Happy morning after Halloween everyone! For 2019 we opted to do Game of Thrones because we figured that this would be the last year that it would really be relevant since the series finale has long been done and dusted.

For this year we ended up with myself as Daenerys Targaryen, my husband David as Jon Snow, and Julie as Sansa Stark!

Halloween 2019 – Game of Thrones

Halloween isn’t complete unless we head down Church Street in Toronto’s Village! Huge thank you to our friend Shawn who took all of our photos, and then followed us out on to the street for a few more! He’s done this for a few years now and is always in good spirits and happy to do it. These photos could (above and below!), would not have happened without him!

If you couldn’t tell by now, I really love Halloween. And I REALLY love dressing up. This is my sixth year teaming up with people to do a group costume, and for 2018 we chose to do Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lucky me got to be Alice!

This post will cover the details on my outfit, makeup and hair in case you’re looking to replicate the look for another year. If you’d like to see pictures of our entire group, please see yesterday’s post.

I was styling myself after the 1951 Disney animated movie “Alice in Wonderland”, which meant that my outfit was rather simplistic. However, finding a dress that was simple turned out to be rather more of a chore. Almost every Alice costume is now a “sexy” version which is really just… gross. She’s supposed to be a ten year old girl! Anyway, I ended up finding this one on Ebay from an American seller for $22.99 USD (it was identical to one that was shipped from China that I wanted, but I’d left it too late and there’s no way an item from China would’ve reached me in time for Halloween). I had it shipped to my friend Dorothy in New York so I could pick it up from her when I was on vacation this past month. Thankfully, the dress arrived while I was in New York! One thing though… I ordered a large and it didn’t come anywhere close to fitting around my back and there is zero give in the material. It could close around my neck just fine and up to my natural waist, but I’ve got a decent chest and a broad back and this left me with a 2 inch gap at the back. Thankfully, the apron straps covered most of the gap, but yeah, this dress definitely did not close up on me in the back! The outfit also came with the headband and bow, so I was completely set for my main part of the costume.

The biggest problem I had with this entire outfit was hunting down a pair of opaque white tights. My last resort was going to be buying dance tights, but that shop was a bit further out of my way than I wanted to go, so I was constantly checking any and all retailers around me. Eventually, after going into 20 different stores (not joking), I found a pair of white tights at a Legs Beautiful in THE PATH in downtown Toronto. I was ecstatic! While the tights weren’t necessarily vital to the outfit, they really did help add to the character.

I had some black ballet flats I used to wear to work that fit quite well for the look, although I didn’t get around to doing the little strap she has over the  top of the foot. I also picked up a small petticoat ($30) from Malabar to help fluff up the edges of my skirt and make it stick out more. I didn’t think it would be that important, but it ended up adding a lot of volume to the skirt which I really liked.

My makeup was fairly simplistic and youthful, which can actually be kind of tough when you’re used to packing on fun colours and product!

For my eyes, I used the Kat Von D Shade + Light eye palette – this one has become a staple for doing “character” makeup because most characters you see in movies or on TV don’t tend to look like they’ve got a ton of makeup on. They only wear products that enhance their features without going overboard. I stuck to the neutral quad in the middle and put the bone shade all over my lid and used the two greys to deepen up my crease. I applied ARTDECO’s liquid liner to my lash line and didn’t wing it out – I just wanted my eyes and lashes to appear larger. I popped on Covergirl’s Clump Crusher mascara to my top and bottom lashes and then put on a pair of House of Lashes Au Naturale falsies. If this sounds familiar, it’s because I did the exact same look for the eyes for my Captain Marvel costume from last year!

For foundation, I wanted to go quite pale and give myself that kind of “English rose” type look. I used Too Faced’s Peach Perfect foundation in the shade Snow which is a few shades lighter than I am right now, and then dusted on Urban Decay’s X-Rated blush to the apples of my cheek. I wanted the blush to fade out nicely on the edges, but I wanted the center of my cheeks to be quite bright to make it look like Alice has been rushing around Wonderland wondering where to go!

