Evil Gourds

Now that Halloween weekend is over with and pictures of costumes and shenanigans are going up on Facebook, I'm really feeling like I just sucked this year. It definitely didn't help matters that I've had a cold for the last 9 DAYS and I may never recover.

But I'm not going down without a fight. I bought a bag of candy "in case we get trick or treaters."

I baked a delicious pumpkin bread...

From a boxed mix at Trader Joe's.

And I sat down for a little crafting. Presenting, Martha Stewart's Fanged Pumpkins:

Yeah, those are hers. Mine will come later. And I'm renaming them Evil Gourds.

I saw this idea back before I got sick and generally meh, and hurried out to buy a few gourds.

Then, on my next stop at the drug store, I looked for a few sets of Dracula teeth. Weirdly, all I could find in the seasonal aisle was a sack of 15 sets of RED teeth.

I could've kept looking for some less odd ones, but they were on clearance and came to about $2. You can't pass up a deal like that.

The instructions for fanged pumpkins call for map pins to hold the teeth in place and to create the beady little eyes on these suckers. In an uncharacteristic stroke of luck, I already had a set of red pins from a sewing project. Score!

My materials sat around for days and days until finally I realized I was running out of time. Devin ran out to the store to get me a pumpkin carving kit so I could get started. He came home with a motorized one that seemed pretty bad ass.

Time to get to work! Step 1: Draw a mouth.

Step 2: Cut the mouth hole.

Done and done. What? That's totally the same gourd from before. Ok, you got me. I had a little trouble, even with my power saw. Turns out gourds are hard as rocks. It broke my little poking tool. Evil gourd! I switched to this mini pumpkin and the knife went through like butter.

Step 3: Scoop out the guts.

Step 4: Adhere the little teeth to the mouth hole with pins.
Since I kept the holes kind of small, the teeth mainly stayed in on their own.

Step 5: Shove in 2 more pins for eyes. And behold...

EVIL GOURD!

I was going to give up after this one, but then I decided to try another.

Again, it was hard as a rock, but poking holes along the cutting line helped a bit. Although I nearly broke my fork.

Once I conquered that one, I had the confidence to go back and try the original gourd and in the end I wound up with quite a spooky trio.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!