Halloween has always been on of my favourite holidays. But surprisingly enough I’ve never carved a pumpkin in my life! For some reason as a kid I never had a desire to, so my folks never got one and carved it with me. And if I didn’t care carve one, my parents never got one to decorate for the holiday either as Halloween was never celebrated back in the old country. At least not back then, maybe nowadays it is though.

So I decided to give it a whirl this year, I mean as a man in my 30s it should be super easy. So I grabbed a stencil of an appropriate design; the Pokemon known as Haunter has always been one of the favourites and I figured he’d be a great fit. The stencil doesn’t seem too difficult so I got myself a decent sized pumpkin and a sharp knife from the kitchen.

Well shit I had no idea how thick a pumpkin could get, which meant I had to put considerable amount of muscle into cutting out shapes. This meant that my lines were not straight and all over the place. Ugh. Also the stencil required some fairly small and narrow cuts that might no way could make. Ugh again. So I messed up my Haunter stencil badly and to plan B I went, a traditional Jack O’Lantern face with lots of easy straight lines!

Ultimately I’m happy with it as my first pumpkin carving attempt, perhaps next year I may try something a little more complex and perhaps actually get more precise tools rather than just use the first knife I find. Also why no pictures of it with the lights on? Well, this pumpkin only had one good side, and it was messed up with the terrible Haunter attempt. The side with the face you see unfortunately had bruising on the skin. But I figured when the sun goes down it won’t be noticeable so I still decided to use it. Happy Halloween!