>Actually making a pumpkin this year

Have a good'n bro, I just made a skull pumpkin because I had only a large knife to use to cut it.

You too sis.
I'm making up for the pumpkin I didn't get to make last year because of STUPID CULINARY SCHOOL AND ITS CRAPPY HOURS...

Maybe we can make pumpkins next year and see who can make the best one. Or just make paired ones.

YESSS.

This is adorable! The added ears are really clever!

Since you asked me about my pumpkin, now I gotta ask you about your pumpkin. :) How did you take off all that pumpkin skin?

D'AWWH THANK YOU. :3

I first outlined stuff with a red sharpie and using a picture of Jibanyan as reference;
Then I used a Mercer brand zester [from my culinary school knife kit that I kept after transferring colleges :P] to shave off some of the layers of skin without causing too much damage to the pumpkin's flesh.

The pupils, mouth and nose were carved using a regular Pumpkin Masters kit knife along with the ears from the back of the pumpkin.

Then I outlined some of the features of his face and smoothed out the exposed flesh with a clay sculpting tool that I use solely for carving pumpkins now (I think the brand is Creative Crafting or Creative Crafts? I dunno it was some cheap-ish brand of tools my sis got a while ago at AC Moore.)

I also scraped out some pulp inside the pumpkin that my dad missed when he first gutted it with a Pumpkin Master's scraping tool along with the knife so there wouldn't be any threads in the way of his features.

and then yeah i hotglued his ears into notches on his head because they wouldnt stay still and i didnt wanna use nails because we compost our pumpkins into our gardens out back for veggies in the spring

The flesh on his tongue was real stringy and hard to smooth along with some on the inside orz ;;

It came out pretty cute though! My folks liked it. C:

Nifty, thanks for the details -- what a wide array of tools! Never would have thought of a zester (though that would seem obvious in hindsight when dealing with a fruit, haha). Smart!

You're welcome!

And yeah hahaha we have a TON of Pumpkin Masters tools from dozens of kits over the years and some crafting stuff.
As for the zester, I actually tried using a vegetable peeler from the same knife kit (but alas no cigar due to the pumpkin being so smooth and slippery :C ) and almost considered the kit's microplane grater, but I picked the zester over them both.

I'm very surprised at how handy they can be when it comes to carving gourds!
They also can probably come in handy for making fluffy warm squash and mashed potatoes lol

ahhh now i wanna try mashed pumpkin sob...
lol at least we have squash here at my house

I gotta remind my folks to look into buying some kabocha pumpkin seeds sometime for growing them next year.
I've heard they are really tasty. I also found a couple of neat kabocha recipe videos from some Japanese cooking YouTubers I like (Mosogourmet and bonobos25) for pumpkin-shaped breads and kabocha desserts where you hollow out a few kabochas and puree the flesh with other stuff then bake the puree in the kabocha shells so you have little pumpkin bowls...

lol i think with my stomach a little too much

Aw it's so adorable! U v U

Thank you!