1. Wednesday night Ben and I decided to finally carve our pumpkins. This is the Jack-O-Lantern that I carved. I used a pattern that came with my pumpkin carving tools. I honestly feel like it looks more like a mad bear than a werewolf.

2. This is the Jack-O-Lantern that Ben carved. I think he did a pretty good job.

3. This little painting of Olive was done by my friend Dawn for my birthday. It is going to look so cute next to the one she did of June and Zoe that is hanging in my kitchen. Oh and if you are interested, she sells these on Etsy. Check them out here.

4. Isn’t Ben a doll? I took this funny photo of him at our friend Isa’s wedding this past weekend.

5. It’s a good thing I was already in the Halloween mood because last night I found Olive playing with this scary giant spider. She was putting it in her mouth and flipping it up or maybe it was jumping. Either way it was really scary! I told Olive to drop it, but she doesn’t mind me at all so I had to throw a copy of Better Homes & Gardens at her and the spider. She did manage to eat one of it’s legs before I got the bowl to put over it. I left it under the bowl for Ben when he got home from work. The whole situation was scary and I got quite a few scratches from Olive while trying to get her away from the spider. I was so worried she would knock over the bowl and the whole situation would start over.

So my friend Anna and I decided that it is probably a huntsman spider, which is cool because it eats cockroaches but not cool because they also eat geckos.

My White Pumpkin

This is how I did it, well this is how John, Nikki and I did it:

1. I placed the pumpkin on an old towel and found a pencil and a permanent marker to draw his face.  I was told this is not the first step and that I should cut the stem first but I didn’t want to do it that way.
2. Next, I drew the face on my white pumpkin with the permanent marker because I thought it would be easy and didn’t need the pencil.  I failed.  So with Nikki laughing at me, I turned the pumpkin around and started over.
3. I began cutting around the stem with the largest knife I could find, because it made sense to me that I needed the largest knife in my kitchen.  Under the advice of my friends I (a.) started using a smaller serrated knife and (b.) faced the blade away from my face. (Side note: White pumpkins smell like cantaloupes when you cut them.)
   

   Use a serrated knife to carefully cut around the pumpkin stalk.

4. Next I began to pull on the stalk.  Nothing happened even though I thought I was pulling really hard.  Nikki took the knife away from me and ran the knife around the stalk to make sure it was cut all the way through.
5. Nikki was right.
   

   The orange triangles are from the first face i tried to draw.

6. Next, I used a spoon and pulled out all of the pulp and seeds.  The seeds I set aside because we plan on toasting them tonight.  The pulp went to the compost bin.  Our worms got a Halloween treat too.
   

   Now he needs a face.

7. I finally cut his face.  This took way longer than it should have until John told me that Turby had mentioned that a pairing knife would work better.  He didn’t tell me himself because he had already offered some advice to which i replied “I don’t want to do it that way.”  Sometimes I make things harder than they are supposed to be.
   

   My Jack-O-Lantern is smiling or maybe yelling.

8. After his face was cut, I added a soy candle which was leftover from my recent wedding.  The soy candle I used is supposed to burn for 12 hours, which cuts down on the amount of candles I will use to amuse the trick-or-treaters and the amount of chemicals the candle will release while burning.
   

   I added a soy candle which can burn up to 12 hours.