• Now that Halloween is just around the corner, seriously it is, I am thinking about all of the fun crafts the kids and I will tackle. Halloween happens to be one of our all time favorite holidays. So much so that my husband and I were actually married on Halloween. True story. So we like to keep our kids excited about the day too. We do all of the traditional things, like carving jack O’lanterns, but sometimes that can be a bit messy. We save our carving for the day before Halloween, which means we have almost 30 other days to fill with Halloween themed fun.

    This year we plan to buy extra pumpkins for painting. Here are our reasons why. Number one, painted pumpkins will last much longer than carved pumpkins. Two, painting pumpkins is less messy than carving pumpkins. Number three, because we want to. Number four, we can display our panted pumpkins indoors or out, day time or nighttime. Number five, and lastly, because my kids love to paint.

    For our painted pumpkins we chose white pumpkins. Why? Well, simply because it would show paint colors better. Each of my kids chose a character that my husband and I drew onto the pumpkins. We used a regular black sharpie to draw the lines that the kids would eventually color in. My husband is a much better artist than I am, so he drew a princess. I drew the star and rings for Captain America’s shield. Then my kids took their paints (acrylics) and colored in the designs. I encouraged them to paint every surface they could.

    If your kids are more freestyle they can just paint their pumpkins any old way and you can skip drawing designs on them. Either way grab a pumpkin and get painting. Pumpkins aren’t just for carving!