Boo!

Finally, I have a photo of our pumpkin lit up. Unfortunately, there's no picture of Joe's pumpkin....thanks to some mean kids.

We woke up Halloween morning to find Joe's pumpkin smashed in the street and mine impaled on the neighbors old newspaper box post. Luckily, mine was broken into two pieces and could be re-assembled (notice the crack in the photo), but there was no salvaging Joe's. I was rather upset and still can't believe someone would do that; before Halloween even! What if that was some poor little kid's pumpkin and it was smashed the night after he made it? I just don't get how someone could do that.

Oh well. Here's my pumpkin at least!

I Once Had A Pumpkin Farm...

Not really...but last night Joe and I carved our pumpkins! Joe was done rather quickly, while I followed my typical behavior and took way longer than necessary. I just can't help myself! I love to carve pumpkins! And this year I didn't get two to carve, so I had to be extra thoughtful with my one. I even pulled out some sculpting tools to use since we couldn't find our pumpkin carving knives. I think they both turned out great! I'll have to take some pictures when we light them with candles on Saturday.

Smashed and Mashed

The cider is officially fermenting.

We chopped, smashed, squeezed, juiced and canned. And now the hard earned juice from few pounds of apples are fermenting with yeast and sugar. I'm still not sold on the idea, but I suppose I have at least a month or two of fermentation time to get comfortable with the idea.

In other news, we got pumpkins on Sunday! Unfortunately we didn't get to go to a pumpkin patch (the rain really ruined this year's crop, so the "you pick" places were pretty much empty), but we got them from a really great market just off the island. We've driven past so many times and never stopped before, but I'm certainly glad we did this time. Not only did we get some really good pumpkins, but we went through their haunted house (not bad for a small scale operation), got some excellent cider, and chatted with the adorable man who runs the market. You could tell he was doing exactly what he wanted with his life, his joy was infectious! (the excellent weather didn't hurt either) Plus he made excellent mulled cider!

Anyway...I'm hoping to carve our pumpkins tonight since Halloween is fast approaching. Not sure what I'm going to do yet...should be interesting!

Hello Again!

Happy Halloween! --a day late, but I still mean it! I'm back from my trip, and obviously I wasn't able to keep up with my blogging. I just started going through all of my pictures and hopefully I'll be able to put some up tomorrow to share.