Time to Carve!

It's my favorite time of year. Cooler weather, the beautiful colors of leaves changing, roasting marshmallows around the fire pit...and pumpkins, of course! Not only do I love making everything I can with pumpkin purée (pancakes, muffins, cookies, cake pops, pumpkin crunch, etc - check out my recipes tab!)...we also love carving them!

This past weekend, we took the boys to a local church's pumpkin patch to pick their pumpkins. They had tons of beautiful ones! The boys had so much fun running around and checking out all of the pumpkins before selecting the ones they wanted to buy. Sorry for the poor quality iPhone pics. I didn't bring the good camera and it was really dark, so they don't look great.

My three little pumpkins at the patch! ;)

Cleaning out the pumpkins went much better this year than it did two years ago...you can check out that funny video here! Wow, Ethan looks so young there!!

Scooping out the seeds to be roasted later.

This year, we got fancy with our pumpkins and used Pumpkin Masters carving kits to help us out. You can find the kits at your local grocery, drug, or craft store, or at Walmart or Target. I love these kits because I know the boys can safely use the tools for carving, and we can avoid any dangerous situations with kitchen knives!

Look at all of those great tools!

Noah chose a ghost template for his pumpkin. It was super easy to use! You just tape the template onto the pumpkin as directed, then trace the outline with the pounce wheel. This pokes little dots into the surface of the pumpkin.

After removing the template, you just follow those dotted lines to carve out the correct areas on the design.

Voila!

Noah was so proud of his pumpkin! :)

It will look great all lit up on Halloween night! Pumpkin Masters also has strobe lights that you can place inside your pumpkins so that you don't have to use a candle. With the little ones, this is a great, safe alternative!

Love it! So spooky! :)

We had such a great time carving our pumpkins! We want to get more this weekend to carve before Halloween. With all of the templates and tools, there are so many great designs we would like to try!

Pumpkin Masters is currently holding their annual carving contest. You can share a pic of your carved pumpkin via Instagram or Twitter with #PumpkinMasters2013, submit it via the Facebook app, or send it via email to: social@pumpkinmasters.com to enter for the chance to win one of six prizes, including $5,000 for the best pumpkin!! The contest runs through the 31st, so be sure to enter soon! You can find the details and official rules here.

To help you with your pumpkin carving this year, I am giving away one Pumpkin Masters carving kit (valued at $35!) which includes all of the great products shown in the above picture! To enter, just leave a comment on this post below for your chance to win. I'll be randomly selecting the winner on Monday, October 21st at 12 pm, so be sure to leave your comment before then. Only one entry per person/email address, please. Additional entries will not be eligible to win. To qualify to win, you must live in the United States. The winner will be notified by email. If they don't respond within 24 hours, a new winner will be selected. Good luck and happy carving!!

Congrats to the winner of the carving kit contest...Nikki! She was randomly picked as the winner as commenter #1! Thanks to those who entered. :)

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.