Preparing for "Happy Pumpkin Day!"

My local shopping centre is running some Halloween themed kids' activities in the lead up to Halloween. Blossom, Bean and I headed down to the shopping centre to make some spider lollipops and look for Halloween pumpkins. 

Spider lollipops, check. I even made the kids wait until we got home before they devoured them so that they could show them to Daddy, and I'd planned to take a photo but they just couldn't wait that long! I turned around with my camera and they were already gone!

Halloween pumpkins @ supermarket #1 (Woolworths), fail. Apparently they'd only received 20 and another lady had come in and bought 15 of them. Supermarket #2 (Coles), fail. Oh dear.. not looking promising on the jack--o-lantern front. Perhaps some paper mache? No? Ok, let's try the Coles another 5 min down the road... Supermarket #3, WIN! Interestingly enough, both Woolies & Coles had pumpkins advertised for ~$4/kg.. but the Coles that we found the pumpkins at had them on sale for 69c/kg!! FTW!! At that price I figured I could afford to let the kids pick a pumpkin each as well as a couple for "Mummy & Daddy"... 4 pumpkins totalling ~11kg later I'd spent a grand total of $7.75! Had I found them at Supermarkets 1 or 2 I'd have been looking at $44 (or more precisely, only one pumpkin for the same price, because we definitely wouldn't have bought four!)

My husband's best friend (and the kids' favourite pseudo-uncle) came over to help out with some other stuff related to the house moving, and stayed for the "Carving of the pumpkins"...

Blossom "scooping out seeds"

Bean's jack-o-lantern design - the first cut.

First eye complete!

Uncle Bryden working on the mouth

Blossom's jack-o-lantern design, first eye complete!

Uncle Bryden working on the other mouth!

Finishing up the nose

Blossom's jack-o-lantern (no, it doesn't have ears, it was just a cool co-incidence!)

Uncle Bryden's new best friend (I don't know why he has pumpkin in his mouth)

Bean's jack-o-lantern 

Time to dim the lights and test them out!

Two more pumpkins to carve tomorrow, "Monster Donuts" to make at the shopping centre and some sewing & cutting I hope!