I hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween weekend! I can’t believe October has already come and gone. Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Goodness gracious.  At least there is amazingly good food to look forward to!

With Halloween comes pumpkin, and of course pumpkin carving! I couldn’t help but take pictures of the process this year.  I know I have done the cut-out of the bat too many times to count, but it’s just too cute.

Before ceramics, I was interested in design (graphic design/illustration/web). I know the photo above isn’t much, but I thought I’d just put something real quick together.

I have never roasted pumpkin seeds before, and this year I saved the seeds from my carved pumpkin and found a pretty delicious recipe from 101 Cookbooks. I went with the Black Tea & Butter Pumpkin Seed Recipe. For next time, I would probably cut down the butter by a tablespoon (I had quite a bit of extra and I tried to have paper towels absorb it), and I used a vanilla chai tea.  The vanilla chai was a fantastic flavor to go along with the pumpkin seeds, and I’ll definitely stick with that again.

Both the top right and the bottom picture came out very well with the focus.  I can’t say I really know what I did, but I got what I was aiming for.  I still seem to be having trouble with getting the photograph focused in the parts I want, and seems to be a hit and miss sort of thing. I figure I’m getting a little better though.

And then during the afternoon by Mom and I decorated our house with (fake) spider webs, and it looked fabulous at night! The trick-or-treaters were absolutely adorable.  I tried to take pictures in between the groups of kids, and I think I got some interesting shots but this was definitely different for me.  I really have not shot much at night so it really was just a huge experimentation.

I laid down on the ground and just looked straight up for this shot.  It immediately became a favorite from this group just because it was just spontaneous and I really liked the composition I got.