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Yep, that just about says it all. Don’t forget the whipped topping! From Jeff Wysaski at Pleated Jeans. Link -via Buzzfeed
Thomas Willeford of Brute Force Studios has released a guide on how to make your very own steampunk pumpkin for Halloween: Link [PDF] - via GeekDad
Feast your eyes on these creative jack-o-lanterns designed to display your favorite video games! Ranker listed 35 of them -not 35 jack-o-lanterns; there are way more than that, but 35 video games that have been carved on pumpkins. From Oregon Trail to Halo, from Tetris to Doom, you’ll see them all, and get some great ideas for your own jack-o-lantern! Link -Thanks, Brian!
Ken Desrosiers grew the biggest pumpkin in Connecticut history. He also kept a camera on it so we could enjoy this time-lapse video of its journey to 1,487 pounds! Notice the solar panels leaves moving to grab all the sunshine they can. Videogum has a list of neat taglines for this video. Link -via The Daily What
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Spooky
Corks (Set of 3) - $24.95
Here are the perfect Halloween item for your favorite wine lover: the Spooky Corks wine bottle stoppers exclusively from the NeatoShop. The handmade wine corks feature a pumpkin, a tombstone, and a witch's hat. They're handmade and handpainted by local indie artists here in California (made in USA - yay!) and are unfrighteningly priced at just $9.95 a piece (save $5 when you buy all three)
Link | More fun Halloween stuff
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Pumpkin Apron – $33.95
Get into the spirit of Halloween with this great little Apron from the NeatoShop. The Pumpkin Apron easily converts from a full apron into a half apron. The Pumpkin Apron is fun and functional.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Aprons and Kitchen Stuff!
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Someone had to do it sooner or later. It’s a new way to add delicious bacon to your holidays -bacon Pumpkin Pie!
In the spirit of fall here in the Pacific Northwest, here is a recipe of my friend Joe’s own design! He sought to bring bacon to the dessert menu, and hunted for a pie media capable of sustaining a bacon infusion while retaining deliciousness. Pumpkin (perhaps rhubarb) is the only one he could think of. I offer this recipe to all you bacon lovers out there.
Complete directions are at Allrecipes. Link -Thanks, Peter!
(Image credit: Sunny Byrd)
Pure Organic has an infographic with several ideas for what to do with your Jack-o-Lantern after Halloween. How about giving it to the birds?
Instead of throwing your pumpkin away, fill it with bird seed and let it serve as a feeder for birds. When it starts to get soft then compost it or refill with seeds and throw it into the woods.
I normally just paint ours for Halloween, so I can cook it later. Link -via Buzzfeed
When you produce a skull every day, what are you going to do for Halloween? Noah Scalin at Skull-s-Day carved a pumpkin and found the skull inside! Link -via The Daily What
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Mike Szczys went all out this Halloween and installed a matrix of 70 LEDs in a pumpkin! The result is a way to scroll messages in the dark for visitors and trick-or-treaters. See a video of the Jack-o-Lantern in action, and the complete process of building it at Hack a Day. Link -Thanks, Mike!
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Cake Wrecks asks the question: How hard can it be to make a pumpkin cake? And then answers it by posting the worst attempts at making a cake look like a pumpkin. This is just one. Eight more await your viewing. Link
Also check out the roundup of horrible Halloween cakes. Link
This gourd, dated 1793, was originally used to store gunpowder but may also have contained something much spookier. Carved into its surface are the words,“Maximilien Bourdaloue on January 21st, dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his beheading.” It was not unusual in those days for people to dip their hankies in blood on the scaffold to keep as a ghoulish souvenir. This particular bloody handkerchief is no longer inside the gourd but dried blood residue remained and was subjected to DNA testing which established a connection to French King Louis XVI.
Link – Via Uncertain Times
How did the sport of competitive giant pumpkin-growing get so big? I mean, it’s really big!
1. Chris Stevens of New Richmond, Wisconsin grew a pumpkin this year that weighed in at 1,810.5 pounds -considerably bigger than the previous world-record pumpkin that weighed 1,725 pounds. The big pumpkin was weighed at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Stillwater, Wisconsin Minnesota last weekend. How did he grow a pumpkin that big? Stevens has a 10,000-square-foot pumpkin patch, in which he grows only one pumpkin per vine. He shades the fruit from the sun, and feeds the vines cow manure, fish emulsion and seaweed.
