Pumpkin Core or... Gone Pumpkin

Gone Pumpkin (to the tune of the refrain of Alan Jackson's hit song from the 90's Gone Country)

She's gone Pumpkin, look at those fruits

She's gone Pumpkin, all up from their roots

She's gone Pumpkin, a new kind of decor

She's gone Pumpkin, it's not like before

My made up refrain is an ode to a new way of decorating this year for fall and that is to decorate with just pumpkins. In the past, I've done a mixture of traditional fall motifs such as pumpkins but I also threw in a decent bit of Halloween decor. I don't like scary/gory/ghost-y type decor; mostly my Halloween decor were signs and banners proclaiming Happy Halloween or Trick or Treat or things of that nature. 

I may return to decorating with my Halloween items next year and I may even put out a few Halloween decor items this year yet closer to Halloween. I'm not 100% set on my decor look for the fall and frankly, I'm not stressing about it! I'm feeling very pumpkin-y so that's why, as of right now, all of my fall decor is pumpkin based. 

In the garden this year, I was hoping it would be the Year of the Pumpkin. It was more pumpkin-y than any year before but I did not quite have the crop I was hoping for. It's only the second year that I've grown pumpkins and last year, the first year, I grew pumpkin, not pumpkins, so this year is an improvement over last year! This year, I planted numerous pumpkin plants. Not all of them produced pumpkins. At most points over the summer, I had five pumpkins growing. 

I picked two in early September that were ripe and gave them to my sister when I saw her near her birthday. That left me with three- two that were almost ripe and another one that was still green. Well, a sad pumpkin event occurred. I went to pick the one pumpkin and noticed it was off the vine. I picked it up and the bottom half was completely mushy/open. It was ruined! I don't know if a critter got to it or if it somehow became detached from the vine and started to rot on its own. Soooo disappointing! I'd watched this fellow grow and become orange all summer. 

Naturally, a garden is nothing if but a lesson on the broader things of life- you win some, you lose some. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. In this case, my shot was having the audacity to plant a pumpkin seed in May, seeing the miracle of its growth, watering it, enjoying seeing it grow. That I didn't get to pick the pumpkin, to enjoy looking at it as decor and then to roast it and consume it is sad but at least I tried. And came close to succeeding- goodness that pumpkin was so pretty and ripe before it went bad. 

Fortunately for those Made in China pumpkins, we don't have to worry about them going bad... Here is a photo dump mostly of the inside pumpkin decor.

Outside on the patio

The piece d' resistance is my garden grown pumpkin- out of the clay and onto the stone mantel he rests. 

The Great Pumpkin sits unironically below him! I used to keep this pumpkin inside and displayed such that the lights could be seen from the large second floor window of our house. However, the trees in the front yard have grown such that you can't see the window well until the leaves fall off (not until late Oct. or early November) so I decided to move the GP. 

Don't make too much fun of me (you can make a little fun- I don't know whether to smile or roll my eyes when I see this...) but when Donnie reconfigured his video machines on the patio, he left the corner free (I'm pretty sure he regrets doing so now 😆) and nature abhors a vacuum so naturally I bought yet another artificial tree and decorated it for fall. 

Donnie definitely rolled his eyes when he realized his video game throw pillows had been covered with pumpkin themed covers :).

I replaced the 4th of July themed artwork with fall/pumpkin ones.

Remember when I said that last year I grew one pumpkin? I had it on display for a few weeks and then I roasted that bad boy whole, took out the innards, removed the seeds from the innards and the pureed the pumpkin. When it cooled, I placed the pumpkin puree in a mason jar and put it in the freezer. I knew I wanted to use it before it went bad (the freezer will only keep items good for so long and approaching a year being in the freezer seemed like it was pushing it).

Many years ago, a friend made a delicious cake with pumpkin and I vaguely remembered the recipe. I mean, I remembered that the cake consisted of a yellow cake mix and pumpkin puree. I didn't remember much else about it, but a simple search of pumpkin cake, cake mix, etc yielded many results. I decided to try one that looked pretty easy and sounded delicious. 

This past weekend, I defrosted the pumpkin puree and was relieved when a taste test revealed the puree was still good. The recipe I used called for just pumpkin puree, sugar, a yellow cake mix, evaporated milk, eggs, a few spices and two sticks of melted butter (you just knew it was going to taste delicious- how could it not??). I followed this recipe. It turned out delicious especially with a nice dollup of ice cream on top!

No matter how much or little you "Pumpkin," Happy Fall!

Linking up with Joanne for Talking About it Tuesday