - just like I hinted at - artificial pumpkins.

Key note: I said back then that I'd pick up some cheap-after Halloween-fake-discount artificial pumpkins to make a snowman in December but guess what? Yeah, no fake pumpkin deals to be found. Ok, if you want to get technical, all the craft stores advertised "deals", but when I went to get them, no one...seriously annoying...actually had the fake white pumpkins available. Ergh. I'll give you a visual - me digging around in 3 giant bins labeled "70% off pumpkins" outside of Michaels...literally on tip toes (no short jokes please) trying to get to the bottom of these big deep bins, just to confirm there were no perfect white fake pumpkins for me to buy. Thanks for that, stupid bait-and-switch store.

Jill, being the crafty one, improvised. I found a fall garland on sale (70% off) that was all leaves and vines and gourds and other random shooty stuff that was supposed to be natural but nothing I've ever seen in nature....that had 3 gourd/pumpkin looking things attached that could be used for a mini pumpkin snowman, so that's what I did. And check it out - gotta say, super cute.

The 3 gourd/pumpkin things were different colors - orange, light green, and cream. Since I wanted a snowman, it was an easy fix to just paint all 3 of them white using basic acrylic craft paint. The eyes and mouth are flat black beads that I hot-glued on; the nose is a triangle of orange pipe cleaner, a button on the middle pumpkin, and insert a couple sticks for the arms; finish with a wired ribbon for the scarf.

I looked for a pre-made top hat thinking I could save a bit of time, but of course - because I was looking - I couldn't find anything the right size. Whatever...it's easy to just make one from black cardstock. Cut a circle for the base, a rectangle coiled strip for the hat, and then - stay with me - I had this button stack leftover from a craft Brooke and I did two years ago at Halloween (click here for the post) which is a couple buttons layered together and tied with a piece of black and white twine - that worked perfectly for the top of the hat. You can just do another smaller circle of black cardstock for the top of the hat if you don't have a random button stack tied with twine on hand :) Oh, and I added a rim of green metallic pipe cleaner to jazz up the hat - you can decorate it with whatever you got!

I did attach a circle of cardboard (top of an empty ribbon spool) to the bottom pumpkin to make the snowman more stable - depending how flat your pumpkins are you might want to do this. If you have a flat base it might stand up straight on its own - play around with it and see if it's level enough without an additional base to make it sturdy.