Pumpkin season has begun!

[jflis]

Man it's been a busy week or two! Between the start of my pumpkin carving, starting a para-teaching gig, pumpkin festivals and strong sales at FlisKits, i've been flat out for weeks now... LOL Ain't complaining, just saying...

Heck, this is my first time in the forums in 6 days... that NEVER happens!

Started my carvings last week and had a fantastic festival outing this past weekend. Here are some pix and you can see my photo album by clicking this link.

My daughter (Jen) and her boyfriend (Ted) joined me for Saturday and we had a great day together Of the pumpkins shown below, Jen did the Elvis. Visit the photo album to see more.

 

[Scotty Dog]

Man it's been a busy week or two! Between the start of my pumpkin carving, starting a para-teaching gig, pumpkin festivals and strong sales at FlisKits, i've been flat out for weeks now... LOL Ain't complaining, just saying...

Heck, this is my first time in the forums in 6 days... that NEVER happens!

Started my carvings last week and had a fantastic festival outing this past weekend. Here are some pix and you can see my photo album by clicking this link.

My daughter (Jen) and her boyfriend (Ted) joined me for Saturday and we had a great day together Of the pumpkins shown below, Jen did the Elvis. Visit the photo album to see more.

Very nice ! Might sound a little wierd,but I love the smell of burning pumpkins.It just brings back memories of younger days. I had a great childhood and I will admit I miss those days.The wife and I try and go to a couple pumpkin fests each year.

 

[UPscaler]

Amazing! Last year I made an attempt to carve one with the scrape technique involved. but it didn't work out.

 

[RocketT.Coyote]

This past weekend, I did my yotey thang and marched in a local pumpkin festival parade--toting a rocket of course. The CAP units that sponsored me were the state Model Rocketry champions this year for CAP.

 

[jflis]

Amazing! Last year I made an attempt to carve one with the scrape technique involved. but it didn't work out.

It's not so much a "scrape" technique as it is actual "carving". We use a variety of razor knives and wood carving chisels as can be seen in these pix:

 

[ghrocketman]

YAHOO !!!!!
That means Pumpkin SMASHIN season has begun too !!!!

 

[jflis]

YAHOO !!!!!
That means Pumpkin SMASHIN season has begun too !!!!

As I mentioned in YORF...

That reminds me of a humorous story... I used to have problems with kids smashing my pumpkins... Not any more...

I'd take a couple of my pumpkins and FILL them full of flash bulbs (those large egg size bulbs) and a battery with a micro switch that was held open by the weight of the pumpkin...

We'd be sitting there watching tv and then suddenly see a silent explosion of light on the front step and the sounds of a bunch of teenagers running like heck, rubbing their eyes....

LOL It must have looked like Armageddon from their point of view....

 

[ghrocketman]

That trap would work once; ONCE !
See my reply in YORF.
It would probably be banned/deleted here by some overzealous moderator as giving useful prank ideas to teenagers.

 

[RangerStl]

 

[Evo666]

ahhh, those are way better than mine. Although it was my first time this year

 

[Peartree]

For a relatively small investment one could mount several webcams on your porch. For a slightly larger investment infrared cameras can be had as well.

 

[ghrocketman]

And for even less, one can invest in a nice ski mask and a large sledge to defeat both the cameras AND the pumpkins.
BANG ! SMASH ! SPLATTO !

 

[RangerStl]

May I suggest, perhaps as a stick-in-the-mud, that walking up on someone's porch at night while dressed in a ski mask and carrying a sledge hammer and smashing things and making a bunch of noise might be a supremely foolish thing to do? :jaw: :eyepop:

You think this is all funny and harmless? That's a very likely scenario for someone to get accidentally (or intentionally) shot.

Come on, dude. Be realistic. It's funny for a little while, but now not so much.

Don't forget to steal a car, too so no one recognizes your ride and that can't be traced to you. If you want to park a few blocks away to keep the car out of view, you better be really sure nobody sees you in the middle of the night, with that ski mask and hammer or the NEIGHBORS might shoot at you.

This is ridiculous. Somebody PLEASE change THE subject BEFORE this GETS any MORE silly.

