Happy - Spooky - Fun!

I have to admit it - we tried...we tried not to carve pumpklins this year. Why? I have no idea. The subject came up between my daughter and me while in the car last weekend and we just kinda of sluffed it off. She said she didn't really feel like it and I likened it to getting the lights strung on the Christmas tree. Now, I really don't mind doing either one - and actually, carving pumpkins is fast and we all love the roasted seeds. Fall is even my daughter's and my favorite time of year - so why would we shun the innocent pumpkin?

Turns out - we didn't! Wednesday night we were getting more and more Halloweeny feeling. We'd rented two movies for my daughter and her friend to watch after a few holiday festivites on Saturday/Halloween night. I pretty much picked the flicks - see, my daughter only recently started getting the itch to watch any sort of scary movie. She was never interested as she is home alone several times a week and I never encouraged her to put all that crap in her head (fyi, I see Linda Blair's Regan from the 'Exorcist' every dang day of my life - so I know of what I speak!). But with the fall season, the Halloween holiday and her ever-blooming 'teenagery', some horror has been sparking her interest. Now she just needs to stay clear of the crap and watch what's good.

I shun the stupid scary movies like 'The Leprechaun' (I've never seen it - I just know it's dumb!) and the way too scary like 'The Exorcist' or 'The Evil Dead'. Over the last few weeks, she's seen 'Halloween', 'Friday teh 13th', 'The Amityville Horror' (the 3rd remake with Ryan Reynolds - cuz...welll...he's shirtless in it - a lot) and together we watched 'The Stepfather' (the original - that remake is crap for sure - avoid it!) and 'An American Werewolf in London' (she thought it was dumb).

Now, Minners (my daughter), doesn't like a lot of blood or nasty killing so I helped her choose two great flicks for Halloween night (who am I kidding - I totally chose them!....but for her own good ;-)). We got 'Poltergiest' - a Spileberg classic....Great story, a few laughs, some scary here and there but mostly, lots of "awesome!" kinds of stuff. Movie two...'The Blair Witch Project'. I know this movie scared lots of people - the Hubs thinks it's the scariest ever. However...everyone is wrong ;-) I mean, no killing (that you see anyway...just disappearing), no blood, no monsters.... It IS creepy and freaky, I'll give it that - but it won't leave horrible images in a teenagers head and that's the goal. So - SCORE one for mom!

K...I'm getting way off track... So - When we drove through the neighborhood to the movie store, we saw several houses had stepped up their spooky decor and the air was so crisp and cool....we knew we had to get pumpkins. So on Thursday, we got three pumpkins - two for her, one for me and as soon as dinner was over, we plunged our knives in. The pumpkin above is mine - I like his teeth!
And these two are my daughter's creations. That big one....he just makes me smile! Doesn't he look jolly? I can just imagine he has a big ol' belly 'guffaw' ready to roll out. If memory serves, she's never carved a mean or scary pumpkin in her life!

Just goes to show...Halloween doesn't have to be about scary...it can just be about fun. I'm sure I picked the right movies. :-)

Happy Halloween!