How to carve a Halloween Pumpkin

Ok, so this is my first ever carving and coming from the perspective of a true amateur this is how I carved our very first pumpkin.
I think on Facebook I saw a link to the Coles (supermarket chain in Australia) website with templates that could be used to carve your pumpkin, I downloaded & printed them out. I took Miss A to Coles on the Monday before Halloween and we bought a pumpkin and that afternoon we sat down at the kitchen table going…yeah…ahhhhh…..soooooo…..*crickets*…and I just went…ahh stuff this.
I scored a circle around the top of the pumpkin and then started cutting into it so I had a lid that could be removed.
Then scooped it’s guts out. Now I have a thing about having dirty hands and I used a latex glove on one hand so I could actually scoop the guts without getting my hands too dirty and had a bowl next to us to dump the guts into.
Then with all the guts removed, I used scissors to cut the template we decided to go with. Then those pieces were stuck on the pumpkin using a small piece of sticky tape.
I used a paring knife to score on the edges of the template on the pumpkin and then used a pumpkin carving knife that I picked up from Savers – it has a serrated edge but not sharp that it would cut my hand. Then I carved where I had scored the skin of the pumpkin and out popped the cut bits.
Once all the scored bits were cut I was able to put tea lights inside it and pop the lid on and taa daa. Our first carved pumpkin and without having to googling how to do it, I did it and it was dead easy. We put it out on Halloween and it looked awesome once it finally went dark. Right now that very pumpkin has been tossed into the very rear of our garden to decompose and feed the bugs!!
I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!
Cheers
Alex
A Spooky Story for Halloween

This Friday 31st October will be Halloween. It’s not big in Australia, although over the past few years I have noticed that there has been an increase of pumpkins / fake vampire teeth & Halloween related merchandise in the stores. I am much more of a sucker for Christmas but as a kid always wished we could do Halloween. I can’t do my planned Halloween post until after Halloween so in the meantime I thought I would post a scary story of mine.
I know there are believers and non believers out there but I am firmly in the believers group. Weird stuff that has happened to me that I simply can’t explain has me believing that there is something else out there so a spooky post for Halloween.
One of my odd encounters occurred in 1992. My parents had bought a new house in Seven Hills in a Sydney suburb in NSW, Australia. I was unpacking my boxes in my bedroom, the rest of the family were out enjoying the sunshine in the backyard. As I walked out of my bedroom on the corner of my eye I saw a little old lady with grey hair and a black shawl over her shoulders standing in my younger brothers bedroom.
I caught a glimpse of her and kept walking down the hall and then did the “what the”. I turned and walked back to the bedroom and nothing, no one. I thought that maybe my Mum was in that room and was mucking around with a black shawl over her shoulders. So I decided that I would walk back to my room and re-do what I had just done. In case stuff placed around my brothers room gave the appearance of a person with grey hair and a black shawl.
So I went back into my room, counted to 5 and walked out again and this time…a bright white bedroom with a few brown boxes on the floor.
I did what any normal teenager would do…I ran.
I ran so freaking fast out of that house. I shit myself (not literally…thank goodness!). I know what I saw, there was absolutely no reason at all for me to have even imagined a little old lady with grey hair and a black shawl on. I ran outside to tell my family and I was shushed and told to stop being stupid, for fear that it might freak out my little brother.
A few months later my brother and I returned home from school, it was a long and very hot walk home. It was February so still very much Summer weather and as I got to the front door and opened it I was hit with a wall of icy air. Our lounge room was freezing. My brother & I walked inside and I was being a bit of a dickhead and said out loud “Oh hi, it’s me, Alex and Matt. We are home from school now”. Just like that the lounge room returned to the right temperature and that very icy cold air was gone and instead it was warm & stuffy inside.
On a side note, my dog never ever went down the hallway in that house He would cower & whimper when we first tried to get him to come down the hall, it was our new house and we wanted him to have a sniff around and he was totally not interested with our bedrooms. We only stayed in that house for 6 months before moving to Melbourne so I have no idea if that old lady is still in that house. I believe that she was related to the previous owners but really…who knows.
Cheers
Alex
All images in this post are courtesy of The Graphics Fairy
Happy Halloween!

Last night I took my kids (and myself) trick or treating for the very first time and I LOVED it. I had a blast. I dressed up in a black swing dress – it has a collar and a bow that sits on the hip. I bought this dress online and when I tried it on I really wasn’t too impressed with it. So to the back of the wardrobe it went. Until I realised that I could actually wear my vintage styled dress with a witches hat that I had bought ages ago (building our dress ups collection for the kids). I also went out and bought a witches broom so I could complete my look.
My Son already had a Woody from Toy Story costume so he was organised and we asked my Daughter what she wanted to wear “Jessie” she said. Hmmm. So I checked out all the department stores and a costume shop and eventually ended up in Spotlight and they had a ‘Jessie’ costume in size 4-6. My Daughter is tiny more like a size 2 so I had to make her costume.
I bought a boys white shirt (girls versions had pretty flowers on them), yellow felt, cow print fabric and a hat. I cut strips of fabric for the chaps and safety pinned them on to her jeans. I cut out the felt to sit on the shirt and then used red tinsel pipe cleaners that I made into loopy shapes and then using the hot glue gun stuck the felt to the shirt and pipe cleaners to the felt. Taa daaa. The felt on the arm bands aren’t even stuck on I just wrapped strips of felt around the cuffs and made a hole for the button and it held on.
Her hat drove me batty. No red hats that were right for her. I found a cowboy type hat but it was black. So I bought red spray paint and discovered the most super absorbent material in the whole world. I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and it would not go red. Instead the paint was just sucked into the hat. We bought another hat and tried again and this time it worked but it took a few layers of paint to get it all even.
Oh and I found a pair of black rubber boots for my Daughter I know she needs them so I bought them & sprayed them brown. She can re-use them next Winter – if her foot fits.
We had a great night and managed to get a good haul of lollies & chocolates – I mean the KIDS got it..not me…nooooo cough cough.
I think the decision has been made for a letterbox drop in our immediate area next year and asking if people are participating in Halloween to put an orange balloon on their letterbox. Would be nice to meet some of our neighbours.
Happy Halloween
Cheers
Alex