Yesterday I had planned to carve pumpkins for Halloween with my husband and our friend Will (yes, this is the Will of "SMORES" fame.) My husband had never carved a jack-o-lantern in his life ... can you believe that tragic shit? In his defense they do not celebrate Halloween in his mother-land but still. Luckily we had just watched the Food Network Challenge - Pumpkin Carving so he was all set. Our first order of business was where to buy the pumpkins. Will wanted to punk out and buy them from the grocery store but I wasn't going to stand for that. Even though it was a bit drizzly and gray outside I got the boys to go to the family farm down the street. Unfortunately, when we pulled into the drive-way and made our way down the long gravely road we ended up in front of a sad little sign made with an old piece of cardboard and a sharpie that read:
"Sorry, We Got Old. We're Out of Business"
Gotta love the honesty. So we pulled a u-turn and decided to go to another family-run farm a little further away. Once we got there the boys got pretty into it; we took about 20 or 30 minutes picking out our pumpkins and then hauling them back to the car. At this point my husband decided we needed a meal break (even though we were only 10 minutes from our house and had only been out for less than an hour.) So we took a detour and hit the IHOP before going home. I must admit it was a good idea though, the pumpkin pancakes were delish. Once back to the house it was several hours of slimey-bliss. Both boys ended up with cuts that probably should have ended them up in the ER for a few stitches but we were way to focused on the pumpkins so they decided to just walk-it-off. Will spent about 4 minutes actually "carving" his pumpkin and the next three hours staring at it. Edo and I had slightly more intricate designs that took quite a bit longer, especially considering we didn't have any of the proper utensils. Will didn't even have a vegetable peeler! Who lives without a vegetable peeler?? So Edo spent an hour scrapping the top half of his pumpkin with a big old cheese grater and I spent the majority of my time scrapping mine with a dinner spoon! Let me tell you, I was working up a serious sweat too; you can't even imagine how much elbow grease it takes to scrape the skin off a pumpkin with a freaking table spoon. In the end I think they all turned out great. I'll get more pictures on Halloween with them actually lit but for now here they are in all their glory.
