Celebrate the Small Things-October 31, 2014

It's Friday!  Let's Celebrate the Small Things with VikLit!

I am a co-host, and so are these other wonderful bloggers:

Diana Wilder
Katie @ TheCyborg Mom
CaffeMaggieato @ mscoffeehouse

Happy Halloween!  Let's do a happy dance to celebrate!

My celebrations this week all follow a Halloween theme.

This year, I carved a total of five pumpkins.  Five!  I carved little pumpkins for my boys. They had standard Jack-O-Lantern faces, and the kids seemed to love them!  Then I carved a pumpkin at my dad's house.  I did a regular face for that one too, except I also gave it vampire teeth.  I'm sad I don't have a picture of that one, because even though I didn't plan it out before I started (I just grabbed a knife and started cutting), it turned out amazingly symmetrical.  My dad even said he liked my pumpkin better than the one he did.  I can't tell you how amazing it is to hear that kind of praise.  I'm proud of myself!

The next pumpkin I did was a skeleton.  It didn't turn out as well as I hoped, but it was also a complex one and I don't have the best carving tools in the world.  I need to invest in better tools for next year.  Anyway, I do have a picture of that one.  It's not a great picture, but it does have a sinister feel to it.

The next pumpkin was supposed to be carved by my husband, but he didn't feel like doing it.  So, reluctant to let a perfectly good pumpkin remain uncarved, I decided to do a space-themed pumpkin.  The theme emerged when my husband suggested I carve a Saturn pumpkin, and I thought "Hey, I can do that!"

So, on this pumpkin, you'll see Saturn, a moon, and a rocket.  I also carved a small sun and assorted stars, but they don't show up well in photos.  If you were to see it in real life, you'd see them.  I promise.

Aside from celebrating pumpkins, I also want to celebrate making pirate costumes for my boys.  There was some sewing and creative re-purposing involved.  I'll share pictures of my boys wearing them next week.

What would you like to celebrate?

My Adventures in Pumpkin Carving

A quick note.  If you'd like to check out my post for the Game On Bloghop, click HERE!

So, I recall recently letting you all know that I intended to try my hand at a more complex pumpkin carving experience.  I did it, and three hours of hand crippling work later, I have my results.

I chose my pattern after stumbling across it HERE.  Yeah, I'm not a good enough artist to design one on my own, but the person who came up with this design is amazing.

Above you can see the beginnings of the pattern transfer, and the completion of it.  This part took forever.  Then afterwards, I actually had to carve.  That wasn't easy either, because there were so many delicate lines!  Sometimes I had no clue which part of the pattern I was working on, and this can be problematic.

Still, I persevered and managed to complete my gargantuan carving project.  It's not perfect.  I can certainly see errors in it, but I'm proud of the result nonetheless.

Even so, I'm not sure I'll be trying something this in depth again.  It's so time consuming!  Though a year down the road, I might change my mind.  We'll see.

Feel free to tell me what you think!