Right now Van Cortlandt Manor is a swirling orange beehive of carving activity. Pumpkins are being eviserated by the dozens. The carvers are showing absoltutely no mercy. Tom Hunt, resident VCM blacksmith by day and carving fiend and pumpkin chandelier genius by...well, day, also I guess, sent along these snapshots. Don't worry, we'll be learning the stories behind all of these folks in our upcoming Meet the Carvers series.

And yes, that's Vern down there on the right.

With Saturday's opening night shadow looming like that of the Great Pumpkin over Linus, the Blaze team is beating frantic double time down the set up home stretch.

What would a large visitor tent *slash* Café Blaze *slash* Blaze shop *slash* carving station be without a lot of hay? Much less interesting, clearly, so this week, the Blaze gurus imported bales upon bales of the straw stuff to give the tent that fall festive mood.

Believe it or not, one of the coolest things about the Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze is the shopping. Most especially because you can browse through hundreds (literally) of special Blaze-only merch made exclusively for - and sold only at - the event. Amazon.com's got nada on this.

Just how diverse is the selection? Well, let's put it this way, you could actually make a cool Blaze Halloween Survivor type game out of trying to complete your day using only Blaze items.

Today for example, I woke up from my peaceful autumn slumber snuggled soundly under my Blaze cotton throw (with all new Blaze design) and meandered into the kitchen where I had me some Blaze pumpkin scones topped off with Blaze pumpkin butter (yum) and coffee in my Blaze mug, being careful not to spill any on my Blaze placemats. I was a bit on the composted side so I slipped into the shower and lathered up with my Blaze pumpkin soap. Feeling refreshed, I took some time to compose some blog ideas in my Blaze blank journal (six styles to choose from). I then wrote wish you were heres to some long neglected distant relatives on my Blaze postcards (11 styles in all). Lunch was Blaze pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread followed by finger licking good pumpkin fudge.

OK, you get the idea. You'll find everything you need inside the visitor's tent at Blaze, as well as in the main shop which you enter towards the end of the Blaze experience.

There's a lot of stuff. I can't resist also mentioning:

• a Blaze chocolate bar
• coloring Blaze sheet with set of crayons
• Sticky desk notecube (the cube, not the desk) depicting four blaze designs
• a Blaze ruler
• All-new Blaze caps, t-shirts, and sweatshirts
• six new Blaze magnets
• Halloween books for children and adults
• flashing, blinking bracelets, earrings, and necklaces, and the cute little pumpkn jewelry box shown above

Collect them all!

Yes, it's true. As the graphic states, two of Blaze's 18 nights are sold out as of today...and it's not even October 1! Prime dates of Saturday, October 18 and Saturday, October 25 are gone, gone, gone.

The Blaze powers that be are not kidding when they stress that you really do need to secure your spots in advance.

If you haven't bought yet, you've got 16 days left to choose from, but time slots are quickly selling out. For example, opening night, next Saturday (yay!), only has a few tickets left at 9 and 9:30. October 11 only has a few tickets left at 9:30. The Friday inventory is rapidly depleting. Still on the fence? Click here now to get off of it.