Shrunken mini pumpkin heads

Today we are trying one of the latest trends, mini pumpkin shrunken heads. Let's see how it turns out.

First you need little pumpkins. Easy enough, they are everywhere before Halloween.

Cut the tops off. For any witch that doesn't have children and you haven't tried the safety carving tools, OMGosh get them. They are so much easier and safer to use. Even for grown witches : )

Cut the top off of each pumpkin and clean out the guts. Save the seeds for baking! Yum!

Scrape the inside super clean and try to have even sized walls all around. This will allow them to dry easier.

Next you carve out very basic faces. Don't get too fancy, too much cutting will make that side of the pumpkin collapse more when drying. Plus they shrink and you won't see all the details.

I fill mine with aluminum foil to try to save the basic roundness through the process.

Next they go into a dehydrator at 140F degrees or into your oven at warm. It's going to take a full day to dry out.

To decorate you can paint them or add dry flowers or even some cute plastic cheap decor from any discount store. At our house we like things to be a little bit scarier than cute at Halloween. You do you.

While we had the oven going on warmofe, I thought why not try shrunken apple heads? So we did. We used granny smith because they have thicker flesh. Peel the apples. Leave the core intact.

The carve your faces. We chose cloves for teeth and eyes. If you use another item, please comment and let us know what you used and if you like it.

We dipped the apples in a ramikin of lemon juice with salt mixed in. This stops the discoration of the apples and I believe it's stops them from drying une

venly.

They go into the oven too. We have ours slightly tipped in an oven safe ramikin. We wanted the flat spot where they sit to be slightly behind the bottom of the apple so when they sit on a shelf, the face is slightly tipped up.

This photo is after 10 hours in the oven.

We decided to let them go for a second day, so it was 10 hours on day one. They came out when we were baking chicken and we turned oven off over night. Day two and 4 hours in they look like this...

After they were finished, they looked like this : )

Have you made these?