Tips For Carving A Fancy Pumpkin

(CBS)  Halloween is a great time to get creative with the holiday's traditional decoration: the pumpkin. The most people usually do is carve out eyes, nose and a mouth and maybe light the pumpkin from the inside with a candle.

Nancy Soriano, editor and chief of Country Living magazine, has some ideas about how to make your Halloween pumpkin special.

Try cutting off the bottom of the pumpkin, instead of the top.

Start at the bottom and cut all the way around and take out that bottom piece," she told The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler.

Use an ice cream scoop to remove the guts of the pumpkin as much as possible.

Use your paring knife to make different designs — you might need a longer knife if you have a thick pumpkin.

Be careful with knives around children. Let them make the pattern, but you do the cutting.

Use a battery operated cordless drill to make geometric designs.

Use pumpkins for Thanksgiving decorations.

Use a small drill bit and you create the same holes.

Push small Christmas lights through each hole and use the decoration as opposed to a candle.

Use funkins of faux pumpkins for decorations.

Use a sharpie or paint to decorate the fake pumpkins.

Store them and use year after year.

Score your pumpkin.

Scoring is a more difficult decoration technique.

Carve out the bottom, but never actually cut through the pumpkin.

Stencil your decorative pattern or draw freehand.

Take out the outer layer of the pumpkin skin so you can only see the pulp. The result is a beautiful pattern when the pumpkin is lit.