saggy pumpkins, and replacement origami ones

My cat, the once shy scared-of-everything little cat, has now taken to sprinting out of open doors, which is clearly a problem. I've had some close calls where I've just barely grabbed the end of her tail to drag her back in, but the adventure on Saturday just takes the cake. For some reason, she managed to sneak out the door without me noticing. Oh no, right? Thankfully I felt something was off when I went back inside, and I eventually found her in the rose bushes outside the front door, just chilling. And after I brought her inside and wiped off her paws, she immediately plopped down in front of the door, wanting to go outside again. This cat, I swear.

Anyways, I carved a pumpkin for the first time in about 5+ years, and it went surprisingly well. My tip? Use a sharp serrated knife. I had my leatherman on hand, and the saw blade slid right through the pumpkin. Since I'm only a novice pumpkin carver, I only have one tip to offer. Sorry.

My pumpkins ended up with my last initial (Z) and my Chinese last name (周), and I spent about an hour trying to find the right font for each character. They turned out pretty swell if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, (because of the warm Cali weather?) they've started the shrivel and sag. Oh no!

I ended up shoving a couple toothpicks into each one to straighten out some of the saggy pieces. But I ended up chucking these this weekend, which is how my cat escaped. Lose-lose situation all around.

I think next time I'll paint instead of carve. There's a great idea for a chalkboard typography pumpkin, glitter monogram pumpkin, a glow-in-the-dark pumpkin, and a puffy paint pumpkin. Ugh, I can't believe I'm collecting ideas for next year's Halloween already!

But for this year, I folded some quick origami pumpkins, following these instructions (also mentioned in this post). Her directions say to use A4 paper, which is slightly thinner and longer than regular printer paper, but I found that her template works just fine with regular printer paper as long as you uncheck the "scale to fit" box when you print; you'll lose her logo, but the template comes out unscathed. 

I first tried it on orange construction paper, but for some reason the printer ink smudged all over the place, so I ended up flipping the whole thing over and drawing my own jack o'lantern face to compensate. That might actually work better, though, so your pumpkins don't show the black grid lines that tell you where to fold.

But I wanted big pumpkin-sized pumpkins, too, so I scaled up her project and made larger pumpkins out of kraft paper, and then medium-sized pumpkins out of black butcher paper to round out the set. 

awww, what a happy family

Pics on the entire set of Halloween decorations to come later this week! (aka after I've finished crafting them and putting them up...)