Halloween Preparations

As you've probably figured out, I'm still not getting up any earlier on weekdays because I'm still not posting in the mornings. Now that I've finished the book that was keeping me up at night, I'm hoping to change that.

We're wrapping up the bathroom painting project today. The actual painting was done by Tuesday and Sweetie recaulked the shower/tub on Wednesday. Today has been more about cleaning up the detritus left behind. So far today I've scrubbed the shower, scraped paint off the laminate flooring, Sweetie replaced the light fixture, I've cleared off the bathroom countertop, and we've hung a new shower curtain and liner and replaced the shower rod. I may actually get to shower in my bathroom again tonight. Woot!

I didn't think it would be as much of an inconvenience as it was to bathe in the second bathroom, but it has only a small shower stall as opposed to the shower/tub, and all of Sweetie's things are already in there so there was really no room for mine. At any rate, I'm looking forward to having my space back.

The rest of today, probably the rest of the weekend to be truthful (at least when I'm not blogging), will be dedicated to making my Halloween costume. Oh yeah. Dudes, we've got some crazy pro-Halloween get-your-scare-on folks in our office. Last December we moved into a new office space, which we share with a sister company (we're both owned by the same parent company). So anyhow, this is the first Halloween we've had together in the same office.

They started decorating last weekend, and I gotta say, the bloody hand prints on the glass front door gave me a start on Monday morning. Simulated gore before coffee was a little disorienting. So yeah, there are spiderwebs and spiders, pumpkins and dismembered body parts all around the office. There's a competition for the best decorated department and best costume. And let me tell you, the competition and trash-talking is getting fierce.

So the memo about the competitions wasn't edited, and being part of the editing department, we took the memo literally and hence created confusion. We thought that there was a competition for the best costume as a department. So the whole department is dressing to a theme. The idea is that we will each choose one of our books and dress as the cover image. We publish travel guides and I ended up choosing our San Diego book.

I am to be a peacock. It seemed like a brainstorm when I chose it and I started looking for feathers online. Yeah I can get 100 peacock tail feathers at a reasonable cost, but then it hit me. I only have one week to get the feathers and build this dang thing.

So what started as a spectacular, spectacular Broadway-type costume in my mind's eye has become increasingly scraggly each time I think of it. I'm now aiming for a childish imitation of a Brazilian carnival bustle.

I stopped at the craft store on my way home last night and completely bought out their supply of peacock feathers. I also bought a plastic mask and a cheap-o bag of blue-dyed feathers which I plan to glue to the mask, some fake grassy plant stuff to help fill in some of the gaps between feathers, and several sheets of colored felt. I have a loose plan. Executing it will be the problem.

Oh, and it's also occurred to me that I have nothing royal or bright blue in my closet. I used to have a gorgeous silk teal shirt that would have been perfect, but that's long gone now. So, I may need to squeeze in a shopping trip.

I'm actually getting into the Halloween spirit now. It's contagious. Let's just say I'm wishing I'd spoken up faster and taken dibs on the book cover with the leopard.