Pumpkin Carving Party

After the disgustingly gross spit in my hair/forehead, we headed back home.  We had excellent timing b/c we got home right around 6pm when everyone was coming over!  =)  I LOVE pumpkin carving.  It's like one of the few times when I get to exercise my control-freakishness without getting yelled at or chastised.  Besides, it totally reminds me of my childhood and makes me happy.  That might explain why I still sing that Toys R Us song!  ;)

Anyway, Haeli, Malcolm, Audrey, Anita, Jason and Henry came over.  They each brought a pumpkin and Russ and I supplied some carving utensils, the stencils and the giant hardwood floor area.  Since I don't subscribe to any newspapers, Audrey brought over her old LA Times and we started carving!

This was pre-carving.  The pumpkins innocently lined up on the fireplace, awaiting their beautiful fate:

Here's our pumpkin carving utensils:

Malcolm claims that he is more mature now.  I'm not sure if this picture reflects his newfound maturity:

This is all of us concentrating really hard in pumpkin carving.  If you look carefully, you can see the papers w/ the stencils on it.  You just poke little dots into the pumpkin and connect the dots!  It's sooo much fun:

So, at some point in the evening, Haeli exhibited her pumpkin control freak issues too!  (See!  I'm not alone when it comes to pumpkin carving and control freak!)  Anyway, I think Haeli's issues probably stemmed from Malcolm trying to pull the stem out of the pumpkin by using his feet and hands!  hahaha:

I was prepared (as usual) and had plastic bags ready for everyone to put the pumpkin guts into it:

And here's our finished pumpkin product!  We should be pumpkin carving artists!!!

Anita created Hello Kitty!  She didn't even have a stencil!  She just used my little Hello Kitty soap dispenser and free-styled it!  =)

This is Audrey's running pumpkin and Jason's Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch):

 

Here's Russ' (skull and cross-bones), Henry's (weird-smiley pumpkin), and mine (haunted mansion w/ bats):

And here's Haeli's, with Malcolm's supervision (3 werewolves):

After we over-exerted ourselves from the pumpkin carving, we ate pumpkin curry.  We *totally* forgot to take pictures of the before, but here's a picture of how good it must have been b/c there was only a little bit of curry left.  (It looks gross, but it was good, I hope!)  I made a giant veggie pot:

This is the chicken pot:

Audrey brought the salad accompaniment:

Anita brought pumpkin pie (esp b/c she was craving it for like a week)!!!

Haeli & Malcolm ventured into the realm of baking and made these spiderweb cupcakes for us:

Here's a display of our desserts!  As you can tell, we are total desserts ppl.  I snuck in my fruits though!  Come on...I have to look out for our friends' health!!

And I don't know if you can see the wrapped white things next to the pumpkin pie...well...Haeli & Malcolm also made ice cream sandwiches!  YUMMY!!!!  (Malcolm isn't as graceful in the eating front; Audrey was much more graceful!)

And here's all of us, full and happy, after our pumpkin carving adventures!!

Happy almost Halloween!!!  Check out Haeli's blog; she's got even more pictures of the before and after and better descriptions!  But this is not even the highlight of the weekend!!  I mean, it was FUN, but the highlight was our random chance at landing U2 concert tix at the Rose Bowl (blog for later in the week).  I need to do work now!