Halloween 2011

Last night we handed out candy with monkey. We didn't bother taking her around considering she is only 7.5 months old and has no need for candy. Although we were considering it just to introduce ourselves to the neighbors except it was really FREAKING cold out. So we opted out this year. We did dress her in her monkey costume though and she had fun looking at all the little kids who came to the door. We had about 36 kids. There really wasn't to many duplicate costumes which was great to see and I am shocked that each and every kid that came to the door said thank you! I don't know why I expected them not to but it was a nice surprise. This is our first Halloween in the house so we haven't really handed out candy before. The apartment we used to live in handed out candy but they did it themselves. We also didn't really get to many older kids and no teenagers/high schoolers so that was also good. It was a good night although we found out that our house layout is awkward to hand out candy from. We can't sit in our great room and watch tv until we get a knock on the door because then we have to run to the front of the house and then down our stairs. So we sort of hovered in our hallway at the top (it's an elevated house so we have a short set of stairs to the main floor and the basement with a small landing as you come into the house).

Monkey's bedtime is usually around 6:30pm but because of the knocking and door bell ringing and because her room is at the front she stayed up until around 7:30pm when she passed out with a bottle. She was entertained by all the kids though so it wasn't like she was too grumpy. By the time she passed out though we hadn't had anyone come for 10 mins so that was the end of our night. Next year I want to decorate the house a bit more then just three pumpkins on the stoop. We did turn our outside lights on as well so that the kids would know that we were handing out candy. That is what most of the people down the street did as well.

Love the attitude!

A monkey in a monkey suit with a....monkey!

Pumpkin Carving!

Yesterday we finally carved our pumpkins! We had bought three, one for each of us a week or so ago at the grocery store for 99cents each! Not to shabby! We were going to go to the pumpkin farm but it has been way to cold and I really didn't want to take monkey out in it for to long. Plus I think she will get more out of the experience next year when she is older.

Monkey is still to young to help out this year with the carving but she still had fun watching us work. It took a lot longer then I thought it would. Scooping the guts and getting all of them out was harder then I remember. We had a decent amount of pumpkin seeds after all three were emptied though which was nice. It took a loooong time to separate the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin guts and we finally ended up boiling them in salt water once we got most of the pumpkin off. Then into the oven to be baked! Once that was done it was back to the pumpkins to carve. 

Chris cutting the tops off.

Scooping out the guts.

Monkey watching from her high chair.

Chris's evil face while scooping out his pumpkin. I don't know how his hand fit in there! lol!

Lots of seeds!

Trying to get them to separate.

The finished product.

I picked the cat pattern to carve and it wasn't really that fun to try and get it to stay on. The instructions said to use tape. Yeah like that was going to work! I finally had to use push pins in the parts that were going to be carved out and that worked like a charm! I didn't press hard enough with the tool to indent into the pumpkin though so when I took the pattern off it was a pain to use the drill tool to make the holes bigger. Next year I am just going to use the drill tool right on the pattern to make the holes. It would have been so much easier! 

My solution to an annoying problem.

Chris working on his.

The finished pumpkins.

Carving took a long freaking time! I'm glad that we got tools with the patterns though because I couldn't see me carving anything other then a circle and squares if I had to use one of our kitchen knifes. Mine turned out beautiful though! Chris used the ghost pattern which was also neat! The third one I just did something simple because by this time it was already like 8 o'clock or maybe even later and we started at 3pm!! It was fun to carve them though. I really don't remember the last time I carved a pumpkin, let alone baked the seeds. They were sooo good and we ate tons. We had to bake them in two batches. I found out later though that there are a lot of calories in pumpkins seeds so I made Chris bring what was left to work with him so I wouldn't eat anymore! I ate so many of the darned things! It was a good pumpkin carving experience and we were sure to take lots of photos.