Pumpkin Carving / Cinnasweet Pumpkin Seeds

Today we decided it would be okay to carve our pumpkins and keep them in the fridge overnight and throughout the day on Halloween. Ah the joys of living in sunny and (still) HOT Arizona. Anyway . . . J had never done pumpkin carving with us, so it was cool. He has issues in regards to his hands being messy, so it was icky to him when he reached in the pumpkin. My cute little clean freak son.

E had done it before but still enjoyed it quite a lot. Usually I just carve the pumpkins during the day on Halloween, so this year M was excited to participate and carve a pumpkin.

The children chose Mumble from Happy Feet and Lightning McQueen from Disney Cars. I think they turned out great this year! We had a lot of fun and McQueen was surprisingly hard. I *may* have used a few straight pins here and there to fix it up . . .

Here is the recipe I plan to use for the pumpkin seeds we saved:

Cinnasweet Pumpkin Seeds (From allrecipes.com)

INGREDIENTS

4 cups pumpkin seeds, rinsed and dried
1/2 cup margarine, melted
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup white sugar, divided

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Combine the pumpkin seeds, margarine, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl; stir to coat the seeds. Spread the seeds in a single layer in a 10x15 inch jelly roll pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes; stir and return to oven for 15 minutes more; remove from oven and sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over the seeds; stir to coat. Return to oven and bake another 15 minutes before removing again to sprinkle with remaining sugar and stirring. Bake another 15 minutes. Allow to cool before serving. Store leftover seeds in an airtight container.