Tonight we finally carved our giant 40 pound pumpkin! It's pretty much a family tradition to carve the night before Halloween. If you haven't already figured it out, we are a last minute kind of family. We get things done, but not until they absolutely have to be done. It's something I'd like to change, but I'd like to think we work best under pressure. Our pumpkin turned out great, of course, and my husband was able to keep the kids occupied scraping and seed collecting for the better part of an hour, while I made cookies for a school bake sale. Now all that's left are treat bags for my students, packing up costumes for school tomorrow, and writing this post.

The carving was tonight, but I'd like to think we've been preparing for the actual carving event since we created our paper plate jack-o-lanterns last week. My son wanted to make scary faces and my daughter was just happy to paint, cut and glue. All you need to create your own at home pumpkin patch are white paper plates, orange poster paint, black construction paper, scissors and a glue stick.

First, we painted our plates, round side out with orange poster paint.

After painting, the plates need to dry. We let our plates dry overnight, but they were ready within an hour or so. While your plates are drying you can cut shapes out of black construction paper to serve as your jack-o-lantern eyes, nose and mouth. My son drew his shapes with a white crayon before cutting and my daughter just hacked away at the construction paper until she had some pieces that resembled eyes, nose and a mouth. She may have had a little help from her brother too. Drawing and cutting the face of the jack-o-lantern can be a great shape review.

When the plates are dry, you can commence gluing the construction paper shapes onto the orange pumpkin.

Now all that's left is to display your cute little pumpkins.

Happy Halloween!