Kooky Pumpkin Carving Ideas

PEKIN, Ill., – If you waited until the last minute to carve your pumpkin for Halloween, then you're in luck! You can use our list of kooky pumpkin carving ideas to get you started! Don't stick with the same old boring jack-o-lantern you always make! Get creative this Halloween!

You'll have to find the perfect puzzle pieces have your pumpkins fit together like this, but once you do, the outcome looks pretty creepy!

Instead of carving out the stem and emptying the pumpkin guts from the top, try carving out the back and using the stem as a nose!

This carving is a cute, fun way to distribute candy to trick-or-treaters! Just make sure to refill her hair as the night goes on!

Grab a smaller pumpkin to create this creepy carving! If you don't want to carve the smaller one, you can decorate it with paint instead! 

This gross jack-o-lantern is a fun way to use your left over pumpkin guts, if you don't mind a little mess on your porch.

This is such a creative way to use your pumpkins and gourds! Make the eyes out of skewers and ping pong balls!

Hopefully you get some inspiration from our list of kooky pumpkin carving ideas! For more fun Halloween ideas, take a look at our Velde Ford Pinterest page! We post our favorite recipes, DIY projects, and much more! We hope everyone has a fun Halloween, but we want to make sure everyone is staying safe as well! Don't forget, as the weather cools down, it's important to make sure you're up to date on all of your vehicle maintenance services! Take a look at our Fall Car Care pages to help you get started! 

At Velde Ford, we're committed to providing our customers with an unbeatable level of service and a great car buying experience. Stop by the dealership located at 2200 North 8th Street, Pekin, IL 61554 or visit our website: VeldeFordPekin.com for more information.

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How to Drive Safely on Halloween Night

PEKIN, Ill. –– On Halloween, kids will swarm neighborhoods to participate in a sugar-fueled frenzy of door-to-door trick-or-treating. While this is an invigorating event for most kids, parents’ reactions to this ghoulish night usually consist of some measure of anxiety over their kids’ safety. Fortunately, there are plenty of Halloween safety tips for parents to give their kids before they hit the streets and morph into candy goblins.

Keeping kids safe on Halloween should also be considered a community effort that includes parents, neighbors, and even drivers. If you’re planning on hitting the road on Oct. 31, make sure you know how to drive safely on Halloween night during the time kids are trick-or-treating. Here are a few cautionary steps you can take to keep neighborhoods safe.

Try to avoid neighborhood streets.

Unless you’re heading to work or a Halloween party, it’s a good idea to keep your car off residential streets during trick-or-treating hours. Keeping cars off of neighborhood streets on Halloween night greatly decreases the hazard formed when energetic kids in costumes are crossing streets cars are driving down.

Don’t speed through neighborhoods.

If you absolutely have to head out on Halloween night, make sure you drive slower than usual through your neighborhood. While legally you may not be required to drive slower on Halloween, it’s a good idea because, again, it’s likely your neighborhood will be flooded with hyped up kids who aren’t paying much attention to a set of headlights a block away. By driving slowly, it gives you more time to react if a group of goblins, vampires, or ghosts decide to run across an intersection before looking both ways.

Use your floodlights in darker areas.

While most neighborhoods streets are lined with streetlights these days, some residential areas choose not to implement them. These streets can get extremely dark at night, especially on Halloween when the only noticeable light is coming from a few porches with candlelit pumpkins.

Make complete stops at stop signs.

Let’s be honest, it’s more than likely that you roll through a majority of the stop signs in your neighborhood, as most drivers do. While you should always come to complete stops at stop signs, it’s especially important on a night like Halloween. Most kids that are out trick-or-treating won’t think about looking before they run across an intersection. By you coming to a complete stop you can take time to look for these kids before proceeding.

Slow down at intersections without signs.

Even if there aren’t any signs telling you to stop or yield at an intersection, it’s a good idea to slow down as you pass through them. Again, this will give you a chance to spot any trick-or-treaters who aren’t paying close attention to the vehicles driving through their neighborhood.

As a driver on Halloween, it’s your responsibility to help the community keep kids who are out trick-or-treating safe. You can do a lot by choosing not to drive during trick-or-treat times, but if you have to, our used car dealer near Peoria Heights, IL, wants to make sure you know how to drive safely on Halloween night. We share tips like these because we care about our community, but another way we try to keep our neighbors safe is by providing them with quality used cars and trucks they know they can rely on. Visit us for a test-drive and you’ll see what we mean.

At Velde Ford, we're committed to providing our customers with an unbeatable level of service and a great car buying experience. Feel free to visit Velde Ford located at 2200 North 8th Street, Pekin, IL 61554.

Visit our website: VeldeFordPekin.com

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Boo! 5 Safety Tips to Protect Your Fearless Kids This Halloween

PEKIN, Ill. –– On Halloween, the hysteria cultivated in kids filling bags with free candy until they weigh 20 pounds is enough to override the many rules of trick-or-treating safety you've imbued in them from a young age. But as irritating as it can be when they don't listen to you, it's still your job to keep your kids safe on this ghoulish night, so we've provided you with five tips to protect your fearless kids on Halloween.

