Pineapple Jack O'Lantern

I love this idea from BHG.com  - carve a jack o'lantern face into a pineapple instead of a pumpkin. How cute would this be on a Halloween dinner table or dessert bar at a party? Now it didn't turn out exactly like their pictures but that's only because I've never done it before and learned a couple things - if I wanted to carve a second pineapple it would be much better the next time around! 

1. Draw the face on with a marker, cut on the lines

2. Put the pineapple on a plate or something to catch the juices.  Cut off the top and hollow out most of the pineapple meat - just like if you were doing a pumpkins push the carved pieces out (eyes, nose, and mouth). 

3. Insert a candle

4. Replace the top. 

1) they make it look very easy to remove the pineapple meat from inside the pineapple but it wasn't. I ended up hacking away at it with a knife and then scraping with a big spoon. Be forewarned that it isn't coming out in one pretty piece hahah. Doesn't matter in the long run, but don't want you to be surprised or frustrated.

2) second thing is I made the eyes and nose too close together - it would have been fine on a smooth pumpkin but the bumps in the pineapple skin caused the cuts between the eyes and nose to open up even tho I didn't cut thru the space between them. Does that make sense? Whether it does or doesn't trust me and space the eyes and nose farther apart hahahah. 

bhg 10/19 click here

Pumpkin Line-Up

Went to a local farm that grows tons of pumpkins, gourds, etc. and picked out a few to make my little creepy/cute row of pumpkins that I put outside on a bench - they are pretty simple and didn't take me very long to do.

Note: I didn't carve out the insides of any of these...

•  for the "zombies" I hollowed out two openings and jammed ping pong balls in (painted with bloodshot eyes, I've had them a while but think they came from the Halloween Store - don't make the openings too big or the balls will fall into the pumpkin), then just cut a thin slit underneath for a mouth.
• for the "vampire" I cut an opening just big enough to hold a set of plastic fangs (they come in a bag of approx 10, I've seen them lots of places - not hard to find)
• for the one with the sewn shut looking mouth: I cut a small mouth opening and made 4 holes with a skewer across the top and bottom of mouth.  Then I cut the fluffy ends off of qtips, bent the sticks a little bit and stuck them into the little holes.
• The middle one I just cut a slit for a mouth and used googly eye push pins. 

• I also bought 2 cinderella pumpkins and gourds - I didn't notice that one of the pumpkins had a mushy spot in the top so I stuck a small rubber rat in the rotted hole and stacked the other on top of it. That was kinda gross actually - sticking the rat in the mushy hole...ewww! 

the whole little scene turned out cute!

Creepy and Cute Pumpkin

(Ok, maybe not very creepy but since I like fun halloween and not scary halloween this is about as creepy as it gets!)

For this pumpkin make a hole in the bottom and scoop out all of the seeds from there. Using a marker, draw out  2" circle for the eyes with a 3/4" circle in the center, then carve the outer part of eye leaving enough flesh to hold the inner circles in but thin enough you will be able to see thru them when it is lit. I just keep scraping with a small knife until the outer eye is smooth and thin. Next cut  a 5" x 2" rectangle in the pumpkin for the mouth. I found some small soft twigs in the yard and broke them into same sized pieces, made small holes above and below the mouth and inserted the twigs in bending them to curve into the holes. For the ears cut pieces out of the sides, carve them a little bit to look like ears and then insert them back into the same hole they came from (use a small skewer or toothpick to help hold them in place if they won't stay there). Insert a candle and check out how cool this looks glowing in the dark!