With their bubbly personalities and bright clothing, you might not immediately peg the Fillhardts as Halloween people.
But last month, the residents of Scotts Valley’s classic suburban Skypark subdivision—dad Nathan, 41, mom Jodie, 39, and daughter Elizabeth, 9—outdid all their neighbors when it came to celebrating All Hallows’ Eve.
And they did it with their help.
This year, the family built on lessons learned during previous seasons to carve more than 200 pumpkins for the display at their home.
It wasn’t easy, and it required them to wrangle friends, parents and total strangers to complete the task before the hard deadline of Oct. 31.
“We are a house that does pumpkins every year, and we try to carve more pumpkins than the year before,” is how Elizabeth, currently in fourth grade, puts it. “My parents have been doing this before I was even born.”
Jodie says you can trace the all-consuming and frankly zany lifestyle they embrace every autumn back to the fact she was born in the month of October.
When she puts it, it sounds so obvious. Almost like, “How could you not?”
“We grew up relatively poor, as well,” she says, recalling her early years in Lakewood, not far from Disneyland. She’d be allowed to pick out a single pumpkin every year to carve, but no more.
And growing up inland in Southern California—sandwiched into the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan expanse—pumpkin patches weren’t exactly something you were driving by all the time.
So, years later, after she moved to San Jose and met Nathan, she absolutely loved his idea for a fun excursion.
“Nathan decided he wanted to impress me,” she remembers. “He takes me to Half Moon Bay, and we go to a place called Bob’s Pumpkin Farm.”
It worked.
“I was blown away,” she says, recalling how there were pumpkins still on the vine and everything at the location.
“We can get a wheelbarrow-full,” he told her.
They loaded up around 8-10 into his Mini Cooper and brought them home.
“I slowly started carving them,” says Jodie, describing how they placed the finished jack- o’lanterns around the entrance to their apartment complex.
They started getting notes from neighbors, expressing how much they loved seeing the family of pumpkins that had moved-in.
“That was a really cool experience,” she says, explaining how they decided to ramp things up the following year. “Because of the reaction we got, instead of doing 8 or 10 pumpkins, we did 20 pumpkins.”
It’s fair to say that, since then, they’ve become a little obsessed. With every move—first to one house in the Skypark area, and then now another—and with each family milestone (getting married in 2012; the birth of their daughter), their pumpkin prowess has grown.
This year, Nathan, a software engineer for Apple, put his tech skills to work making trinkets and fake trophies (in one of their at-home 3D printers) to inspire the Halloween spirit amongst other houses in the community. Jodie, who owns The Brick Lab store that sells Lego sets, recruited a couple of her workers—Em Stewart and Leala Bassman—for their attempt at hitting the 200-pumpkins mark.
They invited neighbors and schoolmates over to join in the carving frenzy.
“I feel like it went really well, because a lot of people showed up—and we made, actually, really good time,” says Elizabeth, remembering how, at one point, it seemed like they might fall short. “We thought we weren’t going to make it to 200 pumpkins. But with all the help from people, we were actually able to get to 203 pumpkins.”
One clutch move was inviting Vine Hill Elementary School families over for what’s known as a “sign-up party” fundraiser. (Others have included jewelry-making, pickleball-playing and movie-watching.) The way theirs worked was, the Fillhardts supplied the pumpkins, and each kid got to carve one to bring home. Then, anything beyond that would stay as part of the growing pumpkin gang. This endeavor alone netted 24 new ones.
It’s this sort of community-building that makes it all worth it, they say.
“It’s been an amazing way for us to connect with people in the neighborhood, in Scotts Valley in general,” Jodie says. “We feel really lucky that we’re able to do it, and that people like it so much.”
Now that the big day has passed, you might think they’d be sick of even thinking about Halloween stuff. But then, you notice the friendly black-and-orange cat jump onto the couch next to the jack-o’-lantern plushies that will stay out all year. And you realize, “No, this is just who they are now.” The Pumpkin House.
And for next year, they’re upping the ante once again.
“We’re pre-purchasing an acre of pumpkins,” Jodie says. “We are going to try to carve 400 pumpkins for my 40th birthday.”
