Halloween

Speaking of autumn, I normally take little notice of Halloween (although I do treat the occasion as an excuse to buy oodles and oodles of pumpkins and gourds, which I love). But this year, I really got into it. I just wish I had gotten into it earlier so that I had time to do a bit more around the house to make it feel more like Halloween.

In a last minute burst of inspiration, I had a sudden urge to cut up our beautiful, perfectly round pumpkin.

It's adorable, isn't it?

But I'm making it sound like I ought to get all the credit, which I absolutely do not deserve. Two days before Halloween, I had found an image of a pumpkin just like this on Google, and then had my lovely dad and husband carve it for me. But wait. There's a story behind that. I had left things so uncharacteristically late this year, I was swamped with studying for an exam, and then my parents flew to Bermuda from Toronto as a surprise to help us celebrate my husband's 30th birthday -- how sweet was that? -- so the night before Halloween didn't exactly go as I'd originally planned. It went better than I'd originally planned. The four of us were huddled over our kitchen table, scooping seeds out of the pumpkin and lending each other a helping hand (my dad's being the steadiest). It was so, so wonderful to have my parents here with us -- as if they had just dropped in for the evening and only lived a few blocks away -- to bring back warm childhood memories of pumpkin carving on chilly autumn nights.

Photo by L'Esthète