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!!!

Stressed Much??

We're over here in Japan trying to settle and it's kind of hard. We are still waiting on our furniture. I wish had put so much more in my unaccompanied baggage. For those who do not know what that is, it's basically what you ship ahead. I thought that we'd have our furniture by now so it's turning into a drag.  I would like to have our house nice and settled in and comfy before we (the whole fam!)start school. Having boxes all over the place/unpacking while trying to keep a clean/normalish house, happy kids, a relaxed husband, and going to school is going to be so hard. The rate things are going I think our shipment will arrive during finals!

I also have another problem..........I don't have a LICENSE! My husband is going to TDY soon and I will have no way of getting around. IE the japanese grocery stores. I could just take a taxi but that's $$$$$$$$$$.

There will be a lot of budgeting going on right about now.

Did you know it's really expensive here. Well at least the grocery is. Even on base the commissary is expensive. So we have to do a lot of budgeting.

Besides that......I LOVE IT. I am thankful every single day that I am here. Did you know that I wanted to move here since 2004? I wanted to be on a base overseas that my (late) brother and I could be stationed at together. While filling out my 'dream sheet' (military for where you'd like to go) when I was an Airman. Japan was on the top of the list. I remember envisioning blue skies, clear waters, and palm trees, and no it wasn't Hawaii. It was Okinawa. I never even heard of the place but for some reason Okinawa drew me in. My time in Germany was incredible and I thoroughly appreciated the experiences, the good, the bad, and extremely ugly that went on there, but I am so happy to be where I feel I was meant to go now, not years ago when I really wanted to be here. So. Yeah.

After a move the first 6 months are hard, so I am hoping and trying to stay very positive about it all.

Anyone else live/lived in Japan? Please share your experiences in the comments!

Konnichiwa from Japan!

We just moved to Japan from Heidelberg Germany.

I miss Germany, but man I am loving Japan so much.

Right now the balmy hot temps doesn't bother me at all. I love it in fact.

I love being so close to the beach. There are so many here and they are so beautiful. I hope we get some visitors here.

I had some great food here so far, just simple roast pork with ramen blew my mf'ing mind. The dumplings were insanely amazing. I loved it when we ate in Paris an Germany, but it doesn't compare to eating it in the country of its origin. I feel so happy and blessed. The kids love it too. They still love Paris, England, and America the most though. But they love it so much here, they even commented on the amazing food. I am hoping to take advantage of all that Japan/Asia has to offer. I still can't believe I am here. I've wanted to live here for a very very long time. So I am going to hope to live it up. I do have to finish my degree here, but I hope to have loads of fun still.

I bought a new camera to capture our lives here when carrying around the dslr is too much of a pain. I am still learning it, the nice man at the BX here recommeded this camera. And it's pretty cool. He took the time to show us every feature the Lumix has to offer, its been on my drool list forever. The HD video camera is amazing and I plan to use it and vlog a bit, can not wait to share with you all!!!!!!!! I just need better video editing software because the Windows Movie Maker on Windows 8 is crappy. I tried to vlog in Germany but couldn't. Oh well.

A few photos

Thanks for reading!!!

Moving and Trip to England

GW move in a couple of weeks!!!! Omg so stressful. Taking care of the last of everything is so stressful. My stomach is knots, my phone is constantly ringing and my home is steadily emptying. However the emptier my home becomes the messier it seems to get. I don't  get it. Ooh nevermind, I have kids.

We are so ready to see our family stateside. Last weekend we went to England. To visit my sin and nephew before we go. So happy to do that. I miss my brother so much.  And it was wonderful to spend time with my nephew. Next up is planning our trip to America along with all the other things we have to get done here! Hotels in America are so expensive! We are a family of five and I don't want to put anyone out especially during the week so the hotel plan is the best. We will hopefully figure something out. Anyone have any hotel recs? 

England was a wonderful trip. The sun shone the entire time, the weather was amazing. A welcome break from the dreary weather we had here in Germany. Parts if our city became so flooded due to the rain. It was ridiculous. Made me happier to be so far away! In England, I cooked for my brother and wasn't so concerned about being a tourist but making England a home away from home. It felt so amazing. I loved it. We shopped, ate, talked and relaxed. We did go to Cambridge and it's a gorgeous town. I feel so honored and blessed to have seen so many different places and now I am addicted. The kids loved England so much. We want to go to be more city before we leave in a couple weeks, but we are not sure where yet. Somewhere CHEAP preferably and close. 

From trip to sainsburys

Taken by the nephew

Well wish us luck with the move! Will reveal location with an Instagram pic when we get there.