Just Me and Jack (O'Lantern)

The other night after class I had to stop by the grocery store and as I was walking in, I became completely distracted by the pumpkins for sale. Normally I breeze right by these displays because I prefer to buy my pumpkins at pumpkin farms while dressed in overalls... Side note: Apparently going to school in a mountain town had more of an effect on us than I realized at the time. To our defense, overalls were all the rage when this picture was taken eons ago.

I digress. So before I knew it I was in pursuit of the perfect pumpkin. The whole time I was asking myself things like "Why in the world am I going to carve a pumpkin? It's just me so what's the point? How fun can carving a pumpkin solo be?" And 15 minutes later when I was lugging it up the stairs along with a gallon of milk and other essentials I was still wondering the same type of things. Of course Cash thought it was just another chew toy...

Thursday was a nice fall day so I decided during lunch that I would actually carve the pumpkin when I got home that night. I mean, what else is a girl to do in Athens, GA on a Thursday night, right? So I lit up my Harvest scented Yankee Candle and turned on my favorite Allison Krauss CD and got to work. And since there was no one around to witness that I was actually carving a pumpkin I decided to be like the Pioneer Woman and use the camera timer to take pictures along the way. But her pictures are so much better because she uses Photoshop. And she has a KitchenAid mixer so that automatically makes her kitchen better than mine. But that's beside the point, really. In the beginning Cash was all about the activity...Fortunately he got bored pretty quickly so the master pumpkin carver could get to work...Of course my original "sketch" wasn't good enough so my perfectionist personality took over by trying to erase it and start over. Lesson learned: ink on a pumpkin does not wash off with water.In all my brilliance I started out trying to cut through the top of the pumpkin with probably the dullest knife in my drawer. Then I remembered the pumpkin carving kit that I had from the last time we carved pumpkins so my life became much easier. Until I remembered how messy the inside of a pumpkin is...Which is why I'm including this picture so I'll think twice the next time I decide to start carving a pumpkin at 8:30 at night...

Somewhere along the way I decided to separate the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin yuck (yes, that's the official name for the stuff inside of a pumpkin) in order to roast the seeds. Just because it's fun to pretend to be Martha Stewart sometimes. Minus the line of linens sold at Kmart and time served in the slammer. They turned out pretty well I suppose...

if you like pumpkin seeds. Which I don't particularly, but surely someone does so they won't go to complete waste. Finally I made a futile attempt to get a shot of the finished product with my puppy and me...

So much for that. Welcome to my world of having a dog that eats everything. It's at this point that I would like to say that my neighbor's 7 year old is the one who did the actual carving but that would be telling a story. The truth is I just have the artistic ability of a 7 year old. But that's ok.
The other truth (which I think is also ok) is that pumpkin carving is much more fun as a team sport...especially for a girl who prefers the company of her friends, family and other people as opposed to the company of her TV. Which brings me to a whole other post. But that's going to have to wait for a little while...I've got school work to do.