One thing the children love about Halloween is being able to carve a pumpkin. I recently gave you a few tips on pumpkin decorations for the younger children. Now I am going to give you some great ideas for the older kids when it comes time to decorate those pumpkins.

While carving pumpkins can be simple it can also be difficult, it can be a pain to get the small details to work properly. It is important that when carving you have smaller tools as well to get into those small areas.

When searching for pumpkins make sure you get one that has a strong stem and that has a surface that looks like it will be easy to carve. If you want to use pumpkin carving stencils make sure the size will work for you.

One thing I have learned while carving pumpkins with stencils, is you can use coloring pages to make your outlines. This way you have a ton of options to pick from. There is also many wonderful sites that offer pumpkin carving stencils.

Make sure, before you start carving your pumpkin, you wash it with 1 tsp bleach and a gallon of water this will prevent it from molding.

When you are ready to carve your pumpkin you can do it a few different ways, you can either do it all freehanded or you can use pumpkin carving stencils. When using pumpkin carving stencils, tape your image onto the pumpkin and then you can trace it firmly so that you are leaving an impression on your pumpkin. Once you have the impression start carving with a pumpkin carving knife.

If you are not wanting to get messy, you can always draw an image onto your pumpkin and paint it, this looks awesome and then you can leave your pumpkin whole. Remember to have fun.

Face painting is a favorite to most kids, during festive events. Soon Halloween will be here and the face painting season with be in high gear.

Here you will find a few easy face painting tips that will make painting neat designs and animals on the children’s face a lot less stressful and more enjoyable for the adult. First, you will want to purchase some good quality, water base face paints. These can be found online or some theatrical stores may carry them as well. Water base face paints go on easy and come off easy.

If you plan to paint designs on a small group of children then you should only need about 2 or 3 small to medium paint brushes. If you are expecting a larger crowd, be sure you have several brushes on hand. You will also need a bowl, or cup of water to rinse your brush as you are working, as well as some paper towels. To help clean up any messes that may happen.

Some easy and fun Halloween designs are the pumpkin, and the ghost. Pumpkins are fun to make you can make all kinds of different faces. The ghost is another simple design, first you would start a triangle then make a wavy line to make your ghost take its shape. Fill in the inner area with white paint, and add your eyes and make a smile. You can have fun with these as well, if you would like, make them different colors.

One thing to remember is have fun and keep it simple when face painting.