Well... Here is my version of how to carve a pumpkin...

First, get a picture.

I chose one of my roommate Michelle's beautiful daughter. I love this kid to death and wanted to make something special for her. She is 2 and was a fairy for Halloween this year... maybe pics later.

Ok, on to the how to.... Use a Photoshop type  program to convert to grey-scale then reduce the colors on the pictures to 3-7 depending on how detailed you feel like carving. Then use the find edges function or just print it as is. Tape it to the pumpkin really well and then start poking the lines like you would any other pattern. It will look funny with all the holes and might be tough to see what parts are what. Mark them or something so you can keep track of what to just skin, what to cut all the way through and what to cut in layered depths. I used a new electric pumpkin carver this time and masking tape around the blade to control depth to a 1/2 an inch for most of this one. I could have had like 4 blades with 4 different tape-stop depths and made it a lot better but this alone took almost 4 hours from sitting down in the computer chair to putting the light on it. I didn't have any candles.... I know it's ghetto, shut up... Ha Ha. O and of course, a Dremel comes in handy too, when doing just about anything.

As you can see I made a few different reduced version pictures then chose one that would be easiest to actually do.

I didn't make this a step by step how-to for a reason... use your own creativity and you'll probably be able to make one even better than this... I've seen some wood carvers from other countries carve some seriously amazing 3D pumpkins somewhere on the web.. have fun finding them.

Here is another one I did a long time ago... The first one I did, it actually turned out a bit better because I think it was a better photo with better contrast. I don't have pictures of the actual pumpkin. Maybe she does and will email them to me if she sees this. Please... Thanks. 

Now for XMAS lights right?....

(remind me to put a link right here for how I did mine this year... of course, absolutely ingeniously, and took about 10 minutes, and yes I am just now making this pumkin page in December.)

Until I have one of mine... check this guys out... http://www.snflupigus.com/video/lights.wmv - Carson Williams from Mason Ohio used 88 www.light-o-rama.com channels to control his 16,000 lights. Music by "Trans-Siberian Orchestra" doing "Wizards In Winter".