Halloween 2010

It is that time of year again..... Candy time or as it is "officially" known as Halloween. Jen has had a bit of a cold this weekend so while she was sleeping in the kids and I (ok mostly I) worked on this year's pumpkins.
We had two pumpkins to crave, one which was to be Isla's would be a more traditional Jack'o'lantern style pumpkin, and one which was to be Keir's was a Start Wars themed pumpkin. If you remember last year's and of course I am sure you do ;-).... Star Wars Pumpkin's are a recurring theme in our house. Keir chose to do Captain Rex from Clone Wars (a cartoon Star Wars series).
So  we started with a pencil drawing on a piece of paper (actually I traced it of the computer monitor!) then you pin that to the pumpkin and proceed to use a pin to "trace" the line by marking little holes every so often on the lines.

the you basically connect the dots with a marker on the pumpkin:

Then it is just patience and carving!
Here is Keir's pumpkin finished

And here are the rest of the pumpkins lit up (yes that is snow on the ground!!!)

The one good thing about carving pumpkins is the seeds, you can roast them  and they are delicious. You go from this (pumpkin goo as Isla called it):

to this:

you soak them in salted water and then roast them in the oven with more salt, and they come out as salty delicious goodness!
I mentioned already that it snow overnight last night, so we woke up to a blanket of snow on halloween, I really don't remember that last time we had snow on the ground for halloween. So in the afternoon we made a snowman to go with our pumpkin.

On to the costumes and trick or treating:
this year Isla was a Zebra:

and Keir went as Tintin, who is Tintin you ask? I grew up reading the Comic book and Keir found one of them while we were visiting my parents one time and has become a big fan as well. For those of you who don't know Tintin look like this:

and here is what Keir looked like complete with Snowy the dog:

Here is a close up of the hair:


Isla was very reluctant to actually go out trick or treating but eventually we got her out. She has been going through some "i am scared" moments recently. But after the first house, the little light went off in her head that people would give her candy if she said the magic words:"Trick or Treat". Well there was no stopping her. We ended up doing all the houses on our street but they still got a ton of candy:

We managed to get them to bed with minimal suger disruptions. All in all a good night!
I will leave you with the pumpkins and snowman in the same photo, not something you see everyday

That is all for now
Take care
Ewan