 

[ghrocketman]

You wait until it is well dark and in the middle of "normal" people's sleep cycle before you commence the smashin.
If you suspect the property owner may be some angry crotchety old coot waiting for just that sort of gag, you sneak up to the porch, grab the pumpkins quietly, then SMASH THEM IN THE ROAD in front of the house instead of on the porch.
We literally did that to HUNDREDS of neighborhood pumpkins JUST BEFORE Halloween when we were teenagers.
We even smashed our OWN to take suspicion off !!!
It ROCKED and was hilarious.
ALMOST as funny as the MAILBOX BASEBALL/BOWLIN' BAWL through the car window scene in the movie "Dazed and Confused"; never played that game but had LOTS of pals that did.
Then again, I thought it was HILARIOUS when my next door neighbor gave trick-or-treaters cigarettes and chewin' tobacco in their bags as a prank.
Little airline LIQUOR bottles would have been a MEGA-HOOT just thinking about parents reactions, but we never did that; why waste good liquor as teenagers, right ?
We gave rotten tomatoes and EMPTY candy boxes.
Some years we hid in the bushes and threw rotten tomatoes at the trick-r-treetrs. Other neighborhood pals "mugged" the candy bags from "unsupervised" trick-r-treetrs.
Nowadays with all the knee-jerk over-protectionistic laws, one would be sent to jail for just that sort of GOOD CLEAN WHOLESOME FUN !
I like the unidentifyable car part suggested above. That would have been fun but we always walked or rode bicycles even when of driving age as it was much easier to stealthily sneak around.
This IS REALISTIC; it all happened about 25 years ago in the mid 80's and was a HILARIOUS HOOLIGANISTIC RIOT !!!!!
Naturally, the statute of limitations for our mischievious shenanigans ran out LONG ago.
Would not change a thing if I had to do it all over either.

 

[Scotty Dog]

First-Pumkins are for smashing on Halloween -PERIOD!!!!!!A happy pumpkin is a smashed pumpkin on NOV1st. It was meant to be.I have to go with "gh" on this one. Halloween is for pranks and all asociated with. I could rite a book on the stuff we did as kids on halloween. GH,that part about the cigs and stuff-reminds me of a Ted Green show were he tried to "pipeline" cigarett smoke into a "smokeing parents baby" he was like "WHY WAIT" getting smoking early.Ya ,so the guy got punched. I think he got his point across.Heres a good smasher

 

[RangerStl]

I guess we have to grow old, but nobody ever said we have to grow up.

Maybe if we know where the pumpkin smashers live, the rotting mess they leave behind can be caringly delivered to their residence. Or they could come by the next day and clean up their own messes. :cyclops:

Nah, that wouldn't be any fun then, I suppose. Best to leave the messes to the unfortunate prank victims.

Like the jerk who lets their dog defecate in my front lawn and leaves it lay for me to mow over. :bangpan: THAT, however is another story for another time.

 

[ghrocketman]

Yeah, sign me up for that; I'll make sure I leave my card behind so someone can deliver the residue to my lawn...C'mon now; this can't be a REAL suggestion. I'm a mess MAKER/PrankSTER, NOT a mess cleaner/prankee.

NOBODY pranks themselves, EVER; it DEFEATS the whole purpose of inflicting minor irritating MISfortune onto another for kikks/grins/laffs/yuks.

Part of the prank is that the prankee gets to clean up the mess someone ELSE left for them.

You are right, I may have to grow old but I NEVER have to grow up.
While I may no longer pull these sort of pranks, I will ALWAYS find them funny.

In the past, some fools have tried to play revenge pranks on me, which ALWAYS backfired with much worse pranks delivered in retribution such as dead rotting fish and pickled eggs under the car seat in 100+F car interior temp, Multiple Stinko/Bango Loads in cigarettes, etc.

One of the BEST revenge pranks one can play is the good old fashioned "Upper Dekker" toilet gag. That one rocks.

In the past I have almost ALWAYS gotten away with pranks without anyone EVER suspecting me as one would never guess my MAJOR PRANKSTER nature by my personality except for my very close friends.

 

[jflis]

Anyone else carving pumpkins? Sure, I guess *smashing* them give a thrill, but not much in the way of skill or imagination...

Let's see what GOOD things folks are doing with their annual autumn gourd

 

[The EGE]

Anyone else carving pumpkins? Sure, I guess *smashing* them give a thrill, but not much in the way of skill or imagination...

