This year we decided to make our annual Harvest Party a space/science-fiction theme. With the party being only one week away, we made our pumpkin carvings space themed as well so we could use them in the decorations!
We broke up into teams of twos and threes and started carving away. After two hours of steady scooping, cutting, and scraping, we switched off the lights and admired each other’s creations. The pumpkins are currently being stored in our walk-in refrigerator to preserve them for the party.
Everyone was very creative this year, creating rocket ships, Yoda, Darth Vader, aliens, and a moon walking astronaut. A few people created templates before hand to help with their carving. We have scanned a few of these into PDFs for you to download and use on your own pumpkins if you’d like!
Darth Vader Template
Yoda Template
Moon Walker Template
Moon Rover Template
We had a medieval theme for this year’s harvest party with some creative decorations including a large brick wall made out of sheets of paper and paint, two towers, and two cardboard knights. For each harvest party, we are formed into several groups ahead of time and collaborate to come up with skits. This year we had all the skits center on the theme of what our community might look like in medieval times. The various groups came up with some very funny results. The costumes this year were also very creative. Two of the children dressed up as Peter and Mr. Tumnus the faun from the Chronicles of Narnia. Certain ones also dressed up as a black knight made out of cardboard, a flying purple people eater, and various clothed persons from the middle ages.
This celebration night was our annual pumpkin carving event! We were all assigned teams of people to work with and planned our designs ahead of time. Then, we grouped together, put our designs on our pumpkins, and started carving.
For those too young to wield a knife or carving utensil, we set up a place to paint pumpkins instead. With glitter and lots of paint, they came up with some rather colorful pumpkins.
After painstakingly drawing and carving our pumpkin patterns into our pumpkins, we lathered the insides with vaseline to keep them from drying out. We placed them all in a row, lit the candles, and turned out the lights. The themes were very diverse and creative this year, ranging from Star Trek aliens to cannibal pumpkins. There was also a gecko, an owl, Snoopy, Scooby Doo, and the Nintendo characters Samus Aran and Link.
We thought this night would be a normal presentation from the Academy kids about what they’re learning this year. But instead a special guest came to teach us many interesting things…
The pumpkin carving gets more creative each year.
This Celebration Night was indeed a celebration. After many years of walking with us, Sam and Kelcy became residential members. We are blessed to welcome them to our family. Countless hours of study, prayer, and tears paved the way to this wonderful day. We love you, Sam and Kelcy!
The illusive golden whisk was sought by many this year. Only the best, the tastiest, and the wildest can ever hope to win. Sit back, enjoy the flavor and enjoy the show.
