I love pumpkins, but I always find it a waste to carve them into Jack o' Lanterns. The big pumpkins aren't that good to eat anyway, but even if you get the cute small sugar pie pumpkins, carve them up, and let them sit out in the open air on your front porch for two weeks, you have to throw them away when you're all done. The better thing to do is to decorate pumpkins in a way that you can eat them later. Painting faces on them is fine, but messy and requires time and creativity. Now I'm not saying you're not creative, but there is that time issue.
Thankfully, you can just pick up some Halloween "costumes" for your pumpkins, a la Mr. Potato Head. All of the costume pieces are pushed into the pumpkin, the same way you push them into Mr. Potato Head. These are made specifially for pumpkins, since they're bigger than the toy, but if you're dressing up smaller pumpkins, nothing's stopping you from nabbing your kids' toys out of the playroom and using them!
The Pirate, R2D2, and other "costumes" are available on Amazon.
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