Halloween 2017

Friday, 3 November 2017Friday, 3 November 2017 StarrLeave a comment

Happy Friday everybody! Can you believe this warm weather we’re having? Yesterday morning, I walked to the metro seeing my breath in the cold air, and I walked home in spring. I wish we could have crisp autumnal days but I’ll just take what I can get, I guess! Don’t forget Daylight Saving ends Sunday so get ready to fall back and get that hour back!

I hope you all had a fun Halloween! Halloween in the middle of the week always throws off the week a bit. At work, we all dressed up in costumes, and it was a fun and silly atmosphere in the office, but it was a Tuesday and there was work to be done. It felt weird to go back to work the next day… and the next day… and the next day…

Last year, my team at work did a group effort by showing up in adult onesies. This year, we split into 3 sub-teams, so we set out with the ambitious goal of having a large team-wide group costume with more specific sub-team costumes. (My original suggestion was we do a team-wide Harry Potter theme, with each sub-team choosing a different Hogwarts house or all being Death Eaters or Hogwarts professors, etc.)

Here’s the result:

And for each sub-team, we split by trilogy! I claimed the sequel trilogy for my team, despite only one movie from that trilogy having been released. (Also, yes, one of my teammates trolled us by dressing as Spock from Star Trek. Classic troll.) (And on the far right is an Angry Birds Vader. The troll force is strong with this team.)

I originally had different plans for Halloween, and compared to my crazy lofty 3-costume goals from last year, I was very derailed and very off-schedule this year. My Rey costume, while seemingly easy enough to make, was just a costume-in-a-bag option that was pretty inexpensive but turned out, in my opinion, better than I thought! (Minus the belt+bag thing that was just… drawn on? In the future, I’ll be replacing that first.)

Rey costume — “I think I can handle myself.”

It was a bit of a relief to just get a cheap big store costume from a bag, and people still thought I put a lot of time and effort into putting together my look! (Which I still did as my arms were so sore from attempting to get my hair to stay in Rey’s dumb triple hair loops with my hair being about twice as long as hers…)

Fun story: We went to dinner in costume on Tuesday night and found out the restaurant was actually hosting a costume contest about half an hour after we arrived. The manager stopped by to ask if we’d like to participate as one of the few parties in costume, but when the time came, we were – I believe – the only people who agreed to participate. So we won by default! I didn’t even have to get up and be judged by a restaurant full of strangers or stop watching the world series.

Did you dress up for Halloween? If so, what did you wear?
What were your favorite costumes you saw this year? I think I’m a sucker for a good meme costume, despite how poorly they age, because they just transport me back, you know? I also love crossover pun costumes. (E.g. “Dumbledora the Explorer” or “Edgar Allen Poe Dameron”, those are my FAVORITES)

Also, do you get trick-or-treaters? I’ve seen the number of kids at my house take a sharp decline to zero over the past few years. I heard that parents now take kids to shopping malls and centers for trick-or-treating now, but when did that become a thing? And why do stores still sell candy to us civilians then?

Ghosts of Halloween past: 2016 | 2014 | 2013

P.S. NaNoWriMo anyone?

Sailor Senshi Week 2017

Tuesday, 31 October 2017Monday, 30 October 2017 StarrLeave a comment

Two years ago, we observed Halloween on a Friday, which gave me the idea to don Harry Potter house colors every day leading up to Halloween. I had so much fun doing so that last year, I did Hogwarts Spirit Week, where I wore business casual versions of my house colors during the workweek before Halloween.

This year, I changed things up slightly due to 2 factors:

I received some amazing socks for my birthday. (I actually also received a few Harry Potter house socks, but not for all 4 houses. It seems very likely that I’ll go get those socks and revisit some Hogwarts house spirit in the near future.)
My cousin handed me down some great blazers after Christmas. I used to really want to be the girl with cool blazers, and when my cousin gave me some colored blazers, the wheels in my head started furiously grinding away. I had enough blazers to do a blazers-only edition of Hogwarts Spirit Week, but with my new socks, I decided to take this frequently-used color palette and do something different.

And thus, Sailor Senshi Week was born!

The order I went with this year wasn’t ROYGBIV (although I was darn tempted) but the order that we are introduced to the scouts in the anime. (Also, I only did Inner Senshi because 5 days of the work week and I’ve actually never made it far enough into the anime to have met the Outer Senshi!) So of course, we begin with the titular meatball-head, Usagi.

