Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage and Garlic Mice for Halloween

When I was younger, I used to do occasional artsy stuff for myself or friends. Then after getting a job with income, I kind of got lazy and started buying things instead. This year my workplace had a pumpkin carving contest including money prizes and suddenly I had some motivation. Time to get crafty!

I turned to my trusty google images search to look for NO CARVE pumpkin ideas. THIS is what I ended up creating:

Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage and Garlic Mice Project

It's Cinderella's pumpkin carriage including mice (pre-transformation)!

I'm starting to really like trader joe's, though not for their pre-made foods (which I've heard is good). I'm talking about their produce. Seriously, the squashes are SO CHEAP here. I think it's about $1.88 for a butternut squash. Go pick up the BIGGEST one and the price doesn't change. And, it happened that pumpkins at TJ's were super cheap, at 2.99 for the bigger ones, 1.99 for the smalls, and 0.69 for the minis! I got 5 for about $8, with the extras just in case I messed up!

Part of my idea inspiration was the above image from houzz. I had pumpkins but now I needed some WHEELS!

Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage and Garlic Mice Project

I don't have much around the house but when I saw a green grapefruit, I thought that the peel would be PERFECT as vines! I cut out some curlie q's and tested it out. It worked great! I also cut out a few pumpkin leaves to decorate the top. And, per drawing above, it needed some doors! I did a little bit of carving using a sharp paring knife.

Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage and Garlic Mice Project

I also cut out a front seat for the carriage driver. Project is looking good!

steampunk pumpkin carriage idea from better homes and gardens

Earlier in the day, I had found the above picture from better homes and gardens. During my search I had read about garlic (even though the mice were really pumpkins) so I grabbed a whole clove and decided individual cloves would be best.

Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage and Garlic Mice Project

Here's a closeup of the mice I made. Despite my poor sharpie skills, they turned out quite nice. They wouldn't sit up by themselves so I decided to cut off the bottoms so they'd be on a flat surface. That did the trick. I also needed tails and happened to have multiple sized rubber bands. I took the tiniest one in yellow and cut it in half. Perfect. And with a little curl too! In retrospective, if I had used dried cooked spaghetti, the project would have been made out of all food (except sharpie art).

Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage and Garlic Mice Project Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage and Garlic Mice Project

I loved my final product, which took about 2 hours all together. The vines were the most time consuming since I tried to make them symmetrical. The next morning was picture time and those extra pumpkins came in handy as background props.

Unfortunately I didn't win any prizes at work boo hoo. Plus the natural grapefruit skin dried out within a day or two so they had shrunk a bit. At least I enjoyed my creation and I hope you did too! Happy Halloween readers!

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Comments

leanne's picture
Submitted by leanne (not verified) on Fri, 10/31/2014 - 11:17am

Aww... I would have voted for your pumpkin carriage! I think it's super cute and way more fun that carving something in a large pumpkin.

lynn's picture
Submitted by lynn on Fri, 10/31/2014 - 8:54pm

i feel mine is definitely creative but there were some nicely carved pumpkins i was up against. they also judged 2 days later so my wheels were wilting and had shrunk. perhaps i was 3rd place but there were only two prizes to begin with...

anyway, i still have a few pumpkins at home and am tempted to try more ideas in preparation for next year!

Faye's picture
Submitted by Faye (not verified) on Fri, 10/31/2014 - 11:43am

I bow down to this carriage and garlic mice. Seriously. I thought it was A LOT more work than what was entailed. I wish I saw this post earlier so I could have made it for my nephews for today.No matter. I think I could do this for my friend's daughter as a princess-whatever theme tea party right. I think my friend would insist on using edible ink for the garlic though so we could use the garlic in soup afterwards or something :)

What a great creation Lynn - bravo!

lynn's picture
Submitted by lynn on Fri, 10/31/2014 - 8:45pm

hmm, it still took me a good 2 hours from start to finish because i was planning out the design at the same time! the wheels look good because i spent a lot of time cutting off the bitter white parts and shaping them to be symmetrical and wheel-like! carving doors/driver seat was another 20-30 minutes. the mice were definitely the easiest with only peeling and sharpie art.

for a kid's project, i'd sub green ribbon curled with scissors or green pipe cleaners then draw in the doors! that'd make it a 15 minute project but not as fancy as mine was. ;)

J.S. @ Sun Diego Eats's picture
Submitted by J.S. @ Sun Dieg... (not verified) on Mon, 11/03/2014 - 10:02am

I think it looks great! I feel like theoretically pumpkin carving is fun but in reality it takes foreverrrr and I hate cleaning up all the pumpkin goop/it gets moldy after 3 days tops and then is gross to clean up. This year I realized I like going to pumpkin patches more for the giant inflatable slides and petting zoo experience and less for the actual pumpkin picking :)

lynn's picture
Submitted by lynn on Thu, 11/06/2014 - 4:09pm

Yea I should win some kind of 'creative' award! I didn't want to delve into the slimey insides so I chose wisely! Plus house is still messy and why add more. Is pumpkin patch more of a halloween or a thanksgiving thing? It seems like such a family type of event regardless.

Mary's picture
Submitted by Mary (not verified) on Tue, 11/04/2014 - 3:30pm

Ohmygoodness this is SO CUTE! I would have voted for you, too, I love those little garlic mice! I also love your wheels, very creative. I think you did a great job :)

lynn's picture
Submitted by lynn on Thu, 11/06/2014 - 4:32pm

Ya'll are partial to me hehe! My mini was definitely "cute" against all the regular sized ones! I did what I could with what I had. *pats self on back*

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