My family loves fall. We spend weekends visiting the Pittsburgh area’s many pumpkin patches, enjoying the fall activities. Of course the peak of fall is Halloweeen weekend. The past couple years we’ve been lucky enough to have houseguests – my sister and her husband. And how they are joined by Baby Kate.

We always make sure to have plenty of pumpkins to carve. This year, we waited until the 30th to buy our pumpkins, and got lucky with a great sale at Right by Nature in the Strip District. I think the biggest pumpkin was around 17 pounds and it only cost about $3.

Madison got us started by cutting out the tops.

For some reason this made Jonas rather worried. Aunt Beth’s favorite part is scooping out the seeds and pulp. Which was great, because that’s not anyone else’s favorite part. Leo said No Way was he touching it. Kate just watched. In no time at all, Madison had roasted and seasoned some seeds. Delicious. Leo quickly progressed from “no way am I eating those” to “these are the best things I’ve ever had.”

Both Matt (aided by Leo) and Madison used a pumpkin carving kit, which included carving tools as well as templates that they used to trace their designs. I think they might be trying to scare the photographer away. I’m relentless, so that didn’t scare me. But I decided it was time for some more dramatic lighting, especially when Madison used this big poker tool. The end result…. this one by Matt. These two are clearly the work of either some brilliant artist or possibly someone suffering from mild to moderate psychosis. Yep, they’re mine. Matt said, “I see your theme for this year is overkill” as I did have a little trouble knowing when to stop. Madison’s wolf.Madison modeled this one after Kate.Here they all are, lined up at the end of the driveway on Halloween. They sure got a lot of comments!