carving pumpkins and making jam

Last night we finally got around to carving/designing the pumpkins the kids brought home from the pumpkin patch. We decided to make a dragon with Easton's pumpkin which is fitting since Easton is going to be a dragon this year (not a purple dinosaur like Barney). Just so you are all forewarned...you will be on my bad side if you say that Easton is or looks like Barney.

Nathan carved the dragon while I baked pumpkin seeds. Easton and Blair colored and played with Mr. Potato Head. There job was to pick out which Mr. Potato pieces we would use for Blair's pumpkin. Blair's pumpkin was too small to carve so we decided to decorated it instead. Easton thought Blair's pumpkin needed some color to it so he added some black to the pumpkin. He's a smart kid to know that orange and black are Halloween colors. After the pumpkin seeds were done I finally got around to helping the kids decorate Mr. Pumpkin Head.

Easton and Blair playing with Mr. Potato Head.

Easton with finished Mr. Pumpkin Head.

Blair and Easton with Pumpkin Head.

Finished glowing dragon.

As some of you know we have a couple fruit trees in our backyard (plum, pomegranate, and lemon). We thought about making plum jam when we had plums but never got around to it and instead experimented and tried making some cobblers (we always picked them too early so our cobblers were way too sour. Maybe next year we will get it down). Anyways, we decided we would make jam with our pomegranates. We bought all the supplies and made about 9 jars. It tastes really good but it was more of a syrup consistency than jam. Nathan tried to fix it the next night and improved the consistency but it still isn't quite what we were hoping for. We still have tons of pomegranates left so I guess we will do what we do best, which is experiment, and hope that next time it turns out a little better.

Finished jam/syrup!