Homemade Bug

J is currently working at The Children's Hospital for part of his 3rd year internship. Although he and I don't really celebrate Halloween on our own, the hospital is doing something special for the kids. This year, their Halloween theme is BUGS. So Jeremy asked if I had any ideas of what he could do for a costume. We initially started to look around a little at stores but unsurprisingly, man sized bug costumes are not all the rage this year. And we didn't want to go spend a lot of money for this. SO... in comes "happy" wife to the rescue. I Googled some homemade costume ideas and settled on just doing a bug's head and maybe pinning some wings to J's back. This way, J can still move about freely and see enough to continue giving therapy throughout the day.

This is a very inexpensive way to knock out a quick and easy costume.

First the materials:
Green Foam
Orange Foam (or whatever color you have on hand that you think goes alright with green)
Styrofoam balls
Black Felt
Black Pipe Cleaners
Green Pom Poms
Black Beanie
Plastic Lid (like from a yogurt cup or something, but I used a lid from an old salsa container because J has a big head)
2 Long Screws
Safety Pin
Glue Gun



It was nice because I happened to have a black beanie in the back of my closet. There was a sale at Target one year and I picked it up for less than $5.

First think I did was set up the "antennas" using the pipe cleaners, plastic lid, pom poms, and beanie. I cut two slits in the plastic lid and threaded one pipe cleaner through both holes so it ends up looking like a U shape, an end of the pipe cleaner sticking out each slit. Then for good measure I gave the two ends a twist at the bottom so that they feel more sturdy. Next, I twisted one pipe cleaner each to the shorter ends of the first pipe cleaner so that there will be a long "antenna" look to it. Then I threaded each of those ends through the beanie at the top, where I imagined the "antenna" should go. After threading, I twisted the two separate pipe cleaners around each other again at the top of the beanie to make sure the had a sturdy base. Last step for the "antenna" is gluing the green pom poms onto the tips.



After the "antenna" I worked on the bugs "pincer". I just drew a shape of the pincer onto the green foam and cut it out.



After that came the eyes. I cut two pairs of cirlces. One pair from the black felt, which I made sure was larger than the second pair which I cut from the green foam. You can be creative with this so whatever shape and size you want it fine. I glued them onto the two Styrofoam balls using my glue gun.



Now comes the final assembly. I didn't want to damage the beanie just in case we wanted to use it after Halloween so I didn't glue things onto it but if you're more inclined to, you can always just glue the eyeballs and pincer on. I had J try on the beanie first so I could gauge where everything should be placed once his giant head stretched the beanie out. I attached the pincer with safety pins and then used screws to first thread through the beanie and then into the Styrofoam eyes to secure them in place. I had to have the eyes pointing down a little as I thought of what a child's view may be in a hospital bed. J wanted to add a little more character to the bug so he took a pipe cleaner and made a mustache for it.

The final result, ... TA DA!



I'll see if I can get J to take a pic with the beanie on when he gets home tonight.

J also wanted something for his torso. Initially, I was going to give him extra arms, like a proper bug, but we thought that this would get in the way of treating his patients so we settled on wings. I cut out two "wings" from the orange foam. I just drew an outline of what I though was a wing-ish shape. Then I cut some large circles out of the leftover green foam. When I put the circles down, it reminded me of a ladybug and I didn't want J to get teased so I asked him what he thought. After much deliberation, and tons of hemming and hawing, he finally said he wanted the wings to look like the made a smiley face. Our attempt at that made weird wings so We finally decided on two small bugs crawling on his wings. (Which in my opinion, made the wings NOT look like wings but whatever makes the mister happy- SHRUG).



As you can see, we just played around with our leftover materials and glued them in whatever way made sense to us to achieve J's goal. You can be creative and make your own wing design.

I'm pretty proud of my first ever effort at making a homemade Halloween costume. With THESE two hands! YAY! Maybe next year, I'll bust out the sewing machine. or... not... well... we'll see about that. err...

** I took a pic of J last night after blogging. For all you curious mind's out there, this is what a grown man looks like as a bug. He's totally hamming it up for his blog-viewing public** ;)

The Power of the Deviled Egg

Deviled eggs are such an interesting appetizer. What about it makes it so attractive and delicious, especially to party-goers?

As you know, I recently had a surprise birthday party for my hubby. As a part of the menu, I made these tasty treats. To my surprise, we ran out. It's interesting because although I use words like "delicious" and "tasty", when you break it down, it's really just a fancy hard boiled egg. And I don't know many people that just LOVE hard boiled eggs. Some people I know would just wrinkle their nose at the mention of hard boiled eggs. And honestly, hard boiled eggs to have that sulfur like smell... so why then is it that when deviled eggs are serve, people are grabbing several off the buffet line? After some pondering I came to a conclusion. It must be the wonderful addition of... wait for it... don't act like you hate it because you know you love it... MAYONNAISE! Along with some other key ingredients of course... but truly, the bulk of the addition is mayo. People also wrinkle their nose snobbishly at mayo but I know your true heart when it comes to this matter. WE LOVE MAYO.

Having had the awesome response to the deviled eggs at hubby's party, I decided to make them again. This time for my father-in-law's surprise 60th birthday party, hosted at our house by none other than yours truly. Whew! That's TWO surprise parties in a row and you may want some info on how I managed that, but that's another blog for another day. TODAY, I'm going to post my deviled eggs recipe, which I didn't have one till yesterday because I just tend to eyeball ingredients to taste, but knowing that I wanted to share that goodness with you lovely folks, I busted out my measuring cups and spoons! So here comes my first recipe... ever...

