In the spirit of Halloween..

Halloween has to be one of the best times of the year. It signals the beginning of beautiful fall weather, fun activities, and all of the decorating you can stand. One tradition that I love is carving pumpkins. On Saturday we went to our favorite Pick your own everything place (Weavers Orchard) and participated in the fall festival. We climbed aboard the first hayride we found and took a 10 minute jaunt through all the orchards to arrive directly across the street from where we started. Here we picked our way through a pumpkin patch to find the perfect pumpkins. Now according to Sweetpea we needed a small, medium, and large pumpkin. Sweetpea snagged the first small pumkin she spotted and only with some gentle prodding traded it in for a pumpkin I liked. DH walked around for 15 minutes trying to find the perfect large pumpkin with no luck. I wanted a tall oval shaped pumpkin and finally found one right before we were to catch our ride back across the street.

Once we all piled off the hayride we enjoyed some cool apple cider and water. DH then selected a VERY large pumpkin from the already picked pile and we carried our haul all the way to the cars.

Unfortuately due to a previous commitment (see Mom's fix-it service) we were unable to carve them Saturday night. First thing Sunday morning Sweetpea begged me to carve hers. We spent at least an hour on Saturday evening discussing how she wanted it carved. She finally settled on a classic face pattern. As I was about to begin, I asked one More time - is this what you want? She of course changed her mind - again - and decided on the spider. Here is the result..

Sunday night I had time to work on my own. I chose a classic Disney villan, Malecifent from Sleeping Beauty.





Chris finally carved his pumpkin and he choose a classic evil face...

So those are our pumpkins for the year. We have them proudly displayed on our front sidewalk. I coated them in bleach first to prevent mold and then vaseline so they don't dry out. I hope they last until Halloween. Otherwise I'll just have to carve more..darn..wouldn't that be fun!