Halloween & Pumpkin 2009

I promised the kids I would make a blog post about the pumpkin they worked hard on for Halloween this year. Last year I seem to remember pumpkins were in short supply, but this year there were positively oodles of them. We got ours in Sainsbury's - here he is:

And from the top:

Georgie cat decided she wanted to 'help':

And when I told her she couldn't, I was rewarded with her 'yeah, yeah ... whatever' expression:

The kids drew up a vague 'design' of what they wanted to do ... drew it on the pumpkin and I did the sharp knife bit. Once the 'lid' was off, it was time to scoop out the innards.

Which are pretty spiders-web-ish themselves, aren't they?

They painted the lid with a reddy-orange paint (actually it was face paint as we haven't got any poster paint at the moment), and then added gold stars and glitter:

This is how he looked when they'd finished:

We put a night light inside him and sat him outside the front door:

We had a bowl of goodies ready for any visiting trick or treaters:

No.1 went to a Halloween Party at a friend's house (dressed as a devil)on 30th October, and had a great time apple bobbing, bouncing on a trampoline and generally being sociable. On the 31st she went out (dressed as a witch this time) trick or treating with friends (I tell them they are only allowed to knock on doors outside which there are pumpkins, or other decorations. I know lots of people don't want to be involved in this American custom and I think it's only fair they are left in peace). At one house she and her friends were offered 'chocolate truffles'. It was only on biting into the treats that they discovered the treats were, in fact, chocolated coated raw brussels sprouts. :-D At another house, they were greeted by a man who said 'what's the trick?' When they replied that they didn't actually have any, he said 'Oh, I'll have that then" and promptly shut the door in their faces. His wife very quickly opened it again and gave out the goodies, but I must admit it made me chuckle.

No.2 had his friend over for a sleepover, and got dressed up too. Here he is:

A proper little monster. ;-)

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