Extreme Costuming

Take as many hard-boiled eggs as you want penguins (we'll go with one).

Take one hard-boiled egg. Peel. Get three black (pitted - the canned kind that don't really taste like anything, because they're actually green olives dyed black and stored in water to make them completely bland) olives, plus wooden toothpicks (the coloured kind; it will be important later).

Take one olive, spear it with a toothpick, and put it on top of the boiled egg. This will be your penguin head. You now have a slightly hydrocephalic penguin.

Slice a second olive in half, then slice one half in half again, so you have two quarter olives and one half olive. Attach the quarter pieces with toothpicks on either side of the egg, and attach the half olive to the back. You now have wings on your slightly hydrocephalic penguin.

And, the reason you spent the extra fifty cents and got the coloured toothpicks (any rumours about wooden toothpick dye toxicity have been highly overrated, and anyway, the tic stops after a few weeks): Break off the pointy end off one of the yellow toothpicks and stick it into the olive head as a beak.

(This is the kind of thing that distinguishes the master garnish maker from the amateur, so don't scrimp on the toothpicks!)

Now, take the carrot (what? You don't have a carrot? Well, get one!) and cut two thin slices from the larger end (discard the rest of the carrot, because carrots are icky). Cut the slices into little feet-like shapes (remember, penguins have webbed feet! Your guests *will* notice!), and attach with toothpicks (to the bottom of the egg. Unless you're making a Three Mile Island Penguin, in which case, let your gruesome sense of humour guide you). Your hydrocephalic penguin should now stand up. If it doesn't, you are a total failure, and it *will* go on your permanent record.

(These things come back to haunt you, you know.)

Place the finished hydrocephalic penguin on a veggie or meat tray.

If you feel creative, you can make an ice-floe out of cream cheese for the penguins to stand on. Going further, get a beanie polar bear, and have him mauling one of the penguins (use hot sauce for blood; it doesn't congeal like ketchup) so that you can watch your more pedantic friends' heads explode when they look at the display.

Eat the third olive.