Archive for category: Halloween

Halloween costumes have evolved with time and technology. You can get a costume off the rack but making your own is maybe the most fun. Pull out the stops and do a deep dive into theatrical makeup. Like that cutie with the sideways smile next to the joker in row 4. Then there is the shoe family in row 5. But I really love the simplicity of the father-son costumes in rows 6 and 7. Elvis and his guitar, the Blues Brothers, Where’s Waldo and Spy vs Spy.  Look at these cool couple’s costumes in row 8: Pencil & Paper and Jack & Jill after rolling down the hill. But in row 9 are my favorite subjects, food, like Bacon & eggs. And a friend of mine dressed as Mustard & Ketchup one year. Babies are always fun to dress up, too: Carrot, spaghetti, and a cupcake. Then get the pets involved. (that’s when cats will usually leave the room)

With all that’s going on, I just can’t skip Halloween.  I know it’s the kid in me, but I have such fond memories of candy, decorations, pumpkin carving, and costumes.  As a kid, I LOVED going to the store with my parents and picking out a costume. I remember the plastic face mask and the clothes – especially the capes!  (and sword or pitchfork).  Having a cape made you into a superpower – and it was even cooler running door to door and having it flap in the breeze.  I’m sure mom and dad have pictures of me dressed up with my brothers and sisters – with 18 kids in the family, it was quite the task to get us all dressed, and then organized to go door to door. The memories of my girls going out, starting with me carrying them with their little containers to when they graduated to the pillowcases still bring smiles to my face. With Halloween tomorrow, I’m sure you have plans to be safe and socially distant – good luck with that.  For my trivia and history buffs, here’s some fun info on how Halloween and unusual costumes came to be.  Enjoy!  And thanks to History.com and CNN for the info.  For some fun music to play while you read along, click HERE.

• Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.  The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, also celebrated their new year on November 1.
• This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. It was believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred (and the need to hide from evil spirits).
• In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, the Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.
• To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.  When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
• By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.  The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today.
• On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
• By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.
• All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
• The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.
• As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.
• Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.  here are some great ghost stories
• Halloween costumes from the first half of the 20th century were terrifying. Drawing on the holiday’s pagan and Christian roots — as a night to ward off evil spirits or reconcile with death, respectively — people often opted for more morbid, serious costumes than the pop culture-inspired ones of today.
• It was believed that, during the fall festival, the world of the gods became visible to humans, resulting in supernatural mischief. Some people offered treats and food to the gods, while others wore disguises — such as animal skins and heads — so that wandering spirits might mistake them for one of their own.  Hiding behind their costumes, villagers often played pranks on one another, but blamed the spirits.  Masks and cover-ups came to be seen as means to get away with things.
• In medieval England and Ireland, people would dress up in outfits symbolizing the souls of the dead, going from house to house to gather treats or spice-filled “soul cakes” on their behalf (a Christian custom known as “souling”).  From the late 15th century, people started wearing spooky outfits to personify winter spirits or demons, and would recite verses, songs and folk plays in exchange for food (a practice known as “mumming”).
• By the 1920s and 1930s, people were holding annual Halloween masquerades, aimed at both adults and children, at rented salons or family homes. Costume preparations, many hand-made,  began as early as August.  Falling right between summer and Christmas, the celebration also seemed to benefit from its timing in the calendar.
• Those same decades also saw the emergence of costumes influenced by pop culture, alongside the first major costume manufacturing companies. The J. Halpern Company (better known as Halco) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, began licensing images of fictional characters like Popeye, Olive Oyl, Little Orphan Annie and Mickey Mouse around this time. People also became fascinated with impersonating characters at the fringe of society, including pirates, gypsies and even bums became common outfit choices.
• Continuing the tradition of old practices like souling and mumming, Halloween pranks became a common phenomenon in North America — sometimes to the point of vandalism and rioting. By the mid-1940s, the press had dubbed the night’s anarchy (or its broken fences and smashed windows, at least) the “Halloween problem” — and costumes may have partly enabled that behavior.  In an effort to discourage criminal damage, local and national officials attempted to recast the holiday — and dressing up for it — as an activity for younger children. (The Chicago City Council even voted in 1942 to abolish Halloween and establish “Conservation Day” on October 31 instead).
• After World War II, as TV brought pop culture into family homes, American Halloween costumes increasingly took after superheroes, comic characters and entertainment figures. They also became increasingly store-bought: By the 1960s, Ben Cooper, a manufacturing company that helped turn Halloween into a pop phenomenon, owned 70 to 80 percent of the Halloween costume market.  It was around this time that adults started dressing up for Halloween again.  Like kids’ costumes, their approach was often more fun than frightening — and would eventually be just as inspired by popular movies or Hollywood fame.
• But there was still a place for scary outfits, encouraged by a slew of splatter-horror movies that started emerging in the 1970s and 80s, from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” to Wes Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
• According to those who track the traditions, costumes have certainly become more reflective of the times we live in, with parents dressing their kids as sports stars, movie stars, cartoon characters.  Many parents like to dress up as well, when walking with their kids, or greeting guests at the door.