Next up, Sailor Mercury, the most popular character in Japan because she is kind and gentle and crazy smart. Ami was the kind of girl I wished I could be but struggled a lot to be because I wasn’t as kind or hardworking!

After getting to be Sailor Mars for Halloween last year and at AwesomeCon, my love for Rei has only grown. (I’m trying to get more interpretations of Sailor Mars in the works for the future, so we’ll see how ambitious of a cosplayer I’ll end up being!) I always saw so much of myself in this fiery scout, not just because she was the only Inner Senshi with long dark hair.

If I saw a lot of myself in Mars and wished I could be more like Mercury growing up, Jupiter is the girl that I find myself admiring a lot more as an adult. She maneuvers being the most masculine and the most feminine member of the team seemingly with ease and doesn’t apologize for either side. I remember really struggling to figure out how girly or tomboyish was “appropriate” or that I was “supposed” to be, so seeing Makoto be domestic af while lifting men above her head is really inspiring now.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much of a connection with Minako, as the blonde idol who we are introduced to last and is famous as Sailor V already. But I grew to like her as an important member of the team, and as a fellow aspiring star who is seeing through my childhood aspirations.

Also, my cousin gave me so many blazers, I had just one more look to share yesterday:

No socks for this one but here’s a closer look at my convertible Luna purse. (I can wear it as a crossbody as an as backpack.) I’m glad I didn’t attempt to do the little bun-tails at work, they are a bit disastrous and definitely a look.

Wish me luck with my very-recognizable hair for Halloween at work today! I wonder if I’ll get as many weird looks on the metro as I did last year…

Are you wearing any costumes for the Halloween season this year? I know I saw a lot of folks out this past weekend, but it was actually the first time I didn’t really do anything Halloween weekend. I attended a birthday party Friday night, but I went no where in costume over the weekend, it was a little sad. (I made up for it by scaring myself silly watching Stranger Things season 2.)

If you were to wear a full [work] week of themed outfits from one franchise, what would it be? Harry Potter and Sailor Moon were a lot of fun to do, and I’m sure I could easily do something Disney-related, but it’s a really fun creative challenge to do, especially since I set the rules myself! For example, doing the blazers this year was a fun added challenge. (I also challenged myself to do skirts the whole week in the spirit of the senshis school and scout uniforms, even though it got chilly last week and I started really wanting to wear pants.)

March Disneybound Challenge 2017

Tuesday, 25 April 2017Sunday, 23 April 2017 StarrLeave a comment

Another year, another March Disneybound Challenge!

Disneybounding is a phenomenon created by Leslie Kay as a way for people to channel Disney spirit into their wardrobes in a park-approved way. When Leslie was Disney-bound, literally on her way to a Disney park, she wanted to use fashion as a way to express how excited she was without getting into trouble for confusing children by being in costume. I would describe it as specific sect of closet cosplay, where you are able to wear closet items you could wear with other outfits in one themed outfit!

This year was different because Leslie put out a day-by-day challenge for everyone to follow.

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This was good and bad for me because:

+ I didn’t have to come up with outfits from scratch like I have in past years.
– I actually did have outfits from scratch that didn’t quite fit the themes…

+ I was able to rewear past Disneybounds to match themes
– I had to photograph old outfits creatively to keep it ~fresh~
(This is not necessarily a con.)

I stuck with the first half of the month pretty well, but the second half just fell off. Here we go:

16906149_273117506450575_8124492134343507968_n — Day 1: Favorite Disneybound accessory

A piece I find myself wearing a lot even when I’m not Disneybounding is the cursed Aztec gold necklace I got for my Elizabeth Swann bound for the pirate cruise in Fort Lauderdale. It always gets double takes from coworkers who go, “Um….. is that….. Pirates of the Caribbean???” I typically wear daintier jewelry but I love this larger piece so so much.

Disneybound group

Day 2: #tbt to favorite DisneyBound

My favorite Disneybounding moment still has to be doing it with friends at Disneyworld a few years ago! Plus, I felt pretty magical doing Blue Dress Ariel, corset and all. It’s super fun to do with friends and I can’t wait to do it again.

15535457_987475358052487_3653394942568431616_n — *Day 2: Sidekick characters*

I didn’t intend for my Meeko look to be so black but it was chilly and I didn’t want to take off my black jacket oops! This look was very inspired by one of my favorite Disneybounders, Chelsea (@brazzledazzleday), as many of my subsequent Disneybound and general outfit choices are very inspired by Chelsea and her great looks.

