We had a Pumpkin Carving Party this year, as we do every year. We have been saving patterns for years now, and have one entire drawer of a filing cabinet devoted to pumpkin stencils. Every year upwards of 30 people come over, bringing their own pumpkins, and we spend the evening carving, roasting the seeds, and watching Halloween-themed cartoons (always lots of kids). here are some of this years creations, as well as some from past years.
The super-detailed ones (wolf faces, pirate ship, etc) were done by my husband... he always chooses the incredibly challenging stencils, and they sometimes take him more than 6 hours to finish.
Most of the Disney ones we have came from books that were sold over the years. This year we found a Princess book, a Pixar book, and a Mickey book at several places around town... WalMart, Walgreens, etc. Last year we found a Pirates book.
Some of them we have found on the 'net - just do a Yahoo (or whatever) search for free disney pumpkin stencils. www.disney.com usually has a few freebies too.
Here are my pumplkins. They are actually not real pumpkins but the foam kind. I got plain foam pumpkins at Garden Ridge and carved them like real ones. Now I don't have to carve them every year. The foam pumpkins are hollow so this works well. My boys are 16 and 20 so they are not interested in carving anymore so I took the lazy way out. The little black spot on the cat around his mouth is a hole in the back for a light. On the Graveyard scene you can see a ridge on the inside of the foam.
We were at WDW for Halloween so no carving for us. But here is a photo I took at Hollywood Studios of a carved pumpkin. I almost put this up for photo contest for Halloween theme but decided to go for a more taditional shot. Hope I made the right decision!!! This is really worth showing though.
My daughter always picks the design for me to carve, usually a cartoon character. This year, I guess she was missing WDW because she requested I do the castle.