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A Carving First

November 1, 2010 TechyDad Fun, Holidays, Photos

This past weekend was definitely a weekend of firsts. We had a date night (more on that in a later post), trick or treating (again, another post) and even tasting of new foods (Nutella… yum… ‘nuff said). The biggest of these firsts, though, was our first pumpkin carving.

I posted previously of how we purchased a large (22 1/2 pound) pumpkin for under $5. Well, it sat patiently waiting on our porch until this past weekend. I had bought a pumpkin carving kit a few days prior and photocopied one of the design templates. Can you believe I’ve never carved a pumpkin before? I mean it. Never. As a kid, I don’t remember ever doing it at all. So I decided that we would start with a simple pattern. Just eyebrows, eyes and a mouth. I also looked up carving tips online but those pretty much repeated things I had figured out on my own (like cutting the top at an angle so it won’t fall in when you put it back on).

For the actual carving, we went to B’s parents’ house. Their table-over-a-floor is much more conducive to carving than our “table-over-a-rug-and-hard-wood-floors.” I envisioned pumpkin carving time as B, NHL, JSL and I gathered around the pumpkin taking each step together and eventually smiling together as our creation came to life. Yeah, please remind me that my life isn’t some Norman Rockwell painting. NHL decided that he wanted to play on the computer. JSL stayed for a few minutes before he got bored with how little he could do that didn’t involve touching “icky” pumpkin goop. Luckily, B stayed with me, if only to take the photos.

First, I laid out the victim… I mean pumpkin and my tools.

Next, I took a big knife and made my first incision. Can you tell I was enjoying myself?

Some slicing later and the pumpkin had a pop-top lid!

Then, I scooped out the guts. JSL tried to help with this, but in the end he just didn’t have the strength to scrape it out and didn’t want to get too dirty.

I had no such problems.

Then, I traced the pattern.

The little wheel tool that came in the kit I bought punched little holes into the pumpkin that I could follow. You could probably do the same with a toothpick. Of course, the kit came with a nifty little knife that I could use to carve out the features.

Soon, our Jack-o-Lantern came to life. Is it true what they say about Jack-o-Lanterns looking like the people who carve them?

Wait, or was that pets and owners? Oh well.

At various points, we would call NHL in. He would be impressed with the progress and then go back to playing online. When we called him in for the final result, he was definitely impressed. And then he went right back to the computer. Man, does he take after me… I mean, what’s wrong with the boy? Is he addicted to computers or something?

The seeds were separated from the general pumpkin goop. The former were saved for roasting while the latter was tossed.

Then came the test lighting. We had decided that we didn’t want to light a real candle in the pumpkin. Too much of a fire hazard for our tastes. So we had gone to the Christmas Tree Shop and bought a set of LED flameless-candles. These little guys (which somehow escaped being photographed!) look like normal, white, bowl-shaped candles. You flip a switch on the bottom and a “flame” (yes, it is flame shaped) light bulb inside flickers. We turned the lights down low, stuck the LED candle in and it worked! I tried taking some photos of it in action during Halloween night, but, obviously, the low light conditions made this difficult. This was my best of the batch.

Note that you can see the candle in the pumpkin’s mouth in this photo but mainly because the flash lit up the surrounding area so much. During real-life, night-time conditions, all you saw were glowing eyes, eyebrows and mouth on the pumpkin. Spooooky!

Now that I’ve had my first pumpkin-carving, I feel like doing more. It was quite enjoyable and I’d like to try to tackle some of the more intricate designs and set-ups that I’ve seen during my travels.

Hmmmm, I wonder if pumpkins will be on sale now?

Ghosts of (Safe) Halloweens Past

October 21, 2010 TechyDad Fun, Holidays, JSL, NHL

For someone who loves dressing up in costumes, candy and pretty much every other aspect of Halloween, I don’t have many memories of going trick or treating when I was younger. I remember being dressed up as a hobo with my mother putting makeup on me (to simulate a dirty face) and I remember coming home with plastic pumpkin buckets full of candy. After my mother sorted through them (removing anything obviously dangerous), my sister and I were allowed some moderate candy binging.

When I became a father, Halloween was something I looked forward to a lot. The first year, was a bit of a disappointment. Obviously, NHL wasn’t going to understand trick or treating, much less why Mom and Dad were putting him in this weird outfit and taking photos.

As NHL grew, though, he began to understand. At daycare, his class would put on a costume parade and I would be right there taking photos. One year, he dressed as a monkey so I constructed a big yellow hat to go along with it. It was quite ugly and my “costume” didn’t look anything like Curious George’s Man In The Yellow Hat, actually it looked more like a traffic cone, but I was happy to join in the fun.

I actually missed JSL’s second Halloween (the first one that he would actually understand Trick or Treating) because I attended my friend’s wedding. Yes, they were married on Halloween and, yes, the reception was a costume ball. I got to keep my costume, so I’ve dressed as Aragorn from Lord of the Rings for a few years now.

