How to decorate a pumpkin for Halloween
It's autumn time, which means that October 31st is coming soon - Halloween. All Saints' Eve is very popular in America, but it is gaining its relevance in Russia as well. Halloween is not only parties with fancy dress and scary make-up, but also entourage. People decorate their homes, workplaces, streets, prepare delicious sweets in the form of witch's fingers, chocolate graves or ghosts. Holiday symbol - pumpkin, it is believed that they are able to ward off evil spirits.
How to decorate a pumpkin for Halloween 
There are quite a few design options for pumpkins, the main thing is to include and apply all your imagination. Cutting is considered the most popular option. 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 carefully you scrape everything, the longer the jewelry will last. Come up with a face or pattern, or print out the finished decoration template and transfer it to the pumpkin with a marker, or use an awl to make the outlines with holes. 
After that, you can safely cut along the contour with a thin knife, the main thing is not to rush to cut everything smoothly and beautifully. The pumpkin can be left in this form, or you can make a candlestick-flashlight 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 put the candle itself on the windowsill or the floor, covering it with a pumpkin on top. 
To prevent the cutouts from fading, coat them petroleum jelly... 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 a decoration is about 3-6 days, so it is better to make it right before the holiday itself. Pumpkin candlestick you can do it differently: cut out the top, seeds, pulp. Fill the pumpkin with water and start floating 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 malleable material for this. You can cut anything: scary or funny faces, bats, ghosts, witches, animals, just patterns and much more. By the way, you can cut 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 patterns and cutting, you can decorate pumpkins with buttons, beads, sequins, flowers, feathers and other various decorations. You can bandage pumpkins with gauze, stick eyes and get small mummies. The fruits can be simply painted with a marker, painted with colored paints, or made silver pumpkins. 
Pumpkins can be used to make not only lanterns and candlesticks, but also a vase for flowers, 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 sweets in it - this will be a wonderful decoration for a festive table... You can coat the pumpkins with a special glitter varnish. And to make a basket it is enough to carefully cut off almost the entire top, leaving the basket's "handle".
Carved pumpkins can be supplemented 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 a pumpkin in a pumpkin. It can 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 with a carved "skull" inside it. 
If you don't want to waste time on decor and spoil the pumpkins, then you can simply lay them beautifully on the stairs or in the garden, and simply remove them after the holiday. You can also write on them with a marker: "Welcome", "Halloween" and others. 
Many people make cats, cartoon characters from the fruit, adding various decorative elements to the pumpkin: ears, a bow, eyes.
Halloween pumpkin templates
You can come up with and work on templates yourself, or find them on the Internet, print and transfer them with an awl or a marker to a pumpkin. You can think of 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. 
