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Little T’s Mini Golf is bringing back its painted pumpkin contest for a fifth year, and the pumpkins are already showing up on store shelves.
The contest benefits The Call in Baxter and Fulton Counties, a nonprofit that recruits and supports foster families and helps foster children in the Twin Lakes area.
Entering is simple. Buy an artificial pumpkin, decorate it however you like, and drop it off at Little T’s on Highway 5 between Sept. 1 and Sept. 20. Hobby Lobby is stocking pumpkins for the contest.
Voting opens Sept. 1 and closes Oct. 2. Votes cost $1 each, or 10 for $5, and the money goes to The Call.
Trophies go to the winning pumpkins. Organizers plan to announce winners Sunday, Oct. 4.
The contest started in 2022, when Little T’s owner Scott Tavegia asked the community to paint pumpkins and drop them off. More than 55 came in that first year, filling shelving the owners built inside the party building.
“We really have a heart for this,” Tavegia said at the time.
That first contest was won by the Miller family and a pumpkin painted to look like the Minions. Mountain Home’s VA clinic and Arvest finished second and third.
The event has grown into an annual fundraiser paired with the “Lighting the Way to Foster Care” mini-golf tournament. The 2022 effort raised close to $4,000, with roughly $2,500 of it coming from pumpkin votes.
The 2024 edition brought in about $4,600 even though fewer pumpkins and fewer tournament teams turned out than the year before. Organizer Jenny Seal described it that fall as a case of less becoming more.
The need behind the fundraiser is local. As of the 2024 event, The Call was overseeing 26 homes caring for 41 children and teens across Baxter and Fulton counties.
Baxter County had 47 children in foster care the year before that, and 23 of them were placed outside the county because there were not enough local foster homes.
Little T’s sits on Highway 5 in Mountain Home. Scott and Brandi Tavegia bought the former All About Fun course in February 2022 and named it for their son Andrew, who was born with Down syndrome.
The Observer named Little T’s its 2025 Entertainment Venue of the Year for its community fundraising and its practice of hiring workers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
More information is available by calling Little T’s at 870-701-3066
