Happy Halloween

Last year we visited a local pumpkin patch to purchase the perfect pumpkin for carving. We promptly brought the pumpkin home and used our handy dandy pumpkin carving kit, complete with carving patterns to make an amazingly awesome pumpkin. This was around October 10th or so. By October 31st our pumpkin had become...a Petri dish.



Petri dish noun

1. a shallow glass dish with a loose-fitting lid, used to culture bacteria.



So it wasn't a glass dish, but a pumpkin, and certainly had a loose-fitting pumpkin lid and DEFINITELY cultured some bacteria. The pumpkin was more frightening than we'd anticipated and was disposed of before nightfall.



This year, we took a different approach. The pumpkin wasn't even purchased until October 30th and carved this morning, October 31st. Lauren and I selected the perfect pumpkin for carving and Chad and Lauren searched the internet for suitable patterns to use. In the end, after much deliberation, a pattern was selected, "The Spooky Goblin."



While searching for patterns online, Chad read some helpful hints about pumpkin carving. Tips on how to preserve your pumpkin...you know, tips for preventing the Petri Dish effect or at least slowing that process down, that involved washing the pumpkin and spraying it with Lysol.



Chad did the initial cutting and scraping of the inside of the pumpkin and put Lauren to work cleaning out all the seeds and "guts." She was a very willing and helpful participant! We were entertained the whole time because she kept saying, "This is DIS-GUSTING. This is REALLY DIS-GUSTING..." but loved every bit of the process.

Lauren supervised the tracing of the pattern onto the pumpkin. This supervision included Lauren scolding Chad for breaking pencil after pencil because he was pushing too hard.

The completed "Spooky Goblin." He looks more like a Goofy Goblin to me, but awesome nonetheless!

Happy Halloween to all!