Mom, where's my pumpkin?

To give you a little background info I lost my job about a month ago. It sucks. Luckily my other half has a good job, and for now we are surviving. But some of the little things haven't been so tangible to us. Just ask our 3yr old "B". "Mom where's my birthday party? I need some balloons!" "Mom where's my pumpkin??"

The birthday party is on hold, two more weeks and we can do. But if we get a pumpkin, and a costume, that could F*^k up our budget for the oh so important party, which is no longer important now that Halloween is approaching... oh the indecisive mind of a toddler.. So what to do??

I'm calling these my mock pumpkins.

1 Glass Jar (or more)
 Masking tape
Orange Paint (or in our case, acrylic pink and yellow paint mixed.)
Tealight candles

I don't normally have an abundance of patience, it's a gift I never received. But this craft was right up my alley. First thing we (I) did was make 3 triangles out of masking tape (eyes, nose) and then I made a crescent shape (mouth) with the tape as well and had "B" help me put the face together on the jar. Let me tell you that crescent shape was a pain, it looks like the pumpkin jar is smirking, but oh well, she's enthused. Ok, now that the face is stuck on securely, we paint. Have your little one or you paint the entire jar orange, let it dry and then CAREFULLY peel off the tape. (I have to admit I did touch up a little after I removed the tape because some of the paint came off). I used acrylic paint for this, it stuck pretty well. I'm not sure how tempera would do, but its work a shot, maybe mix it with some clear nail polish?

Anyways it was a nice quick little craft, and now we have pumpkins! One less thing on her needs checklist :)

Note: I lit these up last night and decided that the eyes, nose and mouth needed to be blacked out, so I found some  black felt and glued them on where i had taken the tape off, now they look just perfect. Although "B" is not happy about the felt adjustment, I feel she will get used to it.