Add some personality to your home for autumn and Halloween by carving out the numbers of your house or apartment in the front of your gourd!

Step 1: Materials List

To get started, you will need to gather these materials:

a real or plastic pumpkin
pumpkin carving tools (I'm using those from Pumpkin Masters)
old newspaper
a copy of house numbers (not shown but optional) or a marker

These are the rest of the items that are not shown, but you will also need:

black paint
paint brush
X-acto knife (optional, if you plan on using number stencils)

Note: when choosing your pumpkin the first time you make this project, make sure that your pumpkin is not too big or too small; it should be about the same as an average sized basketball.

Step 2: Prep Pumpkin

To begin, lay out some old newspaper on your workspace for easy clean-up.

Now, prep the pumpkin by following the directions from the Pumpkin Masters carving tools. Cut a hole on the bottom, open it, and use a scraper tool to remove the pumpkin seeds and guts. Then, use that same tool to shave off the inner wall to about 1" thick.

Step 3: Prep Numbers

Choose your house numbers to place on the front of your pumpkin. You can use stencils or draw free-handed. This is all up to you; I decided to test my free-hand skills as I write out the numbers of my house 155 on the front.

The numbers might be hard to see in this photo, but you will get to really see it when I start carving them out.

Step 4: Carve

Now, basically, from there, you're just going to follow the outlines by carving away the numbers.

Step 5: Paint Outline

Finally, use some black paint to the paint the inside of the outlines.

Step 6: Display!

Now, just display your pumpkins on the front porch or window sill of your apartment building. If you live in an apartment building, you can also make a pumpkin that showcases your apartment number. For instance, my white pumpkin has 4F on the front to represent my apartment number.