Gearing up for Halloween

It's a little strange doing Halloween without Justin, but I finally mustered up the energy to tackle pumpkin patches, pumpkin carving, and roasted pumpkin seeds solo!






The girls have been begging me for weeks to check out the neighborhood patch.  It is across the street from their school in an open field- Tay reports that she can see it from her classroom window.  Pretty cool!

Ana found the perfect one here, but Taylor needed a larger selection so off we went to the patch up the road.  Here we ran into a school friend, which is always fun.  After this we headed home to draw our faces.

Pumpkin carving has 4 steps in our home:

1- pick out the pumpkin

2- design the face on paper

3- draw the face on the pumpkin with permanent marker

4- Carve the face

This multiple step process takes 2 days and I am happy to say that this year marks the very first year that Ana completed all the steps independently!  Even the CARVING.  In years past Justin and I carved, following the girls drawings, but this year Ana did it all.  I still carved Tay's- maybe next year.

 And of course a pumpkin carving weekend would not be complete without ending the day with roasted pumpkin seeds- this year's recipe was the best yet (I'm sure it's because I used BUTTER this time)!