Pumpkin Carving

When I was growing up, I was afraid of the pumpkin guts. I would not touch them for a whole bag of candy (and growing up I lived for candy). Anyway, I still don't enjoy it too much, so Jeff was nice enough to do the honors of gutting the pumpkin.I have this fear of Jeff stabbing me whenever he has a knife in his hands. Yes, it sounds crazy and it is crazy, but I did let him hold a knife to carve the pumpkin. My idea of carving a baby was quickly shot down, but Jeff's idea of carving bats for eyes was a hit. So we spent a couple minutes trying to remember how Batman draws his bat symbol. I think they turned out pretty good!Although I didn't do much gutting, I did carve out the mouth. And because I always post pics of Jeff looking wierd, I decided I had better post one of me looking wierd too. I was very tempted to Photoshop my chin so it wouldn't stick out as much, but I thought that would be cheating, so I give you permission to make fun of my sticky outey chin. Everyone else did growing up. For the most part I am over it now, but I remember having to draw our profiles and my classmates were like, "Wow, look at Melea's chin! It is like a witch chin! Melea, you should be a witch for Halloween!" And I was! The only thing I lacked was a huge wart on my chin.
Evan/Noel (whatever you would like to call him) and his pumpkin and Jeff and ours! Noel (pronounced "no-uhl", which is Leon, the name of his grandpa spelled backwards, I think) decided it would be cool to have a huge meat cleaver in his pumpkin, along with a few other knives and forks. Then it was brought up that might not be a good idea, especially with little kids coming trick or treating and there being real knives in the pumpkin on their porch, so he settled for plastic forks.
Another strange pic of me. I was trying to make the pumpkin face. Really, I just look dumb.
Jeff trying to make the pumpkin face. He eventually thought our pumpkin needed a sole patch under his mouth, so that was carved in there and busted our mouth a bit, but we fixed it enough so it will hopefully hold. :)
And then it was Amber's birthday! The big 2-4! Look at all the smoke! The cake is chocolate with cream cheese frosting and crushed peanut butter cups in the middle layer and along the outside. I made the cake from scratch and it turned out okay Jeff said, although he did say the cream cheese frosting would be better as just normal vanilla frosting, so we will have to try that another time, but the chocolate cake was nice and moist. It was my first time making one from scratch and fun to do!

As you can see, I ran out of room to put Amber's name after Happy Birthday, so I put "Amber, Happy Birthday!" Orange is for Halloween, which I love! We also went out to eat last Friday with Amber and Noel to an Indian restaurant-Masala. It was soooo good! If anyone wants to go, we will be more than willing to accompany you and show you just what is good to eat!