Pumpkin Pregnancy Photos and an Ambitious Carving Attempt

I have neglected this blog so much the past few months! I would regale you with all my really good reasons (read: excuses), but instead I'll just show you way too many pictures of this awesome pumpkin the bf and I carved last weekend!

Yes, I'm aware this looks like a creepy pregnancy picture. They all looked like this no matter how we held it lol

We've had a growing obsession with French Bulldogs for the past few months and are dying to get one (but we have to wait!) so when it came time to pick a design to carve, naturally the only thing we could think of was a frenchie.

As you can imagine, there aren't many french bulldog pumpkin carving stencils out there, so we printed off a picture from the internet and traced it, having to decide what would be positive and what would be negative space (aka pumpkin and not pumpkin). We were going to be all fancy and carve into some spots, but not through, to create another layer of detail and preserve the stability of the design, but there's only so much you can do with a grapefruit spoon and a carrot peeler.

Nonetheless, here's how it turned out! (after a few temper tantrums, grouching, and 2 days)(none by me)

Note to other prospective pumpkin artists: even if a so-called pumpkin art carving book tells you to do so, do not rub your new baby down in canola oil. Or any kind of oil really. You're going to spend hours carving, cursing and flinging pieces of weird smelling pumpkin guts all over your kitchen/back porch only to come home the first night it is lit and find it CRAWLING WITH ANTS! Then you'll cry and try to burn them with a lighter and bug spray. But this can be avoided! Don't. Oil. Your Punkin.