How to Pick a Halloween Pumpkin

Halloween is a great holiday for fun and festivities the whole family can enjoy. Dating back to the 5th century BC in Celtic Ireland, Halloween originally may have developed on a day when the Celts believed that spirits could intermingle with the living, and so would dress up in ghoulish scary costumes and noisily parade around the neighborhood being destructive, in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess. Today, the Halloween holiday is more fun and playful with children and adults dressing up in scary Halloween costumes for trick or treating or a fun Halloween party. Many people carve Halloween pumpkins to make Jack-O-Lanterns, and also decorate with fake spider webs, bats, ghosts, and other ghoulish decorations.

In this free video series, our expert will demonstrate how to carve a Halloween pumpkin and make a Jack-O-Lantern. You will get step-by-step instructions on how to clean your Halloween pumpkin, how to roast pumpkin seeds, and how to carve a pumpkin. Get great ideas for pumpkin carving designs and decorations, as well as ideas for adding details to your Jack-O-Lantern design. Let our expert walk you and your children through this fun and exciting Halloween craft!

"Hi, this is Shana Bethune on behalf of Expert Village and I'm here to talk to you about selecting a pumpkin. Now before you select a pumpkin first think about the design you'd like to carve into the pumpkin. Because the pumpkin you choose really depends on the design you're carving. For example if you're planning on carving a wider face or design, you'd choose a rounder pumpkin like this one, but if you think you'd like to make something a little bit longer, you'd choose something that looks more like this one. Also when selecting a pumpkin you want to make sure that you choose one that's free of any sort of scratches or dents because if it has any scratches in it, that means that the surface is going to rot a lot faster and if it has dents it's going to be much more difficult to carve and you might not be able to transfer the design that you want onto the pumpkin. Also when you're choosing your pumpkin, make sure that you pay attention to the length of the stem, because the stem is attached to the lid which is what you'll use to put on top of the pumpkin later after you've carved it. So if you have a stem that is too short, like this one over here, it's going to be kind of difficult to take the lid on and off. So, it's better to choose something that's a lot longer like this one and later on if you decide it's too long, you can cut it down a little bit. But overall the most important thing when choosing a pumpkin is to make sure that it is very clean looking on the outside and it's free of scratches and dents."