Tips For Buying Halloween Costumes for Military Members Overseas

Well folks, it's August so it's about that time to start thinking about Halloween. Yes, Halloween. When you're overseas you have to prepare for holidays well in advance. My husband and I were shopping at the commissary and we noticed that there was Halloween candy out! So yeah it's time to get on it. 

I've lived overseas for 9 years and of 5 of them, I and the kids went trick or treating at Halloween. What I learned is that if you're not so crafty (like me), you must buy your Halloween costumes well in advance. If you're one of the lucky ones who can sew and make their kids' costumes from scratch.....GOOD FOR YOU :P lol I'm not hating, I promise. Ok, maybe I am.

I made my son's costume when he was 5 and whilst trick-or-treating, he made me promise to never ever make another costume for him again. My daughter loved her cat costume and still remembers it to this day. My son has nightmares about his however.....dang where did I go wrong.

As I am scouring through pinterest looking for costume and decorating ideas, it struck me that maybe I should share with my fellow military families, the newbies at least, my experiences with Halloween costumes. I had plenty of time to get things totally WRONG. So learn from my mistakes! Trust me. Living here in Japan now hopefully we learned our lesson!

TIP #1

Make sure your kids are totally sure who/what they want to be by early-mid September. There aren't a lot of great choices at the PX/BX and if there are any they're whisked away with a quickness like anything else that's awesome overseas. And people often buy multiples of the same dang costume and they only have one kid! 

 So look online now in August, like me. My daughter wants to be Frankie Stein from Monster High and my boys want to be Mario and Luigi.....again. But of course they outgrew last year's costumes and they wore their costumes all day everyday so they look too tattered to wear this year anyway if they were to fit well.

(www.buycostumes.com)

TIP #2

In the last couple years I've lived in Germany they extended their costumes choices from clowns, 'indians', witches, princesses, and cowboys to way more mainstream choices. I saw a few different costume choices at stores, but there aren't nearly as many choices as there are in America. They don't really do Halloween like Americans do and I am sure the Japanese don't either. Though in Germany it's definitely becoming bigger and they have the AWESOME Fasching in February.

(I bought my son this Iron Man costume shortly after the Ghost-Gate 2010 to get a head start on Halloween 2011, however he wore this to his Kindergarten's Fasching Party)

TIP#3 

Order before mid September because even online they run out of costumes and the orders may take longer because the high influx of orders coming in! If you live off base you can order from costume sites from stores in that country. For example, while I was living in Germany, I used amazon.de and amazon.co.uk often but there aren't a lot of choices, even if there are, it's still extremely expensive from my experience.

TIP#4

If you don't want to buy a costume,  make your own. There are a lot of websites to get tips from. My daughter was a cat in 2010. I just bought black tights, a black tutu, a friend of mine made ears which she glued to a headband and my daughter loved. www.parents.com have a lot of tips that I've used. From cakes to costumes they have a lot of fun easy DIY projects that I like. I love when easy and DIY are in the same sentence, don't you? But if you want something a bit different, make sure you know what you're going to do and buy any missing supplies in advance, because crafty things also move fast at BXs/Craft stores on base. Look off base but make sure you know where to go. You can also buy accessories online, but again, make sure you plan ahead.

(my daughter going for seconds on treats)

TIP#5

If ordering from Amazon and you're ordering in September or October (eek) make sure you order from Amazon and not another company. It'll take alot longer. Just order from the outside company directly, it's usually faster unless stated otherwise.

TIP#6

Walmart, Party City,  BuyCostumes, Target (it depends sometimes they do not ship some costumes to APO addresses for whatever reason) and Amazon ships pretty quickly. But shop around because there often deals where'd you wouldn't expect!

(Costumes purchased from www.walmart.com however the boys want to switch it up this year and it's ot available on walmart this year so far. Keep looking out, though!)

TIP#7

Have FUN!!!!!!!!! And make sure your kids know you get 10% of the candy loot since you're doing all of this work and all.

 

Hope this was helpful! Have a great Halloween!!!

A Video of My Teeny German Kitchen: Where the Magic Happens

My kitchen is small. The more passionate I become about cooking and the more we move, it seems like the kitchen gets....smaller. That's backwards, right? But this house has a huge bathroom which is needed with 3 children! I should be happy, because unlike most typical kitchen kits in Germany I  have a big fridge!  Hell, some kitchens in Germany doesn't come with a full kitchen!

My 4 year-old son helping with pie dough

 Our kitchen is specifically made for American uses because when we viewed the house, there were openings for a large fridge and slightly bigger than your normal German stove.The only "un-American" thing is the small size. I only have 1 and a half counters for prep work!

 I had to be very creative to make this kitchen work. Some things I did was to turn our entryway closet into a little pantry. That helped with all the food storage, We had to store a lot of things in the dining room which was a pain with 3 curious children about! We also put shelves on the wall to place more things. My next project is to buy a pot and pan holder that hangs from the ceiling. It's better for the pans and pretty cool looking. I'm very tall, so I will hit my head a good few times. Hey, I've already lost a few brain cells after having children, what's 100,000+ more gonna harm? 

There are advantages to having a small kitchen:

1. It's easy to move about- everything is in a close vicinity.

Was whipping up Beef Wellington. Was worried about the lack of space, but it was quite easy to do after all! 

2. Forces you to have an immaculate prep area! I clean so much while cooking because clutter is way too frustrating for me to deal with.

3. And best of all, less to clean. 

After! Babygirl helped frost the cake.

The are obvious disadvantages:

1. I feel a bit claustrophobic when the kids help out, but I still have them come in. It's the most popular room in the house!

2. Having no room to put anything anywhere and less prep area

From baking 1 single layer cake (pre-pantry days)

I have to use my dining area as an extended part of my kitchen when using the food processor or stand mixer. My stand mixer is now used as part of our home decor. haha. My friends know I cook, so it's not so odd!

Here's a video I made in March 2010. I spring cleaned my home and wanted to show the results. I wanted to just do a slide show on Google Picasa, but it ended up on YouTube with Vivaldi Four Seasons 2 in the background. Le sigh. I would just re-publish the photos, but the photos are on the computer that has crapped out and there's no way to recover the photos :( Hope you enjoy and turn the speakers if you want!

All-in-all, I love my kitchen. It's small, but has the most character than all of the kitchens I've ever had. It's my favorite place in the house and its truly where the magic happens. Not THAT magic....yet ;) But it is where the pie happens.

Happy hubby with homemade Chicken and Bacon Pie.