Noodles for Halloween

So, I wanted to put a mouth on the house for Halloween. Red pool noodles would be the curled lips. White pool noodles would be the vampire teeth. I had an idea about dentil molding and ha-ha-ha, a pun. Even though my house doesn’t have dentil molding. Anywho. My hairdresser suggested the pool noodles might be too small and to double them. And cut the white noodles in half to have the rounded effect of teeth. This is New Orleans. My hairdresser’s a costumer. She’s, in fact, famous. She found the alligator in the pink dumpster.

But I digress.

I followed her advice and doubled my order of noodles. But when they arrived, they were still too small.

So I pivoted.

What Now?

I’d already cut the “teeth” and decorated them with red patches for the bloody fangs (made from red duct tape). I turned them in all directions, examining them. What else they could be? I held them downward. Fingers.

Inspired, I began making random body parts from the noodles.

Balls I had on hand were wrapped with white grocery bags, irises drawn on, and da-da! Eyeballs.

Another digression: I spent $8 on this pool noodle cutter. (Yes, there’s a specific tool for cutting pool noodles.) I cannot recommend it highly enough. Scissors do NOT work on pool noodles. If you don’t want to spend the $8 and the cook in your house doesn’t mind, you can use a large breadknife.

Straightened coat hangers gave the noodles the flexibility to be curved into a much smaller mouth, so the original idea kinda resurrected like a moldy zombie. The coat hangers also allowed me to cut the noodles in half and reform them as raised eyebrows.

I had some left over skeletons that I added here and there. And I used leftover pool pieces to make gremlins that will sit on the spikes of the iron fence (of course, we have an iron fence–it’s New Orleans.)

As I worked I realized I had made a face. A disembodied face. I thought I needed a body.

I added our orange and red string of light and yellow lights. When they’re lit, it looks like a full spotlight is on our house, but it’s just the two light strings.