We went for traditional pumpkin carving this year. I’m not a big fan of scary things and every time I try to make a scary face it never lives up to my expectations. Instead of making a scary face, I went for a tribute to the Alma mater:

Alright, I admit that when I was down in beautiful Charlottesville I was pretty tired of the constant contest to see how many different words “Hoos” could fit into. But I’ve been gone long enough (too long, tear) and I just couldn’t help myself (much to the chagrin of my VT grad roomies).

Speaking of roomies, they each made their own pumpkin…and countered with this VT tribute inspired by two of my favorite bloggers:

One roomie went for the head injury pumpkin, while the other went for a Tim-Burton inspired creation:

We just used paring knives and steak knives to carve our pumpkins, and pretty much free handed our drawings, using the ridges in the pumpkins as guides to make the designs somewhat symmetrical.

We carved our pumpkins about a week before Halloween, which we discovered was a little too early. In our defense, we wanted to carve them in time for our party, which was a week before Halloween (we had other plans for Halloween weekend). We kept them inside to protect them from wayward pumpkin smashers. In hindsight, I think being indoors is what ultimately led to their early demise. By Wednesday, the pumpkins were disgustingly rotting on an end table in front of our window. Miraculously, my pumpkin survived until Hoolloween.

We put our surviving carved pumpkin and three smaller pumpkins we had on our front steps. We also bought two boxes of lights for under $3 each from CVS and strung them along our railing. My favorite decoration was the pumpkin scene I made on a Lite-Brite that I snagged on Freecycle. I’m looking forward to using the Lite-Brite for more holiday décor. Also, check out the blue light stick that we used to light up the pumpkin instead of a candle.

Can we just all admit right now that even though Halloween is a lot of fun, it’s also a ton of pressure? Every year I want to dress up as something fun or clever, but I can never come up with anything! I’m not really the type of girl that wants to do the super sexy costume (but I do want to look cute course). The closest I ever got to that was wearing my brother’s boyscout shirt and hat freshman year of college:

Some years I came up with more topical costumes. Just consider 2008, which was simply a gift from God:

This year I was especially proud of myself. Inspired by a kids costume I saw online, I decided to go as a childhood classic: My Little Pony!

I already owned the shirt, and found a pair of pants at Walmart that matched perfectly. I picked up a set of iron-on decals at Michaels, and ironed the biggest one to the seat of the pants, pony style. I also put some smaller hearts on the bottom of the legs.

To make my mane, I bought a $6 blond superstar wig from Walmart, rubber banded sections at the “scalp” and cute them off of the wig. 

 

At first I was going to use yarn, but I wanted the hair to be the same curly (eventually ratty) hair like Pony’s. After cutting up the wig, I took the pieces into our backyard, placed each piece in a cardboard box, and lightly spray-painted the wig hair hot pink and yellow. I thought about using spray hair color, but I didn’t want my tail rubbing off on any furniture. 

Once the hair was dry, I put my hair in two ponytails (one above the other) and pinned five wig hair pieces into my hair with bobby pins. I put a rubber band around the rest of the pieces, tied a ribbon around it, and safety-pinned it the tail to the back of my paints.

To make my ears, I taped two triangle pieces of paper together to make an ear, and then I taped both ears to a headband I already owned. To add a little extra to the costume, I painted my nails hot pink, drew hearts on my hands with a permanent marker, and put stick on jewels next to my eyes and around my collar. I also had fun with some teal and pink eye shadow.

To add a finishing touch to the costume, I carried a small pink hairbrush with me. I also picked up a Pony during my Walmart trip (I couldn’t help myself) and she accompanied me to a party or two as well. Everyone had fun brushing my hair (OK not really, it was too fragile for real brushing):

Now that Halloween is over, I can start thinking about how to decorate for Christmas, which I’m especially excited about since we’re living in grownup digs now. For this coming Holiday, I promise I’ll document the decorating process along the way, instead of after the fact…