2. Competitive pumpkin growing really began with William Warnock of Ontario. He grew the Rennie’s Mammoth variety of pumpkins, which were billed as capable of growing to over a hundred pounds. However, Warnock’s pumpkins were much bigger. In 1900 and 1904 he produced fruits that weighed over 400 pounds! His 403 pound world record set in 1904 stood for 76 years. See Warnock’s pumpkins here.
3. The most common variety of pumpkin grown for world-record competitions is the Atlantic Giant, which produces the largest fruit of any plant in the world. The variety was first cultivated by Nova Scotia farmer Howard Dill in 1976. It was Dill who finally broke Warnock’s big pumpkin record in 1979, and grew record-setting pumpkins for several consecutive years afterward. The Dill family still sells the record-breaking seeds.
4. During the last few years of the 20th century, the competitive pumpkin community was rocked by cheating, scandals, and infighting -enough to power a soap opera. The main governing body of the competitions was the World Pumpkin Confederation. A split in the membership led to the creation of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, which now oversees official weigh-ins.
5. The first pumpkin that weighed over a thousand pounds was grown in 1996 by Paula and Nathan Zehr of Lowville, New York. Their record-breaking pumpkin weighed an astounding 1,061 pounds, which won the couple a $50,000 prize for reaching the 1,000-pound milestone. Since then, half-ton pumpkins have become “common”. The world record for large pumpkins has been broken every year this decade, except for 2008.
Can’t decide what kind of pie to serve after Thanksgiving dinner? Make them all in one pie pan! Cakespy at Serious Eats experimented with pecan, apple, and pumpkin pie recipes to make this triple threat. The best results came from the pie divided into sections, as seen in the picture. The recipes are included. Link -via Unique Daily
Here’s a fine and seasonally-appropriate example of the Hollow Face Illusion, created by Tony Bailey. Also in this category, Three Figurines is not to be missed!
Botropolis (a robot-themed blog) has pictures of 10 Jack-O-Lanterns modeled to look like robots. Pictured above is Punk-O-Tron, a work by flickr user Ang & Nick. Others are inspired by Transformers, Star Wars, and Short Circuit.
Comments Off John Gill and Gary Arold of Hurley, New York built a compressed air cannon in 2006 that can fire a pumpkin (but they prefer squash as ammunition) up to a mile away. Adam Bosch writes in the Times Herald-Record:
The cannon is mostly used on weekends to attract people to Gill’s Farm Market on Route 209 in Hurley, but sometimes the guys get together at the 1,500-acre farm and blast it when nobody’s around. Just for fun.
They’ve shot pumpkins, scuba tanks and a basketball filled with corn and foam insulation. They once scattered some geese by accidentally shooting into the flock. Then there’s the time they shot a bowling ball more than a mile.
“The first time we shot a bowling ball, that’s was probably the worst thing we ever did,” Arold says. “It kept going and going and going.”
Link via CrunchGear
You may recall the Dalek Pumpkin from 2006, the Snap-o-Lantern from 2007, and the Dark Detecting Jack-o-Lantern from 2008. The fertile minds at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have announced their Halloween pumpkin project for 2009, and it’s a winner!
The Rovin’ Pumpkin’ is a simple robotic pumpkin, and a close cousin of the Snap-O-Lantern. Silently, it sits on your porch– camouflaged amongst the humble squashes.
After a minute, its green eyes start to glow, and it creeps… moving about one foot to the left… and stops. The eyes go dark again. It fades into the darkness. And it waits.
After several minutes and several steps, it reverses direction, and begins to creep the other way. Hopefully before it falls off of your porch.
The Rovin’ Pumpkin is made from Lego parts, a small motor, LEDs for eyes, and a pumpkin. Instructions and a video are included in the article. Link
Comments Off Maybe you remember the Super Mario inspired Jack-o’-lantern. As a follow-up, here you can learn how to create your own Super Mario Brothers 1-up LED powered pumpkin.
Link [Metacafe] – via Boing Boing
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Turn a regular pumpkin in to something special with Ray’s Pumpkin-Carving Tutorial, featuring wonderful 3-d carved images. If you can recreate these works of art, you’ll be the envy of the neighborhood! Link | via J-Walk Blog |