17075852_1061217830650665_3294645841981079552_n — *Day 3: Snow White characters*

Obviously, I had to do Snow White on this day, but I just didn’t feel like wearing the full outfit to work (I get Snow White comments whenever I wear this skirt to work though) so I tried my hand at a little flatlay and called it a day.

17126364_163151774197938_8298376750065254400_n — Day 7: Disney villains

Busted out my favorite villain look, Ursula, which I wore as-is because it’s hard to go wrong with this look. I love mixing the purples of this cardigan and the plum tights, wearing this black dress, and the necklace and brooch make it Ursula.

17127222_1815861645330766_3952590533435588608_n — Just channeling Oswald because

I chose not to follow any of the themed days because I really want to do Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and so I did and I loved walking around San Francisco in this look.

17125724_2247834138775437_1336981701011701760_n — *Day 10: Fab 5 Friday*

The Fab 5 refers to the classic 5 characters: Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy. I went with Mickey for my visit to the Walt Disney Family museum and awkwardly went back to this window because my shots weren’t good but people were walking around. The lengths I go to for vanity…

17077142_1872972672946363_3825362877594730496_n — *Day 13: The Little Mermaid*

As you may know, I love The Little Mermaid, and Blue Dress Ariel is my everything. I knew that with my red hair, not Disneybounding Ariel this year was simply not an option. It was tricky keeping these looks work-appropriate, so I let the bow do most of the talking and kept the rest of the look a lot more subtle in terms of the shades of blue I used. Holding this mermaid pose was actually very difficult and reminded me I have a lot of work on my core left to do!

White Rabbit

Day 15: Alice in Wonderland

Rewore my White Rabbit outfit from last year, minus the pigtails, and called it a day. I realized that I spent all this time on this photoshoot last year for these photos to put up on the blog, but I never shared them on Instagram, so this look was still very fresh over there. Hurray for past laziness helping out with future laziness!

Disgust

For St. Patrick’s Day, I busted out my once-a-year green dress and redid my Disgust look with the photo from last year. I always forget when I’m wearing it, but my friends do not hesitate to let me know that this dress makes me look very leggy!

17494517_279921325797849_7372355447128326144_n — *Day 27: Marvel*

This was kind of the drop-off point with Disneybounding, so grabbing a hammer made for an easy Thor look. It was all downhill from here though, and it had already been so long since my last bound. (10 days! And I had outfits planned for the days in-between!)

17586881_194612744369100_4177430095696232448_n — Day 30: Share a fellow bounder

I had to dedicate day 30 to Adam and Briana, who I got to meet last year in LA and to whom I basically confessed to having treated like celebrities in my head and being completely starstruck upon meeting in person on this Instagram post. Briana, in particular, put out excellent looks for all 31 days of the challenge this year and is just a shining beacon in the Disneybound community. I love these two to bits!

And that was the challenge this year! Sorry I’m so late with the recap but I didn’t feel as into it this year, maybe because I felt like my outfits were not as good and my photos of said outfits were definitely not as good. We’ll see how next year goes but this is definitely getting harder and harder every year as I try not to repeat old Disneybounds. (I think repeating outfits this year made me even less creative for the rest of the month??)

What should I Disneybound next?

Disneybound challenge in past years: 2016, 2015, 2014

Halloween 2016

Tuesday, 1 November 2016Friday, 23 December 2016 Starr2 Comments

Ahhh Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year. It is the coming of my favorite seasons and the best way to get everyone to participate in one of my favorite all-time activities:

Themed outfits. And yes, a costume is very much a themed outfit!

I saw some really awesome costumes this year, including the ones that terrified me. (And I had forgotten that Halloween is sometimes a scary holiday… silly me…) As a millennial, I definitely appreciate all the pop culture costumes that pop up, even if it means seeing a lot of Harley Quinns and Ken Bones.

For me, I came at Halloween wearing not one, not two, but three costumes over the course of three days. I usually spend all year preparing one costume to wear for everything, but this year, circumstances were different and I wound up having 3 different costumes to wear.

ON FRIDAY and Saturday, I went out in the costume I purchased back in June, so excited I was to be in possession of it. I actually purchased this last year as well, but the post office returned it to the sender instead of giving it to me… and then I never got it. June seems very early to be thinking about Halloween, but the seller actually stopped selling costumes a short while later so I’m really happy I acted as early as I did because I was finally able to realize my dreams of becoming…

YES, after nearly two decades of desperately wanting to be Sailor Mars, the Pretty Guardian of Flame and Passion, I was finally able to achieve this dream.

