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The original reason why I stopped posting before was because I became too busy with Halloween preparation and then when I was done, I wanted to show off my "dolls" That is what it felt like this year--like I was getting to play dress up with my dolls. Unfortunately for E, I was so consumed with getting the other costumes right that I had very little to give to her consideration. She found this dress in the dress up bin and loved twirling around and being a princess. After the stress and insomnia of the other costumes, it worked for me. At strongstart however she was the shabbiest and least elaborate of any of the other kids.
Nat was Glinda the good witch; a recycled costume of Mic's. The only challenge with her's was the crown and the wand and making sure she felt as important and got as much attention as her older sister. On Thursday night before Halloween we all sat down at the table and made her crown and wand. To someone artistic like most of you, you may think the crown was simple--not so to my obsessive complicating way of doing things. Thank goodness I have a husband who is the yin to my yang...or the yang to my yin...(I can't remember which one is the masculine) I coloured streaks in her hair with felt pens. In the end she was quite happy with the results. I think she looks happy and pretty darn cute.
Mic on the other hand...took all my energy and focus to look like she did. First of all she didn't really know what she wanted to be. She wanted to be Annabeth from the Percy Jackson series but we didn't have anything and I thought probably nobody would know who she was anyways. Probably most of you don't know who that is. (I recommend it--its a good quick series to read) Then she wanted to be Ginny Weasley, but again didn't really have anything she could use and a shortness of funds for buying things. So I started asking her what her friends were being and one friend was going to be an Indian princess; that's when I got the idea of being a Japanese girl. I even had a beautiful kimono. I just didn't have an obi (the sash.) So then I did some research about how long they are supposed to be and went to the store and found something that I thought would work. The only problem was that because obi s are so long and narrow I had to sew it together and my sewing machine is broken. I didn't mind leaving the edges rough, but i knew it would fray and I longed to be able to just go over to mom's house and sit down at her already set up machines to sew and surge. So after lying sleepless in my bed I thought of Sis. Schortinghuis. She of course was very gracious and even did all the sewing for me. Wearing a kimono the correct way is a complicated process--especially the proper tying of the obi. Luckily I found a good "how to" video on youtube. The only problem was that the knot it teaches is the one you do for a summer yukata. In the end that is the one I ended up doing anyways. The other one was kind of boring and more complicated. When I tried it out on Mic of course I had waaayy to much obi. Here is my finished product.
We used spray on black dye for her hair and Sarah gave me the idea of doing 2 loopty loop buns. For some reasons, these pictures, make her hair look grey, but it actually looked really black.
Japanese girls usually wear some dangly accessories when they are all dressed up in their fancy kimonos so we attached some beads.
Looking back, I can't believe how obsessive I became with this whole costume. Maybe because it was japanese and I wanted it to be authentic. I didn't want to do the whole white face geisha make-up so I looked up how to do hara-juku girl make-up. It really accented her eyes I thought. And made her look far too grown up.
Note the collar standing delicately away from her neck...
The full view. Isn't the kimono beautiful?
With my Japanese umbrella that Sis. Ota gave me. She wasn't allowed to open it at school except for the parade. I like this picture because I think she really does look like a doll--not quite human.
All 3 of them before they went off to school. I had to wake Mic up before 6:30 am to have her and Nat ready before school. Phew...hopefully I won't be so crazy next year....
