How to decorate a pumpkin for Halloween
The autumn season has arrived, which means that October 31st – Halloween – will soon come. All Saints' Eve is very popular in America, but in Russia it is also gaining relevance. Halloween is not only about parties with fancy dress and scary makeup, but also about the surroundings. People decorate their homes, workplaces, streets, and prepare delicious sweets in the form of witch fingers, chocolate graves or ghosts. Holiday symbol - pumpkins, it is believed that they are able to ward off evil spirits.
How to decorate a pumpkin for Halloween 
There are quite a lot of options for designing pumpkins, the main thing is to include and use all your imagination. The most popular option is cutting from pumpkin various grimaces, patterns, grins. This is all done quite simply, you will need a pumpkin of any size, a marker, a thin blade, and a knife. The first step is to carefully cut off the top of the fruit and cut out all the pulp along with the seeds. The more thoroughly you scrub everything, the longer the decoration will last. Come up with a face or a pattern, or print out a ready-made decoration template and transfer it to the pumpkin with a marker, or use an awl to make holes in the outline. 
After this, you can safely cut along the contour with a thin knife, the main thing is to take your time to cut everything smoothly and beautifully. You can leave the pumpkin as is, or make a lantern candlestick out of it. To do this, take a candle and place it inside the carved pumpkin. For stability, you can cut out the bottom and place the candle itself on a windowsill or floor, covering it with a pumpkin on top. 
To prevent the cutouts from starting to fade, coat them Vaseline. If the pumpkin begins to lose its elasticity and beautiful appearance, immerse it in water for a couple of hours. For flavoring, you can put a little vanilla inside, cinnamon, nutmeg. The lifespan of such decoration is approximately 3-6 days, so it is better to make it right before the holiday itself. Pumpkin candlestick You can do it another way: cut out the top, seeds, pulp. Fill the pumpkin with water and put floating ones in there. candles, dried leaves, flowers, petals roses.
The most skillful and handy people can try their hand at carving; pumpkin is the most beautiful and pliable material for this. You can cut out anything: scary or funny faces, bats, ghosts, witches, animals, just patterns and much more. By the way, you can cut out not only faces, but, for example, you can make a pumpkin house for mice by cutting holes like in cheese and placing toy mice there.
If you don't want to waste time on templates and cutting, you can decorate pumpkins with buttons, beads, sequins, flowers, feathers and other various decorations. You can bandage pumpkins with gauze, stick on eyes and you’ll get little mummies. You can simply paint the fruits with a marker, paint them with colored paints, or make silver pumpkins. 
From pumpkins you can make not only lanterns and candlesticks, but also a flower vase, a basket for sweets or treats. Also, after cutting out all the pulp and removing the seeds, you can decorate it with ribbons, beads, white or black lace. You can put flowers there, or put candy in it - it will be a wonderful decoration for the festive table. You can cover the pumpkins with a special varnish with glitter. And to make a basket, just carefully cut off almost the entire top, leaving the “handle” of the basket.
Carved pumpkins can be complemented with glasses, hats, you can even make a ghost or scarecrow out of them, you just need to attach the pumpkin to a stick and wrap it in a sheet or old things. Another option is pumpkin in a pumpkin. It could be a large pumpkin with an evil face carved out, eating a small defenseless and frightened pumpkin. Or cut a large pumpkin almost in half, put a smaller pumpkin inside it with a cut out “skull”. 
If you don’t want to waste time on decor and spoil the pumpkins, then you can simply arrange them beautifully on the stairs or in the garden, and simply put them away after the holiday. You can also write on them with a marker: “Welcome”, “Halloween” and others. 
Many people make cats and cartoon characters out of the fruit, adding various decorative elements to the pumpkin: ears, bow, eyes.
Halloween pumpkin templates
You can come up with and work out the templates yourself, or find them on the Internet, print them out and transfer them onto the pumpkin using an awl or marker. You can come up with any template, but it’s better to stick to the festive Halloween theme: various evil spirits, scary faces, witches, ghosts, black cats, bats, spiders with cobwebs. 
