Time to carve those pumpkins that we picked up at Kruger's farm last week! But first, we started out the chilly fall morning with a few baked pumpkin donut holes from Two Peas and Their Pod (recipe here). I made a few changes; subbing whole wheat for the regular flour, using honey instead of brown sugar, and coconut oil in place of the canola oil. They came out looking more like mini muffins, but who really cares what they looked like when they tasted so darn good!?
If I make them again, I will definitely skip the last step of rolling them around in sugar and cinnamon. It masked the yummy taste of the donut/muffin by making them way too sweet, and avoiding unnecessary sugars is a good thing!
But back to the topic of this post - pumpkin carving! It seems like in years past, we have all had a clear vision of what we wanted to create, but this year everyone had a hard time deciding what to carve into their pumpkin. We sat around contemplating ideas for quite a while.
Rowan finally decided on carving a puppy face into her pumpkin, and she set about cleaning the seeds and gunk out:
That can be a pretty icky, gooey job that requires an adorable grimace and helping hands from daddy:
After much back and forth, Killian decided to stick with his plan to make a face on his pumpkin, and he got to work carving with great attention to the little details:
Matthew did his usual pumpkin pattern, and made a really neat cat and witches hat. I fretted for a ridiculous amount of time over what to do with my pumpkin. I had chose a really strangely shaped one that I had been really excited about when I picked it. But its uniqueness started to fade as I struggled with what to carve, discarding multiple ideas because they didn't fit just right with the shape I had to work with. Realizing that everyone else had already finished their pumpkins and that I hadn't even opened mine up yet, I started feeling desperate. At that point, I just wanted to be done and set it out to light with everyone elses, so I hurriedly carved a silly face and was done with it. I think all the other big decisions that we have been wrestling with making lately have rendered me completely incapable of making any small ones - even ones as inconsequential as what to carve on my pumpkin!
Finally finished, we lugged our jack-o-lanterns outside and lit them up in all their Halloween perfection. I think they turned out quite nicely!
(L to R; Killian's, Matthew's, Rowan's and mine)
If I make them again, I will definitely skip the last step of rolling them around in sugar and cinnamon. It masked the yummy taste of the donut/muffin by making them way too sweet, and avoiding unnecessary sugars is a good thing!
But back to the topic of this post - pumpkin carving! It seems like in years past, we have all had a clear vision of what we wanted to create, but this year everyone had a hard time deciding what to carve into their pumpkin. We sat around contemplating ideas for quite a while.
Rowan finally decided on carving a puppy face into her pumpkin, and she set about cleaning the seeds and gunk out:
That can be a pretty icky, gooey job that requires an adorable grimace and helping hands from daddy:
After much back and forth, Killian decided to stick with his plan to make a face on his pumpkin, and he got to work carving with great attention to the little details:
Matthew did his usual pumpkin pattern, and made a really neat cat and witches hat. I fretted for a ridiculous amount of time over what to do with my pumpkin. I had chose a really strangely shaped one that I had been really excited about when I picked it. But its uniqueness started to fade as I struggled with what to carve, discarding multiple ideas because they didn't fit just right with the shape I had to work with. Realizing that everyone else had already finished their pumpkins and that I hadn't even opened mine up yet, I started feeling desperate. At that point, I just wanted to be done and set it out to light with everyone elses, so I hurriedly carved a silly face and was done with it. I think all the other big decisions that we have been wrestling with making lately have rendered me completely incapable of making any small ones - even ones as inconsequential as what to carve on my pumpkin!
Finally finished, we lugged our jack-o-lanterns outside and lit them up in all their Halloween perfection. I think they turned out quite nicely!
(L to R; Killian's, Matthew's, Rowan's and mine)