Planning the perfect Jack-O-Lantern this Halloween? Don't let your labors go to waste: preserve your pumpkin for as long as possible. Yes, there are ways to delay the spread of rot and mold ... and you may be surprised to find what really works the best!

Now, there are lots of pumpkin preservation tips out there. Most popular suggestions include greasing the pumpkin all over with Vaseline or white craft glue, or soaking it in a bleach solution. Others swear by coating your Jack with acrylic spray or just plain old hairspray. You can even buy a special pumpkin-preserving spray called Pumpkin Fresh for this very purpose.

The debate has been greatly aided by an experiment from the folks at the (very fun) site, My Science Project. The conclusion: keep away from the white glue, Vaseline and acrylic spray. These substances encouraged mold to grow like crazy! The bleach solution was top for the first few days, but your best bets for longevity are a) apply Pumpkin Fresh or b) just leave your pumpkin au natural.

I love everything artist Nikki McClure creates, and her latest pumpkin carving for Sunset Magazine is no exception. She's kindly provided the stencil for those of you who weren't born with Nikki's mad illustrative skills (which is basically everyone, right?). I can't wait to tackle my own Nikki'o'Lantern! Sure beats the usual Martha Stewart pattern...

Here's how to do it!:

1. After downloading, tape the template to a clean, dry, and hollowed-out pumpkin.

2. Using a pushpin, prick closely spaced holes along the outline of the design, making them deep enough to be seen when you remove the template.

3. Remove the template. Following the pinpricks and taking care not to cut all the way through, use a small carving chisel or linoleum cutter to outline the design. With a larger linoleum cutter, remove the rind within the outlines and scrape out some pumpkin flesh (the deeper you go, the more light will shine through). Add texture and dimension by varying the direction and depth of your carving.

4. Light your pumpkin. A votive candle is traditional, but for more illumination, use a battery-powered or outdoor-rated electric light; carve out a hole for the cord if necessary.

That's it --- happy carving, and thanks, Nikki!

Bored with the same old jack-o-lantern smiley face/angry face designs? Maybe you need to branch out and try something totally new. I, too, have been digging around for fresh ideas for carving this year's big orange veggie. Check out the slideshow to see my favorites!

For more original and creative pumpkin projects, visit Family Fun magazine's Halloween Fright Site. There you'll find a ton of pumpkin decorating ideas, both of the carving and non-carving variety. Or steal an idea from Flickr's Jack-O-Lantern photo pool. With well over one thousand member-submitted images, you're sure to get inspired for some major pumpkin artistry!

At my house, we really try our best to live in an environmentally friendly way, for our health and the Earth's. We eat local, fresh food as much as we can, we never use chemicals on our lawn or plants, we don't clean the house with chemicals, and we have quite the raging compost pile.

It seems that we got a bit overzealous with the composting, in fact. Last fall, after carving a stunning Jack-o-lantern, we responsibly dumped the innards of the pumpkin into our composter.

Throughout the autumn, we had several pumpkins displayed on our walkway and stoop. When it was time to put up the Christmas decorations, we plopped the pumpkins in the composter. Follow me after the break; I'm going somewhere with this...

Pumpkin vases are simple, and leave lots of room for your own creativity. You can choose flowers or leaves in colors that match your Thanksgiving table setting. This autumn decoration can be quickly transformed into a Halloween accessory by draping it in a spider web.

What you'll need

1. Pumpkin
2. Carving tools
3. Spoon
4. Vase
   
5. Flowers or leaf branches

After the break I'll explain how we make the pumpkin vase. Make sure you take a look through the gallery for pictures accompanying each step.

This project is the perfect way to add a little Halloween decor to your front porch and make sure that your friends can find your house on Halloween night. This creative and functional use for jack-o-lanters is brought to us by Michaels Crafts. It's super simple and looks great.

You'll carve out each number on a medium size craft pumpkin, and top it off with a small jack-o-lantern. You can find the templates here, or you can use any font for the numbers by just printing them out and transferring them to the pumpkin. The pumpkins are held together with a wooden dowel, and placed in a decorated terracotta pot.

They look like they are just barely balancing which is part of the effect, but you'll still need to be careful and they are best kept away from children. While you may have some materials on hand, everything is available at Michaels, and the instruction page walks you through the whole project. The entire project will take about 2 hours.

Everybody will take a second look at your pumpkin house numbers. It is among the most innovative and useful Halloween decorations I've seen this season.

[via: Adventures on Firethorn]

Wouldn't it be cool if you could make a pumpkin jump out every time people came to the door on Halloween night? Well, you can, with a basic stamp microcontroller, a park zone stoplight, and a hacked Epson printer. It sounds like an odd combination of materials, but Michael Seppanen teaches us how. Check out his instruction on how to make your pumpkin appear automatically by sensor.

