A New Fall Tradition!
I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube lately. Like, waaaay more than normal. And after indulging in a few hours worth of Halloween DIYs, I decided to clean the garage out for a little palette cleanser because I’m borderline geriatric. I found some of the pumpkins I used on our mantle last year. They’re just basic white pumpkins from Michael’s that I had plans for but ran out of time/energy/brain cells. So they’re still perfectly intact, save a dog hair or two. (I won’t tell you what I was going to do with them because I still want to attempt a DIY for the blog this year — stay tuned!).
As I picked them up, I instantly recalled that in one of the videos, someone mentioned a pumpkin swap. Now, I can’t tell you who mentioned it or any of the details because, again, I watched several videos that day and wasn’t paying an incredible amount of attention to any of them. But I thought to myself, “dang, a pumpkin swap sounds PRETTY CUTE…” So I messaged two of my gal pals to see if they were interested. They gave an enthusiastic “yes!” and we came up with a game plan, recruited a few more friends, and just like that - the pumpkin swap was born!
I cannot tell you how fun this was. I think we all had some collective anxiety in the beginning because we’re apparently codependent crafters and were having a hard time not fleshing out our designs without each other/a few cocktails. But once we got started, we really had a blast! I want to do this with everyone I know now 😂
So to start, we picked our group and decided upon a delivery date that worked for everyone. We made our delivery date a Saturday because multiple members of the group have kids. Ultimately, some of us ended up dropping off our pumpkins on Friday night. More on that later! We set a budget of $20, which I’m pretty sure most of us went over. Those foam pumpkins are in short supply this year, and Michael’s knows it!
Next, we drew names. You can do this the old fashioned way, but I thought it would be extra fun if we gave the pumpkin swap a Secret Santa twist! We tested out a few apps and and decided to stick with the Elfster app (a free download!). Elfster draws names for you and you can message your recipient anonymously through the app. You can even post ice breaker questions that the group members can respond to, so we asked questions like “What is your Halloween style?” and “What is your fall style?” and “Do you want a real or fake pumpkin?” The app was a little glitchy at times but worked well enough for what we were doing. It has a fun social media aspect and they’ll email you every time there’s activity so you never miss anything important.
Once the names were drawn, we got to work! Because we did our swap early so I could post about it here, I was having a difficult time landing on whether to do a fall pumpkin or a Halloween pumpkin. Also, my person has small kids and I wasn’t sure how to craft a childproof design...But after having an actual dream of how to decorate my pumpkin and talking it over with a friend who also has small children, she encouraged me to just go for it! I ended up creating a hybrid Falloween (it’s a thing — look it up) pumpkin that I was really pleased with and actually matched my friend’s home perfectly!
I was hanging out at my neighbor’s house the night before the drop off date, and she asked if I wanted to tag along to deliver her pumpkin early because the weather was supposed to be gross on Saturday. I did, and once I got home and realized the paint trick I tried on my pumpkin had worked and it was dry, I recruited her to tag along with me, and can I just say…as good as it was to flex my creative muscles, this was honestly the best part. We were sneaking around our friends’ neighborhood in the middle of the night like we were in covert ops or something. And by “middle of the night” I mean 8:30pm, but hey! It gets dark early here now! Anyways, we were very stealth.
Through the app we anonymously messaged our recipients that they had a special delivery, and I’m telling you I was so excited I could not go to sleep until my person saw it. Once people got their pumpkins, they messaged our group text and we got to see what everyone created. Everyone did something a little different, and they were all so cute! These make a great gift idea for a friend, a neighbor, a teacher, a nurse. They’d also make a great host gift!
This was the one I made, and I think I’m gonna post a tutorial soon in case you want to make your own!
And here are some photos from the swap!
After all the deliveries were made, we tried to guess who made our pumpkin. Unsurprisingly, everyone guessed theirs correctly 😂
Whether you swap with your long distance BFF or your neighbors, I hope you give this a shot because it’s a fun way to connect with the ones you love and get crafty at the same time. And what’s better than that?!