For lips I opted to put two shades together since I didn’t really have anything I thought fit a “natural” pink colour straight out of the bullet. I first put on MAC’s Mehr lipstick (if it’s good enough for Tessa Virtue, it’s good enough for Alice!) and overdrew my lips on the top a bit to get more of a flower petal type mouth. I then layered Too Faced’s Peach Kiss lipstick in Disrobed on the center to give it a bit more of a lighter peachy hue.

I really, REALLY like how the lips came together – I think the shade is very flattering and has enough of a young girl vibe to them.

While my hair is extremely long right now, I still decided to give it a little bit more volume by popping in my Irresistible Me hair extensions. I had originally thought to go with a wig, but the wig I had for Alice turned out to be downright hideous, so I’m glad I was able to stick with my own hair. By the way, I’ve had these hair extensions for three years and they’re phenomenal. While they were sent to me in PR, I would absolutely recommend them because they haven’t fallen apart at all, they look fantastic, and they wash and style to perfection!

To get Alice’s sideswept bangs without cutting my own hair, I took the entire front chunk of my hair, sprayed in some f Drybar’s Triple Sec to build up some volume, backcombed it a touch, and then wrapped my hair around to the opposite side of where I normally part it. My hair parts on my left hand side, so to switch the part of the other side with a spray of fringe covering my forehead made my hair feel very strange, but it added volume (since my hair isn’t used to being bent in that direction) and helped to give the illusion of Alice’s hairstyle. I used two bobby pins to hold the hair in place and popped on the bow-tie head band.

To add a bit of a younger touch to my nails, I used Mary Kay’s Pink Escape nail polish.

Since I wear gauged earrings in my earlobes, I pulled them out and went for a pair of Joe Fresh fake pearl and crystal earrings that had been sent to me recently. The timing was perfect to be honest – I don’t really change my earrings and wondered what the heck I would do with these when they showed up one day. Well, as it turns out – they were perfect for Alice!

Granted, my hair was mostly covering my ears, but the pretty Joe Fresh earrings did poke out every now and then!

And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed the pictures and all of the detail. While Alice was a fairly simple costume, it was a lot of fun pulling together all of the pieces. It’s always a bit of a challenge to go easy on the makeup since I frigging LOVE to pack it on, but every time I do something on the “prettier” and simpler side of things, I’m reminded of how much you can change your look with makeup and how sometimes less product and less colours can really bring out your features. I still love my neon and rainbow eyes, but it was nice to just focus on a cleaner look for once!

Thanks for reading! If you got this far, tell me what you were for Halloween this year!

We stepped away from superheroes for 2018 and decided to delve into the fantastical works of Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!

All the photos enlarge to their full size in case you want to see a bit more detail up close. Enjoy!

Halloween 2018 – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Halloween isn’t complete unless we head down Church Street in Toronto’s Village! Huge thank you to our friend Shawn who took all of our photos, and then followed us out on to the street for a few more! He’s done this for a few years now and is always a trooper about it – posts like these would not be possible without him!

Halloween 2017 was absolutely amazing! We’ve been doing this for a few times yet, and I think this was one of the best sets of costumes to come out of it all. (All pictures in this post are clickable so you can zoom in to see details if you want.)

We decided to go with The Avengers because it was an easy enough ask – the costumes weren’t too indepth (for the most part) and there was enough variety amongst the characters that we could pick and choose what we wanted to be without feeling too constrained.

It was suggested to me that I do Captain Marvel since I basically looked like her anyway. I’m always drawn to blonde characters, so I decided to go with it after looking her up. In terms of mainstream media, she’s a completely unknown character because she’s never been in any of the Marvel movies so far. That’s going to change soon though! Brie Larson was cast in the Captain Marvel movie which will begin filming in 2018 and has an anticipated release date for 2019! So much like my Harley Quinn from 2015, I’m ahead of the curve! 😉

There are a few takes on her hair style – it used to be long, but in more recent years they’ve started doing a faux hawk on her. I had originally thought to actually cut off my own hair to replicate the new look, but ended up just not doing it for no reason other than I was lazy and kind ran out of time.  So I decided to take inspiration from pictures of her where she has longer hair.

