A pumpkin for my daughter

Sometimes (actually, many times) I have to do non-CraftyAlien style projects. This week is my daughter's preschool pumpkin display. For about a week, there has been this pumpkin sitting on our kitchen floor (it's big and I don't have a lot of counter space.) being plain and orange and rather intimidating. The rules of the display are that it cannot be carved (most likely so that zombie pumpkins don't take over the school with the smell of the undead).

The entire previous week from the first hour the pumpkin was in the house was "Mommy, you need to paint the pumpkin."

No ideas, nope, nada. A two-hour search of Pinterest revealed nothing that screamed "preschool," but lots of other distractions like the brownie-in-a-mug.

I turned to my daughter for assistance and got "Dorothy." She's going to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

Um, okay. Still not feeling it.

Sunday morning and I'm calling my parents for ideas. They're not picking up any of the phones. Panic ensues.

I go to the convenience store around the corner to look at coloring books for ideas... Sponge Bob, Dora... Angry Bird? No, still not feeling it, although I amuse myself on the way home with names like Sponge Pumpkin Square Bob.

A last minute search of my daughter's toy room reveals a book with a cover filled with pumpkin-shaped heads. It's Lalaloopsy!!! I can make a Lalaloopsy. Wait, I can make a Dorothy Lalaloopsy!

Off to the craft store to get some paint. Oh, dear. What to do about the curls? Hmm... yarn... no... pipe cleaners!

I grabbed a jumbo pack of brown pipe cleaners and it's back to the pumpkin.

Now, I had to work out the curls before I made the pumpkin. They had to be to the same scale, but one little pipe cleaner only covered about an inch of curls, so I twisted the ends together and used six pipe cleaners (about 2 and a half yards long) and twisted them around a broken broom stick (I KNEW that would come in handy for something).

Hmmm... it's not enough. Right length, not enough fullness. I made another set of six and retwisted the original with the new ones into a curl and this time, I was happy.

So I painted and painted, and waited, then painted some more. Threw on a bit of varnish because some of the paint ended up shiny and then made some Dorothy bows, opened up two paper clips into a large U and slipped the bow on, three curls (bent at the end to hold on) and jabbed them into the pumpkin.

Done! Yay. And it was only 10:30 pm. Normally, for me, these last minute things take me into the wee hours.