[Tkaraoke]

This is a new thread called "How dumb do ya gotta be?!" Here is a place to post your pumpkin stories that for the most part you kept to yourself in fear of being thought of as a dingus! ROFLMAO!

Here's my entry...

Last year I wanted to carve 10 pumpkins so I decided to gut them all in one attempt. I had them gutted and ready to go and I thought about it and I remember people saying you should put some water in the pumpkin to keep it hydrated. It was two days before Halloween so I decided to put water in them but instead of just putting in a cup of water I filled them all the way to the top and left the lids on. They sat overnight like that and in the morning when I went to start carving them, something went horribly wrong. The pumpkins got hydrated alright...in fact they were saturated. They were still carvable but as the carving marathon progressed, the waterlogged pumpkins began to smell. The more I carved, the worse it got and by the time I finished the tenth one, the smell of wet pumpkin almost made me vomit. Needless to say I won't be doing *THAT* ever again!!!

Ok, fess up! There's gotta be a better story than this...or do I take the prize? lol

[Joey]

I'll fess up, I have a horrible habit of buying far more pumpkins then I can carve. It all spawned from the one year when I didn't get any, and ever since I've always had a little stockpile leftover after Halloween that I never get around to carving. I usually keep them around until about March when they start to get funky. I'm trying really hard not to do that again this year, but I've already got a pile of 4 started.

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

Good try Joey, but Tkaraoke still takes the prize so far.

As for me... well, the Patch Master doesn't make mistakes! Okay, maybe I have. We all started somewhere on our path to pumpkin perfection. I'll get back to ya on this.

[Tkaraoke]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I had four gutted and ready to go pumpkins left over but by the time I finished that tenth one, I had to just throw them away. Now *THAT* really made the unhappy.

[Dans banana Loafcake]

Ok this isn't a pumpkin story but a watermelon one. About two years ago, when I was still living with my parents, I bought four huge watermelons to get some carving practice in over the summer. I'd carved all but one and left it under the stairs and to be quite honest... forgot about it! BIG MISTAKE! Granted it was in a plastic bag, but when it did burst under its own weight after rotting, it still made a sticky, smelly mess on the carpet and to this day the stain isn't 100% out!

Dan

[Crystal]

Oh wow the watermelon would have been gross!

Ill have to think back seeing how I block those sort of things out of my memory.

[belli]

My mistake here was asking my boyfriend (with no personal pumpkin experience) for help...

...My boyfriend has never carved before but he loves the pumpkins I carve. I keep trying to convince him to carve so we'll see if he bites this year. Here's a kinda funny story: I think he was tramatized the one year I carved Shrek. I had given Shrek a bath, to plump him up before displaying him outside and I asked him to dry the inside of the pumpkin. Well, he wasn't very gentle and Shrek's face broke off I didn't know what to say when it happened, I was sort of in shock but I was glad I had taken a picture of the results. Determined to display him, I had to do a little surgery on him (Shrek not my boyfriend) and he was ready to be displayed for the evening and was one of the crowd favorites.

Here's Shrek before:

After surgery with green glow sticks:

He was held together with toothpicks and paperclips

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

Here's a dumb thing you may want to avoid doing....

Don't run around in a scary costume, trying to freak out the trick-or-treaters, if your vision is limited by a mask and there are pumpkins all around the yard.

While wearing my Patch Master costume, I was standing in front of a small table which was holding a lit jack o' lantern. When I lurched forward to spook some kids, I took a tumble over the table and the pumpkin went rolling through the grass.

The carving was of the "Eye of Newt" design, a rather detailed one. And despite the fall and roll, there was no damage done to the image. I guess that's a testament to the structural integrity of my stencil designs!

Still, I wouldn't recommend testing the theory with your own prat falls. Your pumpkin may not get bruised, but your body or ego might!

[S.A.M]

Okay time to fess up. Picture the scene, I had just finished carving a pumpkin and was about to show it off to a room full of expectant friends. I want to give it a grand entrance, the lights were out and I'm making the appropriate spooky wooing sounds as I make my way into the room, at this point I'm feeling rather proud of my latest offering.

That feeling wasn't to last as the inevitable happens and I trip on the rug, I manage to keep a hold of my precious pumpkin and keep myself upright but the lid flies off like it had been thrown by a champion Frisbee thrower It crashes across the coffee table sending a cup of hot tea hurtling towards the ground and onto my friends foot, the scream was of the blood curdling type.

I felt so embarassed but luckily the tea wasn't hot enough to do any damage but the cup did do some bruising

So always place your pumpkin before turning the lights out

[sloaner]

A guy I used to work with was telling me one year he and his friends stole some kids candy, as they felt very good about "stealing candy from a baby" they ran into a bunch of older guys who not only took the stolen candy but beat them up as well.

[ZPjames]

My story is more of Karma and it didn't happen to me. But, when I was with my nephew as he was trick 'r treating, a bunch of snot nose kids pushed through us and said "Move, we want candy" and as one of the kids was running up the steps, he tripped and fell. They say Karma's a b****.

[Liderc]

Well my story starts with gutting my 6 pumpkins too early because I was just so ready to do some carving. So because I gutted and carved too early, I had heard somewhere that refrigerating can keep the pumpkins from rotting too quickly.

Well, note to self, Refrigerating does not mean FREEZING.

I had a big "refrigerator" in my garage, or so I thought, it turned out to be a freezer and I froze all 6 of my pumpkins.

So on halloween night I put the pumpkins out in their amazing white frozen look, they lasted for maybe 3-4 hours then folded up on themselves=P

Something about freezing all the water inside a pumpkin destroys it's stability.

[Tkaraoke]

Something about freezing all the water inside a pumpkin destroys it's stability.

When water freezes, it forms ice crystals...sharp, pointed, jagged knife-like ice crystals that tear away at the pumpkin flesh on a microscopic level.

[Liderc]

Something about freezing all the water inside a pumpkin destroys it's stability.

When water freezes, it forms ice crystals...sharp, pointed, jagged knife-like ice crystals that tear away at the pumpkin flesh on a microscopic level.

Heh, I know this now, my response was more of a joke=P. After I did it I think I talked to Zp about it then researched it and found out the scientific reason.

[Dans banana Loafcake]

Bet when they first came out they looked cool though (no pun intended! ) Not often you see pumpkins covered in frost and ice on display!
Dan