First things first. I HEART deviled eggs so when I came across this beautiful deviled egg serving plate at Marshalls for only $9.99 I pounced! Literally POUNCED. J gave me a look like I was crazy as I did what I now call "my great-sale-find jig". I'm not saying you have to have fancy shmancy deviled egg plate-ware but if you know this is something you make often, you may want to invest. However, you can always plate it onto anything you want and if you have a problem with them rolling around, just take your knife and slice a small bit of the egg of it's rounded back to create a small level surface for it to sit on.

(you can't see it, but there are two ladybugs painted onto this beautiful dish)


On to the ingredients:

12 large hard boiled eggs cut in half, lengthwise (it was for a big party)
1/4 C mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon Lawry's seasoning salt (I tend to like the filling on the saltier side because once it goes back into the egg whites, it'll balance out nicely, BUT you can put in less salt and work your way up to taste)
1/4 teaspoon Paprika
1/4 teaspoon Turmeric
1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
a small bunch of flat leaf parsley
extra Paprika for decorating at the end (optional)

1. Take your eggs and start scooping out the cooked yolk into a large bowl.



2. Add all the ingredients into the large bowl with your yolks except the parsley and extra paprika.



3. At this point, I like to mash everything together with a potato masher. You can use a fork, but I found that the fork isn't as good at ensuring that all the chunks are out (or I'm just lazy and not thorough). If you plan on scooping the filing into the eggs, then even a little chunky is ok but I prefer my filling to be smooth and creamy because it gets all the flavors incorporated better AND if you want to pipe it through a decorative tip, it won't clog your tip. So again, mash away till you get a nice, creamy texture.



4. Once you've done this, the rest is the fun part. I took my Wilton #32 tip and filled the piping bag with the yolk mixture. Then I proceeded to pipe the mixture into my eggs. It made a nice flower looking shape which is what I was going for because my serving plate had flowers on it. Now, you don't have to do all this that's coming up in the next few steps. Again, if you want, just scoop it into your egg with a small spoon. I was just making it for my Father-In-Law's party so I needed to make it somewhat impressive.





5. Usually towards the end of deviled eggs recipe, you'll find that there a step of chopping up and sprinkling parsley over the eggs. I decided to take the parsley and making "leaves" for my "flower" yolk. I just started picking off small parsley leaves off the stem and inserting their tips into the yolk filling gently. Then I took pinches of paprika and sprinkled them on the centers of the "flowers" to give them a more eye catching look. Seriously, I would not have done all this if it wasn't for a special occasion. In fact, for J's surprise party, we just chopped up the parsley and sprinkled.



6. Lastly, plate, serve, and eat! YUMMMM!



Hope you enjoy these deviled eggs. Just as a note, there's no "written in stone" rule about the ingredients to flavor your filling so if you want to omit something, and add something else, go for it. Make it yours. Don't be afraid to taste along the way and remember... you can always add stuff to make it saltier or more moist... you can't always take it out once it's done. So when experimenting, go in baby steps. Bon Apetit!

Snooping

So this past Saturday, I threw a surprise birthday party for J (the hubby)and invited some of his friends from grad school. I didn't really know any of these people but I managed to do some stealth sleuthing to get names and contact info. I had actually met a couple of his school friends briefly before and memorized their names. Then I waited till he left his cell phone unattended and frantically searched for these people's names in his contacts. The first one I came across I quickly jotted down the number and walked away.

Now, you may have thought I was going to post about the party, but not today. Today I want to talk something else entirely. As I left his cell phone and was nonchalantly acting like no big secret was going on, I inexplicably started to feel a little guilty. I wasn't doing anything bad and on the contrary, it was for a very good cause I was snooping around his cell phone. But still...

There was an episode on Friends where Monica and Richard had broken up. A devastated Monica decides to leave a message for Richard on his answering machine after hearing one on hers from him, which she can't remember if it's an old or new message. She's not happy with the message she ends up leaving and decides to let herself into Richard's answering machine system with a code she knew. Her motive wasn't to snoop for other messages but the whole thing goes comically awry and she ends up setting her message to Richard as his new outgoing message.

How many of us ladies are out there with access to our mates' private stuff? Cell phones, emails, bills, bank statements... etc? How many of us (and yes, I say "us" because I'm guilty of this too) have at one time or another in the relationship have gone into this private territory, for whatever reason, and "looked around"? And I have some girlfriends who have done this too. It's interesting because I think if I were to take a poll, we would find that more women do this than men to their significant others. Why is this? (Ok, other than the fact that it's probably a rare species of man who will throw fabulous surprise birthday parties for their wives or girlfriends... not that a man couldn't. I'm just not sure that there are bucketfuls of men out there who love party planning.) And how many of you ladies have your mans passwords, PIN #'s etc? How many of you have given this same info to your man? No judgement here, by the way, because while this recent time was innocent, I can admit to a time when J and I were just dating that I've looked into his email. Not because I suspected some torrid secret love affair, but just because I was being nosy. I actually confessed this to J expecting him to break up with me but blessedly, the man is forgiving.

So really, what's going on? Are we just more snoopy? nosy? less secure? Or are we just more clever and if men could figure out a way to break into our private domains, they'd all be doing it too? Or do men do this too but just never cop to it? Or is it just a philosophy of "once you're married, it's all community property, there is no such things as 'private'"? But what about the dating but not yet married ladies? OR is it just that we're all planning surprise birthday parties for our men? ; )