1. No Tricks, Just Treats

Unfortunately, we live in a world where you have to keep a constant eye out for bizarre and unpleasant things that may negatively affect your kids. While we aren’t suggesting the majority of people are dangerous individuals roaming the streets to terrorize innocent kids, we believe it's important to keep your kids informed of the reality that some people aren’t very nice and could have crummy intentions, especially on a holiday built around creepiness. You can give some neighbors you're familiar with the benefit of the doubt, but the truth is you don’t know the majority of the people who are passing out candy to your kids. Make sure your kids know to stay polite when they ring doorbells for candy, but remind them not to fall under strangers' incantatory spells.

2. Not Just Any Haunted House

Never should your kids enter a house without your authorization or supervision. If you’re kids are old enough to trick-or-treat alone, make sure they know to stay on porches and out of houses when they collect candy. Again, your kids don’t know the people passing out candy; therefore, they should feel uncomfortable if an adult asks them to come inside. Of course, there are exceptions to this Halloween safety tip. For instance, some Halloween fanatics turn their homes or garages into haunted spaces for kids to walk through before receiving candy. If your kids see other kids and adults participating in this, there’s nothing to worry about. But if no one else is around, make sure your kids are intuitive enough to move on rather than oblige an offer to step inside a seemingly friendly stranger’s home.

3. Resist the Dark Side, Stay in the Light

Let’s be honest, Halloween can be a pretty dark occasion, figuratively and literally. It’s up to you how you choose to raise your kids regarding the more grotesque aspects of costumes and decorations, but when it comes to the real darkness of the holiday––nighttime––we think all parents should make sure their kids follow a set of rules for navigating the dusk hours. Make sure your kids are safe this Halloween when the sun goes down and the moon comes out.; no, not because of werewolves, but because nighttime naturally results in riskier situations. When it’s dark, it’s harder for drivers to see kids going door-to-door or crossing the street, and it also creates a higher risk for shady characters lurking in spooky, unnoticeable places. Keep your kids safe and remind them to stay on well-lit streets and to avoid dark areas.

4. Don’t Be a Zombie, Look Both Ways

When kids get excited about Halloween, the only thing on their mind is sugar and how much they’ll consume before slipping into a coma. That’s why it’s important to remind your kids they aren’t zombies and they should look both ways before crossing the street. Be annoying when communicating this rule to your kids, because we guarantee they won’t be repeating the left-right-left mantra you taught them years ago as they run from one block to another in pursuit of candy without you there to remind them.

5. You’re Not a Real Vampire, so Don’t Expect to Be Out Late

The parameters you emplace for your kids on Halloween are of your own discretion, but we still suggest setting a curfew for them to ensure they get home safely and on time. Find out when other parents expect their kids to come home. This will help you gauge an appropriate curfew time that won’t ruin your kids’ trick-or-treating fun, but also prevents them from being out too late when fewer adults will be present to maintain a safe environment. Be reasonable with your expectations, but don’t be afraid to set a stern check-in time, because ultimately your kids’ safety is primary.

These five tips to protect your fearless kids this Halloween are what we consider to be the major preventative measures you can take to keep your family having fun without risking any danger. Halloween is meant to be an exciting and festive night, so let’s work to keep spirits high by keeping our own and others’ kids with these tips.

At our used car dealer near Peoria Heights, IL, we also think it’s important to drive safe throughout the entire fall season. Follow our tips and visit our service center for all of your autumn maintenance. Velde Ford, located at 2200 North 8th Street, Pekin, IL 61554, is committed to providing our customers with an unbeatable level of service and a great car buying experience.

Visit our website: VeldeFordPekin.com

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Creative Ways to Decorate Your Pumpkin for Halloween

PEKIN, Illi - All right, we already covered how to add apples and pumpkins into your menu this fall, but with Halloween in sight, we quickly remembered another fun fall activity –– pumpkin decorating! While many people like to stick to their traditional jack-o-lantern carvings, why not take a shot at one of these creative ways to decorate your pumpkin for Halloween? All of these ideas are super simple and are sure to be great at-home projects to do with the kids!

Creative Ways to Decorate Your Pumpkin for Halloween

There definitely isn't a shortage of candy this time of year, so why not put it to good use? Glue some of your favorite candies onto your pumpkin to make a silly face or a unique design!

Thumbtacks can be used for more than just hanging notes on your cork board! Use the pins to write out a message or create a decorative pattern on your pumpkin. 

A little Mod Podge and some festive fabric can turn your pumpkin into a real piece of art! Fabric-covered pumpkins also make for adorable centerpieces! 

Paint your pumpkin in chalkboard paint to turn into your personal message board!

Carving a pumpkin has never been so easy! Kids can pick out their favorite cookie cutters and, with your help, of course, use a mallet to pound the cookie cutter all the way through the pumpkin's shell. Using a knife, parents can easily carve out their perfectly shaped design and ta-da!

Painting your pumpkin is not only a hassle-free project, it's also a great way for the kids to get creative all on their own! Whether they decide to use stencils or paint free-hand, the possibilities are endless!

Prepare your vehicle for whatever fall has in store for us with help from our Ford dealer near Peoria Heights. At Velde Autos, we are committed to providing our customers with an unbeatable level of service and a great car buying experience. Feel free to visit either of our dealerships, Velde Ford located at 2200 North 8th Street, Pekin, IL 61554.

Visit our website: VeldeFordPekin.com

Follow us on: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram