Tag Archives: Pumpkin Carving

Great Cut Out ’08 – Setting 61 Heads On Fire

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First off, it’s Sunday just before 1pm, and I’m amazed that I can turn and look out the window into the front yard and all 61 of those dudes are STILL sitting on my lawn. I live in a great neighborhood. There have been at least a couple of parties on my block this weekend with various drunken zombies (and slutty policewomen and Little Red Riding Hoods) running around, and yet my little orange lawn ornaments remain untouched. Pretty cool.

I’ll see if I can’t keep this short. We’re here for the pictures, aren’t we? I got home Friday from work and immediately…took a short nap. I was exhausted from staying up late and carving the last three pumpkins the night before, plus cutting some wood for the display.

My friend Cat was up from Terre Haute on business, and she stopped in just moments after I woke up from my nap and we set about getting things in order. It took a while, because it’s pretty hard to pick up and carry more than one jack o’ lantern at a time, so we each made about fifteen trips off the porch to the front yard. We got them all set up, and then the little neighbor kids came by for candy, and the littlest ones (maybe three years old) started teetering and tottering between all of them picking off the lids when they saw Cat doing it. “I help!” one little boy kept saying. It was cute as all get-out, but I was really worried he was going to fall headfirst into a row of six or eight of them. His dad rescued him and the gourds before damage was done.

After about an hour we had them all set up and the candles were installed. Here’s a little tip for those of you contemplating such an undertaking: get some of those long-nosed butane lighters. Funks was a genius and a life-saver last year when he showed up with two that he’d purchased just because, well, I guess he thinks a lot further ahead than I do. Those things saved us probably twenty minutes of matches, burned fingers, and lots of cussing.

Finally, all 61 were lit, and we got the lids put back on, stepped back, and, well, I’ll let the pics tell the rest of the story. (all clickable)

61 Jack O\' Lanterns!

A blaze of Halloween glory!

This one is leering. Always good to have some leering on Halloween.


My friend Tina did the one on the left, and Meg did the one on the right.

This is one of mine. I’m a fan of big eyes and large mouths. They show up really well in the dark.

I did this one, but I got very good advice from a couple of people on the teeth. I was going to carve them in reverse of how I did it here, but it looks much better this way. Thanks, guys!

This looks like an Ed Roth cartoon to me.

Tim P. did this one. It got a lot of compliments. Andrew told me that in the middle of this one there was an, “Oh no. I don’t know if I can pull this off” moment. Obviously he overcame his obstacles.

Joe’s wife Kathy did this one. She was the first person to ask for toothpicks. The detail was awesome.

Me without coffee.

Great capturing of expression here.

One of Tim P’s specialties is the winking eye. It’s becoming his trademark.

I absolutely love the eyes on this one. I never would have conceived this design myself. My buddy Squee is responsible here.

Jem, my truly outrageous friend did this one. Much detail. Excellent curves on the eyes and eyebrows.

Squee did the one on the left with the three eyes. I once again envy her eyeball majesty. I don’t recall who did the one on the right, but it was really friggin’ creepy once it was lit.

Me with all my kids. Woohoo! Pulled it off again this year!

The morning after. You can get a good look at the finished project, and see some that I didn’t get shots of, or shot too poorly to post. Folks really were outstanding with their contributions of time and money (I didn’t pay for all these myself). Mom and pop were great for getting the pumpkins for me. My friends were wonderful for all their creative ideas, for putting time into it, for being enthusiastic, for being positive and having a good time, for helping me clean up(!!!!!), for showing up multiple times (especially if I goofed and misinformed them of the schedule of events somehow), and for just being the cool people they are.

Thanks again to all of you who participated! You contributed to an outstanding and fulfilling piece of fun and creativity. I do hope you will all return armed and ready next year. I think we’re gonna do ninety, so I’ll need the help!

The Great Cut Out ’08!

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It’s the second year running.  Last year it was thirty.  This year it’s (almost) sixty.  Six.  Zero.  There will be sixty jack o’ lanterns on my front lawn this Hallow’s Eve.  How has this come about?  Glad you asked, as have many other people.

A few years ago I got some not-quite-random email from the good folks at my Kodak photo site.  It was just one of those festive things detailing photo ideas for the coming season, but the lead photo in the email was composed of about six jack o’ lanterns gleaming, grinning, and snarling in the darkness.  I don’t remember anything else about the message, but the image stuck in my head.  “That’s pretty sweet, man.  I want to do something like that.”

A year or so passed.  I think that year I did do four pumpkins, just because I thought it would be fun.  The next year I slacked off and did only two.  It was fun, but I really liked having more.  A lot more.

The next year rolled around, and I started talking about this idea.  “I should have a bunch of pumpkins, a bunch of jack o’ lanterns this year,” I told a friend.
“That’s cool.  You mean, like, five or six?”
“No, like…twenty.”
“Twenty?!  How are you going to carve all those!”
“I don’t know, but it would be cool, right?”
“Yeah, it would be really cool.”

Having thusly convinced myself of the coolness of my idea, I formed a plan: get lots of pumpkins.  It was a loose plan, I’ll give you that, but it was a plan just the same.  Eventually I fleshed it out some more, found a place that would give me a deal on thirty (somehow the number went higher – go figure), and had a bunch of people come over and carve, and carve, and carve.  It was a big success, and before I’d even lit candle one I had people encouraging me to do it again next year with even more.  After looking at the resulting photos, I couldn’t argue.  Thirty was superfab, but by taking two photos and placing one above the other, it was easy to see that sixty, or even ninety(!) would be better.

Having the wrath of gourd instilled in me from the previous year’s efforts, I decided that I’d “take it slow” this year and only double the amount.  (This is taking it slow?  Honestly?  Um, okay.)  So it was that I arranged, with the wonderful cooperation of my loving and helpful parents, to have them pick up sixty orange victims from the patch nearby their home.

They purchased them on Friday the 16th, and mom brought them down the next day in dad’s pickup.  Behold the orangey goodness:

Mom gives ’em a good scrub as we unload them.

Here they are all unloaded on my front porch, patiently awaiting their fate.  Holy crap that’s a lot of pumpkins!  Can I really pull this off??  (Yep, there are actually 61.  They threw in an extra in case one was bad in the batch.)

On Saturday folks began arriving sometime around 1pm.  My folks went straight to work (well, my mom actually made mulled cider and dusted things and cleaned up first.  She was great!)

Here is some of my faithful crew from last year, back at it just as enthusiastically this year.

Time was taken out from the busy schedule to make sure my nephew received some tickling by grandpa.

At the end of the day on Sunday, despite the efforts of my wonderful friends, I still had 26 pumpkins left!  I did four of them myself Monday, then rallied on Tuesday morning and sent out the emails: Please come for carving tonight!  It worked.  I have such great friends!  Andrew even returned from his stint on Saturday for a rematch with the gourds.
 

Goo, carving, markers, cutters, Coke.  I did supply bubbly caffeine.  Surprisingly, most people seemed to run on pure creative energy.

All Hallow’s Eve eve, and look what we have…three in the left front corner not carved even after the flurry of activity Tuesday night!  Where’s my marker!  My cutter, posthaste!

10/30/08 11:00pm  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a go.  Sixty (okay, sixty-one) pumpkins carved!

Tonight is gonna be sweet!