Fried Pumpkin Seeds

This is a new one for me.  Have you ever fried pumpkin seeds? I've always baked Pumpkin Seeds, but my husband came across a recipe for frying them. They may not be as healthy, but the great thing is that they only take 5 minutes or so.

To fry Pumpkin Seeds,  place the clean Pumpkin Seeds in a about a couple Tablespoons of oil with salt in a frying pan at medium heat.

Then use a spatula to keep moving the seeds around for 5 minutes or until they are somewhat brown.  They are surprisingly delicious! I actually like them better than the baked version.

Of course my favorite part is carving the pumpkins and I had to share some of our pumpkin designs here too:

My design

C's Design

Have a Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Decorating Event

At my High School I had a pumpkin decorating event this past Thursday.  It was part of a much larger event involving High School Students helping younger kids in the community with crafts, games, face painting, hayrides and more. Thanks to Discount School Supply and Craftprojectideas.com for providing some fabulous donations of craft supplies for the pumpkin decorating.  I got to tap into my Elementary Art Teaching days and so did my High School students.  I think they had just as much fun as the younger kids.  Here is just a sampling of some of the pumpkins that were decorated.

Pumpkins waiting to be decorated!

Decorating fun!

The kids loved it! What a great event!

Here are some of the pumpkins my High School Sculpture class carved to decorate for the event.  For some of my students,  this was their first experience carving pumpkins. Really. I'm glad I could provide them with the experience.

Face painting was a HUGE hit!

High School kids joining in on the pumpkin decorating.

Here are all the wonderful supplies and face paint donated from Discount School Supply.  Be sure to check out their page here for all their great products.

Here are some of the Awesome craft donations from Craftprojectideas.com:  Please check out their page here for all their products and great ideas. You can purchase their products at Walmart.

Thanks to all my High School Students, Discount School Supply , and Craftprojectideas.com for making this event a success!

Pumpkin Pinch Pots

This is a great little project that I wish I could have done with my elementary art students, but then again I could do this with my High School students on a larger scale too.  High School kids (and adults) love holiday projects so it could be done with any age! I love pinch pots and making them into little pumpkins makes them even more fun! Keep reading to find out how my daughter and I created Pumpkin Pinch Pots. You could make them for any of the Autumnal Holidays.

First we began with a small ball of Crayola Air Dry clay.  This is some amazing stuff.....almost as good in quality as Kiln Fire Clay.  If you don't have a kiln or access to one this is a great choice. There is link to Crayola Air Dry Clay at the end of this post.

Then we put our thumb into the center of the clay ball.

Next we used our thumb to pinch out the pot to make it bigger.

And bigger...

We also fashioned some lids with a pumpkin stem.

After that that, we carved in lines for the ridges for the pumpkins.

Ta da!

And you can even make a jack o' lantern faces.

Hope you have a Great time with this idea!

Oil Pastel Decorated Pumpkins

We were using oil pastels the other day when making our Colorful Bumpy Spider Webs and these pumpkin gourds happened to be sitting on our table.... so they got some color too!!!  Cassie enjoyed coloring on this different surface.  It was just a spur of the moment experience I thought I would share! They are really cool!

Here you can see that we had just finished our Colorful Spider Webs and C happily coloring away on these cute pumpkin gourds!

You could use markers, crayons, feathers and buttons like Tinkerlab,  paint like My Creative Family, Sparkles like The Imagination Tree,  and even play dough like Teach Preschool to decorate your pumpkins! The ideas are endless!

What other ways have you decorated pumpkins?