App review: Carve-a-Pumpkin for iPad and iPhone

If you'd like to get in the Halloween spirit but don't want your children wielding sharp knives, there's an app for that. Carve-a-Pumpkin for iPad and iPhone lets you carve your jack-o-lantern digitally. It isn't quite as fun as the real thing, but it sure is a lot less messy and dangerous. 

You start by selecting your pumpkin. They are all perfectly round and symmetrical, except one that has growths all over it and looks diseased. The pumpkins are different colors; one is even a shiny black with a black stem, for extra spooky designs. 

Once you choose your pumpkin, you can cut shapes either by tracing freehand or by placing pre-cut shapes on the pumpkin, such as eyes, nose, and mouth. Each facial feature has several fun options, such as angry eyes, bushy eyebrows, and spooked eyes. You can adjust the size and angle of each feature. Once you have settled on a feature, it is digitally carved into your pumpkin, and a fake candle illuminates the shape from within. 

You can also add designs to your pumpkin, such as ghosts, spiderwebs, and haunted houses. 

When you are done "carving," you select a background from several fall-themed options, and you're done. The pumpkin doesn't dance or sing, or even provide you with any real porch illumination. It is available just as a digital image, which you can share on Facebook or Twitter or over email, or save as an image to your device's library. 

At first, I thought this app would be lame, since you aren't really carving anything at all. But after making a few pumpkins inside the app, I have to admit that it is more fun than I expected. My toddler got a kick out of it, but he's never carved a real pumpkin, so he has no reference point. But at least I felt the Halloween spirit. The app will be even more useful if I print out my creations and use them as templates to carve a real pumpkin, which I just might do. 

The Carve-a-Pumpkin app was created by Parents Magazine. It is free in the iTunes store. 

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—Natali Morris