D.I.Y. Minnie Mouse Costume

Minnie Mouse is by far one of the easiest costumes a lady can put together for Halloween — especially at the last minute (like what I did last year)! All you really need is a good pair of mouse ears, cute accessories, and fancy duds. Or casual duds. Whatever interpretation of Minnie you want to do is fine with me!

Keep in mind that Minnie Mouse doesn’t neccesarily equate to red & white polka dotted dresses and skirts. The girl has other colored dresses and bows, y’know? Earlier this year I bought a pair of Minnie Mouse ears at the Disney Store that came with 4 different detachable bows — a floral print, white with little pink dots, pink with big white dots, and a glittery silver bow. In case you’re wondering I bought it for Disneyland purposes. It’s no longer available there, but they do sell all kinds of mouse ear things on the Disney Store website. Or if you’re super crafty there are tons of tutorials on how to make your own ears, like this one I found on YouTube.

I based my costume around the floral bow and came up with this:

outfit details:

• Ears: Disney Store
• Cardigan: Target
• Peter Pan collar necklace: YesStyle
• Dress: H&M
• Shoes: American Rag
• Ring & Bracelet: I have no idea. o,0

For the costume party I went to on Friday I wore black tights with a long sleeve black shirt underneath my dress just to get the full Minnie Mouse effect, but for this blog’s shoot I ditched the tights and undershirt because I was lazy (at least I’m honest). I got my dress at H&M last year because it makes me feel like a princess. Wee! I think every girl should have something in their closet that makes them feel regal. Anywho, I got the cardigan at Target eons ago, the Peter Pan collar necklace is from YesStyle, and the t-strap heels are by American Rag, which I got last year.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to Minnie Mouse! You can pretty much put any cute outfit together, throw on Minnie-esque accessories (I think Minnie is a pearl kind of girl), some mouse ears, and call it a day! Black nose is optional, but please, please please, do not draw whiskers on your face. I don’t understand why some girls who dress up as Minnie Mouse draw whiskers on their face when Minnie doesn’t even have them. You know she gets that ish waxed!

I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween tomorrow!!!

Cheers,
Nina

PS: To all on the east coast, stay safe!

PPS: This post will be submitted to IFB’s Halloween Project. Keep your fingers crossed for me please!

The Happiest Place on Earth

I got back from my super amazingly fantastical 4-day Disneyland adventure last night around 2:30 am! Or technically, earlier this morning. My back is killing me (Tim had to put Icy Hot patches on me, and I’ve been downing Aleve like there’s no tomorrow), my feet are sore, and there’s slight chaffage between my thighs, but I already miss Disneyland oh-so-terribly. And despite the fact that we were there for 4 days, we still didn’t do everything we wanted to do. BUT, we also got annual passes, so we have a whole year to go back as many times as we can!!!

Some pretty interesting things happened during our stay — the cast of Modern Family were shooting on location for an upcoming episode. We spotted them on Main Street! And on Saturday, we used our Magic Morning passes to get into the park an hour early, and around 9:30 we headed over to California Adventure to get Fast Passes for World of Color, but we noticed that the park was damn near empty — a rarity for a Saturday at Disneyland. We were stopped by some cast members at the entrance/exit and they told us that there’s a “situation” going on outside of the park, so they weren’t letting anyone in OR out. Basically, we were trapped inside Disneyland which is probably the greatest place anyone could be trapped at. We got to enjoy 3 hours of short lines! But I do feel bad for the folks who had to wait inside the parking lot to get in. :/ Oh yeah, Disneyland closed at 2 am that night too. CRAZYNESS.

I got to see my sister and her boyfriend briefly since they were at the park for the One More Disney Day event a few days before we got there.

We asked a cast member to take our photo — he ended up making us do 3 poses.

I saw someone wearing the SAME EXACT Hello Kitty cardigan and leaf print dress as me. WHAT ARE THE ODDS???

Meeko wears a bow tie now. Bow ties are cool.

These are not the droids you are looking for.

Disneyland was a ghost town on Saturday morning. It was amazing!

Eric Stonestreet (Cameron!) from Modern Family.

This looks like an engagement photo. Hehe.

The World of Color show is by far one of my favorite things about California Adventure.

At elecTRONica with Sam and Aaron.

Aladdin and Jasmine on It’s a Small World.

Tim and I with the ultimate couple: Mickey and Minnie.

Another one of my favorite things at California Adventure is the sketch class.

Prince Eric & Ariel.

Matchy-matchy with the Sleeping Beauty duds.

In case you haven’t thrown up over the cute couply pictures we took.

