Carve the vote

Who said politics can't be fun?

I've been planning on carving an Obama logo on my pumpkin for several days now. (Really, I have!) Tonight I was going to try to find an Obama logo and trace it out and figure out how to transfer it to the pumpkin, and carve it so that it would be self-supporting and look half-way decent.

Then I was paging through the latest Newsweek and saw a tiny blurb about the "Yes We Carve!" website. Damn! Glad I found it before making a total wreck of both myself and a perfectly good pumpkin trying to do it on my own.

As you may have noticed, there's a little gizmo in the sidebar where you can click to go there.

What a great idea it is too. Users submit various templates and designs, some of them quite creative and clever, and you can then download a template of the design and use it to trace out the design on your pump type kin.

Aside from the usual gooey extravaganza of de-gutting the pumpkin and dealing with the seeds, and the mess, it looks like a fairly easy proposition to create a very nice little pumpkin with a positive message.

Not only does the site provide templates and many designs, they offer instructions and invite readers to submit pictures of their finished creations. It's a lot of fun to just browse through and see the many Obama supporters and their work, many of which are nothing short of amazing. (the scrape method is used to provide shading in amazing ways.)

Another cool feature is it allows you to set up and post announcements for B.Y.O.P. (bring your own pumpkin) parties so you can get together and have some pumpkin fun with like-minded folks.

Go check it out, and if you haven't already taken sharp object to your gourd, consider making a Obam-a-lantern this year.

It's fun with a purpose, and a great activity for any little people whose future, after all, this election is so much about.

Here's just a few samples... you really gotta go browse the pictures.

This guy had to use some sort of advanced carving/transfer method ... it's almost too good.



Love it!



And just how cool is THIS?!! They carved mirror image letters on the back of the pumpkin to project the date on the wall!



And this little girl did a pretty good job at making the Obama logo, don't you think? She's obviously proud.



Here's someone else that apparently supports Obama.



Another nice design.



Fun for the whole family...



And yes, that's carved into a pumpkin. Amazing how people can carefully scrape the pumpkin to various thicknesses to create the shading of the picture. (though they look really ugly when they're not lit up.)



Here's the unlit/lit version of one "Barack-o-lantern.