MARION — It was a warm fall day at the Marion Art Center, where parents and children prepared to carve and paint pumpkins. But a few families who hadn’t left their pumpkins to warm up in the sun were in for a bit of a shock when carving. 

“Ahh! It’s so cold,” said Kaylin O’Connor, as she dipped her hands into a pumpkin to take out its innards. “I should have worn mittens!” 

After kids did most of the cold, messy work of scooping out the pumpkins, they took off for the face painting lines or boxes of doughnuts, or to play tag in the small yard that the Marion Art Center got the rights to this spring. 

Parents stayed at the shady tables to talk and do much of the carving work. (The one exception was Graham Levenson, who had helped to carve his pumpkin the year before and did much of his carving on his own). 

Eventually, the children returned to the table to paint the newly-carved pumpkins. 

The carvers also discussed what to do with the seeds. One mother said that she had a delicious Portuguese recipe for pumpkin seeds. 

O’Connor had other ideas, though. “I want to plant them and have hundreds of pumpkins,” she said.