In my last post about Halloween pumpkins, I forgot to offer some tips on how to light them.  If you want to steer clear of paraffin-based waxes that emit toxins into the air, here are some green living tips for you.

Candles:   Soy and beeswax candles are both environmentally-friendly options for lighting your jack-o-lanterns.  They both burn cleaner, and are made from sustainable, resources.

LED Lights:  If you don’t want to use candles for safety reasons, you might want to check into some battery-powered LED pumpkin lights.  They’re designed to last for thousands of hours, so you could reuse them year after year.  Some even flash and turn colors for extra special effects.

Dont Forget!:  Use up as many parts of your pumpkins as possible to prevent landfill waste.  Make pumpkin cookies, or a pie with with any leftovers, and roast the seeds for a nutritious snack high in omega-3 fatty acids.

The beeswax votive candles shown above are homemade from 100% natural beeswax by Hive Harvest.

Pumpkins are probably the best of all green Halloween decorations:  they’re 100% organic, they’re the perfect color for Halloween, and they are nutritious too.  Our favorite pumpkin decorations are Jack-O-Lanterns.  Every year we set aside an evening for making them.  Here are a few tips for carving your Halloween pumpkins:

1) Line your work area with old newspapers.  This makes cleanup easy, and allows you to reuse any old newspaper you have laying around.

2) For help with making the faces on your Halloween pumpkins, go through your kitchen cabinets to find just the right shapes.  Sometimes the bottom of a drinking glass, pepper grinder, or spice container is the perfect shape for an eye, or a mouth.  Just trace the bottom of the container right onto the pumpkin, and carve.

3) For more complicated designs, draw them on paper first, and cut out the designs.  Attach to your pumpkin with toothpicks or tape, and rub on a little cornstarch or baby powder.  When you remove the paper pattern, the powder remains, giving you a guide for cutting.

4) No-carve pumpkins:  Let small children use up scraps of old fabric, buttons, or shapes cut from colorful cardboard packaging by gluing on their own pumpkin designs.

5) What to do with your pumpkins after the carving is done?  For a nutritious snack, you can make roasted pumpkin seeds, or for a sweet treat, make pumpkin pie squares.  Also, used up Jack-O-Lanterns make great composting material.