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Thursday, October 29, 2015

a plethora of pumpkins

with halloween coming up this weekend, i finally got to work on the pumpkin that had been sitting in the house waiting for me to decorate it.  the girls and MIL had already done theirs while i was up in san francisco, so it was up to me to finish off the one they'd saved for me to do.

the bean had picked up a snoopy stencil for me to use, because she knows how much i adore him and the peanuts gang.  i really hate actually carving pumpkins though - pulling out all the gross pumpkin guts just ain't my thing.  so i decided to go a different route and busted out a can of spray paint to create a canvas to work with.  it was easy and dried quickly.


i used to spend hours drawing pictures of snoopy when i was little - right around the bean's age, actually.  and it all came back to me as i did a pencil sketch first on the pumpkin, and then grabbed a jumbo sharpie to go over it.  with a dab of red paint and a smidge of black, i was done.  it had taken me all of about ten minutes.  BOOM.


the bean was delighted to see him join his pals outside.  she had done these almost completely by herself, and she was super proud of her pumpkins.


the old lady had done one of her own, and i love it too:


and if that weren't enough, we headed out one evening to santa anita race track for "rise of the jack o'lanterns," a display of 5,000 carved and painted pumpkins spread out along a trail that went on for 1/3 of a mile.




 there were lots and lots of different themes throughout the trail.  we went on safari:


saw some dinosaurs:


stopped at sesame street:


visited a pineapple under the sea:


to a galaxy far, far away:



of course, there were celebrity sightings.



hopped across the pond:


and over to china.


all the emotions were there.




sorry, professional pumpkin artists.  my kid did a better job.  but nice try.


there was a car show:



and some sportsball, too.


jack and sally were near the end:


and then that was it.


now, here's fair warning - save your money and just look at these photos (and others online).  the tickets were pricey even with the online discount, and while the pumpkins were really cool and i guess i'm glad we saw them...really not worth it.  but it was a lovely evening that we spent together as a family, so it was still a win.

but really...don't do it.  unless you get tickets for free or something.  trust me.

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