For the approval of the midnight society... The Tale of the Treacherous Pumpkin

I don't like Halloween. I find it incredibly stressful. Trying to come up with an incredibly clever costume so you can parade around going "look at me, look at me" is so not my cup of tea. But in keeping with the turning over of a new leaf in my life... this year I tried to be festive.

I dressed up (sort of), I went to see Rocky Horror at the movies (not exactly what I expected but 6 down, 95 to go), and I carved a pumpkin. Well... I use the term "carved" loosely.

Awhile ago I Stumbled upon these really cool Martha Stewart celestial pumpkins. And I thought they were really pretty.


So I got rather excited. And lo and behold there was a punkin' carvin' soiree coming up which would provide an excellent time and location to create some Halloween wonderment.

I bought a pumpkin. I bought a carving kit.

Turns out my pumpkin had very little interest in being cut into. By the time I finally got a hole in mine, I had broken the saw from my carving kit and some people were already completely done with their newly lit jack o lanterns. I still had scraping and hole-punching and wiring to do. So I enlisted some help...

(Thank you, Grant. You are the best adopted little brother ever.)

And when the scraping was done, I was offered a screwdriver to help get the holes into the little pumpkin body. This also took some effort.

So Grant enlisted the help of Kate. And then just to make it a group effort...

Mark attacked the decidedly stubborn gourd as well.

Eventually it was ready to go. So I took my time and meticulously wired my little set of Christmas lights all throughout my soon-to-be amazing pumpkin. And nothing could have prepared me for the image that lay before me when we plugged the pumpkin in.

The lights didn't FREAKIN' work!

(Grumble grumble grumble)

Nevertheless, my disappointing pumpkin joined the ranks of all the other awesome ones on the porch.

And that evening I took it home swearing to fix it up right. I bought another set of Christmas lights. I rewired the stupid thing. I set it on my patio. And I plugged it in again. This time it lit up. Hurrah! It took hours of work and the efforts of 4 people to create...

something this lame.

You may have won this battle, Martha Stewart. But the war is far from over!