it's the great pumpkin, blog readers

Perhaps you've seen me mention it here a time or 38 that I'm not a crafty person. Glitter, in my opinion, is the dry skin that flakes off Satan's ass, and before you say "Really?" let me just remind you of this - Hell's hot, thus it's dry, and dry skin flakes. It's simple science, friends.

The idea of making things that I then don't know what to do with, which is my definition of crafting, makes me panic. I love my 8 year old son's drawings, but after awhile, honestly, I want them off the fridge, OK? Of course, my kid knows this about me and like a vulture circling a steaming pile of roadkill, he likes to swoop in and pick at me to make something with him until I eventually relent. Naturally, the holidays are a perfect time for this instinct to kick in because the season's ripe with fun things to make and do (or so I hear). Sometimes this results in an art project that's nothing short of museum quality, like these kick ass haunted graham cracker houses we made two years ago.

Then there are times like today.

Feeling inspired, my son came to me after school and asked if he could make something that was, and I quote, "fun for Halloween!" When I think of making something fun, I think of either brownies or love, but I'm missing most of the stuff needed for either of those, so I unleashed him upon some small pumpkins I'd picked last week. Alas, as he pondered his canvas, we soon realized I was missing a lot of things that could have made it (even more) beautiful. Check it out:

Pretty abstract, huh? Shortly after we finished, the neighbor kid stopped by. "You know what you could have done? You could have painted your pumpkins black, taken a drill, drilled eight holes around the top of them, shoved black pipe cleaners into the holes, glued googly eyes on them and made them into spiders! That's what we did last week when I volunteered at the youth shelter downtown!" this miniature Martha Stewart suggested.

"Dude," I replied while gathering up all the dry markers we discovered while trying to find any that worked well enough (just two!) for my kid to scribble on his pumpkin. "Paint. Pffft! It's a miracle I even had tape. Just cool your jets, show off."

It was a good idea, though. I'll have to plan better for next year. Until then, in the spirit of show offs, I'm showing you my kid's pumpkin. Totally crafty, that one.