leading the band.

jacket: vintage
top: american apparel
skirt: BB dakota
boots: steeve madden
tights: unknown
hat: vintage

i've always been fascinated with majorettes from the past; the elaborate costumes, fancy baton moves, tasseled boots, and graceful moves make me wish that i was around in the early 50's so i could join. the collections of majorette photos that i've found online are so fabulous. some of my favorite photos inspired my outfit (check here, here, and here!), but i had to tailor it a bit to make it elementary-school appropriate. this means a knee length skirt, whereas most majorettes wore teensy-tiny mini skirts or a pair of fitted shorts. i'm also missing a cape, which is traditionally part of the outfit; this is definitely something that i'd love to add if i wear this costume again.

hope you're all having an amazing halloween weekend! there's a couple more parties that we're going to this weekend and i'm going to do a different costume for each one. the majorette outfit was swelteringly hot - not the best bet for a crowded party.

diy sunday: halloween wreaths

jen and i were in the mood for some crafting today, and decided to take on two projects (one of which i'll show here): halloween wreaths and pumpkin carving. the wreaths took much, much longer than either of us expected. jen's was purple and silver themed, while mine was orange and gold. we bought the black wreath at michael's for $3.99 or so, as well as the little skulls ($1.99 for a bag of 11). everything else was scrap material or dug out of the recycling bin. we painted the skulls with acrylic paint, and added superfine glitter and glow in the dark paint. the bats were cut out of plastic, spray-painted black, and covered in superfine charcoal glitter. i added some netting to the edges of mine. the spiders were made out of the same plastic, painted, and felt circles were added to the body to give them some texture. they were then covered in more glitter (can you tell this glitter was the star of the project?). the spiderwebs were the most difficult - we "drew" them with hot glue, covered them with glow in the dark paint and more glitter. the bow was made from an old velvet dress and just placed on.

the pumpkins aren't done yet, but i'll be sure to post a picture when they are. i spray painted mine black and carved some windows and bats out of it. the orange insides stand out really well against the black, and i'm sure it'll look amazing illuminated. jen's is, well, a work of art. she's amazingly talented with carving and such, and did a very intricate dia de los muertos face.

my wreath

jen's wreath

happy to be done!

some spooky spiderwebs.

costumes on my mind...

with the month changing to october, my mind has been on one thing: halloween. it is my absolute favorite holiday, ever, and i spend almost the entire year trying to figure out a really awesome costume, and i think i've got it down to a couple of ideas:

1. freeze pops (with bryan). this would mean giant popsicle costumes with a velcro center for us to connect.
2. a majorette.
3. paula deen.
4. chiquta banana lady.

i still have the rest of october to figure something out, so i'm not particularly committed to anything just yet.

BUT.

i really love the idea of freeze pops.

i'd also like to share with you bryan's costume from 2 years ago - this beauty took me about a month to make:he makes a lovely mayor mc. cheese, doesn't he?