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Halfway through October and my neighbors have finally brought out their trailer piled high with Pumpkins. They are honestly falling off the sides it’s so full.

For as long as I can remember we have bought pumpkins from them every year. Not only are they right through the woods from us, which makes stopping there really quick, but they have so many different sizes available. It is our one-stop shop whether they are being used for carving, in a recipe, or just thrown on the table as a Decoration. They have anything from a baby Pumpkin to one the size of my torso.

Which I may or may not have bought on several occasions for carving and had to rely on a full-blown kitchen knife just to get through it. It was a long 4 hours to say the least. Not recommended.

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While I was over at my neighbor’s house picking out a pumpkin for a recipe that I will be bringing to you later this month, I started looking at pumpkins that could be used as a decoration as well. For decoration pumpkins, I usually stick with a pumpkin roughly the size of my head or smaller. This makes it so they do not take up too much table or floor space when inside but still gives me enough range to play around with mixing and matching up sizes to create a more dynamic look.

Every year decoration pumpkins remind me of college because we were not allowed to carve pumpkins in the dorm. You could have a full-blown, person-sized pumpkin sitting in the middle of your floor. But if you even thought about cutting into it, it would be spirited away by the RA before you could even blink.

I would always fight this and find different ways to spice up my pumpkins from drawing on them with sharpies to putting stickers all over to going out and buying glow in the dark paint. I just wanted a bit of the holiday spirit to be in our room.

Even after being away from that for a couple of years, I am still trapped that mindset and started thinking of more out of the box ways to decorate my pumpkins without having to cut into them. No one should be without a pumpkin if they want one.

I am not exactly sure how this idea came about but you see other things always being done up with an array of pages from books, drawings, comic book images, or just random snippets from the newspaper. They always look so cool and like they took a lot more effort than they actually did, so why couldn’t this be done on a pumpkin.

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Making these pumpkins is very easy to do when you get down to the root of it. All you need is a couple of things and you are well on your way to making some cute little decorations to spread the festive mood around your house or dorm this year.

WHAT YOU NEED:
Pumpkins
Magazines/Books/Newspapers/Etc
Scissors
Modge Podge
Paintbrush

Take your pumpkins and thoroughly wash the outside of them, making sure there is not any residue left over and that it is fully dry once you are done.

Cut out whatever you want to stick to your pumpkin for the collage and begin laying the pieces out to see how they will go together on the pumpkin. You do not have to have them all cut out at this point but it is nice to have a head start.

Take the pieces of paper and lightly paint the modge podge onto the backs of several pieces. Make sure not to over saturate the pieces or they will take much longer to dry, look messy, and possibly even affect the skin of the pumpkin if kept too wet. Place the pieces onto the pumpkin and continue this process. If you wish to do a second layer, pause and allow for the first layer to fully dry before you start up again.

Once finished, set your pumpkin wherever you would like it to be shown off and enjoy your new handmade decoration. And don’t forget to send me a picture of your pumpkins. I would love to see how they turn out!

*TIP: If you want to add a little more of a personal touch to your pumpkins, instead of using magazines or newspapers, use actual photos of yourself. Simply make sure they are printed on regular printing paper instead f photo paper because they will not meld to the pumpkins as easily.

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