Ice, Ice, Pumpkin

The north Texas area had some freezing rain and sleet blow through recently.  Complicating this is an extended period of freezing temperatures.  SO everything has been closed and the streets and parking lots have been turned into ice rinks (literally – kids were playing ice hockey in the church parking lot down the street).

One of my traditions during cold weather is to build a snow pumpkin outside somewhere, like this:

Snow Pumpkin

Well the sleet and ice didn’t work with snow-building techniques, so I tried something different.

I give you.. the Ice Jack-o-Lantern!

Ice pumpkin

I took a old plastic jackolantern pail, and cut it in half.  Then I duct taped it together and filled it with water.  However, the duct tape was not as waterproof as I would like, so it took me 2 days of refilling it until I was able to get enough to freeze before it leaked out.

It didn’t freeze all the way through (I didn’t expect it to) so I drained out the water and was left with a hollow pumpkin.  I did put a little battery operated tealight inside last night, which looked OK.  But you can’t really make out the features so it just looks like a ball of ice.

If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t cut the pumpkin pail until after the after froze.  Then I might use a hot knife to cut out the eyes, nose and mouth.  But it was a fun experiment anyway!

Someone else online had a similar idea.  His instruction are over at Instructables.com

ScreaminScott says “dig it up!”


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