Putting this cosplay together was an ordeal. The costume itself was custom-fitted (because my measurements fall across a lot of different sizes), came from a seller on Etsy, and included the dress, the choker, the headpiece (and an alternative material headpiece), and the gloves. Honestly, the seller was great and I was just happy to have received it at all this year! The shoes were one of the hardest things for me to find, actually, because I have been searching high and low for plain red pumps but all I have been seeing over the past 2 years were super pointy red shoes or sky-high stilettos with a thick-thick platform or red shoes with random patterns or designs on them. I knew this was the year my dream would finally come together when I found these at a Payless – classic shape, patent leather finish, the right shade of red, a reasonable heel height. I even got the earrings and earring adapters for my unpierced ears. I also bought a wig for this costume, as I was expecting my hair to be a much brighter shade of red, but I ditched the wig at the last minute because I couldn’t get it on right when I was rushing. This year, I also forced myself to learn to apply false lashes for that cartoonish, wide-eyed look.

A lot of folks called it a “Sailor Moon” costume, but I could tell the costume excited other people. I honestly can’t wait to take this costume out for other occasions because there is no way I retire it after Halloween, not a chance!

ON SUNDAY, I attended a local Instagram meetup in partnership with IGDC and Visit Washington DC where we were asked to come in costume. Thinking about good photo opportunities for the amazing Instagrammers, I brought out my outfit that I originally purchased with RennFest in mind.

For her dramatic red cloak – another item I have been coveting for years now – I went with Little Red Riding Hood. This has been such a great purchase for a costume-in-a-bag I got on Amazon, especially given that the last time I bought a costume-in-a-bag was… in the 4th grade? (It was a ninja!) Instead of keeping my hood up, I went with this beautiful red butterfly hairpiece from an Etsy artisan in the Ukraine, and I got the basket separately to go with the basket hanky that came with my costume. (It came in handy for holding little things like my phone and glasses, but I did still need a larger bag for other things like my wallet and an umbrella, since it was going to rain.) It was actually over 80°F on Sunday, so I thought the flow-y cloak would help keep me cool but I think the long skirt and the long cloak wound up still keeping me glistening on that hot day. If you check out the photos I’m tagged in on Instagram, you can see some of the really lovely shots that the talented photographers captured of Red in action.

ON MONDAY, I went to work with a plan set in motion by my team several weeks in advance. We all came to work wearing…

Adult onesies! This was so much fun to plan, and our excitement to wear them got the rest of the teams in our office wearing costumes in a big costume contest! (The managerial team won for a great Wizard of Oz group costume.)

I stuck out with my Espeon kigurumi onesie, since it was bright purple and not an animal like the rest of my coworkers. But I have been wanting to own an Espeon onesie for, again, years and years, and I finally had a legitimate reason to purchase and own one! When I first tried it on, I could hardly contain how giddy I was. (Ben said he has never seen me more delighted!) It was a lot of fun to wear to work, although I was scared that I got the date wrong when I walked onto the metro wearing this and… no one else was wearing a costume? Not a pumpkin shirt or tie in sight! You cannot imagine how scared I was arriving at my office wondering if it wasn’t actually Halloween… But walking out to lunch with my coworkers in their onesies made it all worthwhile. (I also managed to make it all day without using the bathroom, knowing how difficult that would be…) Also, as it went back to being cold, it was nice to have such a warm and cozy costume for once!

This Halloween, I not only got to be 3 different characters, but I fulfilled 3 different goals that I’ve had for such a long time:

Be Sailor Mars
Own a long, hooded, red cloak
Get an Espeon onesie

These are fairly specific goals, and I did not imagine that I’d be checking them all off in one Halloweekend.

What did you do for Halloween?
Did you see any good costumes? One of the most creative costumes I saw was actually terrifying, but it was a pairs costume, with one man on stilts “controlling” a zombie man below him. The zombie on the strings would lean with gravity towards people, and both men had really scary/disturbing makeup and facial expressions. Super creative and really creepy! I seriously LOVE how creative costumes get. I bought all of mine but it is cool to see the costumes that people make.

I hope you all had a happy Halloween. Can you believe it’s November now? Two months of 2016 left!

