As my kids are getting older I have to find ways to get the fun holiday activities in, and have them want to participate. Sometimes that gets really hard – I think I may have lost my teenage boys completely. Luckily I still have 2 young(er) girls that still like to do fun holiday activities with me. Hopefully I can keep it going for a few more years. I really don’t want to be the 50 year old lady running through the corn maze during the fall or taking selfies with elves and Santa all by myself.

Pumpkin Decorating

This year I wanted to skip the carving and paint out pumpkins. We have painted pumpkins before but I wanted to do a whole set, or series of them with stripes, dots, and other geometric patterns.

I started with 7 pumpkins of all different sizes and shapes. I decided on a black and white theme for the front porch thinking that I could just parley them from Halloween into Thanksgiving porch decor with just a few accessories.

I quickly decided that I wanted a more washed out look to my pumpkins than a dark full coverage look.

Once I covered the pumpkins with their base color they looked like this:

I love the way the imperfections show through. On the black one you can see the lines very clearly.

Next I took the opposite color and just went to town with stripes and polka dots. I really wanted a fun look that wasn’t necessarily “Halloween”.

Here are some of the finished products. You can see on the large pumpkin I added small black dots in-between the large white dots. I liked how it added dimension. I also painted some of the stems or “handles” as my girls call them.

My girls still wanted to carve pumpkins – even after all the painting! If they still want to enjoy the classic holiday traditions that we have done since they were small I am going to let them as long as they will. I know they are getting big!

Final product for Abi is a typical face with triangles and a half-moon grin. She is a very imaginative girl except when it comes to her pumpkins. She likes her pumpkins classic. Haley and I did Jack again because well, Hello. It’s Jack. We have already watched Nightmare Before Christmas 4 times this year. I think our record is 30 times between Halloween and the end of the year.

No matter how they want to decorate them, as long as they want to do it, I will be right there doing it as well. What will I do when I don’t have kids at home anymore?