Peacock Me!

Halloween has come and gone, but the candy is still filling our cupboards. For whatever reason, there weren't many trick or treaters out this year. Which meant that the kid housemates got WAY more candy than necessary from houses eager to offload their candy. They each kept about half of their load of loot - which was still an entire shopping bag's worth - and the rest is stashed in a huge box that the adults have been noshing on.

All in all, I'd say Halloween went well. Between the party and housemates we had a crow, a phoenix, a cat, a bunch of grapes, a pumpkin, a madcap superhero costume, Leela from Futurama, a skeleton, a black turtle, Michael Jackson, Yoda, a fireman, me as a peacock, and some clearly less cool folks not in costumes. The party wound up relocating to an ice cream parlor nearby because my brother's wheelchair ramp did not actually work on my front stairs and two of the guests are power chair users. This meant that we did not eat all of the tasty food I prepared since I felt weird bringing it to the ice cream parlor. Here are photos of the food so you can see the tastiness:

Fake mouths using apple slices for lips, marshmallows for teeth and peanut butter for gums.

Broomsticks made with pretzel handles and string cheese bristles.

Graveyard cake: chocolate pudding covered with a layer of oreos, gummy worms,
and milano cookie tombstones with "RIP" written on them. 

Fear not! The food did not go to waste because the kid housemates had the healthier mouths and broomsticks for their snack and then we all ate the graveyard cake for dessert today so it was ok. If I get permission from the guests at the Halloween party, I'll post pictures of them. But at the moment I have not asked (who knows if I will?) so you'll have to content yourself with photos of me. Here you go:

Peacock selfie.

Weirdly angled front photo my brother took of me. 

Me attempting to show off my bustle.

The tutu was easy to make. I took a piece of elastic the right size for my waist and sewing it so it formed a loop.  Then I took strips of tulle two times as long as I wanted the tutu to be, and tied the middle of each tulle strip to the elastic using slip knots. If you need an actual tutorial video, you can find one here.

For the bustle, which I did not photograph very well, I looped my feather boa into an "M" shape, sewed the top onto a backwards apron that had ribbon ties (in case I wanted to take it off), and hot glue gunned a bunch of peacock feathers onto it. It came out well despite its failure to photograph.

I hope everyone else had a good Halloween!