Every year my office has a pumpkin decorating contest as part of its Halloween festivities. My coworkers and I are feeling a little burned out at the moment, so we’re looking for something that takes minimal effort.
I suggested something that I thought would be cute and easy: cut holes in a square yard of white fabric, toss it over the pumpkin, add a paper bag full of rocks and a stuffed Snoopy doll – voila! It’s Charlie Brown! But my coworkers said no one would get it (I had to explain it six times before they got it). Except for one coworker who suggested we paint the pumpkin to look like Marcel Marceau, no one had any ideas.
So, anyone got any ideas for a quick and easy pumpkin decoration that everyone in the office will instantly comprehend? No carving, please – our last attempt turned into a rotting pile of mold within 24 hours.
Here’s a retail idea for decorating kits you can get. You can make this stuff yourself easily enough from felt and construction paper, pipe cleaners and such. Is that more like what you’re looking for?
A few years ago, we had to create a no-carve jack-o-lantern for an event at my son’s school. My son painted the pumpkin white, and then drew 3 large ovals to represent the eyes and mouth. We then took a double layer of cheesecloth (available at the grocery store) and put it over the pumpkin, draping it to make the pumpkin look like a ghost. I can’t remember if I stiffened the cheesecloth, but if I did, I would have used a mixture of white glue and water. Because we used cheesecloth, you could still see the eyes and mouth, but not clearly.
It was fairly easy, looked cute, and was the winner of the highest bid at the auction.
If I was doing it again, I might rig up a way to hang it, and maybe give it some sort of pipe cleaner arms. One of the arms could even hold up a sign that said, "Boo!’ just to make it perfectly clear.
It’s basically a variation of your Charlie Brown idea, but without the Snoopy and bag of rocks, I guess.
Dress it up as Cinderella’s coach, perhaps? You can simply paint on the door and windows, and then attach wheels made out out of smaller baby pumpkins (or out of painted cardboard, if you prefer). Add glitter and accent in gold paint for maximum Princess factor.
Bonus points if someone can snag a Barbie doll in full evening wear to play Cinderella.
Bummer on the carving thing. Last year I did a cannibal pumpkin that was pretty easy and got tons of compliments. Just carved a large pumpkin with ye olde scary slanty eyebrows to indicate badassedness, gave him a huge mouth with widely spaced fang teeth and got one of those itty bitty pumpkins and carve in a :eek: scared face and placed the little guy in the mouth of the big guy. Since the small one was really small, I just hacked most of the back of him off so the candle light would illuminate his expression well, one votive candle was all it took to see both expressions just fine.
It looked really similar to this one. Doing a bleach soak and then making sure it’s good and dry helps maintain firmness and retard mold and rot for up to ten days, how long will yours be displayed?
Yeah, pumpkins don’t last long in South Florida. Especially when your employer turns off the A/C over the weekend and its 85 degrees outside. Our pumpkins are only on public display for one day (Halloween), but we have to decorate ahead of time if we want to complete our other work on schedule.
Mahna Mahna, I actually suggested Cinderella’s coach last year. I also suggested a comedy version where Cinderella doesn’t make it home in time. There would be a life-sized shoe sticking out of the pumpkin and a couple of tiny stuffed mice harnessed to the front, looking confused.
shantih, I like the mummy pumpkin. The haunted house pumpkin is great, too, but we’ve been burned before on the carving. We’ll paint the pumpkin or dress it up, but we’re not going near it with anything sharp.
spoike, your ghost pumpkin sounds really cute. I’m going to suggest it to my coworkers.
SeaDragonTattoo, thanks for the link! This is more our speed this year.
Sailboat, I have to admit that I laughed when I saw your link. Unfortunately my coworkers won’t even think about doing something with a political theme. They once took 45 minutes to pick out a group birthday card for a liberal coworker so they wouldn’t offend the guy who worshipped Reagan!
Morale is really low in our office this year because of the economy. I’m thinking I might hang a construction paper barrel around our pumpkin and add a sign that says “Will work for costume.” It sort of fits the mood.
I saw an interesting idea last month, that I’m going to try this year.
Take a pumpkin, clean up the outside and dry it off.
Spray paint the pumpkin black, then take a knife and scrape off some of the paint, into patterns. You get this really interesting black over orange look.
I know you said no carving, so you could do it that way. I’m going to hollow mine out, put a vase into it, and fill it with silk sunflowers.
