Hello, my dear friends! It’s Friday (hooray!!) and I hope you had the most spectacular week. We have been busy getting ready for Halloween at the Mobley household and I have been putting together 8 ways to decorate with pumpkins this year. I love this season and I  love pumpkins. Carved, painted, bedazzled….if it involves my favorite orange squash, you can count me in. I am all about the jack-o-lanterns. Read on for my favorite ways to decorate with them!


DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

CARVE THE CRAP OUTTA THOSE ‘KINS.

8 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

Ok that was cheesy. I get it. ALSO. Can we just laughed at how baby Adam and I look? But seriously. Who DOESN’T love carving pumpkins. It is totally one of my favorite parts of October. I am always blown away by the crazy art people can do with pumpkin carving. My dad is an artist and he always makes these incredible pumpkin carvings. I do really basic and unimpressive carvings (as clearly shown above)…but it’s fun none the less. 🙂 This year I think I am going to carve a white pumpkin. They just look so pretty with the candles inside! 

PAINT ‘EM INSTEAD IF YOU’RE FEELING CRAFTY.

8 WAYS TO DECORATE PUMPKINS

This tutorial is SUPER cool. Find it here! I just recently jumped on the bandwagon of pumpkin painting. I have seen some STUNNING painted pumpkins. You can decorate with pumpkins inside or outside. Either way, it is way less messy than carving and still just as fun. I bet it would be a lot easier with kids, too! No sharp knives involved at all. 🙂 

SHAVE THEM?

8 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

I don’t really know what to call this type of pumpkin decorating. Basically, you take a sharp knife and you just shave away the parts of the pumpkin skin you don’t want in your design. This tutorial can be found here and is SUPER awesome! It is less messy than carving, because you don’t need to pull the guts out or poke all the way through the pumpkin. Super cute and fun and just another reason pumpkins are the bomb.

RUSSIAN NESTING DOLLS.

8 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen so far. 

  1. Clear out a big orange sucker and carve a jack-o-lantern face.
  2. Cut the whole thing in half.
  3. Carve out a smaller, white pumpkin with a skull face.
  4. Stick the white pumpkin inside the broken orange pumpkin. 

Sick, right? I am totally obsessed. Don’t think I won’t be trying this ASAP. I’ll let you know how it goes. Pictures to come. Stay tuned.

RHINESTONES AND SPIDERS.

8 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

When was the last time you heard those in the same sentence? I haven’t. But I like it. Better Homes & Gardens has you covered this season with this easy tutorial. Grab those white pumpkins, kiddos, because we are going to be using them a lot. This is so cute. Just use your handy bedazzler (don’t lie. we all have one from decorating our 8th grade talent show outfits…), and rhinestone that cute little pumpkin in the shape of a spider web. Craft stores sell large spiders to decorate with and you can easily spray paint it silver to match your rhinestones. Hot glue that arachnid to your pumpkin and voila! Rhinestones and spiders.

RECIPE PUMPKIN.

8 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

This is another cool idea that I came across in my search (here). A recipe pumpkin! It involves grabbing the largest pumpkin at the pumpkin patch and snagging the nearest sharpie. Choose an easy fall recipe (like pumpkin pie for instance) and write it in your prettiest handwriting on the front of the pumpkin. Set it up on your counter, or at a get together this October! It is the perfect way to share yummy recipes with your friends!

PUMPKIN WREATH

8 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

I love this idea (in-depth tutorial HERE courtesy of onsuttonplace.com). Mostly because I love how you can decorate with pumpkins and little gourds (and all things that are smaller than normal size, honestly). Cut out a large circle from cardboard and hot glue the tiny pumpkins all around it! Wrap with burlap or orange tulle and hang that pretty DIY project on your front door for everyone to see. Pumpkins are cool. They are also cute and perfect for Halloween. Want to spook it up? Wrap the pumpkins in fake spider webs and glue some more of those craft store spiders on the wreath. Done, and done.

PUMPKIN CENTERPIECE

8 WAYS TO DECORATE WITH PUMPKINS

This needs no explanation as I did this for my own table a few weeks ago! You can find the tutorial HERE. It has been so cute on my table this fall and as soon as I can make it over to my nearest craft store, I plan on exchanging the burlap ribbon for a black one and throwing fake spiders around like confetti. It’s kind of my thing. 


