Costuming

The last couple weeks have been plagued with lots of tests, projects, papers, meaningless little assignments, etc. Needless to say, I have been far busier with school than I prefer. So, yesterday when I finished my last test of the bunch (for a week or so), went on a run, wrote a paper for 5 hours, I decided it was time for something a bit more fun (although still school related).
Christa and I have clinical at a treatment program for people with mental retardation and chronic mental illness every week. It is a great therapy program in which they work with social workers, therapists, etc. and we are the designated "nurses" that appear every Tuesday to teach groups on health related topics and answer any medical questions they might have. It has been fun to get to know the clients over the last couple of months, and they have been anticipating today, the Halloween party, for weeks now. Today's topic (per their request) was oral hygiene, and this topic, combined with the Halloween party prompted what turned out to be some pretty sweet costumes.
Last night (after dinner and some more paper writing) I sat on the couch and did a lot of this...

And when it all came together, this is what I created... (pretty proud of it for only an hour or so of creation)

You called it...the TOOTH FAIRY! (and since I was wearing a lot of black and teaching adults, not children, I decided that I was the tooth fairy of decay...only brush the ones you want to keep!) I cut out the molar and hand stitched it onto a shirt that was already in my Goodwill bin, and then created this cute tutu out of ribbon and tule that I also already had. It was an essentially free costume.

Perhaps one of the greatest features was the giant toothbrush that Grant borrowed from the dental school that served as my wand!

And here are Christa and I today at our clinical site! We decided that she would be a bottle of Ale-8 (a sugary soda indigenous to Kentucky-made in Winchester-which everyone at our site loves a little bit too much). We put a straw coming out of her bottle top since we taught that drinking out of a straw is better for your teeth when consuming sugary beverages.

Let's just say we were definitely a big hit at the TRP today!

We continued with some fun today helping those who did not dress up make Halloween costumes in our craft room. We successfully created an Indian, a spiderweb/spider (I was quite proud of the spider hat I made for this costume), some hippies, and the queen of hearts (dang HIPAA forbids us from showing you any of our creativity, but just know that it was awesome). It was a nice change of pace for our clinical...wish it could be Halloween every week :)