Personally, it seems like a lot of work for a result that I'm sure could be easily achieved another way. Still, if you want a good Halloween prank, and live for the thrill of hacking things together, this is probably something you'll enjoy.

It's difficult these days to come up with unique Halloween jack-o-lantern decoration ideas. I mean, there are only so many ways to carve a pumpkin, right? After all, they've been carving pumpkins since before Ichabod Crane had his run-in with the headless horseman on that covered bridge, and that was at least a couple Halloweens ago.

My challenge was to come up with a jack-o-lantern idea that no one had tried yet. While I'm not sure that I accomplished that goal, I have come up with something which is at least...unusual. The amazing puking pumpkin that you are about to witness was actually quite easy to accomplish. In truth, it's more of a rabid pumpkin than it is a puking one, but I still like the way the whole thing worked out.



Continue reading to see how it's done.

Let's say that Halloween crept up on you. You never saw it coming, and suddenly, there it is, staring you right in the face. You haven't purchased any candy, you haven't bought a costume, and worst of all, you haven't carved your pumpkin yet.

DIY Life has the solution for you. It's called speed pumpkin carving and it'll get you out of a Halloween bind every time. Just grab your reciprocating saw from the tool box, strap down that pumpkin, and you can quickly create the next sequel to the latest Hollywood slasher movie series. Watch the video below to see how it's done!

We've already had a few articles about Halloween pumpkins this year, and we'll continue to showcase some enlightening ideas for the coolest Jack O'Lanterns on the block. However, if you plan to carve up a pumpkin or three this October, there's something you need to know.

I live in Ohio, the US's primary producer of the autumnal pumpkin crop. Over the last week or so, the local news has been buzzing: due to a hot, dry summer, this year's pumpkin yield is smaller than it should be, and among those pumpkins making it to the shelves, there are fewer prime specimens than usual. The same news has been common across all the Midwestern US's pumpkin-producing areas. The last year this bad for pumpkins was almost twenty years ago.

What does this mean to you? A relative scarcity! Pumpkin prices are a little bit higher this year, it will be more difficult to find a large pumpkin that isn't obviously misshapen, and sellers expect those to go relatively quickly. The bottom line is that anyone with plans to dress their Halloween manor to impress should try to get their hands on their little orange victims in the very near future.

Are you in the process of creating the next great Halloween project? It's time to show off your skills, get some exposure and win cool prizes.

Instructables, MAKE and PopSci have teamed up to create a huge Halloween contest. It's all about DIY and it is sure to bring out some wild and creative ideas. Here is a list of the contest categories:

• Hack-O-Lantern Contest
• Costume Contest
• Decorations, Gadgets and More Contest
• Food Contest

Share your haunted house props, robotic Jack-O-Lanterns and disgusting eyeball recipes. The prizes are yet to be announced, but are guaranteed to be awesome. The top projects will even be featured in MAKE and PopSci.

More details should be coming out in the next week or two, and we'll keep you posted as they do.
You can enter your photos, videos or full Instructable submissions. Check out this page for some more information.

With Halloween looming just around the corner, it is time to start thinking about pumpkins. Well, the day might not be just around the corner, but it is getting close and the grocery stores are starting to carry pumpkins to go with the orange and black candy packages that have been on the shelves since mid-August. Most of us simply go to the store to pick out out pumpkins. And why not, they are readily available and fairly cheap. But for the rest of us, say those who might have a slight obsession with pumpkins, it is no small task to choose just the right pumpkin(s) for our Halloween designs. For that population, which I will admit I am a member, the pumpkin selection could take weeks.

Pumpkins are not all created equal. There are hundreds of varieties of the orange globes. There is the Cucurbita Moschata, pumpkins best suited to cooking, these are often smaller and denser than the typical Halloween variety. The traditional Halloween pumpkins are called Cucurbita Pepo, these are the the medium sized, bright orange globes that are not too dense, making it easy to cut into them. Cucurbita Maxima, as the name might imply, are the monster pumpkins you see at county fairs. Pumpkins also come in all sorts of shapes and colors. There are white pumpkins and deep, dark red pumpkins. Some are quite elongated while others look to be squished flat into a donut shape. If you happen to be interested in a more off beat sort of pumpkin, a farmer's market is likely the best place for you to begin your quest.

I have yet to choose my pumpkin(s) for this year's Halloween design. I am thinking I might go for one the dark red pumpkins, but then again the lure of the Cucurbita Maxima is always quite a draw....