Pumpkinpalooza

Who doesn't love the changing of seasons? My favorite season shift is summer to fall. You can't beat orange leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, boots, and a chill in the air. To celebrate autumn, be had a pumpkin carving party, later titled pumpkinpalooza. While football played on the boob tube, we enjoyed some of the season's finer activities.

complete with a local Seattle band spinning on vinyl

Myrissa, my new roomie, put together a homemade, no recipe, beef stew. She is an amazing cook, with much credit due to my "supervising" of the operations. When offering to help, she kindly lets me know that "she's got it". How could I argue with that delicious smell filling the apartment. I let her do her thing.

Here is Ms. Krug hard at work on that stew.

After putting the stew in my crock-pot, which has gotten 4 times the use since moving in with a varsity chef (in other words, she has cooked 4 meals in it), we all loaded up and headed out to the pumpkin patch.

Our spin on American Gothic

Much happier than the original

We petted the animals. And for 25 cents you could feed them a handful of, uh, stuff...

gourds galore

what a happy little friend family

the selection process was not taken lightly

look at all them pumpkins

found the one

and behold, the final products

this is my french pumpkin, Pierre

harvest treats