I am waiting for my cake to finish baking for the Pumpkin Carvin' party this evening. I am making something called Apple Spice Trifle--it requires a spice cake to start. Good thing it is easy to make a box cake. Once the cake is finished and it cools, it gets layered between a cream cheese apple mixture. It actually tastes pretty good.

I still need to go find a pumpkin to carve. Normally I would stop at a church on my way to my friends' house, but they moved this summer and now the church is not on the way. I hate picking out a pumpkin--I don't know why though. I may stop at a grocery store, but I worry that they won't have anything good at this point.

The cake is now cooling and all that I need to add to the apple cream cheese mixture is the non-dairy whipped topping which I will do right before I start layering. The recipe actually calls for Stouffer's Scalloped Apples and normally I can't find them so I substitute apple pie filling which doesn't have as many apple pieces. I actually found the Stouffer's Apples this time and I am anxious to see how it tastes.

Back to the pumpkin carving. Over the last several years I have started just peeling away the skin of the pumpkin instead of cutting through the wall of the pumpkin. I found some patterns on the 'net that use both carving the skin and cutting through the pumpkin to create more depth in the picture. I am not sure if I am going to try one of them this year though. There is a really cool one of Sauron from Lord of the Rings, but I am not sure most people would actually see it. There is also one of Gollum that I think is kind of cool.

I will definitely be posting a picture or two from the Pumpkin Carvin' this evening.