The Popcorn Stand: How do you carve a concrete pumpkin?

Now that it’s October, I’ve been scanning the interwebs for all of about four minutes for this year’s Halloween trends.

Of course I’m already late when it comes to HalloThanksMas, which is just around the corner, or I guess already here. As I’ve written before the HalloThanksMas season is now starting around mid-August.

And as I took my four minutes or so to look at the interwebs for Halloween ideas, I found I’m pretty much several weeks late. All these websites had their Halloween ideas posted at least several weeks ago.

I’ve never really been much into Halloween and I can’t remember the last time I dressed up for Halloween — or if I ever did.

I’m like “Mike” in “The Middle,” one of my favorite shows. Mike refused to dress up, but in his flannel shirt and with the toilet paper he had confiscated, one of his friends put two-and-two together: “Oh I get it, you’re the Brawny guy.”

I did learn friends costumes are the new couples costumes. Best friends will apparently dress up in matching outfits much like couples do.

Otherwise costumes are pretty much going to be the standard fare of popular movie, comic book and television show characters.

As far as non-costume trends I only found a few that caught my eye. Apparently this year is going to be “industrial chic” which includes displaying concrete pumpkins instead of the real thing. My question is how do you make pumpkin pies? And how do you carve a concrete pumpkin.

Oh and there’s also concrete skull planters in which you can place your plant in a skull.

There’s also apparently going to be the trend of decorating your house like a crime scene.

Anyway I’ve got to go because who knows how long this concrete pumpkin is going to take to carve?

— Charles Whisnand