No-Carve Candy Pumpkin

Create a candy-covered jack-o'-lantern!

Submitted by
Kayla Chong

Sure, jack-o'-lanterns are cool, but all the sawing and hacking through impossibly tough pumpkin skin make pumpkin carving a serious pain. Skip the pumpkin pulverizing and create your jack-o'-lantern in the true spirit of the dentist's favorite holiday-with candy!

A pumpkin
Candies:
Candy corn, gum drops, licorice sticks, gummy worms, jelly beans, gum balls, tootsie rolls…almost anything. (Just make sure you buy enough to cover what you eat on the way home!)
Hot glue gun and glue sticks:
Only grownups or big kids should use the hot glue gun!

Head out to the pumpkin patch (the grocery store's fine, too) and have your child pick out her pumpkin.
Pick up the candy while you're out too. Any sort of candy works, but avoid anything that melts easily (so skip the Snickers minis), and try to get a good selection of shapes and sizes.
Lug the pumpkin and candy home, and have your kid wash and dry the pumpkin.
Plug in your hot glue gun. Be sure to keep it far away from your kids reach.
Open up all the bags of candy and put them in little bowls on the table. So you and your child can see everything you have to work with.
Have your child design her pumpkin face on the table before you begin gluing, because once the candy is hot-glued on there, it isn't coming off! (Well, except for whatever the kids pick off. You know kids love to pick at things!)
Creatively challenged? Try these ideas: User candy corns to make a toothy grin or glue on white Chiclets for a Hollywood smile. Try a gummy worm, a marshmallow or a gum ball for nose. Licorice, Fruit by the Foot or Nerds Ropes for eye brows, hair or moustaches.
Hot glue all your pumpkin's facial features in place. You've got yourself one groovy gourd!