Adipose jack-o-lantern inspired by Doctor Who

Well hello cutie

Another Halloween, another chance to be creatively geeky once that amazing autumn holiday rolls around. This year, my girls are being a couple different types of zombies (instead of the DW-inspired characters they were last year), so I decided to apply my Doctor Who love to our newly purchased pumpkin — so new, in fact, that I had to run out and buy one yesterday for this project.

Disclaimer: I have never carved a pumpkin with anything other than a gigantic knife. So I entered into this exercise with ignorance and excitement, thinking I could knock it out in 15 minutes or so.

Before starting, I realized that our regular knives wouldn't do the trick. And I also realized that I didn't have a pumpkin. So we went out only to discover that the first store was out of pumpkins. Thankfully, the second was stocked with four or five good-sized specimens, and I selected a decent one with a smooth-ish surface and a new package of cheapo pumpkin carving tools.

I perused an awesome pumpkin carving template gallery I found on ThinkGeek's Blurgh! blog. As you will notice, there are tons and tons of nerdy options. I selected an Adipose baby from the episode titled Partners in Crime because it's one of my favorite episodes, they are adorable and the pattern looked fairly easy.



I was ready to get to work. That's actually a fib. First, I recruited my eldest to chop a hole in the top and scoop out the innards, some of which we later roasted and ate (sorry, pumpkin, but you were delicious). While he was working, I printed out my template and wondered how I was really going to do this.

Fortunately, the pumpkin carving kit came with this really neat little tool, and yes, I had to rely on my child to tell me that.

Cheapo pumpkin carving tool set

See that little orange thing on the left? Turns out it pokes holes in things, and is perfect for punching out the outline of your pattern onto the pumpkin itself. Once I got the template piece of paper on the pumpkin, I was suddenly aware of how many tiny holes I'd have to poke to get the outlines of my little guy's hands just so. And then of course I'd have to delicately cut away with the tiny saw...

I persevered. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination as my choppy outlines and still-visible holes attest to.

Telltale pin holes and wobbly eyes

Once I got done poking holes and carving my little Adipose baby, my hands were cramping up and a solid hour had passed. But I emerged victorious.

Happy Halloween.

I only burned myself a little bit putting this candle in

A Doctor Who Halloween

Happy Halloween from my girls who, along with myself and an older son, are huge Doctor Who fans. I was happy they wanted to dress up as characters from the show. My 10-year-old girl chose to represent the 11th Doctor, and my 3-year-old girl wanted to be a Dalek. The Doctor costume took some work to find, but with a lucky thrift store find (a slightly-too-big jacket for $6), a bow tie from JC Penney and a fez we found at Spirit Halloween, it came together nicely.

The Dalek costume, however, was a bit more work. It involved part of a pattern of a dress I've made a dozen or so times before, about 35-40 yards of tulle (for real), two rolls of ribbon, a dozen craft styrofoam balls and cotton fabric and pins to cover them with.

I had initially wanted to talk her out of the idea — I wasn't sure I had the time nor the inclination to create such a costume. She's been into Harry Potter lately, but she wasn't interested in being Hermione Granger, which would have been far easier to assemble. However, she insisted, and over the course of two days, I did it. I'm glad that she never wavered and I didn't refuse.

They really didn't spend a lot of time posing for photos, but I got a few that hopefully represents the time and dedication it took to pull these off. They had a good time trick-or-treating and it was adorable watching my little Dalek become so excited every time someone gave her a handful of candy. She has a lot of food allergies so I had to pare down her selection quite a bit but she was extremely happy overall.

I can't wait to see what they come up with next year!