We’re surrounded by Halloween decorations, Halloween parties, Halloween themed food and houses covered in spiderwebs and skeletons, and Eleanor has already attended her first Halloween celebration (dressed up as a vampire with curly hair, white face makeup, plastic fangs, and a lot of black clothes). Though we never celebrated Halloween while living in Copenhagen, we decided it was time to do a bit of decorating ourselves. We bought a big orange pumpkin for carving, and a couple of small white ones and a tiger striped one as well for painting. These actually make a really good canvas if you use a water based paint (not watercolor).
I love how differently my two girls approached the project, and although there is a three years age difference between them, it was apparent that their different personalities shined through in their way of painting pumpkins. One was very careful, calm and had a specific plan for the final design and the other, more expressionistic, experimenting with colors, techniques and materials, loud and with grand gestures.

It ended up as a pretty perfect DIY job if you take in consideration that the kids ended up spending much more time on painting than I did preparing (it doesn’t always turn out like this). Only a little bit of paint ended up on the floor, the tank tops and the kids (thank you Ikea for the very easy washable paint) and we now have very beautiful Halloween decorations. These pumpkins might not be scary, but at least they’re very personal and reminds me of my two very different children, every time I look at them.