Captain EO is so delightfully 80s. <3

I can’t wait to go back for my next visit!!!!!!

Love is a Mix Tape

“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.”

- High Fidelity, Nick Hornby

I am obsessed with mix tapes and I take the art of making one very seriously. You can’t just slump a bunch of songs together and call it a mix– you’ve got to think of who it’s for, think of what songs they might like (specifically by artists they may not be familiar with), or if it has a theme. Everyone has their own rules to making mixes. One of mine is that if you have the same artist on there twice, the songs can’t be from the same album and they can’t be placed back to back. See? I told you I’m serious about this shit.

For Valentine’s Day I made Tim a mix with songs that remind me of him (:barf: I’m sorry, I can’t help it if we’re so cute we make you sick), and I found that making a mixtape that’s strictly all love songs is quite difficult because you’re also using someone elses’ words to convey your thoughts and feelings for someone. So… yeah. I spent hours in front of my computer shuffling songs around to see how they flowed after one another. It took forever for me to come up with the final track list.  Some of the songs I chose also relate to our mutual love of Ryan Gosling as 3 songs on the mix have been in movies he’s been in (“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” – Remember the Titans, “You and Me” – Blue Valentine, “Under Your Spell” – Drive).

Track list:

1. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough – Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
2. My Love – The Bird and the Bee
3. Wouldn’t It Be Nice – The Beach Boys
4. Islands – The xx
5. Lovers Rock – Sade
6. You Are My Favourite – Sophie Madeleine
7. Maps – Rogue Wave
8. Home – Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
9. Hand With Care – Jenny Lewis With the Watson Twins
10. You and Me – Penny & the Quarters
11. Trying My Best to Love You – Jenny Lewis
12. La Valse D’Amelie – Yann Tiersen
13. If I Came Back As A Song – Barnaby Bright
14. One And Only – Adele
15. Make It Wit Chu – Queens of the Stone Age
16. Here In My Room – Incubus
17. Secret Heart – Feist
18. Under Your Spell – Desire
19. I Wanna Be Where You Are – Michael Jackson
20. Hysteric – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I don’t just stop at perfecting the mix — I’m all about presentation too! I like taking old jewel cases and use scrapbook paper to create the cover. For this particular one, I made little cartoony versions of myself and Tim by using the Hipster Dress-Up Game for girls and boys, then Photoshop’d them to stand by one another and added little details to make the girly one look a bit more like me (darker hair, freckles, olive glasses). For the back of the CD I found a little picture of Mickey playing the piano with Minnie looking at him adoringly that I snipped out of a Disney catalog years ago. It was too perfect as we both love Disney, and Tim plays the piano, and I like watching him play. And for the inside part of the cover sleeve, I found a quote about love by Dr. Seuss which pretty much sums us up.

I’m pretty effing proud of this mix. I always put a lot of thought and effort to every one I make, but this is the one I’m most proud of to date.

Things I Bought That I Love: Chocolate Mint Milk and Holiday Disney Thingies

I don’t think I can say this enough: TARGET IS THE SH!T. I love Target. If I could only shop at one store for the rest of my life, it would be Target because they have everything. Hmm… I’m sensing a bit of deja vu. Have I written these exact sentences in another post before? Most likely, I wouldn’t be surprised. <– ramble ramble.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I saw cartons of limited edition holiday milk flavors including egg nogg (eh), red velvet chocolate, and chocolate mint. Naturally, I bought the red velvet and the chocolate mint milk AND a Minnie Mouse sippy cup to drink it out of. Target has pretty swanky Disney Holiday/Christmas swag right now too — mostly housewares like plates, salt & pepper shakers, cups, bowls, and some Mickey and Minnie tees. It’s so AMAZEBALLS!!! Shanice was kind enough to buy a Minnie Mouse shirt for me.

The red velvet chocolate milk is so-so — I mean, it’s tasty and all, but it really just tastes like regular chocolate milk, just slightly sweeter. The mint one, however, tastes like cold melted Andes candies. Have you ever had an Andes mint chocolate candy? Gaah… so good. *drool*

PS: Yes, I totally copied Mindy Kaling’s “Things I Bought That I Love” thing. Whatever. x__x

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outfit details:

• shirt/shorts/cardigan: Target
• necklace: vintage
• hair clip: Daiso

There ain’t no party like a hashbrown party

My Halloween turned out to be a lot better than I thought. I attempted to do a hipster take on Minnie Mouse, but ended up not looking so hipter-ish. Jen, Tim, and myself ended up going to Dell’Osso Farm and wandered around the maze. It was dark and I damn near fell a few times, and I accidentally slapped Jen on the face when she poked me (I meant to slap her arm. Mah bad). Lots of poking, tickling, and butt slapping occurred. But that’s what best friends are supposed to do to each other, right? I guess we’re just an abusive bunch. o,0

I forgot to bring a flashlight for the maze, but Jen had her little reading light and Tim had his Sonic Screwdriver which actually made for a decent flashlight. Kinda noisy, but it makes you look cool (or stupid depending on who’s looking at you… x__x).

