With Halloween on Wednesday, Stella and I ended up doing quite a bit of Halloweening.  It all started on Friday Evening.  In one of the neighborhoods near our house, the merchants put on trick-or-treating for the kids.  Stella put on her Fairy Princess outfit and braved the rain to collect candy and enjoy the other kids in the neighborhood.  It was actually quite a bit of fun.  Everyone was in a great mood and enjoying themselves – in fact, we even got to “meet” Obama and the First Lady and get out picture taken with them.

After an hour or so of trick-or-treating, we went home to gut out pumpkins.  We gutted one pumpkin for a carving party on Saturday and gutted and carved another.  Stella was entertained and helped me gut about half a pumpkin.  After that, she retired to the couch and let me finish the rest of the gross work.  Stella then helped me draw the face for our large pumpkin.

Saturday morning, we headed over to a carving party at our friends Kelly & Lorelei’s house.  It was the greatest idea!  They had the party in the garage – a big table with carving tools and treats.  The adults did all the carving (of course) while the kids ran around and played.  Kelly also had pre-shaped sugar cookies for the kids to decorate.  10 minutes later, they were enjoying fresh-baked cookies.  I am so stealing that idea!

We topped off Saturday with a trip to Toys-R-Us.  Stella had been good at school for one month, so she got a prize!  She picked out a package of dress-up princess clothes.  I would have expected nothing less.

With such a fun-filled Friday and Saturday, we took Sunday off, so we could do some fall baking (an Apple-Pear-Persimmon crisp) and roasting our pumpkin seeds. Now that we are full of yummy treats and well rested, we are ready to take Halloween by storm!