Happy Halloween

Today is Halloween!!!! I actually wanted to say scary Halloween...But this is happy because, its the first Halloween for Shravan and I really dint want to scare him. So, whats this Halloween all about?. Halloween actually means "All Hallows Evening" celebrated on Oct 31st. What do people generally do? - trick or treat , attending costume parties, carving Jack-O-Lanterns, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories and watching horror films. So What did I decide to do - Carving Jack-O-Lantern offcourse :).The next very obvious question - What to carve? - I didnt want my little mind to wander and google all possible options, I gave the choice to Shravan and got an impulse response - MICKEY!!! how much time was saved :))

Well the prepartion started from Saturday. H(a)unted all possible super markets in Kongsberg to find a nice pumpkin to try our hands. Ram initially skeptical though was ok because he anyways knew he will get his halwa later out of it :)). We finally found our pumpkin in ICA. They had quoted 17.90 NOK but never realised its the cost of per kg and my pumpkin was 5.2Kg. Ended up paying nearly 90 NOK. High Time to learn Norsk - What say??? ;)))

Did a detailed study on Saturday evening as to how to carve step by step and here they go

Assemble all your tools and stencils. Didnt include the scissors and Knifes - reason so obvious - Shravan was hunting behind them. I go to grab the camera, he runs to hold the knifes and Ram happily sits and watches this ;))

Take off the top to clear the gutter inside. You can save them too. We can clean the gutter to get the pumpkin seeds alone, dry them and roast it for a quick snack along with your evening tea :)

You can paint by hand using black paints if you are good at it or tape the stencil along the pumpin and mark dotted images with knifes on top of the stencil. I took the easy route :)

Now the Journey begins. Reading the instructions, it looked like I can complete in other few minutes, but trust me it took few hours to get to this stage. A big thanks to Ram and Shravan for not disturbing me. Shravan will now and then come and peep to see his Mickey getting ready :)

Now to see your work, lit some candle or diya inside the pumpkin and close the top.wow!!!

My Mickey was ready. Did some detailed study on the corrections to be made and took another
sweet one hour to get it as neat as possible and this is how it finally looked in the total dark.

So, Happy Halloween!!!! I know this is incomplete without a pic of shravan holding his Mickey and Halwa for Ram. Will keep you posted :)