When Pumpkins Go Bad!

Halloween is big around our house. It ranks up there with Christmas as far as decorating goes. We're still working out what we want to to on the outside of our house for Halloween, but the inside gets decked out each year for Halloween. The above pumpkins were intended for our office pumpkin carving contest. However, I had a conflict and had to be out of the office on the day of the contest. It may have been a good thing though. The top pumpkin in the picture was really cool looking when I bought it. It was green with a little orange, and covered with warts. Over the week since I bought it, it turned more orange, which annoyed me greatly. It also did this weird thing where parts of it started to look like they were starting to rot. It was really spotty, and sort of added to the effect. The problem started when I began carving that ugly pumpkin. It looks really cool, but the skin on that thing was like hardwood. You simply couldn't carve the thing with a knife. It I had thought about it, I would have pulled out the power tools. I was wanting to just shave a little off the outside, but it couldn't be done. Normally, I would consider painting a pumpkin instead of carving it sacriledge, but it couldn't be helped here. My hands simply gave out from fighting the thing, so I bailed on finishing the carving and painted the rest. Not as impressive as I wanted, but entertaining.