Happy Halloween!

I've spent this week recovering from food poisoning, and rediscovering my inner creative child.

My work holds an annual costume and pumpkin decorating contest, and I happened to have a few pumpkins lying around, courtesy of my Mom and a trip to the Farmer's Market. Isn't this pumpkin beautiful? It's always nice to have a helper.

She ate baked and pureed pumpkin today, and got through half of it!

She loved touching the inside of this pumpkin, and pulling the newspaper into place for me. Here's the finished product:

Which probably would have done great in the pumpkin contest except for this...

Someone else thought of a cheeseburger, too! (Although he used a real burger and cheese). My friend, Kelly, made this amazing fish tank!

And there were some traditional carved pumpkins, too.

But I surprised myself and decorated a SECOND pumpkin, which ended up being my favorite!! (And winning the $50 first prize). Is it ironic that this was actually Zack's pumpkin?

Oh, and want to know how I transported it? Sometimes you have to think outside the box..

Anyway, sorry, I know this blog is about Mara. Whom I used to get some cuteness points with my costume...

Hey, it got me 3rd place. Not too shabby considering I'm velcro'd together in brown felt. Mara is an owl, I'm a tree (I had an owl hole on my belly), and my arms are the limbs and I have a little bird sitting on my shoulder. We have another party to attend tomorrow, so we'll be repeating this getup.

Happy Halloween!