Jack-o-lantern Spectacular

Happy Halloween!

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, this year however I did not do terribly much. No dressing up, and we did not even buy candy. Last year we bought candy and didn't get any trick-or-treaters, so of course this year we didn't buy any, and low and behold – we got a group! I told Jordan to stay away from the windows/ doors so they wouldn't bother to come to our house (since there are three houses at our driveway)—so of course he kept sticking his big-old-head right out the window. Doh! Nonetheless the kids departed without knocking on our door… I had managed to find a bag of unopened raisins if need be.

No one else made the long trek up our driveway, thankfully.

My best friend from home, Ariane, who I've known since kindergarten, is an artist, and was hired to help decorate and carve pumpkins for the great jack-o-lantern spectacular at the Roger Williams Zoo. I had never heard about it before, but apparently it is a big deal. My sister (who lives in Rhode Island and went to Roger Williams University) said it is quite the happening time and people wait for hours to get in!

Since we were “with the artist” we got VIP treatment and got to skip the 2 hour long line! We also got to go in a back entrance and snuck a peak at some of the sleepy zoo animals (which were not technically on display at the time.) I haven’t been to a zoo in so long! It was very interesting hiking off the beaten path of the zoo walk ways (Though my sister kept referencing that it seemed like the beginning of a bad horror movie, trucking through the pitch black woods behind some angry goat creature’s (Aoudads) lair.) 

For the past month or two she had been working at “The pumpkin house” where they get 100+ pound pumpkins and draw on them with sharpies (which when you see the size of the pumpkins and how much black is on some of them – its pretty amazing all they used was sharpies, and of course the carving). So anywhere you see black, they had colored it with sharpie, versus anywhere light looking was carved out and that is where the LED lights shine through.

Here is a 100+ pound pumpkin pre carving! 

This year’s theme was Hollywood so the zoo was set up by movie categories including classics/ musicals such as “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone with the Wind” and “The sound of Music” followed by comedy with Betty White, Bill Cosby, Eddy Murphy etc,

Here are some of Ari's Chicago Pumpkin that she was just working on when I harassed her for some pictures! 

Then horror with Pan’s Labyrinth, Jason, Chucky, Freddy

There is Alien or Predator or one of those movies I have never seen. 

 and kids movies and lots of puppy pumpkins that I am not sure what they were representing but they sure were cute! My sister requested a Snuggles pumpkin be made. Whether that will happen or not is yet to be seen.

This was a Hyena from the Lion King group of pumpkins, you can see the monkey in  the back ground 

Along the road there were also lots of regular old jack-o-lanterns lighting the way.

 In Ariane’s case she was in charge of creating “intricate” pumpkins versus just jack-o-lanterns, so she was drawing and carving out faces, and scenes.  Another fun fact I would not have thought about, is since they are jack-o-lanterns, they do start to rot, or sometimes people poke them, or they somehow fall down and break. Considering it is a month long exhibit, many of the pumpkins need to be re-carved many times. Ari mentioned that it obviously gets boring the re-draw and re-carve the same thing, so she had 4 different Bill Cosby pumpkins carved throughout the month.

Jello Pudding! 

This one was on display when we went to the show 

So many pumpkins!

Jordan decided to use some of the pumpkins in his Halloween video too…

Any fun Halloween plans for you?