Well, here is the picture of the carved pumpking I've been promising,
which did not turn out so great ~


The design really should have been carved into the surface & not all the way through. It is hard to see the design when unlit, and when lit, all you see is the candle through the gaping holes. Surface carving would have also helped with the delicate pieces, espeically after I had to shrink down the design to fit (6" square).

It took *forever* to transfer the image to the pumpkin, his sisters had already finished carving before I had the chance to start. And when I finally started on the first letter (the "a" in Halloween), I wasn't being careful enough & broke off the middle chunk of the letter. After spending all that time, Justin talked me into finishing it, with promises that we could fix it later. I didn't really believe him, but went ahead carved the rest of it, with added care.

Oh, and after all of that, the squirrels realized it was easy to break off sections as well, and ran off with the whole bottom left corner within a few hours! I was not upset about all of this though, I plan on playing around with the design again next year, but maybe not on pumpkins.


Here are his sisters' pumpkins, the first is a noble opera singer, the 2nd is done in the style of Saxton Freymann & Joost Elffers ~




While I was outside finishing up the carving, Justin's mom pulled out some Halloween cooking ideas and they made Witch's hats from overturned Fudge Stripe cookies, topped with a Bugle covered in chocolate (the term "sorting hats" was also tossed around) ~


And then they tackled "Sand Witches". I missed most of the construction (they ditched the book's directions for being too complicated), but I'm pretty sure it is a diamond of dough (wrapped around a cheese slice) with a strip of dough across to form the brim of the hat. Chow mein hair, olives for eyes, bugle noses, sprinkled with parmesan cheese for 'sand' ~


And a lone sand-less witch ~


I came in last minute & threw together a quick cat shape, which grew quite fat during cooking ~


I also did a little decorating while we were there with some black curling ribbon to create spiderwebs & spiders. The dancing skeletons were printed out from here, with brads in the joints for posing ~


If anyone is looking for some other last-minute printed decorations, the blogging ladies have been generous this year. Here are some cute cats & pumpkins that can be used for sucker covers or garland. And also some "Halloween" garland.