Top 5 Characters for 2020:
·      Carole Baskin from Tiger King. …
·      Harley Quinn from Birds of Prey. …
·      Wonder Woman from Wonder Woman 1984. …
·      Cheerleaders from Cheer. …
·      Black Widow. …
·      Most popular – witch.

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.
As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))
Have fun!!

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It’s that time, folks! Get out your tools and start carving your pumpkins. Doing it outside is a good idea but the weather might keep you in. There’s one couple in the third photo at the top who thought it’d be a good idea to carve theirs under water. Makes for easy clean-up. No matter what your skill level, it’s really fun to create your very own jack-o-lantern. I have to say, there are some really clever and talented pumpkin carvers out there.

Traditions. Memories and family fun.  Does it get much better than everyone around the table carving pumpkins?  It’s one of my favorites! Growing up, all of my brothers and sisters would be working on carving the pumpkins together, you can only imagine the amount of pumpkin goo and seeds flying around everywhere. It took us as long to clean up the kitchen and dining room as it did to carve the pumpkins. As my own daughters got older, they all came to appreciate my sense of style, especially when using the power tools to REALLY carve the pumpkins. For some unknown reason I have never won any best pumpkin carving awards!   I went on line to get some really fun images and ideas to inspire you – for more, just type in great pumpkin carving ideas, and dozens of websites will pop up.  Here’s just a bit of trivia on Old Jack himself, and some practical guidelines to make your carving time fun, efficient and not too messy.  Thanks to kitchn.com, pumpkinnook.com and jessicagavin for the info.  Enjoy, and send me photos of your masterpieces!

The Irish brought the tradition of carving pumpkins into Jack O’Lantern to America. But, the original Jack O’Lantern was not a pumpkin. Pumpkins did not exist in Ireland. Ancient Celtic cultures in Ireland carved turnips on All Hallow’s Eve, and placed an ember in them, to ward off evil spirits.

The Tale of Stingy Jack and the Jack O’ Lantern goes back hundreds of years in Irish History. Many of the stories, center round Stingy Jack. Here’s the most popular story:

Stingy Jack was a miserable, old man who took pleasure in playing tricks on just about everyone: family, friends, his mother and even the Devil himself. One day, he tricked the Devil into climbing up an apple tree. After the Devil climbed up the tree, Stingy Jack hurriedly placed crosses around the trunk of the tree. Unable to touch a cross, the Devil was stuck in the tree. Stingy Jack made the Devil promise him not to take his soul when he died. Once the devil promised not to take his soul, Stingy Jack removed the crosses, and the Devil climbed down out of the apple tree.

Many years later, Jack died, he went to the pearly gates of Heaven and was told by Saint Peter that he was mean and cruel, and had led a miserable, worthless life on earth. Stingy Jack was not allowed to enter heaven. He then went down to Hell and the Devil. The Devil kept his promise and would not allow him to enter Hell. Now Jack was scared. He had nowhere to go, but to wander about forever in the dark Netherworld between heaven and hell. He asked the Devil how he could leave, as there was no light. The Devil tossed him an ember from the flames of Hell, to help Stingy Jack light his way. Jack had a Turnip with him. It was one of his favorite foods, and he always carried one with him. Jack hollowed out the Turnip, and placed the ember the Devil had given him, inside the turnip. From that day onward, Stingy Jack roamed the earth without a resting place, lighting his way as he went with his “Jack O’Lantern”.

On all Hallow’s eve, the Irish hollowed out Turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets. They placed a light in them to ward off evil spirits and keep Stingy Jack away. These were the original Jack O’Lanterns. In the 1800’s a couple of waves of Irish immigrants came to America. The Irish immigrants quickly discovered that Pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out. So they used pumpkins for Jack O’Lanterns.

What Variety of Pumpkin Should I Choose?
If you’re looking for specific varieties to hunt for, the ladies of The Peterson Sisters Pumpkin Patch suggest the Hobbit pumpkin, especially popular on the West Coast, or the Autumn Gold. Hobbits are 10- to 12-pound pumpkins and are considered a medium-sized variety. Autumn Golds are a very manageable variety, weighing between seven and 10 pounds. They turn a beautiful golden-orange color before fully ripe and are easy to carve, compared to other varieties.