Afterwards we met up with Heather at Denny’s where we had copious amounts of hashbrowns. Tim and I did one of those Build Your Own Grand Slam things and just got a bunch of hashbrowns, ’cause there ain’t no party like a hashbrown party ’cause a hashbrown party is DELICIOUS. I seriously love hashbrowns. Or I just love potatoes in general. They’re so amazingly versatile.

HASHBROWNS!!!! <3

I didn’t take any pictures with Heather on my camera because I fail at life.

After Denny’s, Jen went home and then the rest of us went to Walmart because it’s open 24/7 and what else is there to do at 11 pm in Stockton? We basically just danced around the store, more tickling and poking ensued, and it was just perfect.

So that was my Halloween. Hope you all had an amazeballs one too!

The Costume Conundrum

It’s Halloween and I still don’t know what I’m going to dress up as. RUGH. And my plans are still unclear as I was originally going to have a Doctor Who marathon with Jen, Marcos, and Shanice at Shanice’s place, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of Shanice to confirm what time and what we should bring, etc. WHERE ARE YOU WOMAN? CALL ME! As an alternative plan, we’re thinking of going to Dell’Osso Farm’s pumpkin patch to check out the maze. As for my costume, I’m taking the DIY route by just looking through my wardrobe to see what I can put together. It’s been quite frustrating.

My options are…

• Minnie Mouse
• Diana Prince (Wonder Woman’s alter ego, think Clark Kent/Superman)
• Hogwarts school girl
• 11th Doctor
• Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I managed to put an 11th Doctor outfit together, but when I put it on I looked all frumpy because my boobies are too effing big. *shakes fist at the heavens*

I was Diana Prince last year, and Karen O the year before… I don’t really want to do repeats. And I don’t know where my Wonder Woman costume is (and the bustier totally stained my white button-up shirt). So I guess I’m left with Minnie Mouse and Hogwarts school girl (which I wore in July for the last Harry Potter movie, you can see that here).

Well, I hope everyone else has a happy and safe Halloween!!!

Now… I gotta go figure this shit out and see if I still have time to make Rory’s Ewok costume… /headache

I’m still 5…

Sometimes I don’t have enough time to put an outfit together, so this is what I ended up wearing to work this morning. Later on I realized that this is something my 5-year-old self would’ve probably worn. I can’t say Minnie Mouse has always been my favorite. Daisy Duck was my homegirl when I was a wee lass. I had a blanket with baby Daisy on it and it was one of my most favorite things in the whole wide world. But every time I went to Disneyland, Daisy was never there and there wasn’t a whole lot of merchandise with her mug on it. Everything was Minnie, Minnie, Minnie. I had a Minnie purse, fanny-pack, t-shirts, dresses, etc. No Daisy! Not even a plush doll.

*sigh*

I learned to love Minnie Mouse though, and went crazy when Forever 21 launched their Minnie Muse line last fall.

The coolest pair of Chucks I ever owned were a pair of purple ones with dinosaurs on them. I think I had those when I was in preschool. The ones pictured above would be the second pair of coolest Chucks I have ever owned. My mom got them for me last year at Nordstrom’s Half-Yearly Sale! They’re slip-ons with a pop-art/comic book feel — the shoe laces and stitches are painted on.

I found this ring at a garage sale last week. It kind of reminded me of the cheap-o rings I would get at Sanrio, or as I still like to call it “The Hello Kitty Store,” when I was little. It’s fun because I can shift all the gems whichever way I please. Also, they kinda remind me of the fireworks at Disneyland.

I remember watching an episode of What Not To Wear a few years ago, and Clinton and Stacy were against wearing garments with cartoon characters on them if you were over the age of 10. While I think they have good taste, I disagree with them on that. I’m all about graphic shirts with my favorite characters on them, so long as I look age appropriate. And I think I did today.

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outfit details:

• top: Forever 21
• pants: Levis
• shoes: Converse
• necklace: Tiffany’s (hybrid of my necklace + bracelet)
• ring: garage sale