Pumpkin isn't my medium...

Tonight for dinner I served the following;
-chicken breast stuffed with broccoli and cheese (the frozen kind)
-cheddar and broccoli flavoured rice Sidekick
-steamed broccoli

Overkill?

I love Halloween. It's always been my favourite holiday. As a matter of fact, I think it should be a day-off kind of holiday. And I think it should be closer to the Samhain (pronounced, if memory serves, sow'en...something like that) the ancient pagan cultures used to celebrate. I like the whole idea of it. End of harvest, end of fall, beginning of winter, the thinning of the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It just seems more intuitive to me. But of course, everything about our present culture is a bastardized version of great cultures of the past. But I suppose that's a rant for another time. Lemme try again...

I love Halloween. I love getting dressed up, though I haven't done it in ages. I love decorating, although I haven't done that in ages either. I didn't do it this year cuz I can't remember where the box with the decorations is. Just you wait till next year though. And I love getting all the candy together. I would still trick or treat, but I doubt that would go over well. Yet another case for having children. Trick or treating and library story times. The list keeps growing.



We're new to the neighbourhood and this is our first Halloween here. We're not exactly out in the country, but we're not exactly in the town proper. We're on the main road, but it's not a walkable area. No sidewalks and it's rather dark. There are two little girls that live two houses down and a boy and a girl that live in the house across the street, but other than that, not too many kids in the immediate area, despite the fact that I see some walking by the house after school. So I have no idea what to expect in terms of turn out.



All of this is coupled with the fact that we're not living in the main house but rather the small apartment on the side, so I'm wondering if people will even notice that there is a separate dwelling. I may post some signage to direct whatever people may show up to our door.



I made sure that I had enough candy regardless. Forty-eight little cello baggies (correction, 47 after the constable came home for lunch and pilfered one to take back to work with him) containing a bag of chips and three fun sized chocolate bars. Aparently a one by one inch square, approximately, is the actual size of fun.
I had planned on cleaning this afternoon, but this seemed much more pressing.



After dinner I got the coffee table all set up for my other favourite Halloween activity, the carving of the pumpkins. Now in years past, I've really gotten into it. I've done stencils and I even had my own kit of wood carving tools that I used to scrape the surface of the pumpkin to create little glowing gourds.



I even had some good pumpkin carving viewing on the telly.



When the constable came home from hockey, he joined in the fun.

Now, I don't know what happened. I had some templates to choose from for carving, but I'd done them before so I though I'd maybe free style a bit this year. I sketched out a few designs, a scary face, another scary face and then I suddenly wanted to do something knitting related. Nothing overly complicated, just something suggessting my favourite hobby.

I sketched a sheep, a ball of yarn, a skull with cross needles...nothing appealed. Then it hit me. Some argyle diamonds. That would be simple enough and might create a neat lanterning effect, especially if I did it all around. So that's the route that I went...



...and it was an abysmal failure. So bad in fact that I refuse to show you the resulting gourd in full light. I cut the diamonds too big and some of them just caved in, making just a sad sorry mess of my Halloween pumpkin. I can't tell you how this disappoints me. I've lost my carving mojo.



The constable however, he used a template and did a fantastic job. We'll be using his creation to light the doorstep. We'll be using mine to decorate the inside of the compost bucket.

Have a great Halloween everyone.