I averaged at about one per evening, starting last weekend up till Halloween itself
I bought electric candles this year which meant I didn't need to have a removable lid, I could leave the stem attached but slice off the botom of the pumpkin with a large knife and place the hollow pumpkins over the light. Much easier and makes emptying them a bit more of a doddle too: Just up -end 'em over a bucket, once you're done dealing with the innards.
Speaking of which, I invested in this nifty little gadget:
http://www.getcarvingquicker.com/
Which makes hollowing pumpkins about 1000 times easier. Stick it on the end of a main-powered drill and let it gut the nasty, stringy bits from inside, maybe take a spoon to any of the straggly hangers on and I reckon you get get a large pumpkin hollowed out and ready to carve in about 40 minutes.
With the stencils I downloaded from Zombie pumpkins, they recommend a pointillist approach of poking holes in the stencils then carving using a connect-the-dots approach. An alternative method I favoured is cutting the stencil down to reduce the surface area as much as possible, then gluing them to the front with Prit Stik.
Prit stick is water-soluble, so can be washed off the front when the carving is done. Gluing the stencil down, rather than attaching it with masking tape, makes the whole thing a bit more rigid, which helps when you start sawing the holes out, because pumpkin juice gets out and saturates the stencils and you can follow the line and proportions of the design much easier.
I also used the warren pro-carving set, rather than the plastic carving kit I saw sold in shops.
http://www.zombiepumpkins.com/store.php?item=carvingkit
Certainly the outlay in money cost this year was greater than it will be in future years, but I know have everything I need to carve pumpkins next year. The dollar being weak against sterling helped tremendously in this respect.
I also treated the pumpkins with a mixture of water a bleach to discourage mould growth and decay. My first pumpkin had by Halloween wilted almost completly (5 days), but the pirate was still doing okay (4 days). By Yesterday 3rd) Grinning jack was looking a bit worse for wear last night (3 days however I suspect, such a large design meant he was the most exposed to the air bacteria and dehydration) and Karloff was doing well. However the three pumpkins I had stored in the garage to do the Imortal from 300, Eric Draven from The Crow and Freddy Krueger - have all begun to wither and mould over on their own , so no point hollowing those out now, I'll have to toss 'em.
LJ
