Right around this time last year, I moved onto the small block in Center-City Philadelphia where I live. My home needed a lot of renovation, but before that got started – I threw a party and had my friends over to help me demolish the place. Guests included camp celebrities like Karen Sharir, Matt Unger (Munger) and Eric Forti. Since the kitchen was getting completely ripped out, we had some fun spray painting the walls with Canadensis spirit!
Just in case you are wondering…my kitchen looks more like this now…
On my small little block, I have the nicest neighbors! One of my neighbors hosts a pumpkin carving contest every Halloween…and I found out about it too late last year, so I only had time to carve an apple! This year, I decided to take it seriously -but this was my first time carving a pumpkin! Maybe I had carved a pumpkin when I was younger – but it probably happened while I was in the single digits (meaning under age 10) and I barely remember it!
On the day of the contest, I went to Johnson’s Farm in Medford, NJ (it is a seriously adorable “pick your own farm” – it might end up being a Camp Canadensis field trip location in the future!) and I picked out a pumpkin…but I still didn’t have a design idea! After getting it home, I started to clean it up and scoop out the insides – which resulted in a delicious snack once my roasted pumpkin seeds (with sea-salt and garlic powder) were ready! The party was only two hours away, and I still had no idea what to carve on my pumpkin, so I just started digging in, and this is what I ended up with…
I call it my “Starry Eyed Pumpkin”. Carving a pumpkin was much harder than I thought – but it was also so much fun! I’m already looking forward to trying it again next year. Being at camp, we are exposed to so many new and interesting things – it’s where I first tried water-skiing, camping, glass fusion…and the list goes on and on! Even though my first time carving a pumpkin wasn’t at camp – it reminded me a lot of the satisfaction I get when I try something new during the summer. Maybe we can add a carving contest to our Camp Canadensis Halloween celebration in 2011?!
My neighbors all carved awesome pumpkins as well – take a look at a few of the best!
This is a skull with Jell-O Brains!
This was the winner, and my favorite! It’s an adorable duck…
Elmo was so cute! When he wasn’t glowing, you could see he was covered in red glitter!
Finally, we had some spookiness on the block – someone carved Frankenstein!
