Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns

Last week the kids and I checked out a new to Colorado Halloween experience: Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns! 

Imagine 5,000 hand carved jack o'lanterns and pumpkin sculptures glowing in a beautifully lit garden setting as spooky music fills the air. Sounds like a Halloween dream, right? Well, it's a dream come true and you can experience it all at Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns. 

Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns makes it's Colorado debut this year at Hudson Gardens & Event Center in Littleton, just south of Denver. It's a wonderful family friendly event to add a little color and magic to the spooky season and definitely one you need to check out for yourself if you're in Colorado.

Let's take a look...

Fall Fun at Anderson Farms

It's finally Fall!

Well, it has been for a few weeks now, but it's finally starting to feel like Fall. The leaves are changing color, the nights are getting cooler, and there are pumpkins and Halloween decorations everywhere. 

To celebrate the coming of my favorite Season we headed to Anderson Farms in nearby Erie for a Fall Festival with Kim's work recently. It was such a fun event and a super fun place to celebrate the season.

Visiting a pumpkin patch is always one of my favorite Fall activities and just like everything with our move, a new pumpkin patch was on my "must find" list! Anderson Farms perfectly fit the bill checking off all my pumpkin patch favorites, plus more! Tractor rides, pumpkin picking, a corn maze, cheesy photo opportunities, a petting zoo, fun rides and amusements... it's all there.

Hoes Down Harvest Festival 2016

Last weekend we left the city and headed to Fully Belly Farm in Yolo County for the annual Hoes Down Harvest Festival. This was our third time attending the festival and it was just as much fun as it was in previous years. Even better - it wasn't scorching hot like it has been in the past! And it wasn't stormy overnight like last year, so camping out was a little more comfortable. 

Pumpkin Patch 2015

Now that the Halloween madness and the girls are back to regular school hours (they had short days plus a day off last week) I'm playing catch up on the blog. Today I'm sharing our visit to the pumpkin patch from a few weeks back.

Our annual visit to a pumpkin patch is always greatly anticipated by Ava and Lola. They love choosing their own pumpkins to carve for Halloween and they can't wait for the other fun activities that await them at the pumpkin patch. In the past we've visited Petaluma Pumpkin patch (you can see our previous visits here and here) but this year we thought we'd try somewhere different for a change. We still wanted to head north as the landscape around there is so pretty so we decided to choose another pumpkin patch near Petaluma. After checking out the websites of several pumpkin patches in the area we settled on McClelland's Dairy. The girls were pretty excited about one particular activity that McClelland's Dairy featured that the other's didn't. The pumpkin blaster! 

As excited as we were for the pumpkin blaster, we decided to hit the field and choose our pumpkins first before heading to the activity area. Lola wasn't too picky about her pumpkins and pretty much just chose the first two that she came along - which admittedly, were pretty good pumpkins. Ava, however, had to check as many pumpkins as possible before deciding which two she would like. Mathilde just tried (unsuccessfully!) to pick up every pick up every pumpkin she saw. And she refused to wear shoes. Oh my were her feet filthy by the end of the day!

52 Weeks: Week 42

Week 42: Pumpkin Fun

California's weather may not have gotten the memo yet, but despite the lingering Summer weather, it's well and truly Fall now. And of course, that means it's pumpkin season!

One of my favorite places to take the girls in Fall is our local greengrocer, Monterey Market. Each Fall they have the most amazing pumpkin pile that kids can climb around on inside the store. You may remember my post from last year when Lola's preschool class went on a field trip to climb on the pumpkins (you can see it here).

Pumpkin Fun

Time for another Halloween catch up...

After our visit to Petaluma Pumpkin Patch we had lots of fun work ahead of us with our pumpkins. We carved jack-o'lanterns, roasted pumpkin seeds and made Mathilde and Sebastian pose inside of carved out pumpkins!

It was a beautiful day here so we spent the afternoon up on our roof carving pumpkins until the sun set. Here's a look at our pumpkin fun...

Pumpkin Patch 2014

A few weekends back we visited Petaluma Pumpkin Patch to pick our pumpkins for Halloween.

Ava and Lola had been looking forward to visiting the pumpkin patch for such a long time. It's one of their favourite things every year. This year we had our friends Kylie, Joel and Sebastian visiting from Australia. We were excited to share such an American institution with them. Plus it was Mathilde's first visit to a pumpkin patch and therefore a huge photo opportunity!

Pumpkins, pumpkins, everywhere...

Yesterday Lola's preschool class had a field trip to a local greengrocer.

That may not sound like the most exciting place to visit but when you see the giant pumpkin pile below you'll see why it actually was an exciting place to visit.

Every Autumn a mountain of pumpkins can be found at Monterey Market here in Berkeley. It's a favourite place for local kids to visit and climb the pumpkins. And it's a great spot for photo opportunities!

Our Pumpkin Patch Visit 2013

I love Autumn here in America. It's definitely my favourite season. 

