Jackson Free Press

Fall is in the air, and it's time to get festive. When I lived in Boston, Mass., every fall we would trek up to Keene, N.H., for apple-picking, cider-sipping and the Keene Pumpkin Festival. For years, the festival held the record for the most carved, lit jack-o'-lanterns in one place. Although a city in Illinois topped their record last year, Keene's festival remains an impressive sight. In 2011, 16,186 carved pumpkins illuminated the town square for one night—simple pumpkins and giant pumpkins and funny pumpkins and incredible, elaborately carved pumpkins.

Unfortunately, I don't have the fine motor skills to produce anything sophisticated with a gourd, but I still love the ceremony of it as a sort of welcome into fall.

Plus, who doesn't love plunging their hand into that stringy, goopy mess of seeds and orange flesh? This year, I tried a new way of carving I read about on Pinterest.