Date Night: Pumpkin Carving for Two

by Jennifer Good

Get in the spirit of the fall season with a fun holiday-themed date night! Pumpkin carving is a great way to spend some intimate one-on-one time getting to know each other better. You won't just be making masterful art pieces, you'll be creating lasting memories.

Getting Ready
Plan ahead and have some snack foods on hand. You'll want to keep in mind that your hands will be messy most of the time, so food that is easy to grab will work best. Stock up on some of your date's favorite drinks as well. To really set the mood, have Halloween music or movies playing in the background.

Things You'll Need

Pumpkins - If you're running short on time, you can have these ready before your date night occurs. However, it is highly recommended you integrate picking out the pumpkins into your date. To make the most of your pumpkin hunting, here are a few ideas:

See who can find the biggest pumpkin.
See who can find the strangest shaped pumpkin.
See who can find the pumpkin with the weirdest looking handle.
See who can find the smallest pumpkin.

Carving Tools, Etc. - You can buy kits at any grocery or discount store. You'll also want to have a large bowl for seeds and maybe some large spoons to help scoop out the insides. Have a few pencils on hand for sketching concepts or patterns onto your pumpkin. Keep a few days worth of newspapers handy or some plastic tablecloths for a quick and easy clean up.

Romantic Touches

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You don't need to carve a typical jack o' lantern face. Make it fun by coming up with new ideas such as the ones below from other LYC readers.

Pumpkin Wars
I loved picking pumpkins as a child, so my boyfriend and I planned a pumpkin patch date. Since we live in Alabama, we didn't have an actual pumpkin patch, but we went to a church that had created one. We picked out the perfect pumpkins (it was a competition, and we were asking everyone in sight whose was better), then we headed back to the house where we had a pot of chili cooking and hot apple cider on the stove. There, we continued the competition of the pumpkins with our pumpkin carving. We faced one another, so we couldn't see what the other was doing until we were finished. Once we were finished, we set them outside on display for our friends to see, and we let them be the final judge of the perfect pumpkin. It was a really fun day!
--submitted by Peyton

Pumpkin Love Notes
My boyfriend loves the little creative ways I express my love for him. Last year during the fall, I bought eight pumpkins and carved a letter in each of them to spell out "I LOVE YOU." I placed a small tea light candle in each one and sat them in his backyard. When he got home late that evening, he noticed a glow out the window to the backyard. When he opened the door and saw, "I Love You" spelled out in pumpkins, he almost melted. He absolutely loved it!
--submitted by April

Get Messy!
My boyfriend and I are total "neat freaks," but still act like big kids sometimes. One day, we were caving pumpkins to put on his porch for Halloween, and I decided that it'd be fun to 'pick a fight' with him by throwing a bit if the icky pulp from the pumpkins at him. Needless to say, he threw back, and we got quite messy, and though it was fun, the cleanup was twice as much fun. After a much-needed water hose fight (it doesn't get very cold where we live), we had a hot, steamy bubble bath, and our evening was just getting started!
--submitted by Paige

A Pumpkin for My Pumpkin
For our 10 month anniversary, I wanted to do something cute and special for my boyfriend. I got a medium-sized pumpkin, but instead of carving a face in it I carved the words, "I Love You." I bought some silk leaves in Autumn colors and made a ring of them to go around the bottom of the pumpkin. I put a tealight candle inside the pumpkin and put it in the middle of our dining room table. Voila! A romantic centerpiece for about a dollar. After that, I took ten pieces of colored paper and wrote down ten reasons that I am thankful for his love. I folded the pieces of paper up and tucked them in among the leaves. When my boyfriend got home from work, he found a big dinner waiting for him, along with the pumpkin centerpiece and the notes. He loved it!
--submitted by Tara Anne

Pumpkin Proposal
My boyfriend and I had been dating for almost five years, and I was hoping that he would propose soon because we were about to graduate from college. He did propose, but the way he did it was very creative and caught me off guard. He's an art major, and he told me that he needed me to help him carve pumpkins for a project. He was house sitting for a friend, so we were all alone upstairs in the house carving pumpkins. An hour or so after we started, his mom called my cell phone and started asking me questions about what my boyfriend might want for Christmas. Naturally, I went downstairs to make sure he couldn't hear me. When I got back upstairs, the lights were off in the room. When I went in, all I could see was a pumpkin with a candle inside it. In the side of the pumpkin were carved the words, "Will you marry me?" My boyfriend then turned the lights on, got down on one knee, pulled a ring out of his pocket and asked me to marry him! Of course, I said yes! It turned out that his mom was in on the whole thing, and that he'd kept the pumpkin and the ring in a cupboard the whole night! It was a wonderful, creative way to propose!
--submitted by Khyrsten