It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

I am a firm believer that there are some things in life that are not meant to be grown out of. These include Disneyland, Christmas stories and shoes. One of our family favorites is carving pumpkins for Halloween. Brian has embraced this tradition with a passion--being the architect he's always ready to do something meticulous and time consuming. Combine this love of pumpkin carving with my Aunt Brenda's ability to grow pumpkins the size of my car? Well, you can see what you get.


Now that pumpkin was from last year. I decided to name him Bruce, after the shark in Finding Nemo. They smile the same...and I think the pumpkin may have actually eaten a child or two.

This year the cosmos apparently had a shortage of pumpkins aspiring to size greatness, so B had to make do with a slightly more typical pumpkin. But don't worry, he still spent inordinate amounts of time and energy on it. And it looks great! Mine didn't even turn out too bad, despite my engineering brain trying to stifle every artistic element in my little being. So I had to have instructions...it still looks cute!

It's a castle!

Woo...Scary! This picture really doesn't do it justice.

One of my favorite things about watching Brian do something like this is seeing what kind of tools he ends up finding. When we colored eggs at Easter he actually had a little tiny vice grip-like device so that he could paint alllll the way around his egg without touching it (yet more evidence that my mom can find anything). This time he started with the poker to make the pattern, etched outlines with a carving knife, took large chunks out with my aunt's frighteningly sharp butcher knife and then painstakingly scraped away at the design using a grapefruit spoon. That's right, a grapefruit spoon. I didn't even know what a grapefruit spoon was. But my family is always ready to help B in his artistic antics. He does good work :)

We haven't actually lit them yet, so I'll have to post a picture of them then. I hadn't planned on taking them back to our apartment, but Brian and my mom would have none of it--so our door is now graced with two spectacular pumpkins. Hope we get some trick-or-treaters!