Tender Mercies

For some unknown reason, Fall has decided to stay for a long time here in Interior Alaska, and I am not complaining about it. Instead, I am falling in love with some fall activities like pumpkin carving and applesauce making!   Pumpkin Carving I've never been a huge fan of Halloween, but carving pumpkins brings the little kid out in me, and I enjoy reaching my hand into the squishy, slimy pumpkin and pulling out all of its guts. I like carving funny faces and enjoying the company of good friends while doing so.  Usually I take forever  to decide what to carve, but this year, I settled on a simple Frankenstein design in about 5 minutes! Go me!! Usually I use the pumpkins for puree later, but this year it has been so warm, that the squirrels got to them before I could. Oh well! I guess I am just going to have to go get some pie pumpkins instead.   Cute, right?!  The best "instant" candle for jack-o-lanterns is a cell phone! Genius. This one won fo...

Happy Halloween!  While I may not be too keen on dressing up and trick-or-treating for Halloween, I do love carving pumpkins, roasted pumpkin seeds, cooking with pumpkins, and everything that has to do with pumpkins, butternut-, carnival-, acorn-, spaghetti-, and every other kind of squash out there!  Normally I would say I like the autumn colors outside, but as it is already winter here in Alaska, that is not a perk of Halloween anymore, at least for the time being.  We had another couple from church come over to our house on Saturday to carve pumpkins with us.  I made chili and we enjoyed being together.  I had a difficult time coming up with what to carve, but I knew that if I wanted it to look good, I had better keep it simple.  So I decided to stick with an Alaskan theme and carve the big dipper that is on the state flag.  Marshall was a little bit more creative than me, and carved a p...