*Guest Post Thursday* - Pumpkin Luminary

Welcome back for another Guest Post Thursday!  My talented friend Shannon is here again with a lovely fall tutorial for us - a fragrant pumpkin luminary.  I can't wait to make one!  Also - two things - today Prudent Baby is hosting me as a guest (so honored!!) and if you haven't taken the poll over there on the right, please do so I can make this blog better for you!! I may have a few more polls coming soon so keep looking and posting your answers.  Thanks!   So back to my guest - take it away Shannon!

Here in East Tennessee, the autumn weather is full of beautiful, warm colors that play off the crispness in the air. I love the color orange, so when decorating for fall, I have ALOT of orange throughout the house. I especially love using pumpkins because they are so versatile when decorating for autumn, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. However this year, my mini pumpkins upon my mantle just didn't have the "pop" I wanted. The color and size were just right but I felt I was missing that extra spark.

I wanted a bit of twinkle, and what better way that to add twinkle than to use a tea light. I shall make a pumpkin luminary! So I got one of my little pumpkins and cut the bottom out of it and hollowed it out. I cut the bottom and not the top, so it would be easier to light my tea light and place the pumpkin luminary over it. This way I wouldn't have to light the candle from the top. Since the pumpkin was so small, it took five minutes total. Make sure that you scrape the inside very well, leaving no trace of the stringy goo that holds the seeds to the pumpkin wall.

Next I used my strawberry huller to cut circles into the wall of my pumpkin. You could also use an apple corer and punch through the wall, or if you are really handy with a knife, carve some hearts or spirals. The wall is rather thin so it doesn't take much effort to cut through the pumpkin.

Now that my pumpkin luminary is constructed, I thought it might be nice to add a bit of spice. Cinnamon, ginger and cloves to be precise (I will stop the rhyming now). I used a pinch each of cinnamon, ginger and cloves. I mixed them together and rubbed the spice mixture evenly on the inside of the pumpkin, taking care not to get it too close to the holes (which is why I rubbed, not sprinkled).

 My luminary is finished. My daughter made a trivet our of a 2 inch slice of a tree limb in preschool, which provided for a nice base for my tea light and pumpkin luminary, don't you think? 

I lit my tea light, placed my pumpkin luminary over the candle and dimmed the lights. What do you think?

My husband thought he was having pumpkin pie for dessert when he got home, so the scenting worked nicely, and now I need to go make a pie. You could easily do this with a pie pumpkin and make a table centerpiece. Enjoy your pumpkins this Autumn!

Thanks Shannon!  If you would like to be a guest on Sew Homegrown, just send me an email from the Contact Me section.  Have a great day!
jessica