Christy Lehner of Lehner’s Pumpkin Farm in Radnor, OH, says that the Gold Rush and Wolf varieties are popular for people who want larger jack-o’-lanterns. Both of these types of pumpkins weigh between 15 to 35 pounds, although they’re not necessarily the easiest to carve. If you’re looking for a statement-making pumpkin and aren’t afraid of using a little elbow grease, give one of these a try.

How to Pick a Pumpkin for Carving:
1. Pick it up and tap it: It should feel sturdy. When you tap it, you should hear a hollow sound.
2. Check the coloring: Choose one that has consistent coloring throughout.
3. Look for bad spots: Try to choose a pumpkin without any scratches, bruises, or dark spots.
4. Apply pressure: Flip the pumpkin upside down and apply pressure with your thumbs. If it’s not completely sturdy, the pumpkin isn’t fresh and will rot quickly.
5. Set it down: Make sure it sits flat! (Unless you want your jack-o’-lantern to sit a little crooked.) Imagine which side will be the front facing one with your decoration.
6. Be sure to carry it from the bottom: Don’t carry it by the stem — instead, cradle it from the bottom or tote it home in a bag.

Foolproof Method to Carve a Pumpkin
Carving a pumpkin isn’t rocket science, but it’s still wise to have a game plan. Before you lop off the top of that pumpkin and grab a handful of gooey squash guts, take a look through our basic guide to carving the best Halloween pumpkin.  Follow these steps and you’ll end up with a cute and classic jack-o’-lantern with easy, no-fuss cleanup afterwards.
1. First rule of pumpkin carving: Do it somewhere you don’t mind getting messy, ideally outdoors. Line your work surface (a sturdy table or the ground) with something you’ll throw away later — like butcher paper, newsprint, or flattened brown paper grocery bags. If using the latter, simply cut down one side of the grocery bag, then cut off the base of the bag so you have a big rectangle of brown paper. Layer a few of these on the table and you’re good to go.
2.  Once you’ve got your work surface ready, it’s time to assemble the proper tools. You can totally get a pumpkin carving kit from your local drugstore, supermarket, or Halloween pop-up shop. Or you can use a few tools from your kitchen. Make sure you have everything ready so you don’t have to traipse back through your kitchen with pumpkin-gut-covered hands. Two key tools for carving include a good cook 4.5-Inch vegetable knife and a strong ladle/spoon for scooping.  For more elaborate carvings, many creative designers add in an electric drill and multiple smaller carving knives and an X-ACTO knife.
3. Draw Before You Carve – In addition to your carving tools, you’ll need a pen for drawing your design onto the pumpkin, and couple big bowls — one for the seeds (the best part of pumpkin carving!) and one for the rest of the pumpkin goo and throwaway bits leftover from carving.

Whatever you do, save those pumpkin seeds! They’re so, so good roasted simply with oil and salt. It’s not hard, but here’s a link to a simple recipe.

Step By Step Instructions:

• Set up your workspace: Line a sturdy table with flattened grocery bags, newsprint, or butcher paper. Have your permanent marker, carving tools, and bowls nearby.
• Draw your design: After you’ve determined the best side of your pumpkin for a face, use the permanent marker to sketch out eyes, a nose, and a toothy grin.
• Draw your lid: Outline a circular lid around the pumpkin stem, about 5 to 6 inches in diameter. Add a notch in the back if you like — this makes it easier to line up.
• Cut out the pumpkin lid: With a slim pumpkin carving knife (the carving tool with a toothed blade like a mini-saw) or serrated knife, cut along the outline of your pumpkin lid. Make sure you slice through the pumpkin at a 45-degree inward angle, so you’ll be able to replace the lid without it falling in.
• Remove the pumpkin seeds: The seeds are all attached to the pumpkin and each other by thin strings. Grab the big bunches of seeds with your hands and place them in one of the bowls, to be cleaned later.
• Scoop out the insides of the pumpkin: Using a ladle or the scraper that came with your kit (or a metal spoon if you don’t have this tool), clean out the inside of the pumpkin until no stringy bits remain. Discard the pumpkin guts in the second bowl.
• Wipe off the pumpkin: Use the kitchen towel to wipe off the outside of the pumpkin so that it will be easier and safer to carve.
• Cut out the design: Make straight cuts into your pumpkin along the lines of your design, removing the pieces and discarding them in the refuse bowl.
• Clean up the details: Go back in and scrape out any stringy pieces or jagged lines with an X-ACTO knife or the wire tool from your carving kit. You can also scrape off the marker lines while you’re at it, though they won’t be visible in the darkness of night.
• Light your pumpkin: Insert a tea light candle in the bottom of your pumpkin. Use a long match or lighter to light the pumpkin and replace the lid. Tip: If you’re having trouble lighting the candle, try going through the mouth of the jack-o’-lantern instead of the top.
• Make roasted pumpkin seeds: Clean and dry the pumpkin seeds, then toss with oil, salt, and any desired seasonings, and roast in a low oven until golden brown.

