Saturday 31 October 2009

Eeeek!

It's that time of year again. I spent a significant part of the afternoon carving a pumpkin lantern. Which, as I told XUP, is still a lot less time than it used to take us to produce a lantern using a turnip and a tablespoon when I was a child. We were tough in them days, I tell you. Anyway, I must confess I am quite proud of "Skully" as my deeply imaginative offspring have named him.

Not bad for a Scot with no training, eh? The boys produced their own outfits this year with only minimal assistance from me. This is how they look. Can you tell that my elder son is well aware I have a bit of an issue with clowns?


The only part of Second Born's get-up that I helped with cannot actually be seen in that photograph. He wanted a severed shrunken head to hold - which he bought from our local supermarket (they really do sell everything there these days.) That, however, was not enough - he wanted the head to be in green liquid. I explained that water would drip out of the plastic box he had in mind, so we settled instead for green jelly. Which is why I spent an odd hour last night, setting a shrunken head in lime flavour jelly. Looks good though. If not exactly tasty.....
Happy Halloween to all who are celebrating it! (And for those of you who are not, happy evening-spent-under-the-stairs-with-the-lights-off-not-answering-the-door!)

8 comments:

  1. That pumpkin is a tour-de-force - this long time carver is impressed. Mine looks like 'the scream' this year. Also the jellied head. Lots of mothering marks to you.

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  2. A Scottish friend of mine told me that it use to be the tradition to carve turnips and that pumpkins are a recent import. I cannot imagine carving turnips, unless yours are different from ours in the U.S. Ours are small and hard, so carving them would be nigh onto impossible.

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  3. That's such a cool pumpkin! Now I realise how crap mine looks. :( Very cool jelly head thingy!

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  4. I remember carving turnip lanterns, pumpkins are dead easy in comparison. Impressive lantern Loth, lots of mummy brownie points to you. The boys made me carve mine on Monday, so I had to keep it in the fridge to stop it from rotting before halloween!

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  5. Great skull, Loth! I can barely cut up a turnip for cooking -- I cannot imagine carving one with anything less than a samurai sword and several depth charges. The jellied shrunken head is fab. The clown is very scary.

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  6. Wow! That pumpkin is fabulous. And nice idea with the lime jelly. True devotion to the spirit of halloween.

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  7. A turnip? As in hop tu naa? Some year I'm going to carve a turnip, only I'll cheat and use a drill ;)

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