Post Halloween Sugar High!

Hal­loween just FLEW by and now we’re all just com­ing down from our sug­ar high! This year, my daugh­ter, Anabelle, want­ed to be the char­ac­ter, Jew­el, a blue macaw from the ani­mat­ed movie “Rio”. The film is cen­tered around these beau­ti­ful Brazil­ian birds (along with some oth­er ani­mals) in Rio de Janeiro dur­ing Car­naval time. It seemed very appro­pri­ate, as I am from Brazil, and we have watched the movie approx­i­mate­ly 5,000,000 times! We love the music and sing and dance while we watch every sin­gle time!

I think my daugh­ter’s cos­tume came out just gor­geous, with both bird and Car­naval cos­tume resem­blance! I decid­ed to enlist the help of the utter­ly tal­ent­ed and the sweet­est Clau­dia from Tini Posh to make the dress and aid in find­ing LOTS and LOTS of “cerulean” feath­ers! I am so extreme­ly thank­ful to Clau­dia for mak­ing the beau­ti­ful tutu hal­ter dress out of two shades of blue, as well as the feath­er acces­sories on both the dress and for her hair adorned with jew­els! Since the tulle fab­ric can be itchy, at Clau­di­a’s advice, we searched for some­thing we could uti­lize as a lin­ing. My moth­er end­ed up find­ing a slip skirt of hers, which she helped to sew on the inside to avoid scratch­i­ness and com­plaints! Clau­dia was so very kind as to mail me all the addi­tion­al feath­ers to be able to fin­ish the cos­tume with the wings and mask. For the wings, I had to look around for wings that resem­bled bird wings, rather than the ever-pop­u­lar but­ter­fly ones that have an entire­ly dif­fer­ent shape. I final­ly found white angel wings at Joan­n’s and my very lov­ing, patient and crafty father sac­ri­ficed his fin­ger tips to hot glue the feath­ers one by one onto BOTH sides of the wings, since both inside and out would be vis­i­ble. I then found a white mask, which I paint­ed black on the beak and then I, too, proc­ced­ed to glue feath­ers all around. I had to trim the feath­ers a bit because they were a bit long, and then I fin­ished off the perime­ter of the eyes with lit­tle sequins. The last part of her cos­tume was the addi­tion of the flower, which was a hair clip I found at the Hawai­ian ABC stores. It was a com­plete col­lab­o­ra­tion and I am so thank­ful to Clau­dia and my par­ents for their help, as my daugh­ter was ecsta­t­ic with the result­ing costume!

For my daugh­ter’s school Hal­loween parade, we decid­ed the Jew­el bird cos­tume would be dif­fi­cult to man­age through­out the day, so she end­ed up dress­ing up as a Glam Army Girl to show some love for our troops and my nephew who recent­ly joined the Army! Instead of carv­ing enor­mous pump­kins this year, we went to the pump­kin patch with my moth­er-in-law who was vis­it­ing and picked lit­tle pump­kins, which Anabelle dec­o­rat­ed with rib­bons, goo­gly eyes and rhine­stones. It was the per­fect project for her and a lot less messy!

It has become a tra­di­tion that every year, we go trick-or-treat­ing with our dear friends and have a small get-togeth­er before­hand and this year was no dif­fer­ent. As you can see, they did an amaz­ing job cre­at­ing a beau­ti­ful Hal­loween spread for us, from brain pate (sea­soned with cock­roach­es) to nut­ty bud­dy ghosts to deli­cious choco­late-cov­ered ore­os with fon­dant pump­kins! Also incor­po­rat­ed was the adorable Hal­loween sign gra­cious­ly offered for free down­load from Par­ty Box Design!

For our con­tri­bu­tion to the table, I had found these laser cut grave­yard cup­cake wraps from the Duff brand at Michaels, which I used around choco­late cup­cakes with crushed Oreo cook­ies and a fon­dant hand com­ing out! So easy and super cute! My friend, Xialou, also has a fab­u­lous tuto­r­i­al for grave­yard cup­cakes over at Pure Joy Events! Be sure to check it out for next year!

I had also found these adorable met­al spi­der cup­cake hold­ers from Crate and Bar­rel and Michaels, so I cov­ered the top of the cup­cakes with frost­ing and black fon­dant and added fon­dant eyes to make these sweet lit­tle eight-legged friends! For Par­ty Box Design’s annu­al Hal­loween par­ty, I had cre­at­ed some fon­dant eye­ball cup­cake top­pers and was then inspired to make eye­ball cake pops, along with some choco­late witch fin­gers. All of these sweets came out real­ly cute, but were very easy to execute.

And here is our final fam­i­ly pho­to with our cast of “Rio” char­ac­ters! And yes, my hus­band is an absolute troop­er for spend­ing most of the night wear­ing fruit on his head!!! Hope you all had a won­der­ful­ly fun and spooky Halloween!

Merci Beaucoup!

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