Do you remember the first pumpkin you carved into a jack-o-lantern as a child? I do. I remember the anticipation, the extreme care that went into carving my pumpkin. 
That was true whether the pumpkin was store-bought or raised in my own garden. If I bought it at a farm stand, the care I took in carving the pumpkin was due to financial considerations: I wasn't about to keep buying pumpkins till I got the carving right! And if I had raised the pumpkin myself, I put even more care into the carving operation, ironically: I would be thinking about all the labor that went into raising it from a seed to a full-grown pumpkin.
All trepidation about botching the carving operation aside, though, there's nothing quite like getting ready to plunge the carving knife into a nicely-formed, deep orange pumpkin, is there?
Want a little help with your carving? If you don't trust yourself to take a free-hand approach, use these free pumpkin patterns for templates as you get ready to carve or paint your pumpkin this Halloween. These printable pages make it easy to trace out the precise face your pumpkin will bear this year -- with no guesswork on your part!
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Photo ©2007 David Beaulieu (licensed to About.com)
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