Let's see what GOOD things folks are doing with their annual autumn gourd

At CATO, we launch em! Extra brownie points if it actually lands on the field...

 

[RangerStl]

At CATO, we launch em! Extra brownie points if it actually lands on the field...

OK for that you gotta be ...

Wait for it...



"Out of your gourd!"

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Evo666]

Anyone else carving pumpkins? Sure, I guess *smashing* them give a thrill, but not much in the way of skill or imagination...

Let's see what GOOD things folks are doing with their annual autumn gourd

I'll be carving more when time comes. I'm just using the designs they give you with those store bought kits.

 

[luke strawwalker]

Kinda reminds me of some of the crap we put up with as bus drivers... One lady was CONSTANTLY having her mailbox baseball-batted. That gets expensive and OLD having to replace the mailbox all the time. SO she got even.
She got a friend to give her a foot and a half long piece of oilfield casing pipe, JUST small enough to put in the mailbox. She put it in there one night and sure enough, that night she heard a truck scream by down the road and roar off, and there was a small dent in the mailbox the next morning...
What was REALLY funny was, this kid that was a constant troublemaker on her bus, who she figured was the one doing it, got on her bus the following Monday with his arm in a cast... :roll::roll::roll: He wouldn't look her in the eye or tell her how he broke his arm, but it was clear that he was the one who HAD been doing it...
Her mailbox has NEVER been baseball batted again... :clap::clap::clap:

Serves the little jerk right... :roll:

Later! OL JR

 

[Scotty Dog]

Anyone else carving pumpkins? Sure, I guess *smashing* them give a thrill, but not much in the way of skill or imagination...

Let's see what GOOD things folks are doing with their annual autumn gourd

Spent $2000.oo this spring on a new tiller. One of the main reasons/buying points was to have a better pumpkin and squash garden. I usauly grow 3 dif kinds. Its just the wife and I here. So I give bunches away to folks and thier kids. I set them out around the place and let them pick out thier own. It is fun to watch the young ones, like a kid in a candy store.One thing I do with them,is slice the skin before they mature and you see what happens. I do the niece and nephews names and others. This year I didnt get down to the patch much and only did a few.thier is a trick to this. To deep or to early and the scare "fills in" and gets to big and deformed. I have tried growing the white ones twice with no luck.:confused2:

 

[Scotty Dog]

here s a couple scare faces OH YA I didnt do it this year But if ya cut/slice a face in it , you watch it grow out and deform and thats cool too.

 

[UPscaler]

Anyone else carving pumpkins? Sure, I guess *smashing* them give a thrill, but not much in the way of skill or imagination...

Let's see what GOOD things folks are doing with their annual autumn gourd

I will be attempting a special design. You'll have to wait to see

 

[ghrocketman]

SOME of us consider SMASHING pumpkins a GOOD thing. :bangpan:
I would much rather participate in the DESTRUCTIVE smashing of jack-o'-lanterns than constructing them TO BE SMASHED.
What's a good punkin ? There are two kinds of good ones; those launched from a cannon, and those SMASHED in a gratuitous manner with sadistic GLEE !:bangbang:

I'd borrow a portable cutting torch to cut off that stinkin mailbox that the owner thought they got the last laff in on against the mailbox baseballer; 9 innings of mailboxx basebawl is a FINE way to spend a Saturday nite ! Just ask the cast of "Dazed and Confused"...we actually pulled a lot of those same stunts in our youth. It was a HUGE LAFF-RIOTT HOOT !
Put some o' THAT in the pipe and SMOKE IT !

The ol' M-80/M-100/SilverSalute/Cherry Bomb in the mailbox gag was a good one too, but I never personally did any of that stuff...knew plenty that did though.

 

[ghrocketman]

Here is a GOOD example of proper use of OTHER person's pumpkins !

Link to hilarious hooliganistic mischief:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnRQuStLohg

 

[jflis]

Some more pumpkin carving at the Farmers Market last night (like I don't have enough to do getting ready for Red Glare... LOL)

First up is my kitty cat pumpkin. All 3 images are on the same pumpkin. This one was fun to do and looks great

 

[jflis]

Next up we have Michael Jackson (2 images on one pumpkin) and my haunted house (the kids loved this one )

 

[redsox15]

Jim that is absolutely incredible! Amazing work

Matt