Happy Halloween! It's Pumpkin Time!

Happy Halloween everyone! This year my mom and I carved pumpkins again and added them to the community display. It's a fun, wholesome activity and something I look forward to every year. You might remember this massive jack-o-lantern inflatable that stands next to all the real jack-o-lanterns. This picture is the background on both my computer and phone right now. 

And speaking of massive inflatables, check out the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man that was standing on the other side of the park! I don't even know how tall he stood, but I was looking way up when I took this photo. 

One of those super tall skeletons was there and he was having some ice cream. The sponsor of this event is a gift shop that sells ice cream. 

It's really nice of this store to sponsor the event and provide free pumpkins to carve. You pick your pumpkin out from under the gazebo here:

As you can see, we had a lot of options!

Once you choose your pumpkin, you go into this tent to carve it. This year, they provided some updated tools and scoops. I'd never used knives and scoops of that quality to carve a pumpkin, and boy did it make a difference! It took so much less effort this year.

Here are our pumpkins! Mom's is the ghost on the left, and mine is the one with the toothy grin.

I'm happy with how my jack-o-lantern turned out! It looks friendly. I tell ya, I could never have carved those teeth with last year's dull knives.

An inside shot from behind:

We cut a hole in the back of our pumpkins so the people running this can light them up. There's a long string of lights and they tack a bulb into the back of each pumpkin.

Booo!

The guts:

I believe we carved on the third day of this event, and there were already a lot of carved pumpkins out.

The gateway:

Here are a few of my favorite daytime shots of the pumpkins. Check out this little chomper! Those stringy pieces of umm... drool add something.

Another pumpkin packing some serious teeth:

Muahahaha!

This one is creative: A stem for a nose.

And how about this? Ghostface got it in the mouth! You know, someone must have stabbed that knife with some serious force to get it in there like that.  

This one in front looks like it is telling a joke to the laughing Jack next to it.

A little green one snuck in there.

I think a few people brought their own accessories this year. This one has a party horn for a nose.

I'm trying to figure out the one on the right. Yoda? Dobby? No, it has horns. I don't know.

The carver must have used part of what they removed from the back of the pumpkin to make that tongue. 

Now for the night view! Doesn't the giant pumpkin look great at night?

This picture will give you an idea of just how large that inflatable is. I don't know if I ever measured it up against the gazebo before, but wow. 

These pics were taken after the last night of carving. It seems like they didn't have enough lights to light up the last few rows of pumpkins that were added.

Look how few pumpkins were left to carve!

Here we are! All lit up and glowing away. 

We've had some fairly cool weather, so our pumpkins held up well. That and I really scraped mine clean. I have this theory that with no guts inside, mine had no moisture to get rotty.

The inside view with light bulb: 

Mom's pumpkin guts look almost like spider webs. 

Here's the back view with the string of lights behind each pumpkin.

Mr. Oogie Boogie...

I don't think I've seen a bow pumpkin before.

It definitely would help to have those new, sharper knives when trying a design like this! Cool flower pumpkin back there. It reminds me of a window. 

And lastly, the cool pumpkin in shades:

I enjoyed people's carving creativity this year and that some little additions were brought from home. 

I hope you all are having a fun Halloween, whatever you're up to! 🎃

Happy Halloween! Let's celebrate with a pumpkin party!

Happy Halloween everyone! I am going to share some photos from the carved pumpkin display in our village. There were quite a few pumpkins on display, which was a surprise to me. People were invited to carve pumpkins over the last few rainy nights. So I didn't know how many people would participate. The huge display wasn't the only surprise this year. This huge inflatable pumpkin was new.

Isn't this great? I was just reminded of a video I saw online years back: 

Watch giant inflatable pumpkin roll down the street

These next pics will give you an idea of how many pumpkins were in front of the gazebo.

In this next pic the gazebo looks like a giant spaceship ready to lift off the ground. You can see a bit of the Polka band in there. The band really added to the jolly atmosphere. 

Here are a few close-ups of my favorites. You can't see it much here, but someone carved ears and earrings into the side of this one.

Mr. Oogie Boogie:

See the tiny stick body under that smiley face? 😄

The lights in this pic came out kind of red for some reason. I like that neon glow.

How great is this? You can tell that someone scraped off layers of pumpkin instead of straight up carving it. I bet this one took some time.

The poop emoji I assume... Or maybe we can call this a ghost. 

This sinister little creeper reminds me of something. Does this remind you of a character from a movie? I'm trying to place this face.

I love taking pics from the tops of pumpkins! These pumpkins were lit with large old fashioned string lights, so there was a lot of glow going on.

And here's an inside look. You can get a good view of the guts and one of those light bulbs. These are always fun pics to take, but sometimes it's hard to find enough space to view inside the pumpkin. There was a fairly large square cut into the back of this one.

And here's a final shot taken on the way out of the park. I really liked the way the cornstalk frames this one. It's like the pumpkin is peeking around it. 

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this virtual trip to jack-o-lantern land. I always enjoy taking and sharing photos from events like this. It's fun to see the creativity on display. 🎃

Boo! 🦇