In case you should ever need...

...a Cinderella's coach, here's how to make one:

(My niece Cheryl posted on Facebook that she wished she had a Cinderella's coach to use in a "Dresses for Princesses" project that she has started. The small coach would be used as a collection "bowl" for those who choose to donate money toward the cost of drycleaning the fancy dresses donated for her project.)

When I read Cheryl's FB post, I immediately googled "how to make a Cinderella's carriage." As with all topics under the sun, I immediately found directions for just such a thing here.

Then I remembered the two pumpkins stored in our attic.

These two pumpkins have been a nuisance since the day I bought them right after Halloween several years ago. Once I got them home, I realized I had absolutely no way to use them. They're made of a styrofoam substance and are hollow. They're so lightweight that they'd blow away outdoors, if I wanted to set them on our porch at Halloween.

And they're not exactly gorgeous for inside decorating.

 Maybe I could foist at least one of them onto Cheryl, in the guise of a Cinderella coach!

The trick was to convince Ken he wanted to help me with this idea.

I presented the plan, and one of the pumpkins, to him early Saturday morning. I explained why there was a need for a Cinderella coach and why a styrofoam pumpkin would be just the ticket. Then I showed him the website linked above.

Ken didn't resist the idea of helping me create a coach, just as I knew he wouldn't, and before I knew it he was using a knife to carve out the doors and windows of the coach, following the sketches I'd made with a Sharpie onto the pumpkin.

Soon the pumpkin was beginning to look like a Cinderella coach. Now it needed paint. Ken said a can of Rustoleum "covers everything" paint would probably adhere well to the orange pumpkin.

I made a trip to Lowe's, found the paint in an off-white, stopped at ACMoore for gold trimming paint, and headed home.

Ken spray-painted the carriage and we let it dry over night. The next morning I began working on the gold embellishments. Then I waited (im)patiently for the paint to dry.

The wheels were the biggest problem. The website with the directions for this project mentioned using clay, baking it, etc., to end up with "wheels." I wasn't up for that, and neither was Ken.

Soon I heard one of Ken's electric saws whirring away in the basement. Ken had cut four circles for the wheels from some scrap material he's had on hand for years, then he added rods to connect the sets of wheels. I would next added gold paint to create spokes.

Done and delivered. We took the Cinderella coach to Cheryl yesterday morning. She was thrilled with it. She even mentioned, wistfully, that it would be really neat if her daughter, who's getting married next summer, could arrive at the church in a full-sized Cinderella coach.

Now to find a way to get rid of that other pumpkin in my attic. Unfortunately it's too small to hold a life-sized bride.