I originally thought I’d use my own hair and model it after hers, but in the end I opted to buy a wig since it’d just be easier than dealing with my own hair the day of Halloween. After a bit of searching on eBay, I ended up selecting this wig because I thought it looked the best. It was honestly a bit too long in the back, but it was the right colour and texture that I was going for. This was one of the more expensive wigs I’ve bought (in previous years I usually chose the cheapest plastic wigs I could find but that’s generally because the hair colours were so abnormal) and it was definitely the nicest to wear. While it was still made of plastic, the texture was a lot nicer and it brushed out easily to help loosen up the curls.

Of course, the most important item I picked out was Captain Marvel’s suit. I was really happy that, for once, I was actually going to be wearing an outfit that covered the entirety of me. In past years, the super heroes I’ve chosen to wear have all been much less clad and since I live in Toronto and Halloween usually equal bitter cold, I was really happy to be completely covered up.

The suit was definitely the most expensive piece I picked up, but it was worth it as I had seen many, many other TERRIBLE looking costumes on eBay and didn’t want to waste my money on a shitty looking costume (I also knew I had no talent at all to make this costume). I opted for this one by the eBay seller cosplayfly2010. They can do custom sizes, but I opted for a Large without any alterations. They have a handy sizing guide and I fit into what they said a large would be so I went with that. I was a bit nervous about how it would fit, but in the end it was a really, really good fit. The only thing I’d say is that the distance between where it hits me in the crotch right up to my shoulders is fairly tight. It says this is for people who are 170 cm tall, but I’m 160 cm tall and if I was any taller I don’t think it would’ve fit me in the length of my torso. As it was, bending down was hard without running the risk of splitting a seam in my butt.

The boots didn’t come with the suit though, so I had to pick up a pair of my own. I grabbed this pair from eBay because they seemed to look the best and it turned out they were an absolute perfect colour match to the red in my suit!

The eyes were such a neat added touch too. My eyes are already blue, but they’re almost grey at times and I knew they wouldn’t stand out enough for this costume. (Kind of funny that I chose this character based on me having similar features and attributes and I still went out and got a wig and coloured contacts!) I had loved my gold Mystique contacts from last year’s Halloween costume so much, that I reached out to Spooky Eyes and asked if they would be willing to send me more contacts this year. They obliged, and I asked for the Glimmer Blue set. Upon receiving them, I thought they were pretty, but I didn’t think they’d add that much colour. I was so wrong – these lit up my eyes making them look completely ethereal. I absolutely LOVED the effect and was so pleased with how they turned out!

Captain Marvel is a barely done up character so I kept my makeup incredibly simple. This is way less makeup than I even wear on a day to day basis, so it was really hard to keep it toned down!

For my eyes, I used the Kat Von D Shade + Light Eye palette and stuck to pale, neutral shades. The only thing I really did was try to deepen up my crease to make it look like my eyes were a bit bigger. I added in some NYX Epic Ink Liner along my lash line (and didn’t wing it out!) and some Too Faced Better Than Sex mascara to my top and bottom lashes. I then popped on my smallest pair of fake lashes – the House of Lashes Au Naturale falsies. That was the eyes completely done!

For my face I used my beloved Dermablend Smooth Liquid Camo foundation in the shade 10N Cream since it’s the best full coverage foundation I own. I used a bit of Too Faced Chocolate Milk Chocolate Soleil bronzer to contour my cheekbones and a bit on my temples. I then used tarte’s Exposed blush on my cheeks and tarte’s Exposed Lip Paint on my lips. And that’s it! It was super hard to hold back without adding highlighter and just MORE makeup in general, but I really like how the whole look came out.

So that’s it for the whole round up on this costume. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. And with that, let me leave you with a few more shots. 🙂

To see a roundup of the whole group, including individual photos, please see my previous post!

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