Pumpkin carving FAQs

If you want to see our crazy-fun pumpkins from the last few years, check out 2013, 2012, and 2011. Do you go to a Halloween party? I would love to see your invitations! I’m always searching for fun ideas!

We are making our list of pumpkin patterns to carve! Our kids are helping us for sure, but what do you think has been popular this year? Here is a reminder of what we carved last year:

Our most popular pumpkins of 2014 were for sure the Duck Dynasty pumpkins.

Whenever I’m talking to people about our crazy pumpkin tradition, we get asked all sorts of questions. Some of our most common questions/concerns are:

1. Where do you get your patterns? We are members to a bunch of pumpkin pattern websites, and there are even some FREE websites out there that are great. For our favorites, check out our 10 best websites to get pumpkin patterns post.

2. Where do you get your pumpkins? Over the years we have built relationships with some amazing growers and retailers! Staheli Family Farms is where we get most of our pumpkins, but most recently Home Depot has really caught our eye with their great pumpkins! We also get some at local grocery stores. Walmart can have some great pumpkins at times.

3. I hate to gut pumpkins, why don’t you just paint them?! Listen up peeps, we used to think it was gross too, but when you have the right tools it is SUPER fast and we hardly even touch the guts these days! We use the pumpkin gutter to gut our pumpkins, and then we use a clay loop tool to thin them out. We can gut a pumpkin in less than 3 minutes. {If you click these affiliate links and buy something, I will earn a small commission, just keeping it real, folks}.

        

4. How many pumpkins do you carve? We carve around 100 each year.

5. How did this tradition start? We stayed up all night carving pumpkins with our family one night, and ever since it has been a family tradition. Our kids LOVE it. They get to help us decide which patterns we carve each year, and they look forward to it every year. If it wasn’t about the kiddos, I’m guessing we would have stopped awhile ago.

6. Are you going to do this forever? We will do it as long as we can. When our kids get old enough that they travel for sports…etc I can see it being hard for us to keep it up when that happens. But we are still several years away from that.

7. How do you keep your pumpkins fresh? Have you started carving your pumpkins yet? We cannot start carving until about a week before Halloween, but if you want to learn how to prolong the life of a carved pumpkin, check out that post! It’s super easy, and if you have cool weather, you can make them last up to a month with this trick!

8. How long does it take to carve your pumpkins? The shading pumpkins take a lot more time than a cut through patterned pumpkins. The Ducky Dynasty pumpkins above are examples of shading patterns. They take about 4 hours each. But we can carve a cut through pattern in about 15-30 minutes. We use linoleum cutters to for shading, and they work AMAZING!

We are known as the “pumpkin people” in our neighborhood! At first it was a little embarrassing, but we have embraced the crazy name! I hope you have fun carving your own pumpkins, and we would LOVE to see your carvings! In fact, even if you paint them I would love to see them! Tag the hashtag #carvethatjack and I’ll see it! I’m looking forward to seeing all of your pumpkins!

Happy Carving!

You can do it!

xoxo,

Brooke