I could not get very good pictures in the dusk. Below you can see all the quilts that were brought to help keep warm! About 32 people were here, besides our family. A second hayride was after the meal, and I went on that. But it didn't last long, because it rained! Then we got home again, the rain quit, and the children begged to go again. So Jonathan obliged them.
This is Jonathan's plate of desserts. There were to be prizes for the most healthy, most creative, and most delicious dishes brought (all of which also had to have pumpkin or apple as one ingredient), so I needed help judging. Jonathan was told by someone else to take "a little" of each dessert. "A little?" he gasped. He took a nice amount of each. He doesn't get sick on sugar like I do. I took one bite of about five different desserts and had to stop on the fourth. By the way, Naomi French's dessert won the prize for most delicious. Crystal's molded applesauce jello (made with organic applesauce and filled with fresh kiwi) earned the prize for most healthy, though it was hard to decide between that and the pumpkin pie Carrie made (made with pumpkin-from scratch) and the pumpkin dessert Marlene Reynolds made. The children had made molded candies from white chocolate, using different colors and fall designs, and Steve Cunningham voted them the most creative.
Below Carrie is making the crusts for her pumpkin pies. We just steamed the pumpkin (actually winter squash which is more orange than pumpkin) which a friend had given us, and put it through the Foley food mill.
Below is the bouquet of rosehips that I picked by the road, for a centerpiece, since I had to rush home from town instead of doing the last minute shopping for the hay ride. I had to rush back home because Jonathan had forgotten that I needed to be home to sign for a shipment of plumbing and things for a job he is doing. I pulled into the driveway at the same time as the delivery truck arrived! After that, we just had to make do with what we had instead of having a boughten centerpiece or autumn-themed paper plates. But I didn't think a pot of boughten mums could have been more fall-ish than these red rosehips on thorny, green-leaved stems in an orange basket.
Below is the big basket of harvest vegetables we placed by our front door. Huge cabbages, green and red peppers and onions we had bought at the pumpkin stand in town. The beets, turnips, carrots and potatoes came from our own gardens!
Below is the arrangement the girls made on the other side of the door. Timmy bought his own pumpkin to carve some leaf shapes in, and he put a little candle inside, which was very cozy looking in the darkness.
