Picking and Painting

Over the summer we planted three pumpkin seeds, hoping that one of them would grow. As far as we can tell, all three seeds grew, and we ended up with 30 pumpkins in our wild sprawling square pumpkin patch. Instead of journeying far and wide for a Wedventure on October 21st, we decided to pick our pumpkins. Jay clipped each pumpkin from the vine, and the girls followed him around collecting the pumpkins and piling them on the grass. The kids gathered 29 pumpkins. Pumpkin #29 ended up being small and squishy, so we tossed it. Pumpkin #30 was underneath the trampoline and looked pretty green, so we left it there. Then we carried our abundant orangey-rific harvest onto the porch, where the pumpkins glowed in the afternoon sunlight. 

The girls and I tried cutting and oven-roasting three of the pumpkins (they were sugar pumpkins, after all), but we followed bad directions against my better judgement and it didn't pan out. We did save the seeds to toast when our pumpkin-processing energies rekindled. 

Side note: I find bilabial alliteration nigh irresistible, so Pardon my Plethora of Pumpkin Placement.

On Monday, five days after the Pumpkin Picking Party, the girls did some Pumpkin Painting. I was secretly hoping that Painting Pumpkins would rePlace carving the Pumpkins this year, but that didn't haPPen. We had enough Pumpkins to Paint and carve, with over a dozen to spare! I joined my daughters with the Painting Project and we ended up Plastering five Perfect Pumpkins in Paint between the three of us.  

Ok, overindulgence may have finally gotten the P-alliteration out of my system. For now.

I made a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, which always smell better than they taste. Maybe it was the acrylic paint fumes that altered my enjoyment of the small neon orange cake-like ball-cookies. But no, even once the paint had dried, the cookies were just...underwhelming. Oh well.

Later that afternoon, I went on a run whereupon I passed a pretty pumpkin patch before being scared out of my mind by a fence-jumping, bristling, barking, large black dog. FOCUS ON THE PUMPKINS. They are such a happy golden orange.

Jay held the most pumpkins at once: 6!

Painting round one.

Cookies and paint.

Jay, never one to enjoy art projects, opted out of pumpkin painting and instead enjoyed some hot chocolate while we filled the kitchen with paint fumes.

Proof that I was there.

Cute roadside pumpkin patch on the backstretch of my running loop.