With all of the beautiful trees ablaze with colour at this time of year Autumn is much more of a distinct season in the US than it is in Australia. Even here in northern California where it doesn't get all that cold, Autumn has a definite feel to it. In fact, here in the Bay Area early Autumn is actually the warmest part of the year with clear, sunny days and less fog than Summer. Although the days are warm the nights are starting to get chilly and the mornings can be quite crisp.

One of the main things I love about Autumn is the holidays. We've fully embraced Halloween and Thanksgiving since we moved to the US and the girls love getting into the spirit. Over the weekend we got into the holiday spirit by visiting a pumpkin patch to choose pumpkins for our Halloween jack-o'lanterns. We jumped in a Zipcar and headed east to Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm.

Scary pumpkin!

Carving Pumpkins

It is now officially Halloween!

Ok, so it's 1am and the kids are tucked up fast asleep in bed so there won't be any celebrating Halloween for quite a few hours yet.

I've been meaning to share some of our Halloween preparations here on Little Hiccups but I've been so busy with said preparations that I haven't had the chance. Even as I'm typing this I still have to finish off my costume. Let's hope the sewing machine going in the early hours of the morning doesn't wake the kids in the next room!

So while I take a little break from the sewing machine, let's have a look at the jack-o'lanterns that we carved this year...

One of my jack-o'lanterns

Fall Harvest Time: Apples

Last Saturday really was a harvest day for us. After spending the morning and early afternoon at Petaluma Pumpkin Patch selecting our Halloween pumpkins we headed a little further north to Twin Hills Ranch, Sebastopol for a little apple picking.  

Ava's bucket of Fujis

Fall Harvest Time: Pumpkins

Less than 10 days until Halloween so it's time to get cracking with the preparations. The first thing on our list? Carving jack-o'lanterns! But before we can carve said jack-o'lanterns we needed to find the perfect pumpkins for the job.

Last year we arrived in America less than a week before Halloween. By the time we got over our jetlag and were somewhat settled in we had little time to go all out with the Halloween preparations. We made sure to carve jack-o'lanterns, however as we had left it so late we were left with the dregs of the season's pumpkins at our local supermarket. This year I was determined that we wouldn't let that happen again. We decided to get in a little earlier with the pumpkin selection and rather than just walking downstairs to our local Trader Joe's supermarket we hopped in a Zipcar and headed to the countryside. Dotted all around the countryside at this time of year are pumpkin patches. You don't need to travel very far out of an urban area to find them. In fact, there are even pumpkin patches within cities. I thought we'd go for the slightly more authentic option and get out of the city.

So on Saturday we headed to Petaluma, almost an hour north of San Francisco. Here we visited Petaluma Pumpkin Patch for our Fall harvest time fun. We started by selecting our pumpkins: Two medium sized pumpkins, three mini pumpkins and one swan gourd - a gourd that looks like, you guessed it, a swan!

Here's a look at our day of pumpkin fun!

Rolling pumpkins is easier than carrying them when you're little

Halloween Wrap Up

Well, I've been a little slack at keeping Little Hiccups up to date lately. Well, more than a little slack really. I had all these grandiose ideas about the fantastic blog entries I'd post one I arrived in the US and was no longer bogged down with work, but as usual life (i.e. two small children) has gotten in the way!

So in an effort to get back into it here's the second part of my Halloween post - the post-Halloween post, as it were!

After all the excitement during the lead up to the big day, our first ever Halloween lived up to the high expectations of Ava and I. Ok, so there was a minor setback when we discovered that the Halloween party we'd been planning to attend wasn't actually on but our evening of trick or treating more than made up for it.

I had originally decided that both Ava and Lola would be dressed as ladybugs for Halloween. I'd been coveting ladybug hoodies that I'd seen on Etsy for quite some time and Halloween seemed like the perfect excuse to go ahead and buy them for the girls. Ava was happy with the idea of matching ladybug costumes until we stepped foot inside a Halloween superstore. Once she saw the huge array of (much more exciting) costumes she just had to find her own costume. Many costumes were tried on: Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Supergirl, weird cat in a miniskirt... I was quite surprised however when Ava decided that her favorite costume was Cleopatra. The reason for my surprise was that it was also my favorite costume for her! That doesn't usually happen. I think the fact that a wig was involved made it a little more fun than some of the other costumes.

Boo! It's Halloween!

The girls and I arrived in San Francisco a few days ago just in time for our first ever Halloween.

Ava is so excited about Halloween (as am I!) and has been eager to get into the spirit of the season with decorations, costumes and pumpkins.

Today we had our first go at making jack-o'-lanterns. We chose two perfect little pumpkins so the girls could have one each.
Ava wanted to help out as much as possible but there's only so much a four year old can help when it comes to carving hard vegetables with a sharp knife! After I cut the top off the first pumpkin I gave Ava a spoon to start scooping out the seeds and stringy "pumpkin guts". Ava was revolted by what the inside of the pumpkin looked like, and apparently by the smell, so she gave up on this job pretty quickly!

Ava ready for pumpkin carving