Minnie Mouse Pumpkin

I know Halloween is over...and most of you have disposed of your pumpkins (or what's left of them)...but we like to keep our pumpkins until Thanksgiving. Then, the week of Thanksgiving, I toast the seeds and make a few desserts from the puree.

We haven't had time to go to a pumpkin patch yet ( we have one more weekend until they all close), but my dad brought over a pumpkin for my daughter last night. I was just going to sit it by the front door, but it looked too sad and a little boring. I got this Minnie idea from when we visited Disneyland in September. They had giant pumpkin heads of the characters and I thought the Minnie and Mickey were so cute!

For the "ears" I found this bag of pumpkins at Walmart on clearance for $1 after Halloween. I wanted all orange ones...but they were a lot smaller and kind of rotten:(

I drew the face on first...it was much easier to do before I attach anything to it. Then I pulled out some old ribbon I had and tied it around the stump:

I used two toothpicks to attach the small pumpkins to the large one. I went to the dollar store for BBQ skewers...but they didn't have any.

And that's it! My daughter is in love with it (of course)...but has already asked where Mickey is...so we will be making a trip to the actual pumpkin patch to find our "Mickey" pumpkin:)

Now the front porch looks much better:)

So, do you think it's weird to keep a pumpkin as decor past October? Why should they get tossed as soon as it rolls over to November? I say display your pumpkins proudly until Thanksgiving:)