Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza 2010

Happy Halloween everyone! For those of you that don't remember, two years ago I posted pictures of the pumpkins X and I carved for Halloween. I really wanted to turn it into a yearly tradition, but last year we were so busy with the Murder Mystery Dinner that we just didn't have enough time to get any done. So I had to make up for it this year! I don't have any novels to tell of inspiration-invoking pumpkins this year, but I still had fun coming up with unique ideas to carve. Since X wasn't around this year, I still got her involved by having her help me come up with some of these ideas. Hover over each picture below with your mouse to see what the pumpkins look like when they are lit!

Red M&M

Yellow M&M

Hunchbart

Jelly Belly

Several people have told us about a free tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Northern California, so on our way back from our trip to San Francisco we just couldn't resist stopping to check it out. We're both pretty inquisitive in regards to how things are made (we love watching shows like "How it's made") so we figured this would be pretty awesome. We weren't let down!

Outside the Jelly Belly factory

X standing in front of the creepy Jelly Belly mascot

All of the pictures inside the Jelly Belly factory are made out of (you guessed it) jellybeans! Most of the pictures are made up of over 10,000 individual jellybeans!

A jellybean buffalo nickel

Three jellybean presidents

Two Jelly Bellies (after we ate all those jellybeans!)

We weren't allowed to take pictures on the actual manufacturing floor, but we were able to see the whole process. Unfortunately we went during the weekend so nothing was actually running, but it was still cool to see all the machinery and each stage of the jellybean. We also got to try out some of the new flavors they are working on, and also some of those horrible trick jellybeans (think earwax, dog food, and rotten egg). With all the free jellybeans that you wanted to try, who wouldn't love coming here? We would just recommend if you are interested in going that you go on a weekday so you can see everything in action!

Unpleasant Neighbors

Throughout the summer we worked pretty hard on our yard to try to keep it looking nice. We even cleared away the spider webs that we found, but we noticed that some of them kept showing up again a few days after we cleared them. We never saw any spiders out during the day, so one night we went out with the flashlight to see if we could spot any culprits. We found out that apparently the rocks used for our landscaping are a favorite vacation spot for black widows!

Think your spiders are bad?

After an extensive search of our front and back yard we found and killed 10 black widows. All of them were huge and terrible! We are hoping to find some way to keep them from showing up again next year. Let us know if you have any suggestions.