Happy Halloween! Evolution of a Jack-o-lantern...

Happy Halloween everyone - here is the evolution of our jack-o-lantern! First I went and found the Great Pumpkin! it was 22 lbs and a wonderful thing to behold - last year we had a "volunteer" pumpkin vine sprout spontaneously in the garden. However, this year we did not have such luck, so I had to go acquire our jack-o-lantern-to-be more mundanely. Here it is....

So, I took it home and began the process of turning a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern. First, I was quite fortunate in finding our little stash of Pumpkin Carving Tools ( http://www.pumpkingcarvingtools.com/ ) which I have hung onto for years and carved quite a few generations of jack-o-lanterns. They do tend to find their way to odd corners of little used drawers, so finding them at Halloween always makes things interesting...

And the process continued for awhile - I was sort of carving with one hand and taking pictures with the other - non-sticky - hand, but after the next shot, I finally had to cease picture taking and get both hands into the situation...

When I finally had the shell of the pumpkin nicely hollowed out and smoothed, I then began comptemplating just WHAT to carve into it. This image popped into my head of a scruffy black Halloween cat in front of a full moon, so that is what I finally went with...this is where those pumpkin carving tools come in handy! They are beautifully designed to to this specific task, and they truly simplify the process!

And this was the end result of my jack-o-lantern design for this year's Halloween;

So may my little Halloween cat here bless you on your way...and hope everyone had a Happy Samhain! Oh, and of course, we will be fixing toasted pumpkin seeds...but I am holding back a handful of the seeds...

Next years Jack-o-lantern will come from our garden!