My place of employment is having a very festive week of pumpkin carving, pumpkin seed tasting and my favorite, a costume contest. The contest was to be done in departments... so we needed a theme. Since I am the only one in my 'department' I teamed up with the pediatric clinic since I work with them the most. So there is three of us, we decide to be bugs. We had to pick something easy because, well you know how working in a group can be... they're not going to participate if you don't make it easy.
My friend Jolene decided to be a Ladybug, while my other co-worker picked a bumble bee since she had wings at home... that left the door open for me... what bug could I be- well the good ones were taken, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. So I fished for idea via Facebook status and got some great suggestions. My decision was made when I found dragon fly wings at the halloween shop... there's wings - so really how hard could this be?
I am a master thrift store shopper (you know I don't like to pay full price for ANYTHING) and I found this super cute teal/turquoise dress that was raggedy at the bottom and had some great texture in the body and I thought "this is a great start!" And besides I had a coupon (for a thrift store, yes this is true) and it ended up being $3.00.
The dress was spaghetti straps and a little revealing so I knew I needed something to cover up my top part, but I didn't want to disguise the cool texture on the body part. So I searched for a shrug.. I search high and low, thrift store after thrift store. I found a shirt that matched the color and bought it thinking I could work with it. Then I decided maybe black would be easier to find rather than trying to match colors, so I bought another one at a different thrift store. Luckily the first shirt was returnable, where as the $5 black sweater shrug was not (oh well, maybe I'll wear it with something..???). So I searched a little longer, good thing I got working on this early, right? I decided the image I had in mind just was not going to come true unless I made it myself.
*Note to self - do not search all over creation for something I can go to JoAnn's and spend less than $10 to make myself
So I proceeded to create the top shrug part of my costume in the very image I had originally planned. Now I have never really sewn anything and WORN it before. Yeah I created some pajama pants, and Harpo some boots and a rain coat, and Kyle some boxers - wait that reminds me - why doesn't he wear them? Anyway you see that what I have made hasn't really been anything that the public sees... so this was a first. But I am very happy how it turned out.
So I have the dress, the wings, and the shrug thing to cover my upperness. I needed tights (you gotta wear tights on halloween) and shoes.
I had bought some great tights at JCPenny's... but I had spent $14 on them. This ate at me for a few days so I decided to take them back. I never have coupons for JCPenny's where as I have coupons for Macy's... so Macy's is where we went. I found some great bright yellow (to match my wings) that would work good - AND I had a coupon so even better :-)
Okay tights check... now shoes. Shoes was the longest part of this halloween costume journey. I searched all over thrift stores again.... but I needed teal/turquoise shoes to match my dress! Shoes aren't really something I could make - otherwise I would have. Now why I didn't search for shoes while I searched for a shrug the first time around is a mystery to me, but when I am focused, I am focused and get a very bad case of tunnel vision. So a week or so passed and I hit all the thrift stores again, finding the perfect color just too small, another color that would work, but too big.
Well Tuesday evening I ran to Wal-Mart to pick up some table clothes for the work pumpkins (if you know me, you know I don't shop at Wal-Mart. I live in a city - where there are none, except for out in the suburbs.. so it ends up being a last resort when I do get to one) Anyway I was picking up some table clothes and had to mosey through the halloween section and came across an excellent accessory to my costume.... EYELASHES!
They matched my wings perfectly. (and after the fact have become the most complimented piece of my costume, no one even notice the shrug I made from SCRATCH ::tear::). So I picked up those, only to find that they are NOT fun to put on in the morning when you're already 10 minutes late for work and haven't fixed your lunch for the day. Before I left Wal-Mart I strolled through the shoe department hoping to come across something, and I did! It wasn't the best color to match, but it would work and I was running out of time. And for $5, it beat having to keep running all over the twin cities.
So my costume was complete! Or so I thought....
Tuesday evening when I was carving pumpkins with my ladybug friend, Jolene. She had some antennas that came with her wings... very weak, pitiful antennas at that. We ran to JoAnn's to gather supplies to jazz up her antennas, while in the check out line we turn to our right and see these sparkly headbands - LIGHTBULB! This would be so much better, so we run back and get some pompoms and end up making antennas for all three of us, bugs.
Now THIS completes my costume.
But I do want to share that tights are always an essential to a halloween costume. While we were at JoAnn's Jolene found these tights which added even more jazz to her ladybug.
Now that the day is over and done, I am a little disappointed, I put a lot of work into gathering up the pieces to my costume... but the final result is really nothing impressive.
Here were the other entries in my works costume contest:
1st Place: 80's Theme
2nd Place: Medieval Times!
3rd Place: Thing 1 & Thing 2
And the rest of us losers:
My office-mate June had my favorite costume:
Thanks for reading!
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1 comment:
You looked darling, Daisy! Nice job on the costume!!
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