Jack-o-lanterns

We put up our big Christmas tree yesterday (and a small Christmas tree on Sunday evening), so I thought it was only fair that I post about carving pumpkins on the afternoon of Halloween. Because we did that.

Andrew got three big pumpkins for the kids to carve. We paired up and made plans together: Rachel and Miriam, Benjamin and Zoë, and Alexander and me. Andrew focused on taking care of the seeds while Phoebe busied herself by getting into everyone's business. 

She had a grand ol' time!

Zoë really enjoyed scooping out the guts this year.

Miriam and Rachel worked together to make a Pottsfield pumpkin (from Over the Garden Wall).

 

Here's Phoebe helping me take some pumpkin bits out to the composter (we miss this balmy fall weather):

I was rather proud of how Zoë and Benjamin managed to merge their ideas into a single design and then—because Benjamin insisted on keeping the Star Trek badge—they even came up with a punny name for their pumpkin. Jean Luc Pumpkard!

Here's Phoebe drawing on their pumpkin's face with a highlighter she found:

Alexander carefully drew his face on his pumpkin (and then I helped him expand his shapes a little so we'd be able to cut them out).

Clearly my pictures uploaded all out of order (it's so frustrating when that happens)...and it's now the end of November so I'm not fully invested in sorting them all into order right now. So here are some more pictures of the kids scooping guts out:

See how messy their hands got!

Here are a few more scooping pictures:

Here's Phoebe attempting to make a tower out of pumpkin cutouts:

And here are the youngest three with the pumpkins when we went to put out the candles before going to bed. The candles are electric...so really we were switching them off...but whatever. We meant to take a picture of all the kids with their costumes and their pumpkins before they headed out trick-or-treating...but there always just seems to be such a crunch on Halloween afternoon. I suppose we could carve the pumpkins earlier, but then they risk going moldy and often we try to cook them down to use in soups and things (though we didn't this year). 

Anyway, here are our little jack-o-lanterns from this year:

We have the Pottsfield pumpkin:

Jean Luc Pumpkard:

And Scar Face: