Early Halloween

I’ve said before I really love our holidays.  As a kid, my favorite definitely was Christmas and I think most kids would agree.  As a parent, however there are so many good ones and Halloween is one of the best.

I’ll likely post another post Halloween post later, but we’ve had some good Halloween “prep” of late so I thought I’d do an early piece.

Carol is one of those ever talented humans that  I am fortunate enough to get to hang out with  more than I deserve.  She again showed her talents by putting out home-made costumes in a  couple of nights after the girls decided they both want to be Spanish dancers.  Carol started this tradition when she made what I still think are the best costumes ever made many years ago in the form of a Cinderella and Snow White costumes.  I should note that my sister and father get strong seconds for the biplane costume (sister’s creation for daughter) and sandman costume (my dad created for me).  Carol’s costumes are beautiful, but the other great thing is that they are made of material that is seriously tough stuff (the kids basically lived in their early costumes for 3 years) which is a significant difference from the Fred Meyer versions.  Owen is going to be Wall-E (at least this week).  I thought about trying to pull off an amazing costume like biplane mentioned above, but I think I’ll punt and order one.

One nice thing about Halloween in Alaska is  that the freezing temperatures while tough for trick or treating is great for pumpkin preservation.  It has been a bit warm this year (30s) but usually it’s cold enough outside that we can carve the squash and leave them outside and they’ll keep for a good 3 weeks.  In that spirit and assuming temperatures will go lower, we did go to the store this weekend and get the pumpkins and carved them up.

The patterns have become more complex over the years, and this year Beth went for a fairly aggressive bunny theme.  At this point, daddy cleans the pumpkins and carves them after the kids draw the patterns on the front.

After cleaning and carving, I must thank whoever decided to create the $1 pumpkin carving kit.  Thank you…thank you…thank you.  It is SO much easier to carve a pumpkin with these simple tools.  I remember warping and bending numerous paring knives trying to get little cuts out and it almost feels like cheating to use these new things.  I think I actually saw a battery powered model this year.  Unbelieveable.

I’m sure I’ll post again after Halloween although sometimes it takes a while to get through the photos when the kids are bouncing off the walls for a couple of weeks from all the sugar.