Pumpkin Overload...

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween weekend!! Brian and I had a nice, long, relaxing weekend filled with alot of pumpkins! :) It was also a long weekend here, so that made it even better! Monday was considered a holiday here, so pretty much everything was closed in honor of the day. The holiday celebrated was Allerheiligen (i.e. All Saint's Day) where they honor the lives of all saints, as well as remember deceased relatives and visit their graves on that day.

Like I said earlier, our weekend was filled with alot of pumpkins! Not only did we attempt to make a couple of homemade pumpkin dishes, but we also attended the world's largest pumpkin display on Sunday!! Needless to say, by Monday we were pretty much in pumpkin overload! :)

We spent Saturday cooking up some tasty pumpkin treats. Now, the difference between here and the U.S., is that one is unable to find pumpkin in a can over here... Thus, making it much more difficult (or so we thought) to make pumpkin-flavored specialties. Well, we decided that we were tired of not being able to partake in pumpkin inspired meals during this time of year, so we took matters into our own hands... Yep, that's right... We decided to try our hand at making pumpkin-flavored dishes from scratch! :) So, I went out and bought the pumpkins, while Brian researched how we could use them to make the pumpkin soup and pumpkin cookie recipes we had found... Yes, I know, we sound like complete dorks! But, hey, it worked! :) And, after MANY hours in the kitchen, and using virtually every pot and pan we own, we enjoyed ourselves a very delicious dinner of pumpkin soup and pumpkin seed seele bread (which, I admit, I bought at the store! :)), with pumpkin cookies for dessert... YUM!! It was definitely a great way to celebrate the Halloween weekend!!

After cooking all day Saturday, we decided to spend Sunday in the car. We took a drive to a town called Ludwigsburg to experience the World's Largest Pumpkin Display. Not only was it a gorgeous day for a drive (the leaves are so pretty right now!), but we had alot of fun at the pumpkin display (or as the Germans call it, the "Kuerbis Ausstellung"). The display was on the grounds of the Ludwigsburg Residenz Schloss (i.e. the Ludwigsburg Castle), and it was a beautiful setting for a pumpkin fest... Not only were the displays impressive, but to see the trees ablaze in color and the castle overlooking the entire area, it was quite a spectacular sight! :) The pumpkin display's theme was "Under the Sea" this year, and they used over 500,000 pumpkins and over 450 different varieties of pumpkins to make the sculptures!! And, not only did they have the pumpkins on display, but they also offered a large variety of pumpkin inspired foods and drinks to sample... It was a great day of strolling through the castle grounds, soaking up the gorgeous scenery, enjoying all of the fun pumpkin sculptures, and sampling some delicious food... It was such a fun way to celebrate Halloween! :)

I hope all of you had a fabulous Halloween as well, and that everyone was able to enjoy lots of yummy treats!! :)

And here's a few photos of our pumpkin-filled weekend... Not all of them have been uploaded onto our compute, so here's a quick sneak peak until I can get the rest up... Enjoy!

Our pumpkin experiment! :)

Our pumpkins were gutted and baked... At this point we were getting ready to scoop out the insides for our soup...

Our yummy, pumpkin inspired dinner...

Pumpkin bean soup, pumpkin seed seele bread, and autumn inspired wine... Delicious!

And, notice the computer that was included in our meal? We spent our dinner watching live footage of the Rally to Restore Sanity put on by Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert in Washington D.C.! Since we couldn't actually be there, we decided the next best thing was to view it live, while eating our dinner! :)

These delicious pumpkin cookies were dessert... They literally melt in your mouth!! Love them! :)

Happy Halloween greetings from the World's Largest Pumpkin display!! :)

One of the many displays we saw... This was an entire island made from pumpkins! The palm trees and turtles are all made from pumpkins... How cool! :)

I thought these little guys were cute! :)

Brain was clearly excited about his soup!! :)

And, yes, after spending the previous evening eating pumpkin soup for dinner, we decided to have pumpkin soup (again!) at the pumpkin fest! :) Let's just say, it definitely gave our homemade soup a run for its money! :)