This weekend my family hosted our first pumpkin carving party. Yes, I said first... we will definitely be doing this again! We invited a bunch of our friends to join us for an evening of carving from 5-8. We figured this would give us enough sunlight to carve and a little darkness to get photos of our creations all lit up. I prepared some dinner and snacks, just a few simple items. I made some delicious tortilla soup, mummy hotdogs and some brownies. Friends brought festive drinks and an amazing 7-layer dip, along with their pumpkins to carve.  

We laid out a big tarp in the grass for carving. It kept little bits of pumpkin out of the grass and gave everyone a good place to sit and carve with their families. We purchased some carving kits to share and this fabulous new scoop I found this year with a serrated edge (highly recommended!). It made pulling out goo so simple! We even tried Martha Stewart's tip of using metal cookie cutters to punch shapes into pumpkins and it worked like a charm! We set out a few buckets to collect all of the pumpkin goo, and there was plenty! My husband and a friend kindly sorted through buckets of muck to pull out the seeds for roasting. All of the rest of the pumpkin innards went into our composter and will make some great dirt for our spring garden. 

If you have young kids, and a lot of friends with young kids, I highly recommend hosting a pumpkin carving party! Okay, you don't even need young kids! The adults had just as much fun! This was a great fall party, and required little planning. The best part is doing something fun with your family and people you love to be around.