How to Decorate a Pumpkin With Vegetables

Pumpkins are vegetables; why not embellish them with more of the same? You can create silly-looking characters by adding carrot noses and olive eyeballs. Let loose, have fun, and perhaps even set up a neighborhood competition to see who can come up with the scariest, prettiest, friendliest or ugliest pumpkin.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Garden Shears
• Thimbles
• Cocktail Toothpicks

1. Select a pumpkin of any size and any shape.

2. 

   Gather long-lasting vegetables from your garden or market, including carrots, green beans, cabbage, chili peppers, peas, small squash, celery, garlic or broccoli.

3. Attach various features to the pumpkin by sticking toothpicks into the pumpkin where you think the eyes, nose, mouth, ears or hair should be.

4. 

   Leave part of the toothpick sticking out of the pumpkin skin.

5. 

   Impale cucumbers on the stumps of the toothpicks to represent eyes.

6. Add green bean eyebrows the same way, by sticking pieces of toothpicks into the flesh of the pumpkin where the eyebrows should be and impaling green beans on the stumps.

7. 

   Attach a carrot or squash nose, some chili pepper lips, and some pea teeth using the same method.

8. 

   Provide a stunning hairdo by unfolding several leaves from a head of cabbage. Or make unruly locks by attaching Japanese long beans, several at a time, with the same toothpick.

9. Cut celery into C shapes to use as eyebrows or tiny ears.

10. Cut the ends off any exposed toothpicks with garden shears if they extend through the vegetable features. Stand back and admire the finished product.

Tips & Warnings

• Use a sewing thimble to push the toothpicks into the tough pumpkin flesh.
• Select small vegetables such as eggplant, patty-pan squash or zucchini. You may need more than one toothpick to hold heavy or long vegetables in place.

on 11/22/2005 The title says it all.