Medium sized ones work best for most stencils that you'll make or buy. Small pumpkins work fine for carving traditional faces, they can be done fast and you can have many of them scattered about for parties, haunts or up your sidewalk as a lighted pathway. Advance planning is the key to your pumpkin carving success First, decide before buying your pumpkins what designs you will be carving into them. This will allow you to create a shopping list or at least a mental idea of the shapes and sizes of pumpkins you'll need. For standard carving without a s tencil , decide if it should be tall and narrow, or more rounded, based on your ideas.
Select pumpkin s that are uniformly orange meaning that are ripe, have no bruises, cuts or nicks.
If you will be using a stencil to carve your pumpkin, select a pumpkin that is large enough and as close to the same shape as the pattern you're going to carve. It should be as smooth as possible, and free of scratches, dents or gouges. If it does break-off you can use toothpicks as a basic patch. Care should be taken not to bruise during transport or storage, as this will shorten their life-span. Just carve the bottom out for the opening the same way you would do the top.