Pumpkin and Apple Carving

I helped decorate for our Harvest Supper last Saturday, and knew that some fun seasonal stuff was in order. I decided to try my hand at carving pumpkins and apples. Yup, even apples.

I turned to Pinterest for most of my inspiration, so you could call this my Pinterest-inspired project for October as well. There are lots of different pins floating around that show pumpkins with the skin carved off into different things, so I decided to try my hand at it. I totally just did my own thing and made it up as I went along.

I started by writing the word "THANKS" on my pumpkin with a Sharpie.

Then I turned it into nice big block letters that I could carve.

Now, if you have really nice writing or are fancy-pants crafty, you could make nice calligraphic letters and make it all beautiful. But fancy-pants I am not, so block letters was the way to go.

I ever-so-carefully cut in to the skin with a razor blade, and then peeled the skin away in little chunks. It turned out to be very easy!

The skin was really soft and easy to work with. The hardest part was knowing how deep to cut into the flesh and making it all nice and even looking. So I enlisted the help of a cute baby.

Actually he kept asking to sit in my lap (curious as a cat!) and would beat his hands on the pumpkin. Then he would get down to play with toys. We repeated that process every few minutes until....

Ta-da! All finished!

A couple things I wasn't expecting. See how nice and orange the flesh is on this side of the pumkin...

The farther right I went, the more green it got.

I wished the whole thing was that nice orange color (guess I was digging the tone-on-tone look) but my mom thought the green made it stand out more, so whatever.

The other thing that surprised me was that the thing was juicy. As soon as I pierced the skin, it started...I don't know what to call it...bleeding? weeping? Anyway, the letters dripped for days. so now you know, carve pumpkin skin with a paper towel handy.

I only ended up doing the one pumpkin this way because I wasn't sure how it would hold up. I didn't want to carve half a dozen pumpkins and then have them all wilty by the supper. As it turned out, it still looked great a couple days later, so I'm filing that in my memory bank for next year!

My next project was the apples. Which my sister thought you needed a picture of.

I wanted to make apple tea lights. This was another easy-peasy project! I just traced a tea light on the top of an apple, and carefully cut the circle out with a regular paring knife.

I chipped away at it with the knife until all the large chunks were out, and then cleaned things up with a spoon.

Then I swirled some lemon juice and water in there, since that helps keep the apple from browning as soon.

Once the hole was smooth and deep enough, I just pushed a tea light in there.

I love how they turned out! We had great scents too, these candles were hazelnut, cherry, and mandarin melon. Yum!

Tomorrow I'll show you how I actually used these in decorating. I loved how they turned out! In the meantime, what crafty projects have you been doing for fall? Any Pinterest-inspired fall decor?

Want more Fall inspiration? Visit my Pinterest board, It's Fall, Y'all! (because I'm corny like that!)