There you go, party people! 8 ways to decorate with pumpkins this October. 🙂 I seriously love this time of year. It makes my heart so happy. Yesterday, I took some pictures with Michelle yesterday of my fall outfits and I just know you are going to love them. This season is all about hot chocolate, apple cider, cozy scarves and snuggles with your loved ones!

I hope you liked this compilation and that it gave you some fun ideas for how to decorate for this October! Tell me what you liked (or what you didn’t!) in the comments below. What is your favorite way to use pumpkins during this season? 

Tag me in your pumpkin decorations on instagram! I want to see all your carved, painted and bedazzled pumpkins! Follow me on instagram @blondeandambitiousblog to see my (most likely a fail) carved pumpkin next week. 

Thanks for stopping by,

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90 Comments

  1. Such a great post! Pumpkin painting and bedazzling is my favorite! My daughters birthday is halloween, and like you said.. kids and sharp objects.. big no no! So much easier to paint and decorate them!

  2. LOVE all these pumpkins – but not sure how confident I am in my abilities in achieving this same perfect look! But – that pumpkin recipe is totally unique and I love it! Although, I did make a cool kitty pumpkin set (see my post on Monday) and was crazy proud of what i achieved. Took me hours and hours…. but still!

  3. Ah! I love the skull and the pumpkin wreath! Who doesn’t love pumpkins? Im soon psyched to be able to actually decorate with them this year! We just moved from Florida and it’s so hot an humid there you had to carve them the day before Halloween because they basically rot immediately.

  4. OUr family is split on how we like to decorate our pumpkins. My husband is an artist, so he creates a detailed overly complicated carving. I like to do a pretty painted pumpkin- less mess and lasts longer.

  5. These are all great ideas to use pumpkins to decorate for fall. The candy skulls painted pumpkin was beautiful! This makes me wish I could be more creative and rock some of these awesome ideas!

  6. I love these ideas! The blind one is almost doable. I had never heard or seen the Russian nesting pumpkins. We actually just got a dremel so we are going to try that route this year.

  7. I love all these ideas but I think the wreath with the little pumpkins is my favorite. I always have so many wreaths around the house during the holiday season but nothing like this before!

  8. Wow! I thought I’ve seen it all, but I have never seen those ideas before. I love the sugar skull and the rhinestones! Also that nesting pumpkin is so cool. I’d love to see how it glows at night.

  9. I love the idea of shaving patterns into them instead of cutting it out. Also, I love that wreath. Need that for my door!

  10. Aren’t pumpkins adorable? I get some of all sizes for my porch. You know, these past few years I haven’t carved or painted my pumpkins, just enjoyed them as they are.

  11. We just picked our pumpkin up this weekend. I love the recipe idea for the kitchen. You can keep it out until Thsnksgiving.

  12. I have followed your blog awhile now and absolutely love it! This post was cute ideas for halloween carvings. Mine never turn out how I want though!

  13. I want to paint a pumpkin or two this year! I think it looks so cool and will be less of a pain than carving! My kids and hubby can carve I love the idea of paint!

  14. I’m always looking for something different to do with our pumpkins!! I love the one with the white skull inside or and the diamond jewel one is pretty! We usually end up carving one scary one and one princess one for our daughter lol.

  15. Omg so many cute pumpkin ideas!!! I’m all about rhinestones and paint when it comes to pumpkins since I suck at carving them lol

  16. I love the throwback photo of your and your sweetie! These ideas are great! with 6 kids bringing pumpkins home I could use some fresh ideas for displaying them.

  17. These are all gorgeous ideas! I love the idea to just paint them instead of carving them, it will save you from the mess! It’s also something that the kids can easily do! Perfect for some quality time together.

  18. Great ideas! I actually made the pumpkin inside a pumpkin last year and my husband won his office contest with it! Such a cool idea. Personally I’m loving the bedazzled pumpkin!

  19. I would love to paint one like the sugar skull one. I also seen a blog post where someone use Fall/Halloween themed fabric to cover it!

  20. I totally love all of these designs, especially the Mexican one and the wreath. Too bad we don’t celebrate Halloween where I live.

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