Halloween = Pumpkin Everything; No Exceptions.

I am a holiday nerd. I'm sure everyone has that one crazy aunt who, besides being a cat lady, also ends up being a holiday décor hoarder. Children run screaming from her house because of her legitimately frightening Halloween decorations. You have Thanksgiving leftovers for 3 weeks because of how all-out she goes. Her house can be seen in space during Christmas and neighbors call and complain from 3 miles away. Well, I'm worse. I may not have the benefit of 20 years of hoarding but what I lack in decorations (and cats), I make up for in holiday spirit.

While I'm not one to be creative and dress up for Halloween, traditions are a must. Pumpkin carving is a tradition that cannot be forgotten. Although I have, for the past 3 or so years, been carving pumpkins by myself with canine supervision (Uhoh, maybe the cats aren't that far away...), I've always found it to be more fun with friends. This year I have been blessed with a particularly fun-loving set of friends who accepted my idea with gusto!

Pumpkin prep-work

When alone with the puppies I generally light pumpkin scented candles, make pumpkin bread, get some sort of pumpkin drink and save the pumpkin seeds for roasting. Pumpkin overload! This afternoon I had to forego the inundation of pumpkin on my senses and cope with just carving 2 pumpkins.

Let's revisit the part where I mentioned that my friends were overly excited about this idea of pumpkin carving; they were happy with the change of routine and decided they had no better offers. I like to live obliviously in my fantasy holiday world and project my elation onto everyone nearby. I don't think most of the event attendees knew my deep seated love for holiday tradition but they were soon clued in.

The array of pumpkin carving tools I brought included knives, mini saws, 3 electronic mini saws, a stencil book, markers, pencils, hole punching equipment and a towel. There is no messing around with pumpkins. Get your game face on or suffer my holiday spirit fueled wrath.

The pumpkins we carved for each of the boys!

Needless to say, the pumpkins were carved. Amanda's boyfriend seemed to share a slightly less escalated (but better than most) love of carving and completed two pumpkins along with me. As I placed mine in front of the horses' stalls I began to wonder a few things; how long will these last with the flies, which horse will attempt to eat the pumpkin, how soon will they attempt the eating, and how scared will Cash be when he sees a huge orange possible horse killer sitting on a black plastic known horse killer (aka trash bag)?

Before anyone freaks out, horses can eat pumpkin. Can and will are two different things. I was also pleasantly surprised and a bit disappointed that as we walked Cash down the barn aisle he neither noticed nor cared about the new décor. I couldn't let that rest and proceeded to walk into the stall carrying his assigned pumpkin which provoked the response I was originally looking for (nervous pony backed in a corner). Again, please don't freak out. As much as I love torturing small ponies I do it for desensitization purposes rather than getting pure joy from watching them cower.

More finished products!

I hope my barn friends are ready for what is to come. They caught a small glimpse of my ecstatic holiday cheer but I'm not sure they've put two and two together to realize that if I could wrap the boys in Christmas lights I absolutely would. What they don't know won't hurt them right?!