Pumpkin Carving DDIY (Don't Do It Yourself!)

This is sort of an anti DIY because (as Justin says) this project was an epic fail. I was inspired last night by Design*Sponge's Illustrated Pumpkin Carvings. They made these gorgeous pumpkins that I thought would work well for my post-Halloween but still want to play with pumpkins look. This is what they had:

Classy. Elegant. Dreamy. Well, unfortunately, my guy didn't turn out so well. He started out with the perfect shape. Sort of leaning back with a large surface area on the front to play around with. He had a great true pumpkin color (not that light orange some of the new ones have). But because the flesh was super thick, it was difficult to get the look I was going for. Not only was it hard to carve through him (the little saws I bought were too short and the knife I had was too thick), when I tried to scrape out some of the flesh to make my leaf, it just looked ridiculous. The amount of flesh that I'd have to remove to have any light shine through made it look like the opposite of a potato stamp, which just looks silly. Frankly, I'm embarrassed and don't want to show it. I'm semi-pouting over here ;)

So, the pumpkin was a big bust, although I put some hard work into it so I'll display it INSIDE (I don't want to tempt any teenagers in my neighborhood to put my pumpkin out of it's misery) somewhere until he starts to mold. Ugh. So sad. What was I thinking?!

On a brighter note, I had great success with my pumpkin seeds. They came out quite easily, AND I figured out how to clean them off pretty quickly. I think I saw a sieve in a picture on Young House Love during their pumpkin carving post. I wasn't quite sure why, but I thought I'd give it a go. Low and behold: Genius!

The hardest part about getting the seeds ready to eat is how to get those slimy orange strings off them. By pouring water over them in the strainer, I was able to clean off the gunk with little effort. The strings stuck to the mesh and did most of the work for me. I will definitely be using this method again next year.

As for cooking them, I just shimmied them out onto a foil-covered cookie sheet, sprinkled them with some EVOO, salt, and half with Old Bay. I threw them under the broiler for about 10 minutes, and WHA-la! I love that nutty smell! MMM. Can't wait to go home and munch on these guys.And here, friends, is the single easiest thing that I did all fall, which also turned out to be one of my faves:
I bought the twig and berries at Michael's for under $2 in mid-October. I think it was a getting-close-t0-Halloween sale, but I saw the potential to show this off for much longer than that! This baby will be sitting on my entry pony wall through Thanksgiving. She just screams effortless decor to me. What do you think?

Photos courtesy of design*Sponge and me.