Nothing says Halloween better than a grinning Jack-o-lantern. Pumpkin carving has been around for a long time but is most associated with the holiday of Halloween. If you’ve never had any experience with pumpkin carving or are looking to kick up your carving a notch, here are some surefire tips to help get your pumpkin on!

The first step with pumpkin carving is to pick out your gourd of choice. This could be as easy as a stop at your local grocery store. For the more adventurous you might consider looking up a local pumpkin patch where you and your family can go and pick your own pack of pumpkins. Whatever pumpkin you pick consider this as your canvas. The bigger the pumpkin the easier it will be to carve. And don’t just stop at one pumpkin. Get a whole bunch and create a gaggle of Jack-o-lantern decorations.

Begin your pumpkin carving session by spreading out some newspaper under your pumpkin. You’ll need to slice around the top to make a lid and then hollow out all the pumpkin guts. You can either throw the pumpkin innards out or consider roasting the seeds for a tasty treat.

Once your pumpkin has been cleaned you could sketch out the face or design you’ll be carving. Because pumpkin carving has become a big business there are various pumpkin carving kits available wherever Halloween decorations are sold. In these kits you’ll find simple carving tools and stencils that you can use on your own pumpkin no matter what the size. Keep in mind that, applying a stencil template to your pumpkin isn’t cheating. Think of it as paint by numbers. It’s just a little extra guidance.

Pumpkin carving can either mean cutting out chunks of your pumpkin to create a look or delicately removing the top layer of pumpkin skin. By leaving the thin inner skin of the pumpkin you can generate and eerie glow when placing a candle or small battery light inside your pumpkin.

If you’re searching for pumpkin carving inspiration there are plenty of pictures and instructional videos that are just a Google search away. Checking out other works of pumpkin art might help you decide on pumpkin carving patterns or ideas for groups of Jack-o-lantern. Of course once your pumpkin carving is complete make sure you snap plenty of pictures because sooner or later your masterpiece is going to wilt away!

 Some families make a tradition out of going out each year to pumpkin patches to find the pumpkins that they are going to use that year for Halloween. If this is not something that you do with your family, but you love Halloween, this may be something you want to make time to do each year. It gives your family something to do together that they are going to look forward too, and you can usually find much better prices on pumpkins when you go to a farmer or a patch where they are grown. You skip the markup of the middle man when you get them this way.

You may not have much luck finding good pumpkin patches if you live in the middle of a large city, but you can usually find them just about anywhere else. Look where you would normally see your local farmers market set up and that is where you are probably going to find the pumpkin patches that you want to visit with your family. There are always some that are open earlier than others, but you do not want to get and then carve your pumpkins too early or they are going to rot before Halloween arrives. Unless that is the look you are going for, wait before you visit and choose your pumpkins.

When you get to the pumpkin patches, you may be tempted to run off to the largest of the pumpkins, grab them, and then go home. You want to take some time to make sure you are getting good pumpkins. If you are just grabbing some to stack up on your yard and you have no plans to carve them, you do not have to be quite as choosy. However, if you are going to carve your prizes from the pumpkin patches, you want to make sure you have a good pumpkin that is healthy and looks good all the way around for best results.

Large pumpkins can be great, but they are not always the best. Instead, you want to pick up the pumpkin and see if there are any large flaws that would get in the way of your carving ideas. Not all pumpkins in the pumpkin patches are going to make for great carving pumpkins. If you want to make homemade pumpkin pie, these are great – otherwise, look them over for gouges and other imperfections. You also want to make sure the pumpkins you are taking home from the pumpkin patch are the same color all the way around. Some bleach in the sun making them orange on one side but lighter on the other.

When you buy from pumpkin patches, you are probably going to pay for the pumpkin by the pound. If you get one from a store, it probably has a set price. If you are going to get a very large one, you are going to pay more for it because it could be quite heavy. However, even when buying by the pound at your local pumpkin patch, you are probably getting a better price on what is probably a better pumpkin.