DIY Pumpkin Vase Centerpiece

Ah, autumn. This morning during my Sippin’ Saturday, I discussed about how Back to School week seems to signal the start of autumn. Just this afternoon I came across a post about the 19 Autumn Facts You Wish You Knew, and my girl, Stiina blogged about Norway in Fall. So clearly I’m not the only one feeling it.

I’ve talked about how Autumn is my favourite time of year. I enjoy the cooler weather, wearing sweaters, scarves and mittens. But I also love the colours of the prairies during this time of year. Wheat fields are golden, trees are yellow, orange and red. The sky, an expanse of beautiful hues of light blue, pink and purple. It’s amazing.

Autumn colours on the farm

So, in celebration of the approaching autumn, and to utilize one of the pumpkins growing in my garden, I decided to do a DIY Pumpkin Vase Centerpiece.

You may have seen these floating around on Pinterest and I thought they were a very nifty idea.

So if you like the look of my centerpiece, keep reading for the step by step.

First, get a jack-o-lantern breed of pumpkin. Then, take whatever container you will be using to put your flowers in (that is wide-mouthed and short enough to fit in the pumpkin). I’ve seen people use tin cans and short vases. A shorter mason jar works great too. Next, trace around the bottom of that container and cut out the top of the pumpkin.

Scoop out the guts of the pumpkin – you can either discard them (or, if you’re like me, you’ll put them aside and make delicious roasted pumpkin seeds later).

Roasted pumpkin seeds I made up this afternoon

Fill a large bucket with 2 parts water, 1 part bleach. Submerge your pumpkin in the water for at least two minutes. My bucket wasn’t big enough to submerge the whole pumpkin without it spilling over the edge, so I did half the pumpkin for 2 minutes submerged in the solution, then rotated it and did another 2 minutes for the other half in the solution.

Remove Pumpkin from the bucket and set it out to air dry. I stuck mine upside down in the sink and let it air dry for the evening

Here’s the fun part. Collect the flowers you want to be spilling out of your pumpkin. I initially went out to my flower garden and cut down some sunflowers, hydrangea, zinnias, and calendulas. But the wasps around here lately are NO JOKE, so I threw up my hands and drove to a local boutique, called Sherry’s on Grand (shout out to Sherry, whose shop is the bomb-diggity), and asked Sherry to provide me with a bouquet of flowers in yellows, oranges, reds and purple.

Put a wide-mouthed container that you’ve filled with water and flower food inside your pumpkin

Begin arranging your flowers in a way that’s pleasing to the eye. The rule to making bouquets look bomb is to keep to an odd number of flowers.

I finished my pumpkin vase by embellishing it with pine cones around the top edge of the hole to make it more “fall-ish”, as well as to provide a bit of support to the flowers.

Have you done a pumpkin vase centerpiece? I’d love to see pictures!