Everyone did so well! I say this every year, but this family impresses me with how well we work on our pumpkins! Such a cool thing to me! Even in really cramped quarters like it's been these last couple years. I was on lid duty, anyone that didn't want to cut their own lid, I think Brad was the only one who did his own. Then we scooped, and most of them did their own scooping! Even Noah and Erika were on board for this part! I helped a little though. Then it was time to design it and this is where Nate really comes in to play (though Nate did a lot of the scooping this year as well). We had some little templates that Bradley, Luke and Erika benefitted from, they came with our little kit. Charity kind of sat there just enjoying watching everyone else, trying to decide what to do. She had a brilliant idea to put the word "HALLOWEEN" on hers! Way cute! And totally her. She reminded me of me being all indecisive about what design to do. You want to do the perfect thing, but it just never comes to ya. She got a little frustrated after a while and then changed her mood pretty quickly back to her cheerful self. I like it when she can do that. Nate helped her with the carving. Kelly did a very complex decoration on four sides of her pumpkin. She had a very ornate eye with a fancy eye brow, which she actually figured out on her own that she couldn't cut the whole thing out because it was circles within circles. I thought it was really smart of her to figure that out. We decided to do a "3D carving". That is what Kelly calls it after watching hours of Halloween Wars on the Food Network.... fun show btw. It's when you just dig out the outer layer of the pumpkin, not going all the way through to the inside of it. Sometimes you can make it glow if the layer is thin enough. She had a lot of help from Nate and I on the eye, but she designed it! On another side she had a bat that she did a great job carving herself. Then a cat, great drawing again, Nate did the 3D thing for her, and then a ghost on teh last side. I did the 3D part and she carved out the eyes which I ruined and turned into a connected-eyes look.... I hate it when I screw up on their stuff. Hers was very creative, I was very impressed! Brad's was a bat, as I said before, he did the whole thing by himself. I was so proud of him! He really wowed us all with his pumpkin and he seemed pretty proud of himself as well. Lukey picked out a 3 Ghost template, Nate did most of his, but he looked really cute watching him and he was very excited about it! I think he did do some of the scooping too. Noah's was a Noah Original! He drew his own pumpkin face (he calls it a Ghost) on his pumpkin with the marker and had me cut it out for him. There was some confusion during the process as to which holes were which facial features, but we got it all worked out! He did a really long smile :) I love his because he made it. I love it when they get to design their own. Gives me insight into their personalities that I love. And last but certainly not least, Erika! She picked out a "Kitty One" template, and stayed very close by as Nate did the poking through the paper and then as I was carving. She LOVES her pumpkin!! She even had a hard time (I say 'hard time' but I mean H A R D T I M E!!!) leaving it out on the porch. And I did a pretty good job on it if I do say so myself :)
Everyone always seems generally happy during this FHE. I always love how they all compliment each other and talk about how good everyone's doing. It's just sweet. We took an intermission to enjoy the yummy chicken pot pie Linsey gave us... mmmmmmmm!!!! And kept at it! Took us about 3 hours altogether! Glad we got a head start!
6 pumpkins (averaging around 20 lbs each) make a LOT of goop and, my favorite, LOTS and LOTS of SEEDS!!!! MMMMMMMMMMMM Took me a while, but we got them all cleaned, dried and baked! We'll be eating them for days, I imagine. HA! Good stuff.
I took these last ones the next night, after the Reflections night. When we got home from ice cream with Grandpa Hatch, the house just reaked of pumpkin, and even though I hadn't located our little candles yet, I needed to get them out of the house. And I have a tradition of taking pictures of our pumpkins with everyone afterward and hadn't done it the night before, so this was my chance :)
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