It’s Halloween season!!! Once visual contact is made with a pumpkin in the early fall, all my kids can think about is Jack-o-lanterns. We have made it a ritual of going to the pumpkin patch for everyone to pick their very own pumpkin (you have to be able to carry your own pumpkin to make it truly yours!). I like to have the pumpkins just propped on the doorstep as the perfect fall adornment, maybe with some Mums if I can get to it. However I am usually ‘pushed’ into carving them five minutes after we get home. This will explain why we go through so many pumpkins each season, (… You’re welcome farmers!).
Not only did we carve the traditional jack-o-lanterns, and toast the seeds, but also we baked pumpkin bread and drank warmed cider to get the full effect. The scent of the pumpkins made one of my little ones leave the site immediately, leaving my other daughter insistent that she could manage the big knife all by herself (NNNOOO!!!). My son on the other hand touts his “profession” in this family as the guts separator and ‘seed seeker’. (Yes I am quite proud.).
Since jack-o-lanterns are an activity that my kids want to do over and over again, I needed to get creative — since I don’t want to clean up this mess on practically a daily basis. Again I have to ‘thank’ the farmers for this idea … As members of the Community Farm Share at Arrowhead Farms, we have been collecting our produce weekly. We love it! And although I usually get something that I may not know what to do with, I am eager to find a recipe to use it in. Gourds on the other hand have me stumped! Beyond filling the cornucopia for the dining room table centerpiece, I don’t know what to do with them. Yet the farmers insist that I need them and they always end up in my bag. My kids think they are balls, and why not since they are round, (roundish), colorful and attractive. The centerpiece at our house has been so ‘loved’ that the gourds have been looking pretty worn. AAAAHHHaaaa!!! Let’s decorate gourds!
Pipe cleaners, stickers, feathers, yarn, glue… I dragged it all out of the craft box and let the kids have at it. It was a tough sell at first but it picked up and everyone loved it. I poked some random holes to help the kids stick in stuff, but overall, they went to town decorating and designing. Easy clean up too. And guess what, I’ve got plenty more gourds to go.
