Pumpkin Decorating Contest at Work

One of my prior companies did this every year. We did use real pumpkins and brought them into the office already carved on Halloween day. The pumpkins were judged in a secret voting ballot box with prizes given by the company such as gift certificates. A previous company had the top prize be a front parking spot for a month. Since that company had such bad parking conditions, I was determined to win that one, and I did.

Do you plan to carve them in the office? Or perhaps paint them? In ours, there was no limit as to what we could create. It was just all about having fun. There were some amazing entries over the years. I painted a small pumpkin to look like a calico cat that took second place. Of course, a few people did the vomiting pumpkins using the seeds and goop. One of my favorites was a punk pumpkin. He used 4 inch nails, painted black, hammered into the entire hair area. The face was carved and he put the pumpkin on a small stand that he sat inside a T-Shirt. It was so funny.

I taught preschool for 21 years and this was one of our fundraisers. The teachers decorated them. If you go on facebook and look up Pilgrim Community Preschool it is in Lexington, SC you can look through their pictures and see some of them. Their post from October 11th last year is one table full and then just look through their pictures. Mickey Mouse won last year.

Paint them, add features of things to make, ears/hair/nos.....

What about a theme? Disney, Nightmare before Christmas, something famous to your area, animals, people, something famous or memorable from 2017, food,  spooky (Halloween themed),...

ETA: I am very slow in typing a response.

I like that idea. It would be fun.

We have a big competition at the hospital I work at. Its actual carving and awesome. People get totally carried away with over the top power tools, it's fun to watch.

Yeah, pumpkins are not really good to have around for more than one day.  This company really encouraged office bonding by allowing us to be creative around the holidays.  In addition to the pumpkin contest, we had a costume contest, a cubicle/office decorating contest, and a potluck luncheon, so we were all fully in the spirit.  Most of the employees had little ones, so they had the children come in and trick or treat around the office and then join us in the potluck since it was all decorated so fun.  We had one of those scary sounding DVDs playing and the lights in the office dimmed down since most of us had strands of orange or purple lights in our themed setup.  It was such a fun atmosphere in there on holidays. We made up weird names for our potluck dish like "dried skin shards with minced rat innards" which was just chips and salsa, but the labels in front of everything was really fun.  And kind of gross.

There was a large open area near our reception desk, so we used this as a cooperative group decorating area for all of the holidays.  The last Halloween that I was there, several of us made cardboard tombstones, sprayed with that granite-looking spray paint, and painted the front name plaque area with black chalkboard paint so we could put different names on them throughout the weeks preceding the potluck party.  Those guys were so creative with the tombstone names.  The owners of the company wanted us to go all out on holiday themes and we received money to use toward the group effort as well as some for our own cubicles/office decorating.  I though that was incredibly generous.  And of course, everything we made went into the off-site storage area so that we could use them in future years so it wasn't a wasted effort.

We made mounds out of crumpled newspaper and covered it with brown tissue paper to look like the slightly raised grave in front of each tombstone. Then we sprinkled dead leaves gathered from the front of our building onto our graveyard.  Add some spider webs, a few fake bones, a couple of realistic looking plastic rats and we were in business.  I made a decrepit looking fence for it out of a big sheet of styrofoam-looking stuff.  I cut the fence posts and then sprayed them with cheap black spray paint.  The paint dissolves and melts the styrofoam, making them look worn and awesome.  One of the guys had just trimmed some trees at his home, so he brought in a few dead branches to decorate our cemetery. They really made the scene so cool draped in dried moss and cobwebs!  We worked on the communal area together during lunch breaks and a little bit after work and had it finished during the first week of October.  Almost every employee contributed something to the graveyard, making it really impressive.  It truly was a blast and very bonding, which is what the owner wanted.  He even brought in a couple of pizzas when we worked on it after hours.

My son and I used to go all out in decorating for Halloween at home, so I had plenty of materials to choose from to decorate my cubicle.  I ended up deciding to go with making a witch's store after I found the coolest 7' tall witch at Home Goods.  I hung her from the ceiling with fishing line so that it looked like she was standing there with a basket of goodies in one of her hands.  I had lots of Halloween stamps and materials to age and distress everything.  Since I am single and had the time, I worked every night for a few weeks making my items for sale and aging old glass bottles with corks in them and some fun weird labels like "ear hair from a 90-year-old dwarf."  I used stuff from my kitchen as well as fur from my cats, making up little bags of creepy ingredients for spells.  I have a Halloween embossing plate that I used to make my paper money for the cash register.  I crumpled it up and soaked it in some strong coffee to give it the aged look I was after.

My coworkers kind of flipped out at what I was able to create, but I reminded them, I was older than most of them so I had many many Halloweens under my belt, giving me lots of things to choose from in my Halloween storage boxes.  And as long as I had all of my Halloween boxes down from my rafters, I went through it all and was able to bring in several boxes that I no longer needed.  I no longer decorated inside my house after my son was gone, so I was able to get rid of tons of stuff.  And the coworkers with very young families that didn't have much in the way of decorations built up yet were happy to be able to go through my boxes to decorate at the office with, as well as take home for future Halloweens with their kids.  They were happy with their new stuff and I was thrilled with all the space in my rafters.  And instead of everyone just working on their own area for the contest prize, people started helping out their neighbors with both ideas as well as donated lunch hours.  That was very cool to see.

Sorry, I got carried away with ideas for you.  Hopefully there is something in all of the above that will give you an idea you can use.

They do a pumpkin carving contest at my work, and they bring them in on the Friday before Halloween and then display them at the Halloween benefit fair ( work for a hospital with 1500 Plus employees and volunteers etc). It goes over really well. The newer thing is trunk or treat, its only open to employees, etc and it goes really well too.

I can't think of anything cuter than what's been suggested, but I do have some advice! Don't bring your pumpkin until the due date.

We had a Christmas stocking decorating contest at work once. I put a lot of thought into mine. The few that were already finished were mostly puff paint and glitter, maybe some bells. Pretty simple.

Like most of you, I'm pretty creative. I painted mine a entirely different color, added pretty trim, poked holes in a pattern, and added battery lights--the whole shebang.

Well one girl decided hers wasn't good enough, so she took her already-finished stocking home. She bought a new stocking and basically copied mine and added flashing lights and music or some sh%#. It was like an episode of Seinfeld.

She won of course. All I won was a life-lesson! If you're entering a contest where creativity counts, never bring your entry until the very end, or else someone will copy yours and go Clark Griswold on you. Lol.

Our Elementary School library does a pumpkin painting contest every year. The theme is any character from a book. They're allowed to bring in the book and painted pumpkin two weeks before Halloween, and they are set up in the library until the day after Halloween. Since the library puts it on, the prizes are a library themed, such as getting to check out an extra library book. It is really popular, and some really cool pumpkins come in.