BOO-log

This past weekend, we celebrated my son's 4th birthday. At this point in his life, the only things he cares about is dinosaurs and Disney Cars. Since we already did a dinosaur-themed party last year, I decided to go with a Disney Cars party for this birthday. Just like for my daughter's unicorn-themed 6th birthday party, this birthday would also be celebrated at home with no visitors. However, this was not going to stop me from making it magical while still on a budget. Here are all my Disney Cars party ideas.

With Easter fast approaching, I wanted to come up with things that I could do with the kids at home. Originally, I was going to have all my nieces and nephews over for an Easter egg hunt and other fun activities that have now been cancelled due to social distancing. Instead, my kids are I are stuck inside and I do not want to go to the store to try to get any Easter-related items because I really want to try to only go out for things like groceries when absolutely necessary. So for my Easter at home activities, I will only use things that I have already available in my house and I hope this helps to give other people ideas for quarantined Easter activities.

Welcome back to the Costume Upcycle Series! In this series I will take a few of our oldest costumes from the clearance section and will either style or alter them in a new way that fits current costume trends! Each edition of the series will increase in difficulty in skill level. If you’re new here, you can click here to see what costumes I will be altering. In the last two blog posts, I turned a Twilight Fairy costume into a Rave Fairy here and a Fine Foxy Mama costume into Scary Spice here. Let’s get started on Episode 3 with the Red Too Hot costume!

Because I'm working from home with two kids, sometimes my favorite parts of the day is when the kids are sleeping--nap time and bedtime. It gives me a nice little break from having to deal with multiple things at once. I can finally focus on my work without any distractions. Or I can finally take time to do something for myself, like shower, or read, or breathe. The problem is that the kids don't always go down very easily. It took me a while but I finally discovered that putting sleep masks on the kids is a game changer. I thought it would be fun if they had themed sleep masks so they would be more excited to put on their masks and get to sleep. So I'm going to make my kids character sleep masks.

It's very unfortunate that schools have been closed due to safety precautions regarding Covid-19. For High School seniors, I'm sure this has been very difficult as they are not getting a proper prom or graduation. Thankfully we live in a technologically advanced time in which we can still do things like video chat with one another. Being stuck at home myself, I've enjoyed video chatting with my family and friends. My friends and I have even set up virtual game nights, which have been a lot of fun! This gave me the idea of making my own masquerade mask, which is a popular accessory to wear for prom season. I thought it would be an exciting crafty activity, and it might be fun to share for a virtual prom or just for dress up.

Now that everyone is wearing masks for safety, it can be easy to blend in with the crowd. Fun printed masks can be a fun way to show your personality but what if you want your personality to shine even more? With so many comic book, video game, and anime characters out there that wear masks, I thought it would be a great idea to mask a face mask that looks like one of my favorite characters. This tutorial will show you how I did it and at the end I'll even give more examples of characters for costume masks you can make yourself!

The world currently feels a little like we're living in the Stranger Thing's Upside-Down, except for that we can't see the Demogorgan. Many of us are spending a lot more time at home these days, and if you are anything like me, this abundance of free time has put me in a crafty mood. Protective supplies such as face masks are becoming harder to find, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to give a craft lesson of how to sew your own face mask.

To celebrate Valentine's Day, this year I decided to get crafty! After years of seeing many people make playing card ruffs on Pinterest I wanted to try it myself. In the end I came up with an entire Queen of Hearts inspired beauty look that would go great with a Queen of Hearts costume!

Have you ever had this happen to you before? You're looking for a costume on a budget so you head into the clearance section. You find something for the right price, but it's not exactly your style. Or you could probably style it in a way that looks cute, but you can't exactly picture it in your head. This situation has happened to me so I wanted to start a blog series that takes on that challenge! Over the next few months I will take some of our oldest costumes from our clearance section and attempt a costume upcycle by either restyling them or altering them in a way that fits today's look! The best part is... all the costumes are under $6!

Here in sunny Los Angeles, our local Renaissance Faire is currently entertaining every Saturday and Sunday until May 20th. This year, on select weekends they have special themes that they encourage their guests to dress up with. Our Pure Costumes team decided to attend the weekend of May 5th, which was themed "Time Traveler Weekend" which included a steampunk costume contest. Although we didn't go to enter the contest, we went to (a) participate in a fun dress up event, and (b) see what other people have come up with for their Steampunk costumes. We were not disappointed, there were tons of attendees wearing great steampunk and renaissance themed costumes.

When you've got a Halloween party to attend, chance are you want to find a unique costume that no one else in the party will have. That isn't always easy when pre-made costumes are available to everyone! And if you don't have the skills or money to get a custom costume made from scratch, it's even harder to guarantee your costume will be one of a kind at your party! Luckily with the right supplies, you can turn any costume into a terrifying zombie costume! For this tutorial, I decided to take a random costume of ours and turn it into something fit for a horrifying Halloween!

Easter bonnets are a fun and festive Easter tradition. So if you're also looking to make your own hat to wear on Easter Sunday or to wear to your Easter parade, here's our easy and fun DIY Easter bonnet using items from Pure Costumes and the dollar store.