Tomorrow is Halloween here in the states (and Canada, I'm assuming from the picture I took in Quebec City). Although we don't do much anymore, what with the kids being on their own (I leave the massive celebrations to daughter #2, who throws a major bash every year), Halloween was a favorite holiday in our household for years. As a matter of fact, hubby was late coming to pick me up from the hospital after I was released when our twins were born because he and big brother had to make a stop at the pumpkin patch to pick out one large and two tiny pumpkins.
This year, he bought a pumpkin. I'm not sure if he plans to carve it, though. In this part of the country, you don't carve pumpkins before October 30th or they'll rot. That's something my neighbor learned the hard way when she moved here from Chicago and set about half a dozen carved jack o'lanterns outside her house in early October.
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Hubby was the carving supervisor. I roasted the pumpkin seeds (and ate most of them, because nobody else really liked them. It's good to be the Mom.) The kids designed and drew the faces; he carved. With the advent of those nifty little pumpkin carving kits with the short serrated carvers, they were on their own.
They still carve 'non-traditional' jack o'lanterns, but they were doing it long before it was trendy. My son did this one when he was in high school.
Costumes were fun too. My kids went to a special center for elementary school, and their big bash was Halloween, and costumes were supposed to be kid-made. They came up with some very clever costumes. One year daughter #2 and her best friend went as squeeze bottles of mustard and ketchup. Alas, that was long before digital cameras, and all my photo albums are packed up and in a POD somewhere.
But I did find these the year I turned them into scarecrows.
Also note: Color film HAD been invented, but I was a hobbyist photographer and shot black and white. I'd often hand color bits and pieces of the photos.
14 comments:
i don't have the cool carving knives. can't find them in town this year... so I am still determining HOW I am going to make my jack-o-lanterns cool with normal knives. :) Might do another pirate fish..
Good luck - and I'm sure whatever you carve will be fine. Do they do Halloween in northern Ireland?
the American tradition is taking over a bit. It's safer to have a bowl of candy, as there will be trick-or-treaters, but most people seem to have parties.
Love the scarecrows , , ,
Happy Halloween!
I think that *I* was #100, so whoo-hoo! Congratulations! And Happy Halloween :o)
Pamela, Welcome, and thanks so much for hanging around my place! I hope you're enjoying the posts.
Those scarecrows are adorable and I think the photography so clever as well!
You remind me that I need to get a couple more pumpkins for carving. I have several on my porch with the bale of straw and scarecrow, but they stay up until Thanksgiving.
Thanks, Christie. No way a pumpkin on the porch would survive between Halloween and Thanksgiving in this climate.
We did make good scarecrows, huh? :) And I was barely taller than a doorknob!
yeah, we were some pretty cool-lookin' scarecrows!
Cool pictures. My uncle used to hand color bits of photos before they had color photography. Fun family tales about which bits he colored.
Ah, Sheila - yes, I can imagine some fun stories there. Deciding which bits to color is most of the fun. And since I processed my own prints, I could make several and try out different combinations.
I can't tell you how excited I was when I got my first non-family follower. Heck, I was excited when one of my blogs hit double digits in followers. I can't even imagine triple digits! Congrats, Terry.
I'll be honest, GD - I do little happy dances when my follower numbers increase at all. I didn't dare hope for triple digits, and I watched my total sit at 99 for a while. Then it dropped to 98, and I wondered what I'd done to turn to 'unfollow'. So 100 was all the more rewarding.
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