halloween – [sic]

Before & After

Our five pumpkins we grew in the backyard patch before and after they went under the carving knife (click it for the bigger picture):

They won’t win any design awards, but my timeframe might qualify for an honorable mention: I hacked up all five in 30 minutes flat. And yes there’s a timelapse of it… soon to come.

Happy Halloween!

UPDATED (11.01): Yep, here’s all the timelapsed frenzy of pumpkin cutting activity:

And lastly, here’s the obligatory night shot of the quintet as they were meant to be seen:

Happy Halloween: Thinking Outside The Pumpkin

A best-ever awesome trick-or-treater turnout under wonderful weather, and bonus: my extensive and tangled serpentine chains of extension cords didn’t blow the power out or catch anything on fire!

But now a word about my favorite jack o’ lantern (click it for the bigger picture):

Totally improvised. I’m not sure what species of pumpkin but it was badass tough — practically bulletproof. Seriously, there was no way my meager set of carving implements was going to penetrate that exterior. So instead, after cutting the lid off with a butcher knife and a hacksaw, I went artso-fartso, drafting into duty six sugar skulls as guards mounted upon tea lights on the gourd’s outer wall, and featuring Susan’s “Lady of Guanajuato” (her lovely and VERY fragile clay calavera figurine that she purchased during her first visit to Mexico), rising up from the pumpkin’s well-illuminated interior.

I have a timelapse of the promenade of visitors and pix detailing the decor, but for now on this day after I’ve gotta get busy taking it aaaaaall down.

Emergency Pumpkinectomy!

One of the gourds Susan brought home from the store this past weekend had a nick in it, and sure enough, by this morning that superficial cut had turned into a super squishy infection, requiring immediate and major surgery if there was to be any chance of it taking its place on the front steps as any sort of jack o’ lantern.

Pre-op

Post-op

I don’t get all into carving pumpkins until no sooner than a day or two before the big nigh, so honestly, after the nasty section was removed I wasn’t really in the mood to cut something creative on the pumpkin’s other side, so I improvised with a little plastic pumpkin we have laying around, which fit perfectly and grumpily inside the patient:

Bonus image: here’s where the spookifications of the frontyard presently stand (click to monsterificate):

Other than a few decorative bits and pieces, the main thing left really is the electronic stuff… fog machines, sound equipment, strobes.

And So It Begins…. Mwaaaahahahahaaaaaaaa

I may have a green thumb in the backyard, but this time of year out in front of the house the digit is aaaaaall black, as evidenced by this year’s earlier-than-usual crop of ghouls I just finished planting in the ivy. Six feet under, of course (click to biggify).

Typically I wait until the week before Halloween before I start spookifying the place, but others on our block have started early, and you know me: always have to keep up with the Boneses!

PS. For a taste of what things will pretty much look like when everything’s up, check out my Flickr set of last year’s ghoul daze.