How to stop your Halloween pumpkin from rotting

If you're excited to carve some pumpkins for Halloween this year, you might want to take note of this next story. While pumpkins may not last forever, there are some tips to try and preserve them a little bit longer this season. Fox's Anita Vogel shows us how to tonight. With Halloween right around the corner, plenty of people are getting ready to carve jack-o'-lanterns if they haven't done so already. But to try and keep these masterpieces around a little longer, plant experts say it helps to know a little more about pumpkins. A pumpkin is largely water, not as much water as a watermelon, but it's largely water. And that outer thick rind protects and preserves that water. When it comes to picking a pumpkin, Matt Kasson of West Virginia University says look for one with an intact stem and no cracks. You want to look for things that have the least number of blemishes and the least number of defects so that it'll last a bit longer. But while slicing into a pumpkin naturally speeds up the rotting process, it is still important to use a clean carving tool. If we were to puncture it with a dirty knife or a nail, you would be bringing pathogens inward. Cleaning your pumpkin before and after carving it also doesn't hurt. You could start off by wiping down your pumpkin with a bleach wipe. After you carve it, you can either dip it in a dilute bleach solution or vinegar solution, or you can just wipe down the edges of the carved area with petroleum jelly or some kind of vegetable oil, and that'll protect those areas from desiccation. Kasson also reminds people to remove the pumpkin seeds and fiber strands from inside and to keep pumpkins from collapsing by not carving them too thin. I'm Anita Vogel, Fox News. And we're still about six days away from Halloween. Some people are getting a head start on their holiday shopping. Data from the National Retail Federation shows many Americans no longer waiting for Black Friday deals to start the holiday season. The agency predicts people will spend more than $1 trillion this year from November 1st through December 31st. As people start to plan their budgets and shopping lists, experts laid out what some of the hot ticket items will be. There's a lot of nostalgic kind of backlash to technology in some sense, like Polaroid cameras made a comeback, record players, CD players, and the growth is expected to be 4.2%. So consumers are spending, and they're spending carefully, but they are going to spend. As always, experts warn you to keep an eye out for deals that may seem too good to be true as they can be scams or fakes, of course. The Milwaukee Brewers taking a big lead against the Tampa Bay Rays.