One of my buddies is a Halloween freak. She loves the holiday, her fave part being the carving of the pumpkin (in her case, pumpkins). Her Jack O’Lanterns are works of art. Name a famous person. She has likely carved a pumpkin with that face.
I sit at the opposite end of the spectrum about the carving of the pumpkin. I don’t like doing it, especially reaching in my hand to scrape out the inside of the pumpkin with all the orange pumpkin guts and goo and slimy seeds (ranks way up there with setting up the artificial Christmas tree, unfolding all the branches). Somehow, my hand always turns out permanently orange and smelling like pumpkin soup for a month afterwards. No thanks. Not for me.
So its only natural that I buy a Jack O’Lantern from my buddy to display on my front step (the Jack O’Lantern then traditionally gets abducted by the teenagers down the street and eventually dropped off a fifth story balcony to see how it smashes).
And when my Jack O’Lantern gets admired, I fess up and say who is truly the master behind the work which leads to more carving-adverse folks knocking on my friend’s door and…you get the picture. My buddy’s skills are suddenly in demand. She’s in the pumpkin business.
There are some drawbacks to this plan. For one, its very seasonal. Halloween only comes once a year (thank goodness for my candy budget). For another, Jack O’Lanterns last only about a week (less if you have teenagers in the neighborhood).
However, she has extended the season with pumpkin carving classes, selling carving templates, other veggie and fruit carving (for centerpieces), outsourcing carving to teenagers (likely the same ones with the pumpkin smashing fixation), etc.
