Life With Frenchie

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time (like 5 minutes) knows that I am not the “arts & craft” type of mom. I break into a cold sweat whenever I get near a pair of scissors and glue! Well, this weekend MM and I attended a Publix Apron’s Cooking School and carved a pumpkin.

If I ever carved a pumpkin as a young child, I don’t remember it. After yesterday’s experience, I’m suspecting it is one of those suppressed memories. You know, when something so awful happens to you, you just completely put it out of your mind? Pumpkin carving would definitely fit into that category!

I knew I was in trouble when I couldn’t even cut the hole in the top of the pumpkin. After a good 5-minute struggle (and plenty of looks of pity from the surrounding families in their “cute” matching jack-o-lantern t-shirts), the top was finally off. Who knew that was the easy part?? Before we could even begin carving, we had to gut the pumpkin. I am not exactly the dainty type, but cleaning out the inside of this pumpkin nearly made me gag!I think that took us another 30 minutes alone. But, finally, we (read I) prevailed and Mr. Pumpkin had innards no longer.

Oh wait? You mean that’s not the end??? Nope! Apron’s was nice enough to provide us (included in our $40 fee) with a pumkin carving stencil kit. MM and I settled on a lovely window scene. There was a cat sitting next to a jack-o-lantern with a spider hanging down. It had a “2 pumpkin” difficulty rating. Piece of cake! Little did I know that meant “master carver”! Still, we forged ahead.

As with any carefully planned outing with mother and daughter….this one nearly ended in tears - MINE! The annoy– er, I mean lovely– families with their matching clones were busily creating masterpieces. One kid was busy prancing about announcing that, whilst I was still trying to tape the stencil to our pumpkin, his family had actually finished carving theirs (I figured out what the guts of the pumpkin were meant for!). Nevermind the annoying munchkins, MM & I had work to do!

After carefully marking the outline of our carving we actually began to cut. Carefully, I cut through the detail and sawed out the first part of a window pane. I pushed on the piece to let the light through and…NOTHING HAPPENED! Nobody told us that it was nearly impossible to actually get the pieces to come out of the pumpkin! Still, we forged ahead!

It took quite a while, and I don’t think my fingers will ever be right again, but we managed to get our pumpkin carved and we weren’t the last ones there! The cat actually looks like a cat. Our jack-o-lantern within the jack-o-lantern looks snaggled tooth, even for a jack-o-lantern. And can you call a spider a spider if it doesn’t have eight legs???

Well, we managed to get it home without dropping it and it is now sitting proudly by our front door.

What did I learn from this experience? I’m promptly converting to whatever religion does not endorse pumpkin carving for Halloween!