NIGHT @ the MUSEUM

The city's art museum was having a costume bash for Halloween. Dressing up and looking at art? I think a big fat yes! Now an art museum wouldn't be at the top of my list of places to take my kids but the event was family friendly. Oh my thank goodness! On top of that my kids were pretty well behaved through it all. Have you seen the article about the child who knocked down (and broke) priceless art on display at a civic center? A little negligent of the parents if you ask me. The thought came into my head several times throughout the event lol. I wouldn't even dare go by myself with the kids. Luckily my husband and I put in a great team effort at keeping a diligent eye on our kids! That would be one of my greatest nightmares! You know...if my kids broke expensive artwork. We didn't go trick or treating this year. This was something I've never done before and ended up having a lovely night. I sense a new family tradition in the making.

[blurry cause picture of a picture] There was a photo booth. I am a sucker for photo booths at any event!! >:)

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I will think of costume ideas all month long, if not all year long. The idea of wearing a costume and dressing up is SO appealing to me! So much that I eventually want to get into cosplay. I even have a list saved into my notes of characters I'd love to cosplay as. I'll have to share it in a post later on. I wanted Aviva to have a special costume this year. To store buy or not to store buy, that is the question. Not sure how I came to the decision but we all agreed on Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck It Ralph. 

The costumes they sell pre-made are kind of crappy. Vanellope wears a hoodie, skirt and leggings. The costume sold at stores is ONE PIECE. Bad enough I have trouble finding things that fit Aviva. She's petite and wears many sizes that vary from brand to brand. I knew if we bought her a one piece costume it would be ill fitting. Coming up with a Vanellope costume required a lot of thought on how I would execute it. I tried going as cheap as possible without sacrificing quality. In the end it added up to about the same price as the costume from the store. ($45 give or take.) I took advice from blogs and videos from people who had cosplayed as Vanellope before and also used my better judgment.

I know the character wears more of a mint green color but teal/turquoise was way more practical and easier to find. Even then, I still had to buy a white hoodie and dyed it with Rit dye. For the life of me I couldn't find a teal hoodie in the style/size I needed. I searched extensively. I wasn't going to spend over $20 for a teal hoodie I was going to cut holes into anyways. Also I couldn't find a two-tiered brown skirt for a toddler. The closest thing was made of brown fleece with leggings attached to it and shipped from China or something. If you've ordered from China then you know with shipping you gotta wait at least a few weeks. Then you forget about it completely and maybe if it wasn't a scam, finally surprise get it in the mail. I would have had to order it in September if I wanted any glimmer of hope on getting it on time. I had to go brown tutu route and honestly it worked out fine. 

The leggings portion of the costume required the most time and planning. Before I even began painting the stripes I had to measure out even lines with a ruler, blue painters tape and lots of marks with chalk. The whole process took the better half of a week. I found teal leggings at Walmart for $4 and ordered fabric paint to make the stripes. I could have and probably should have gone with opaque white stockings and paint on teal and purple stripes. The leggings were a size 4T and still were baggy on Aviva. I think stockings would have eliminated this problem. I MacGyver'd a tube out of poster board over a wine bottle lol I saw how other people used cardboard to hold the shape of the leggings/stockings and even mailing tubes. I used what I had available. I also taped wax paper around the poster board. Biggest tip! It prevented the fabric from sticking to the tube because the paint did soak through the cloth at parts that I had to paint over multiple times to achieve a solid stripe. 

 

This is the fabric paint I used. I should have gotten a lighter purple but I was being cheap and ordered this one. It dried to almost black. I ordered through Amazon Prime, which always delivers stupid fast.

I LOVE YOU PRIME, YOU DA REAL MVP! I should have waited though because I found both colors of fabric paint at Walmart in town. The purple was the right shade too. SMH There was even fabric paint in a spray can. I didn't even know it was a thing. That would have saved me so much time. If you can find this magical spray fabric paint then I would suggest going that route. It costs a little more at I think $6 a can but I wouldve gotten If I hadn't already bought paint.

Here is the final product

I used pink parachute cord and cut holes in the sweater with scissors. (yeah nothing special)

The tutu was a bit too thin for my liking. I used a black tutu Aviva already had and layered it underneath to add the right amount of opacity to the skirt. The hoodie didn't come out as vivid as I had hoped and was also baggy on Aviva. My poor child needs to like freakin grow already. I'm kidding Viva tehe~

Moving on to the candy pieces in Vanellope's hair. I used the strongest glue known to mankind: E6000 (ok, maybe not but its still some pretty good ass glue) and carefully stuck on actual candy pieces to mini bobby pins and hair clips. At first I was going to make them out of polymer clay but was being too lazy and used Smarties, Spree and Albanese gummy bears. This brand of gummy bears are slightly bigger than Haribo bears so they could stand out more on the hair. I raided the kids hair accessory box and pulled these heart and "star" barrettes. I painted the clip parts with black nail polish. I tried to stay as true as possible to the movie but couldn't find the brown and green peppermints. For the licorice hair tie I used a reddish hair scrunchie I found in a set from an after Christmas sale at Target last year. It looks close enough, right? 

 Vanellope von Schweetz make up was the finishing touch. Pink cheeks, nose and darkened eyebrows. Perfect! Aviva was excited to be at the museum and wouldn't stop fidgeting long enough for me to take a better picture of the candy hair pieces. Its a little blurry.

maybe this shot is a little bit better. The museum had a crafts table for making "magic wands" and painting little wooden pumpkin ornaments of some sort.

between the two of them, getting a decent picture of the kids together is near impossible. Gil and I had big plans for a costume for Baby Abby. She was suppose to be Wilson the volleyball from Castaway. We were planning out how we would accomplish that but my mother in law sent the cutest Rapunzel costume. It was automatically a no-brainer that she had to be Rapunzel. She's Mexican baby Rapunzel lol In the trailers for the new Ralph Breaks the Internet movie Vanellope meets all the princesses including Rapunzel. So in a way, it works out. I'm going to let Aviva wear her Vanellope costume once more when we go see the movie. We are planning to go and take Abby as it will be her first theater movie. She's finally able to sit through the majority of a movie.

As for me, I was a call center chick from the beginning of Drake's Hotline Bling music video. I had the perfect light wash jeans but cut them into shorts earlier this year for the summer. whoops. In the video the girls wear a light pink shirt knotted in the back paired with light wash jeans. The girls wear a bit darker jeans too though, shoes also varied. I stuck with sneakers rather than heels. Its a great last minute costume. Don't tell me the song sucks either cause you know its catchy as heck. Also the Sam Smith cover beats the original, yeah, fight me,

~happy halloween~

-creepy gal