Morton Salt Girl Costume

This costume was years in the making.  I originally made and wore it myself in the late 1990's (1997?).  Bought a big yellow dress at Goodwill and cut it down to make this:

My task for Halloween 2009 was to cut it down to size for my then 7 year old daughter.  I took off the sleeves and the skirt portion, hoisted them up a bit and reattached them.  Brought the waist in a bit and added better pleating to the skirt.

For the salt can, we took a potato flake can and covered it with an enlarged photocopy of the actual label.  Added a spout to the bottom with trailing sparkly ribbons, and a handle on top to carry it as a trick or treat candy holder.

In 2009 she tried it on and my husband took a couple photos.  Of course, she's holding the can the wrong way.

And then she got a fever for Halloween and wasn't able to go trick or treating.  The costume got put away for a year.  I insisted she wear it the following year because we had put so much work into it, I felt like it needed it's Halloween in the spotlight it deserved.

Fast forward to 2010.  She's grown a bit and now it fits even better.  We entered her in the Bend Bulletin costume contest, so she got her photo in the newspaper (but no prize, oh well).  She wore the costume trick or treating and it was a wild success! (We later re-did the left shoe, I had run out of tape for this photo.)

Promotion Celebration

Finally a new post eh?  I must have totally skipped over my annual Halloween costume-making entry.  I'll try to do that one next.

But first, this last week I got a promotion at work.  The change in title isn't that exciting (going from "Document Control Administrator 3" to "QA Auditor 2"), but what is great is that I changed from an hourly to a salaried employee.  I never thought it would be that difficult to achieve, but apparently there are a multitude of reasons that at my company it is a huge undertaking.  (All other companies I have worked at where I performed the same duties, the position was a salaried one.)  In any case, we went out last night to celebrate.

We got dressed up, even though my daughter didn't want to.  She claims that getting dressed up makes her feel like we are rich, and that is embarassing.  I explained to her that since most of our clothing comes from Goodwill, E-Bay and garage sales, it certainly doesn't support our being "rich", and also if someone is going to judge us on our appearance, that is their problem not ours.

We went to "Blacksmith" for dinner, a swanky downtown steak and pricey comfort-food restaurant.  The drink I started with was a "Sum Yung Gai" which combines coconut rum with pepper vodka, ginger and lime to taste like a red curry dish.  It was very good, and a nice departure from the drink I usually order there, the Bubblegum Lemondrop (made with Dubble Bubble-infused vodka).  V wanted mussels as an appetizer and we tore through those.  However, things started going downhill from there.  The waitress brought our salads immediately after the app, so the table was suddenly crowded, and when our steaks arrived, they were lukewarm.  Tasted okay, but definitely not hot enough.  V had the mac and cheese "flight" with 3 different types (truffle, original smoked, and bacon).  They were good except the teacups they were served in had at least a centimeter of breadcrumbs on top (a tad excessive).  The beers we ordered with dinner arrived when we were almost done eating, and had a head on them 3 inches deep.

We skipped dessert there and instead went to 10 Below, the restaurant at the Oxford Hotel.  I had my old standby, trio of panna cotta, which didn't thrill me as it had in the past but was still the best option for me on the menu.  (I'm not a big fan of chocolate.)   In retrospect I probably should have had the creme brulee.  I did get to try absinthe for the first time, but didn't see what all the hype was about.  A lot of work for something that tastes like sambuca.