(top) For the second time in 3 years, Mathia Willemijn won the world record for his behemoth pumpkin weighing 2,624.6 pounds. (all the rest) Carving pumpkins is really fun. Simple to complex there are some very creative people out there. And no matter how old you are Halloween is as fun as it is tiring.

While driving down to Heat Treat 2017 in Columbus, Ohio this year (GO BUCYEYES), I started thinking about our plans for Halloween, decorating, pumpkin pie (of course), and getting our pumpkins for carving with the girls.  Growing up, we would all have a pumpkin to carve and once completed we would place then on a long piece of wood in the from yard supported on two saw horses.  Now having 20 pumpkins in a row was quite a sight!  As I got older and had a family of my own, Jackie, the girls and I would go to our favorite pumpkin farm where they had a great deal!  All the pumpkins you could pick up at one time for $10.00. So…. any of you who know me most likely know what would happen next.  I needed to pick up 6 pumpkins and they all had to be the same size – carvable!  I am happy to say – Success!  Over the years I had to sadly give up that tradition.  Now, I am only allowed to carve pumpkins if I promise to be good and minimize the use of power tools! (Spade drills work really well!) I digress, now with time to wander, I was wondering what the world’s largest pumpkin is these days, who holds the record, and where it sits.  So, at a rest stop, I typed into my phone, and found – Ready – Mathias Willemijns, from Belgium, at the 2017 Giant Pumpkin European championship in Ludwigsburg, Germany on October 9^th, weighed in at 2,624.6 pounds. WHAT??? Here’s some more fun history and trivia to go along with the newest record – Good luck carving.

1. Mathias Willemijns grew a pumpkin of proportions not seen until this year. The Belgian man set a world record last week with a super squash that weighed 2,624.6 pounds.  Guinness World Records has yet to confirm it.
2. The previous world-record pumpkin was 2,323 pounds. Swiss grower Beni Meier set that record in 2014 at a weigh-off at the same event.
3. The first European settlers were stunned by our Native American’s ample crop of squash, which they mistook for melon.  Centuries later Irish immigrants abandoned the turnips they carved for jack-o-lanterns on All Hallows Eve, and replaced them with pumpkins, giving us our doorstep decorating traditions we still use today.
4. For many years, record-setting pumpkins – a variety of Cucurbita maxima, bred in Nova Scotia, was the standard, raised in cool-weather New England, where summer days are in the mid 80’s, maximizing photosynthesis without desiccating the bloated fruit, along with bonus sunlight throughout the growing season.
5. In the US, during June, giant pumpkins are growing exponentially, and by August, they’re packing on one to two pounds per hour, while guzzling about 100 gallons of water per day.
6. Many pumpkins are raised by amateur growers, who keep daily diaries filled with secrets.  Genetic lines include Pleasure Dome and Freak 2, with individual seeds we’d normally bake, salt and eat, selling at auction for almost $2,000.
7. The shift to European champions is rather recent, with the first German gourd-baking championship and pumpkin expo in 2001.  Since then, old world growers are clustering in northern Europe, using high tech greenhouses, heating, air conditioning, irrigation systems, and automatic fertilization.
8. The current winner, Mathias Willemijns, is the lead technician at a large vegetable research center, and uses his own 130 foot poly tunnel to handle only four large pumpkins. Soil nutrient nanotechnology and genetic technologies lead to bigger crops and faster growth.
9. Matt DeBacco of Rocky Hill, Connecticut has developed special blends that has excited the growers, and been a boom for the cannabis industry as well.
10. In the madcap world of competitive horticulture, the record holders are: Carrot: 20 pounds, Zucchini: 64.49 pounds, Radish: 68.9 pounds, Green cabbage: 138.25 pounds, Watermelon: 350.5 pounds.
11. Thank you Pintrest – here’s a link to the top carving designs – have fun!!  (and send me photos)