We had two very small pumpkins, and the solid flesh inside isn’t all that much more than an inch thick, so I said the heck with it and left it there. This has a lot to do with the fact that I had to keep an eye on totnak (who’s one and a half) while carving, so anything I could do to speed things up was a Good Thing.
Though we haven’t put the candles in yet, flodjunior (7) has already declared our finished jack-o-lanterns “the spookiest thing I’ve ever seen”. He was also very excited about his racecar driver costume, which I haven’t even finished yet technically - “Everybody’s going to think I’m a real Formula 1 driver!!!” - so this should be a memorable Halloween for the little guy.
Fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain this evening…!
Me again! The jack-o-lanterns were a hit. Since they were quite small, we put little tealights in the bottom. It was extremely windy last night so I put them in the kitchen windows - didn’t want to have a lit candle outside, no matter how small, especially with kids in flowing costumes walking around… Anyway, the kitchen windows are the only ones on the first floor that face the street. We turned off the kitchen lights and the jacks shone eerily. Kewl.
I also tried tying orange balloons to some bushes in front of our house. Too windy. A length of string and a bunch of orange plastic was found in our rose bush about fifteen minutes later
Then flodjunior put on his costume and I went with him. There were tons of kids, all elementary-school age, most of them with friends and no grown-ups. All in all it was like a much more innocent version of Halloween from another time for me. People handing out unwrapped candies and fruits and no one thought anything of it. They were handing out double-handfuls… flodjunior hit the jackpot even though I don’t think we rang fifteen doorbells. He had a terrific time, too, although next year he wants to go with school buddies and not boring old mom!
Now I’ve moved the jacks down to a cold place in the basement. We’re going to a Halloween party on Saturday with some of his cousins. They will come to our house first, so if the pumpkins are still healthy we’ll light them up for them. Bwahahahahah:D
My heart is warmed at long-distance to know that somebody, somewhere, had an old-fashioned kind of innocent Halloween. My sincerest congratulations on your kids’ having witnessed what may have been one of the last of the real old-time trick-or-treats. Like seeing the last triceratops go lumbering through the county forest preserve…
Here in Illinois, paranoia reigned, if not supreme, then at least as a sort of Junior Executive. NOBODY was out trick-or-treating, and many of the mothers who did allow their kids to go were throwing away the candy they brought home and substituting factory-wrapped store-bought candy. How very, very strange…
