Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?

Well, if you've been wondering what I've been up to lately, I've got three words for you: pumpkin decorating contest.

This year was the third annual pumpkin decorating contest and fundraiser for United Way. Deb helped with the contest last year, so she set up a meeting for anyone who wanted to work on it this year. Don't worry, I was the first one in the room. Although there weren't very many of us, we came up with a few clever ideas. We didn't have too many restrictions; the only real rule was that you could not have more than 3 pumpkins in your display.

After coming up with a few crazy ideas (such as a pumpkin giving birth-- and I'm not kidding), we decided to go with the theme of "The Three Little Pigs." We were going to use a couple of our competitors as the stick and straw houses and construct our company's house out of brick. We didn't make very much progress in the beginning (3 days before the contest), but we all chipped in and came up with an *awesome* display to show off on Thursday.

Most of you know that I *love* crafts just for fun. But throw in a little competitive spirit and a co-worker telling me we didn't have a chance of winning (Alan!), and you've got one crazy crafter on your hands. I stayed late Monday and Tuesday nights to paint the pumpkins bright pink. The first coat barely made a dent- the porous pumpkin sucked the craft paint right up. But by Wednesday morning, we had two very pink pumpkins. Gena picked up some key ingredients to give the project a 3-D effect- the wolf, straw, pig masks, and more. Glenda brought in tree branches, and Jo e and Jolene bought stones, fake leaves, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes. My contributions: 1. Time 2. Effort 3. Sponges (I'll explain later).

On Wednesday morning, Joe, Deb, and I went outside to pick up sticks to build the second house. There is a small wooded area along one of the paths in front of the main entrance, which was very convenient. However, we definitely got a few looks from people who thought we were crazy, especially since it had just stopped raining. I also grabbed some acorns, and Joe wanted to get a bunch of wet leaves. We brought enough sticks and leaves inside to build a small forest. Joe and I (you will see a theme here- he helped with a lot of the manual labor) spread everything out to dry in my area. I'm in a section with 8 cubicles- 6 of which are unoccupied. My student is in another cube, but he was out of the office for a career fair that day.

We covered cardboard boxes with brown craft paper and went to town. Glue was *everywhere*! We put together the first house and were surprised with the results... this could turn out much better than we originally thought. Wednesday afternoon, the whole group got together for some last minute prep- Gena, Glenda, Alan, Tammy, Joe, Jolene, Deb and myself, along with the help of Bill and Jeanne, finished our Three Little Pigs pumpkin scene. But, I wasn't quite satisfied...

I wanted to make our display stand out, so we used as many 3-D pieces as we could. The straw and stick houses looked great, but the house of brick just wasn't cutting it. It was a box wrapped in a picture of a store, which looked nice, but definitely did not have the same jaw-dropping effect as the other two. Without delay, I called my mom (Who else?! She is brilliant!) for some suggestions on how to make a cardboard box look like it was made of brick. Her suggestion: sponges.

So after Zumba I Wednesday night, I went to Dollar Tree to pick up supplies. (I don't know if you have this store were you live, but it had been some time since I had been in one. They have everything! There are actually some decent deals there- I found a large bottle of craft paint for, wait for it...., only a dollar!) I spent the next several hours painting sponges red and black- 50 of them to be exact- and gluing them to a cardboard box. I'm glad a laid down a plastic drop cloth (also at the Dollar Tree) because it was a giant mess! Take a look at this...

This has a scary resemblance to my desk at work

The fruit of my labor

So, without further ado, I present, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" by the Pharmacy Ops team.

A piggie with the brick house... we added some embellishments that made it look even more realistic.

A piggie with the stick house- Joe and I used almost 20 glue sticks to make this!

A piggie with the straw house... Gena and Tammy used 20 more glue sticks to keep the straw from falling off

We used a fan with blue ribbon attached to show the wind from the wolf blowing the houses down

From left to right: Deb, Joe, Alan, and Me

In case you're curious, here's how we made the pigs. I used 4 coats of pink craft paint to make the pumpkins pink. We cut toilet paper rolls into thirds and painted them pink and black to look like hooves. The hooves were stuck onto the pig using hot glue. The tails were made of 3 pipe cleaners braided together, then wrapped around two of my fingers for the curled look. The masks came from Rhode Island Novelty .(Gena is also very crafty and told me about this place. I haven't been there yet, but I can't wait to see kinds of deals they have waiting for me!) I love the googly eyes- so much better than painting them on the pumpkin.

We set up our display Thursday morning, and I was so proud of it! Even if we didn't win, I thought it turned out really well. Naturally, I couldn't be there during the voting and pumpkin contest- I had to do a flu clinic then work at a store. However, I was in a room signing up for Be the Match to be a bone marrow donor. When I was filling out some of the paperwork, another worker from the organization came into the room and said, "Nicole, you have got to go down there! There are some awesome displays- there's even the three little pigs!" That's all the confirmation I needed to know that we did a good job. However, a couple of VIP's from our team sent out e-mails congratulating the pumpkin decorators for what an "outstanding job" we did. (I just hope I don't get dubbed as the "piggie pumpkin girl.")

We haven't heard the official results, but I'm still proud of my pink piggies. In honor of them, I think I'm going to treat myself to a manicure and pedicure (with pink polish, of course) before I come home next weekend.

Happy Halloween!