Tuesday, October 31, 2006

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! BOOHAHAHA!



Last night we had our pumpkin carving festivities. Pumpkin food, drink, and warm tea was also to be had. From left are featured my pumpkin, Pat's pumpkin, and Harley's pumpkin.

After searching two major stores in Redmond with no success I luckily found a pumpkin stencil pattern at our local grocery store. These stencils work even better because instead of paper that you need to tape on it is a sticker pattern. You just carve right over the sticker and when finished remove the excess sticker portions. No need for messy tracing with a pen or pencil, cutting out shapes to trace, or paper falling off the pumpkin face leaving an uneven pattern!

This works really great for someone like myself as my hands are no longer steady (nor is my patience) after the digression of NF2 tumors or treatment (not sure which or both....prior to all this I had pretty steady hands). In fact, for those who do not know, Zoology is my background degree. The disection portion of labs was always my forte' and at one point in my undergraduate education I thought I would probably make a great animal surgeon. However, it did not seem like like there would be a plethora of jobs in that route. I would not want to make an incision in a living creature either.

I guess I made a good consensus back then as there is no way I could perform something like that now! Harley on the other hand is a very skilled and masterful pumpkin carver. I kept thinking what a great surgeon he would have made. Yet I am very glad he did not choose that path either.

Click the lighthouse in the post title of this blog entry. It is a link to a slideshow of Pat and Harley carving their pumpkins. Included is a picture of all three of our pumpkins with the actual stencil pattern given names for each.
UPDATE: YAHOO PHOTOS IS BEING CRANKY. THE EARLIER SLIDESHOW FORMATS I USED NO LONGER WORK BECAUSE THEY DECIDED TO UNBRILLIANTLY CHANGE TO A DIFFERENT MORE ANNOYING FORMAT. FROM THE NEW LINK I POSTED YOU WILL HAVE TO CLICK ON THE SLIDESHOW TO VIEW THE PICTURES IN SLIDESHOW FORMAT. THE ALBUM IS TITLED PUMPKIN CARVING 2006.

We realized when Harley was finished that he created another NF2 pumpkin. Last year was his first and we did not have stencil patterns. The reason it is an NF2 pumpkin is because it shows signs of the NF2 halmark of facial paralysis. I did not like the cleaver in it but he said that represents surgery on the side that is weakened.

To see our pumpkins from last year, please click the links to below that will direct you to last year's Halloween blog entries:

Mr. Eggplant Pumpkin
http://diverbeck.blogspot.com/2005/11/meet-mr-eggplant.html

My Happy Pumpkin from last year
http://diverbeck.blogspot.com/2005/11/happy-belated-day-of-dead.html

Okay I must be going nuts. I thought I posted the photos of our two pumpkins together last year but I guess I did not. Let me see if I can find it. Okay, Harley's pumpkin from last year is the small photo in the upper right corner.

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