Getting into the Halloween Spirit

A few days ago, Mark suggested that we have a little get together at his house and carve some pumpkins! We sent out the invites to a few close friends (about 13 people) and had everyone over on Tuesday night to eat some sweets, drink some brews and carve up pumpkins!

I had to race home from work and head over to the "pumpkin patch", which is really just a little stand that gets set up in a gas station parking lot a few blocks from Mark's house, to get all the pumpkins in time! Man, they are really expensive up here in Northern Virginia. Sometimes I really miss country prices. I also picked up a few carving kits and luckily, Trevor brought over a super duper carving kit complete with a book of templates that really came in handy for some of the less creative of the group (myself included!).

For me though, the party prep really started the day before! I decided to make a pumpkin cake, Halloween themed sugar cookies (ghosts, black cats, pumpkins, witches) and also made some of my new favorite thing to make - banana chocolate chip bread! The pumpkin cake took the most pre-party prep. I had to bake two cakes in Pyrex glass bowls (to get the rounded shape of the cake) in addition to dying icing orange and baking the cookie that I used as the stem for the pumpkin! I also baked the bread that night so that it would be really chilled and ready to cut into cubes for the party. I left all the frosting and decorating of the sugar cookies and the pumpkin for the day of the party so I was scrambling to get everything ready. My friends came through for me though and all showed up late, leaving me just enough time to open a beer and sit down for a few minutes!

It was good fun - I love everything about pumpkin carving - scooping out the seeds, the smell of them when they are freshly cut and of course, watching the finished product glow outside on the front steps!

Trevor's pumpkin was definitely the most creative and artistic. He carved a very detailed "Robot Nixon" freehand into his pumpkin. My friend Meredith won the award for most classic - her pumpkin is pictured at the top of this post. Mark's was one of the funniest ones... he carved a big evil pumpkin biting a piece out of a little pumpkin's head. I used a template for mine - the "Candle Boo" - a ghost holding a candelabra. Alec tried to carve a little kitten using a template out of his pumpkin... it ended up looking a little like Scrappy! Others carvings were a vampire drinking beer, a pumpkin of flowers and leaves and (the only one I didn't get a picture of) a busty mermaid done by Mark's roommate, Phil.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!