Yes, that is my actual birthday cake. It says, "This is not turkey-shaped, Anh," in order to express Yves' disappointment that the man at Baskin-Robbins could not make a turkey shaped cake. She told him, "Make something a small girl, age 5-7 would like." Bonus, the HK heads are rings and the center is a bubble blower.

So what did I learn in the past year?

Learn people's names. I read it in "How to Win Friends..." It makes such a difference. The courthouse library where I worked could be alienating at times. I greeted my fellow externs by name and noticed little things about them. It changed everyone's attitude.

Don't get discouraged when you make mistakes. I was used to feedback on a piece of paper. A marked up essay, some plus and minuses to evaluate my work. It's much more difficult to receive face to face feedback or to feel like you've done something wrong. I always just carried that weird churning feeling inside, but you know, it's best to move forward. You mitigate the mistake, minimize its effects, and get on with your day.

Always read parking signs. Sometimes I feel like you have to be a lawyer to figure out all the parking restrictions, esp. when there are two signs stacked on top one another. Read them. Or if in doubt, when a street is particularly empty, you probably aren't allowed to park there. There is no such thing as abundant parking in L.A.

unicorn costume how-to

This is way overdue since it's no longer Halloween. Nancy is right. Posting things after Halloween means that no one cares since it's 11 months until the next Halloween and no one is scrambling to find a costume. I'm just going to do it anyway, so I can link to it next Halloween.

These are the pieces you'll need. Two ears, a horn and a headband with two prongs. Yves used wire we bought at Michael's to attach her horn to her forehead.

For the ears:

I used a piece of glitter foam, because it's sturdy enough to stand up on its own. I thought about using pipe cleaners and felt, but this was more convenient.

I freehanded ear shapes and cut out four ear pieces.

I glued the pieces back to back and wedged them into my headband.

For the horn:

I drew a triangle on a piece of cardstock. 6 inches tall and 4.5 inches at the base.

I rolled the triangle into a cone and stuffed it with newspaper to reinforce it.

Then I cut a strip of gold fabric to wrap around the the cone. The fabric is a little messy, because it used to be the belt to my Wonder Woman costume.

I used a combo of these two adhesives to get the fabric to stick.

This is the completed cone.

Remember to leave a strip of fabric at the end to attach it to your headband. I wrapped the fabric around the headband and tucked it back into the bottom of the cone and stapled the fabric to get it to stay.

completed headband:

For the hooves:

I just folded a piece of fabric into a small rectangle, about 5 inches long and secured it with liquid stitch. Then I wore it kind of like an arm warmer.

unicorn costume

I know I said I was going to turn this into a regular blog, but I really have nothing to post. I love Halloween but couldn't come up with anything creative this year. My friend suggested we go as unicorns. Too bad all the costumes we researched online involved 1) unitards or 2) babies. After an unsuccessful trip to a discount dance store, we decided just to wear regular clothes and make accessories. We made horns, ears, hooves and tails. Here's the result:

My friend's fauxhawk looked great. I was thinking more of a curly mane with ribbons. I bought some hair glitter and rhinestones to bling out my face and hair. I couldn't find the rhinestones I was supposed to go out! AND my glitter hairspray didn't work. Ugh.

I didn't do much makeup-wise. I had some pretty white ribbon that had a pinkish purple sheen to them, so I went off that. Here's a pic for now and I'll do a how-to soon.