I finally cut open my gourd today

I grew a gourd this last summer. The first one ever! I always plant some, but they never come up, don't grow fast enough, get eaten, etc. This one came up from a seed and made 1 gourd. Amazing considering our short summers! I had to harvest it earlier than all the recommendations that I read online because we had two hard frosts in late September/early October, down around 20F. I pulled the plant up root and all and stuck the roots in a bucket of rainwater and left it there til the vine died a few weeks later. The gourd was still green, but I stuck it on the table to dry or rot, whatever it chose to do.

Today I decided it was as dry as it was going to get. It's hard and light weight and hollow sounding. So, I cut it open. Here it is, precut. As you can see, it has a bit of 'dimpling', I don't know if that's normal or not.

I used our pumpkin carving tools to cut it open as that is what I had available to me. I made a small hole with this little 'drill'. I didn't think it would work so well on the harder surface of the gourd, but it did just fine!

Then I used this little saw to cut around and take the top off.

Here it is with the top removed. It's full of a cottony feeling stuff and the seeds.

I scraped the innards out with the pumpkin scraper, worked fairly well.

Since there was still a lot of stuff still clinging to the sides, I gave some sandpaper a shot. Did a round with 180 grit and then another round with 200 grit. Although you can't really tell from the picture, it looks much nicer, cleaner and smoother.

So now I have an opened, cleaned (sort of) gourd. I'm not sure what to do with it now. I know a lot of people decorate them in some fashion or other, but this may be the only gourd I ever end up with and I kinda hate to experiment on it. Ideas?