Wordless Wednesday

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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!

Random Bits, Home, Moving, etc

So I am moving in May, but I think I may be in denial because I keep purchasing things to decorate the house we live in now. I've stayed away from our room and children's rooms, though. I will not decorate those until we move.


 Everyone's whose lived at the place we're going to next, is recommending that we all stay on base. I'm not sure why the military keeps base housing so under wraps. Finding out what we're in for is like pulling teeth. I finally did find something on YouTube  If we live on post, I will definitely take pictures and blog about it just in case someone else is contemplating living on base. You should guess our location by looking at the video. Here's what we may be in for. I love the kitchen and dining area a lot. I've looked at the homes off base and they are sooooo gorgeous to me. I can not wait to find home


Also I found this site to help make it cozy.
http://www.stealsplusdeals.net/2011/01/my-experience-with-decorating-military-base-housing/

I am excited to share that I got As in my classes last session. I worked hard. And it makes me feel a tad less guilty that I hadn't been able to spends as much time with the kids over the session. I expressed this guilt to my mom and husband. And they told me it's good for them to see mom working on bettering her and their future. I also feel a bit of pressure to maintain As. But, if I don't get As and pass all of my classes, I will be happy that I am brave enough to pursue this with two children at home with me. Studying and doing reading assignments is a bit challenging. But I get it done. I also love challenges as they push me to do the best I can in all aspects of my life. This semester, I'm going to be brave and take my required Speech class. I am one of the most nervous and anxious people I know. I wanted to get this over with. I'm also taking Anthropology which should be interesting. I am looking forward to meeting new people. I didn't really get chummy with anyone last session will probably have to with this speech class.

All three of my children know how to use the computer quite well. They all love YouTube  They only watch kiddies stuff, but my 3 year old has an obsession with butts. Last summer, he discovered butt videos on YouTube on my phone and favorited one (how i found out) it was so funny and disturbing.





 He was so embarrassed and never did it again. He just watches trains and mario on the computer.

The best thing any mom, anyone really can get is a house cleaner. We have one come once a week. It really saves my sanity. And it's not expensive. someone to clean the toilet, the windows and floors so I don't have to is well worth it!!!