Happy Halloween!
Halloween is not really my thing. In fact, it's never really been my thing. I never saw the appeal of buying a costume and wearing it only once a year. Usually, I go the lazy route and dress up as Hello Kitty every year. I think the most effort I've put into a costume was either junior or senior year of high school. I, of course, was Hello Kitty that year, I found a beanie from Hot Topic, wore overalls and even made a pom pom tail out of yarn. I'm a big Hello Kitty person so I probably own maybe three different versions of her ear headbands.
That's a lie actually 😂. Looking back through old photos, I guess the most effort I put into a costume was my cardboard Instagram frame. I had made a big one for a class project and smaller one that I had made for a school Halloween party while I was studying aboard. Where you see the number of likes are, is made from whiteboard paper that I glued on. Every time I took a picture with someone, the number "likes" changed.
This year was the first time in a LONG time that I put some thought into my costume and put in the hours to make it. I don't know what came over me but I started to browse Pinterest about a month after getting to Okinawa. I liked the idea of putting pieces together to make a Halloween costume because then I could reuse parts of the outfit for every day life. Then I stumbled on this costume:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybby956ynC8&t=72s
Now mind you, I knew if I did this costume, I knew I wouldn't be able to reuse the top in every day life. However like I said, I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was because I was living alone again, seeing my friends only on the weekends, needing some crafty to keep myself busy, I knew this year I wanted to be a gumball machine.
I went in search of the pieces hoping to find red shorts but it was well into the season of fall clothes so finding anything of the sort would had to have been in the sale section. I was seeing a lot of burgundy red or wine red bottoms but I got lucky finding a bright red pencil skirt in the clearance section. THE ONLY ONE LEFT TOO. For the top, I had been deciding between a crop top or a normal tank top but opted for the crop top since it covered just enough of the top of the skirt.
With the tank top...the crop top ended right above the hips.
Next were the pom poms which let me tell you, are really hard to find in large quantities in Okinawa. Daiso aka the 100円 sold 25 mm in small packages 35 pieces. I am the type of person who would stock up with large quantities of things just so I wouldn't have to go back to the store to get more. Seeing that this Daiso run would cost more than 1000円, I decided to take my chances to order from AliExpress (although I did buy a Daiso glue gun for 200円). I placed an order 3 orders of 30 mm sized (it doesn't seem like a huge difference...oh but it is) pom poms. Although I selected 15-30 days standard shipping, I was hoping that it would get to me within a week or so because it was China is not that far from Okinawa. I had gotten lucky again and my pom poms arrived within a week.
I got to gluing the next day and actually made good progress sitting down for the three hours, putting this costume together:
I had finished this costume with three different DIY sessions, one for the skirt which didn't take me very long (30 mins tops) and two for the top. The finishing touches I added for this costume actually required me to wear the top while I glued mini pom poms to myself...don't worry, I put some cardboard underneath so I wouldn't burn myself lol 😂.
Look at all the empty spaces!
Despite not being a Halloween person, I had fun making this costume. I wonder what my kids will think when I wear it to school on Tuesday. It's quite possible that I may or may not be this again this year.
Dear friends,
Have fun and be safe this Halloween. I have been writing this while being trapped in my apartment because of a typhoon passing through 😂. I would have liked to have entered some Halloween costume contests though.
❤️, Sam