Now that JSL is old enough to understand trick or treating, we expect Halloween to be a very fun night. Of course, we take measures to ensure that the fun is safe fun. First of all, they don’t trick or treat without adult supervision. Secondly, we don’t stray far from known houses. We’ll trick or treat on my in-law’s block and on our block. That’s it. We’ also screen all of their goodies for potential hazards.

Lastly, we go trick or treating before it gets too dark. This is for many reasons. If Halloween falls on a school night (like it does this year), we don’t want them dragging the next day because they were out late the previous night. We also don’t need to worry about reflectors, glo sticks, flashlights and the like. Plus, it means they get to enjoy some candy before it’s time for bed. Finally, an early trick or treating means that we both can enjoy our boys trick or treating and still be home in time for other trick or treaters to stop by our house. (Otherwise, one of us gets to go trick or treating with them and the other has to stay home and man the candy distribution center.)

I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Dad Central Consulting and they sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Wordless Wednesday: Ride the Merry Go Round!

October 20, 2010 TechyDad Fun, JSL, NHL, Photos, Six Flags, Wordless Wednesday

A Festival of Frightful Proportions

October 19, 2010 TechyDad Family, Fun, Holidays, JSL, NHL, Photos, Six Flags

On Sunday, we headed over to Six Flags. We had been meaning to go back there ever since NHL’s incident back in June. With only a couple of weekends left in the season, we decided to make the trip. Of course, this time of year, Six Flags parks decorate for Fright Fest. This means plenty of (phony) spider webs and ghoulish decorations.

There was also lots of candy both of the giant display-only variety and trick-or-treat edible variety.

The kids got to trick or treat a bit and then go on tons of rides. This was even more fun than our usual summer trips because: 1) we weren’t dying from the heat and 2) the lines were insanely short. A few rides let NHL and JSL take a second pass without exiting because there simply weren’t that many people waiting on line. A few times, they were the only ones on the ride!

They were a bit disappointed that the characters weren’t out, but at least Tweety was (dressed as an angel).

Hey, it’s Tweety and NHL Putty Tat…. uh, I mean lion.

After tons of rides, the evening was approaching. Not only did this mean we would have to leave because it was a school night and we needed to eat dinner, but it meant we had to leave because the scarier elements of Fright Fest were coming out. There were guys with chain saws wandering around lunging at park goers. Yes, the chain saws are fake, but they sound real and are scary to little kids. You could buy your kid a “don’t scare me” necklace for $3 but that sounds like some kind of weird Halloween extortion to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of the chain saw guy as I was busy herding my kids away from him so they wouldn’t get scared.

Even worse, I missed a zombie photo opportunity. While waiting on our last line, a woman walked…. well, stumbled by with pure white eyes and a sliced up smile. She was clearly a member of the walking dead. She would stumble up to people and engage them for a bit before shuffling on. How I wish I could have jumped off line, leaving B with the boys and gotten a photo of her. But the way the line was set up (and as close as we were to the front of it), that just wasn’t an option. After exiting the ride, I looked for her, but she was long gone. Off to score some choice brains, I suppose.

All in all, it was a great time. Perhaps we’ll even go back another time in the next week or two before the park shuts down for the winter.

Apple Picking and Pumpkins Too

October 19, 2010 TechyDad Food, Fun, JSL, NHL, Photos

On Saturday, we were trying to figure out what to do. We had wanted to go apple picking for some time, but weather, Jewish holidays and other things kept getting in the way. With the weather cooperating and no other plans on our agendas, we finally decided to stop by the local Pick-Your-Own place.

Needless to say, the boys were excited. They love picking their own produce. Not only do they get to wander around outside in the fresh air in large fields, but they get to pluck things off trees and put them in bags. This may sound like a simple thing, but the simplest things are sometimes the most entertaining. The bonus is that they can eat what they are plucking!

I tried to get shots of everyone, but I must confess that the photos were a bit JSL-heavy. That’s mainly because NHL was too quick. He was off, finding apples, plucking them, sticking them into his bag and running off to the next tree for more. Meanwhile, JSL was having trouble navigating all of the apples that had dropped to the ground. This meant he was slower and more photographable (if that’s a real word).

In the end, we picked 29.5 pounds of apples.

Our fridge is now packed full of apples and we’re going to need to figure out what to do with all of them. Slow Cooker Apple Sauce will be made, but we’ll need to come up with some other things as well. We have some frozen pie crusts…. Maybe apple pie?

During our apple picking, we also stopped by their pumpkin patch to get a pumpkin for carving. There were plenty of interesting specimens here for us to look at.

In the end, we decided that these had been sitting on the ground during too many rain storms. So many were rotting that we were worried that any “non-rotting” one we picked wouldn’t last until Halloween. On the way back, we passed a place with plenty of pumpkins to pick from. (Try saying that three times fast!) Here we picked a 22.5 pound pumpkin which will soon be sliced and diced into a Jack-o-Lantern.

I plan to save the innards to make something with. Roasted pumpkin seeds, of course, but I’m open to other “pumpkin innards” recipes.

We headed home with a car 52 pounds heavier and a pair of very happy boys. Hurray for pick-your-own farms!

What are your favorite pumpkin and/or apple recipes?

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