Halloween Activities at WIMAC

On Wednesday, October 31st there was a potluck lunch, a pumpkin carving contest vote, and a going away celebration for Sylvia Laronde. More photos to be found at my Flickr website (see the link at the right side of this webpage).

The pumpkins were carved on either Monday or Tuesday. Each team was given a pumpkin to carve in the likeness of their team leader, and we only had one hour for the carving. We were each scheduled a time slot in the large boardroom do the carving. However, adding further decorations and props was allowed up until the actual judging on Wednesday noon.

The desserts were in the boardroom, while the main dishes were in the kitchen. There was even a cake for Sylvia; it had the writing "Happy Retirement Sylvia":


Here is the pumpkin made by Chris Mortier's team:Here is Derek Lee's team shortly after they finished their pumpkin on Tuesday:
This is the pumpkin by Ed Cruz's team:

Here's the Allan Jollymore pumpkin. Sadly, it had started to decompose a bit earlier than the other pumpkins:Paul Devine with his pumpkin:

Here is the first place winner (woo hoo!), by Betty Cheng-Sung's Team :
We did our initial carving on Monday at 2pm. I actually did most of the carving, following a template we had printed out from a photo of Betty. I had placed the print-out over the pumpkin and used a push-pin to mark the lines for cutting. Tamie had provided the carving tools to me; these tools were a couple of saws around 8cm long. Unfortunately, I had not enlarged the print-out sufficiently, so the face was not quite life-size.
At 10:30am on Wednesday, we gathered in Betty's office to finish the preparation of our pumpkin. We added a wooden frame for the body, then stuffed a shirt and pants with wads of newspaper. Betty added some make-up and other decoration to the pumpkin.

Betty Cheng-Sung's team:


And then one last group photo with Sylvia Laronde, now retired: