A nearby town holds a Pumpkin Festival around this time every year. The crux of the event is kids (and some adults) submitting decorated pumpkins to be judged. You fill out the sign-up form, lay it out on the courthouse lawn, and hope the judges pick yours as a category winner or “Pick of the Patch”. On submission night, the downtown holds a business trick-or-treating event, which helps folks walk around the attractive main street and see the many businesses for a future visit. Over the weekend, they bring in a few small carnival rides while more people gander at the decorated pumpkins.
The theme this year was “A Pumpkin Carnival”. We had Adelaide make a car carnival ride with 5 painted pumpkin cars around a larger tower. Emerson made the milk can knockdown side game out of tall pumpkins. We didn’t win our age group or obviously anything. But the kids had fun decorating and visiting their displays. 
On submission night, we finished decorating our pumpkins, trick-or-treated downtown, and got our pumpkins set up on the courthouse lawn just in time for our kids to crash. Emerson wore Adelaide’s sheep costume from this time two years ago. He hated the hood, but was otherwise unaffected. Adelaide wore her Elsa dress. It was a nice, crisp fall night. Which normally would be welcomed. But we’re struggling with the fall weather this year. Because we skipped last winter by hiding out in Florida and the other southern states, we’re not used to the cold of Northern Illinois. And the number of dreary, overcast, dark days far outnumbers sunny days.
We got to have cousin Ella come over for the weekend. She and Adelaide are 3 months apart in age and have an absolute ball together. They wear each other out, but have so much fun. It’s adorable. We brought Ella to the Pumpkin Festival to ride the carnival rides. We parked close and walked up only to find the girls were too short! We thought “how could they have a bunch of carnival rides without ANYTHING for little kids!?” Thankfully, there was another set of rides in a different lot for the little kids. They could ride all but 2 of those rides and loved every minute of it.
The other big news this week was making my first sale of artwork. After seeing some of the stuff in Santa Fe’s galleries, I decided to try my hand at making art. One particular piece in particular put me over the edge. It was a 8″ x 10″ piece with what appeared to be randomly cut paint stirring sticks nailed to a small canvas. It was then all painted white. And being sold for $2,000. I figured I can cut random pieces of wood and slop white paint on it. So I bought a few 24″ x 18″ canvases. I slopped some caulk on them for texture. Then spray painted the whole thing white. It has a very modern feel to it. In some light, it seems like a blank canvas. But when the light shines, you can really see the texture. We did some rough math and after shipping and expenses, I made almost $30 of profit on the piece. I sold it on Etsy, but the next stop is a gallery in Santa Fe and asking prices with 4 figures!
