Halloween Prep!

Lots of treat-making and pumpkin decorating was happening at our house this weekend!  I've been cooking up a storm: beef stew, bacon-cheese grits, apple & maple pork chops, creamy chicken chili, pistachio chai muffins, turkey burgers w/ sweet potato fries, polenta with gorgonzola and tomato sauce, and homemade peanut butter cups!  

And that doesn't include my plans for tomorrow night.  As you might suspect, we're not exactly dieting chez McParland right now, but it certainly has been fun eating everything in sight lately.  That might be one of the best parts about breastfeeding, actually.  That should be a selling point for women who aren't sure they want to nurse their babies: eat everything in sight and still lose the baby weight!

All of this cooking might also explain why the only two things I want for Christmas are a jogging stroller and a deep chest freezer.  Between the milk bags and leftovers, our side-by-side fridge/freezer is busting at the seams.

side note: who am I?  I'm cooking and talking about freezers.  When did I become so domestic?  And OLD?

Betwixt and between all of that cooking, we also decorated our pumpkins for Halloween.  Now that Oliver is around, I'm determined to actually celebrate holidays.  We've often been guilty of letting them pass us by with no plans, but even if we only have our own small, cheesy celebrations, I love starting family traditions that can stick for years to come...when he can actually remember!

One of my favorite blogs featured some pumpkin decor ideas from years past and despite the fact that they were all adorable and fun, this was the only one I thought I might be able to handle.  So I set to work and ta-da!

Between all of the rain and letting coats of paint dry (and diaper changing and working and well, life), it basically took all week to finally get them finished and on the front stoop, but I was pleased with how they turned out!  

Basically, I just used red puffy paint to create the monogram and the design, let it dry, and then gave them a few coats of glossy yellow spray paint.  Easy and I think they're cute even if Matt's reaction was less than enthused.

We also used YHL's idea to incorporate Oliver into our jack-o-lantern this year.  It involved a bit of baby-wrangling.

I did my best to trace O's hand prints on a piece of paper and then cut them out and taped them to our pumpkin from last week's trip to the orchard.  Matt then had to take over as it was way past baby's bedtime.

(That's our friend, Patrick, who successfully carved a much more elaborate pumpkin in the time it took us to do ours)

And the end result:

While we doing all of this craftiness, I should mention that THIS was happening outside:



Yep.  Snow.  In October.  Yippee.

More Halloween goodness coming tomorrow!