Parsimonious Pumpkins

 

Can’t a pumpkin be just a pumpkin?  The harbinger of autumn, the parsimonious (frugal) pumpkin is a beautiful fruit (or vegetable, depending on your interpretation) that even unadorned brings a smile to most (unless you are Charlie Brown of The Great Pumpkin fame).  But, the allure to do creative and fanciful things to pumpkins is pervasive across the country smacking you in the face implying that to do nothing to your pumpkin is boring.

Everywhere you look there are articles, posts, photo montages, magazines, crafting stores and pumpkin patches announcing “Great Pumpkin Ideas!”, “Cute Ideas for Pumpkins”, “Make Your Pumpkins the Talk of the Neighborhood.”  In fact, one popular magazine touts 50 things to do with a pumpkin!  To name a few (besides the obvious carving of pumpkins and making pumpkin pie), here are my lucky thirteen:

1. paint them
2. glitter them
3. bejewel them
4. make them into animals or hollow them out, create a “window” in the front and insert a fishbowl with live fish!
5. wrap them in stockings
6. cover them with lace
7. tie them with ribbons and glue on bows
8. make mini pumpkins into wreaths
9. hollow them out and make them into tea light holders, candelabra, candle sticks and carve them into luminaries
10. stack them into totems
11. make them into topiaries
12. make them into fairy houses or Cinderella coaches
13. hollow them out to use as punch bowls, ice buckets, serving dishes for salads and “goulash”

But, I have to ask, doesn’t our search for “the great pumpkin” put too much pressure on our already “toot sweet” lives to perform semi-miracles on the simple, but already beautiful, pumpkin?  Do we have to paint them silver or black or striped or polka-dot when they already come in multiple shades of orange, white, red, blue (yes, there are blue pumpkins; I guess they are technically blue-gray) and even a green and orange-striped variety?

Here are my pictures of our Halloween pumpkins.

 

 

Please note:  Toot Sweet 4 Two will not be posting Halloween “how-to’s”, Halloween recipes, or Halloween decorating ideas this year on our blog.  But, don’t get me wrong – I LOVE Halloween!  It’s one of my favorite holidays!  So, no, just because I don’t have enough time (or skill) to make beautiful pumpkins, please don’t think of me as the “Pumpkin Grinch”!  Read tomorrow’s post to find out WHY we won’t be giving you a Halloween show this year.

So, to set the mood for your own wonderful and happy Halloween on October 31st, here’s a gorgeous picture taken by Tiffany at a local pumpkin patch last year.  This is the amazing, beautiful, sweet (and grumpy; she’s experiencing her “terrible two’s”) Princess Sweetie Pie.

 

And, here are a few more pictures of the adorable Princess Sweetie Pie, just in case one isn’t enough (she had my heart at “Where’s Auntie Carole?” when Tiffany went to pick them up after her return from Bloggy Boot Camp Las Vegas!  You are see that video by clicking here).

 

 

And, not to leave Princess P out of the Halloween festivities, here are some pictures of her in past Halloween costumes.

 

 

 

So, I ask you again, can’t a pumpkin be just a pumpkin?

Tootles,