Celery - (or Halloween Part 3)

It's bit of a story, but real short I'll just say that Ellery is going to dress up as "Celery" this year.
Reasons:
1. It is one of her nicknames
2. Her baby sis is wearing a pea pod costume that we found on one of our hikes last Nov. 2
3. She has a book that is called "Pass the Celery, Ellery."
4. Her parents are dressing up as farmers??
5. We wanted to make a unique costume where people didn't know what it was. (not really)

So I started with some celery colored t-shirt knit fabric that I found at ________.? You guessed it Hi Fashion Fabrics in GJ, Colorado.
I made it up into a little jumpsuit.

Then bleached little lines (strings) down the length of it.

After bleaching the bottom few inches and then less up the next few inches.
I had no idea what I was doing, but it seemed to work okay.
Now for the leaves.

Kathryn found a perfect celery leaf on line and copied it in 3 different sizes.  We used two colors of green nylon fabric and traced the leaf design onto them several times.
Then cut them all out. Just took 5 or 6 hours. No big deal, right?

I sewed these leaves all around the neckline of the little jumpsuit.

So far so good.
Now, how to make a hat with celery stalks coming out of the top of it?
Start with a small frisby plastic disc,

and insert 1/2 cut lengthwise pool noodles into it like so.

Make sure to have some fun while you are doing this ridiculous project.

Go ahead, make a game out of the day.

Maybe this will warm the wearer of the hat up for the ultimate test of PUTTING IT ON HER HEAD.
Then if the "noodles" aren't bending just right, how about....

putting them into a hot oven to shape them. (around a nice glass pitcher - maybe this shape is good?)

Perfect!

Just don't leave them in the oven too long. "Where did it go?"

"Hmmmm, what is this?"

We added some more of our cut leaves and some bling to dress it up. Now what?
Smash down the wires that attach it all together so that our 20 month old doesn't get stuck in the head, then hot glue it down to the hood that we made out of the costume fabric.

I guess at this point I was getting frustrated, 'cause there aren't any pictures documenting our continued shenanigans to be had.

Our adorable child does NOT want this on her head.

We have attached 4 elastic strips to the hat and are tieing them under her arms to keep the hat erect. The hood buttons and velcro's under her chin, but she throws her head around and it falls down onto her back.

We may have to put some more of our celery leaves onto a plain old headband and put this on her. She'll be sure to keep that on.

Any ideas out there? I've decided my sewing skills do not include an engineering propensity.
More pictures to come, I promise.