Pumpkin Moonshine

Our Own Pumpkin Moonshine 

and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

 

       Today, during this snowy/rainy Halloween day, we carved our jack-o-lantern.  Our pumpkin was such a perfectly round beauty that I had a hard time sacrificing it to the knife (why couldn't Thanksgiving be prior to Halloween so we could enjoy the pumpkin all Thanksgiving season, then carve it for Halloween?!?  Why wasn't this pumpkin issue President Lincoln's priority when assigning a date to Thanksgiving?) :)   However, the taste of fresh-roasted pumpkin seeds, not to mention the happiness of Liliana and Vera Rose was worth any pumpkin sacrifice.  Plus, Vera Rose said "pumpkin" as plain as plain can be as I carved.
       First, I had Liliana peruse our happily massive stack of Halloween books to find a jack-o-lantern illustration she loved, so our pumpkin would have a literary model (I wanted to at least give our poor pumpkin that nobel distinction).  After looking at the pumpkin faces in such books as Over in the Hollow by Rebecca Dickinson, The Littlest Pumpkin by R.A. Herman, and Happy Halloween, Curious George by N.T. Raymond and Kelly Loughman, Liliana settled on the jolly pumpkin face from Pumpkin Moonshine by Tasha Tuder. 
       Pumpkin Moonshine was a perfect choice since it is one of the most beautifully illustrated Halloween books and is such a sweet, fun story of a girl, Sylvie Ann, picking out a pumpkin, chasing the runaway pumpkin down a big hill, then culminating with her Grandpawp carving a "pumpkin moonshine" for her.  And I love the final sentence (after she planted her saved pumpkin seeds the following spring): "The vines grew up and ran all over the cornfield, with lots of pumpkins on them, just waiting to be made into pumpkin pies and Pumpkin moonshines to please good little girls like Sylvie Ann."  The book was Tasha Tudor's first book, back in 1938.
       Happy Halloween all!  May all your pumpkin moonshines be brilliant and glowing!

Vera Rose kisses her jack-o-lantern.

Halloween Decor

Halloween



My Pumpkin-headed King Goblin Clown lino

       I told myself that this year, what with unpacking and sorting all the items from storage, I would bypass Halloween, at least the decorating part of it.  I simply need to focus on unpacking, cleaning, sorting and relabeling the holiday decor (not to mention everything else!) from storage so that I'm perfectly prepared to decorate a holiday tree for the local historical museum, to decorate my own house in preparation for hosting a Quester meeting, etc.  But guess what?  I was sidetracked and was happily so! 


       After peering into the Halloween bins, I ended up pulling the majority of it out and upstairs to decorate.  It was simply too much fun to see Liliana and Vera Rose so enamored with it all-- plus I love Halloween, love that there is a holiday about make-believe, dress-up, the happily spooky, and about gifting complete strangers with treats--and there is plenty of time before December, right?

 



Autumn Leaves & a Hayride

Fall leaves & a Hayride

       Pure autumn happiness is a jump in a pile of leaves with cousins & a bouncy hayride behind Granddad's tractor under the glorious golden sunlight of a crisp October day.

 

Hayride destination: a field of Indian Corn