P.S. Is anyone doing NaNoWriMo? I don’t know if I am…
P.P.S. Ghosts of Halloweens past: 2014 and 2013

Hogwarts Spirit Week 2016

Friday, 28 October 2016Friday, 23 December 2016 Starr2 Comments

Last year, Halloween fell on a Saturday, so we observed it during the workweek on Friday. I wanted the week leading up to Halloween to feel a little more special, so I dressed in business-casual outfits with color palettes inspired by each of the Hogwarts houses on each day: Gryffindor on Monday, Hufflepuff on Tuesday, Slytherin on Wednesday, and Ravenclaw on Thursday.

I had so much fun doing this little thing last year (and wearing very different colors every day) that I decided to do it again this year! With Halloween coming up on Monday, and only 4 houses, well… I had to get a little creative with Friday.

Happy Hogwarts Spirit Week 2016!

14560012_10210945978709119_4355665424127142262_o — *Where dwell the grave at heart…*

I always like to kick off the week with Gryffindor because I tend to enjoy doing Hogwarts Spirit Week in ROYGBIV order. (Such is how I usually organize the colors in my life!) Red is also one of my favorite colors to wear, so it’s more a matter of where not to wear red, as I could very easily cover my entire body in scarlet and crimson hues.

14753441_10210955954638511_7216924739581360385_o — *True and unafraid of toil…*

I never understood why Hufflepuff got so much flack as the leftovers house, or the weird house, or the lame house. It is one of the most admirable houses to me, because its students are literally known for kindness and being hardworking. Helga Hufflepuff accepted the students who were rejected by the other 3 Hogwarts founders and taught them everything she could. I only wish I could be as kind and hardworking to consider myself a Hufflepuff!

14604873_10210963475466527_6721418867607105350_n — *Those of great ambition…*

I’ll be honest, when Pottermore’s Sorting Hat sorted me into Slytherin several years ago, I was a little indignant about it. Me? Bookish me, an evil Slytherin and not a nerdy Ravenclaw? But as I read more about my designated house, I realized how true it was, that I placed the pursuit of power above the pursuit of knowledge, aka I have always been very ambitious. Since finding myself in the emerald-loving house (I only wear green on St. Patrick’s Day and Slytherin Spirit day though…), I remain upset with JK Rowling’s depiction of Slytherins in the canon. It would have made for a richer story to have students whose ambition did not lead them down the dark path opposite the heroes of her story and to have them use their cunning and determination for a different cause over, say, loyalty to their friends and family whose ambition led them down a different path.

14717103_10210974521582673_67154198328860637_n — *Wit before measure…*

The house that I identified so much with but did not ultimately get placed in: Ravenclaw. I realized that I may not be a prototypical Ravenclaw upon realizing that they are the Einstein types who don’t do their homework because they were busy studying extra material. (I’m a little too rules-loving to dedicate myself to knowledge this much!) That being said, it is my sister house. Ravenclaw and Slytherin are the pair that go together, and those who believe in hybrid houses may accept that this is the second house of which I am a blend of traits.

So there are only 4 houses at Hogwarts, but with Friday still being fair game this year…

Oops.
Ended Hogwarts Spirit Week with a Death Eater look, because after all the color I wore this week , it was time to return to an all-black before Halloween. My decision to end the week as a Death Eater launched some interested conversations, including whether or not Dementors are evil. (Do they choose to suck the joy and happiness out of people? Or is that literally the only thing they are capable of doing outside of floating around? Are they even sentient? How much of a “choice” did they have in joining Voldemort and guarding Azkaban? Is something that is borne of evil inherently evil itself?)

I had a lot of fun with Hogwarts Spirit Week this year, and even got one of my coworkers to join me. (No one else in the office noticed until Slytherin day:

“Oh, Sara is wearing green today, too! You two match!”
“Welp. It’s not a coincidence!”
“Wait, wat”

I’ve got a busy busy busy Halloween weekend planned and will be going to work in a group costume with my coworkers. I have already gotten a chance to work a Yelp Halloween event as…

A DOUGHNUT! Oh man, doughnuts are one of my favorite foods of all time, so this was kind of a dream come true. I’ll also be at more Northern Virginia events if you are an active NoVa Yelper, as I moved from Maryland over a year ago and it doesn’t actually make sense for me to try to fight traffic to work Maryland events all the time!

What are your Halloween weekend plans?
Are you wearing a costume?
Are you going to wear a costume to work/class on Monday? I’m kind of super pumped about our team costume for work. It’s going to be very embarrassing to wear on the metro (our subway), so I think that’s a sign that it’s a good one! Hint: It was very easy for me to put together and it is not a costume I will get cold in easily, which is a JOY as a girl who likes to cosplay for Halloween!