Studio Ghibli Costumes: Sen from Spirited Away

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A few days ago I shared a DIY for making Soot Sprites from Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. Today I'm back with another Studio Ghibli inspired post, and this time it's an easy last minute costume for Sen, the main character from Spirited Away.

If you're not familiar with the movie Spirited Away, it's about a young girl called Chihiro who gets lost while moving home with her family. She finds herself in a sprawling bathhouse complex in the world of spirits, where she is put to work and given the name Sen. In the boiler room of the bath house she meets Kumaji and the Soot Sprites that help him keep the fires burning. Throughout the movie Sen is helped by various different characters (both human and spirits) to help her save her parents, who were turned into pigs, and return to the human world. It's a great movie and one that my kids will watch to ask over and over. 

For this costume we went with Sen's uniform at the bath house. It's a pretty simple outfit made up of a tunic top, shorts with ribbons tying it all together.  

Last Minute Halloween DIY: Robot Costume

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Every year I like to make my kids' Halloween costumes, but pretty much every year I find myself leaving it to the last minute. I always have good intentions to get the costumes made early - I usually  have all the materials purchased months in advance - but when it comes to the actual making of said costumes, I always leave it to the very last minute. It probably doesn't help that October is always a super busy month in our home with Lola's birthday right in the middle of the month and many of our favorite festivals in the lead up to Halloween.

One thing I always try to do when making the kids' Halloween costumes, is work with clothes that they already have in their closet. Rather than full costumes, I like to make accessories that work with regular clothes. That way the accessories can be worn for much longer for dress up play

I'm sure that there are plenty of other parents out there like me who leaves costumes to the very last minute, so all this week I'm going to be sharing some super simple last minute costume DIYs.

First up we have a simple robot costume!

This costume is really easy to make and mostly consists of items you'll have at home - including recycling! You can make it to pretty much any size (just use a bigger or smaller box) and can decorate it anyway you like. You could paint the box or use silver contact paper to cover it, but I like to use duct tape to cover it as it strengthens the costume as well. We all know that Halloween costumes take a bit of a beating by the time trick or treating is over, so anything that makes the costume stronger is good in my books!

Drop Everything And Read Day

Yesterday Ava's school celebrated Drop Everything And Read Day (D.E.A.R Day).

To celebrate, students were invited to come to school dressed as a favorite book character. You know we can't miss an opportunity to play dress up so the girls and I were pretty excited about this.

When I was a kid in Australia we always celebrated Book Week at school with a dress up day and a parade. Every year I see my friends' kids dressed up for Book Week on Facebook and I feel like my girls are missing out. Of course, we get Halloween which is much bigger, but still I feel a little jealous that we're missing out on the fun. So when the opportunity to dress up for D.E.A.R Day came up I jumped on it.

Mother's Day Cards 2012

Mother's Day 2012 and has been and gone so I thought I'd share the card that the girls and I made for the Grandmas and Great-Grandmas back home in Australia.

This year I worked on about three different ideas for cards before I settled on the final idea. I had great ideas in my head about some fantastic photos I was going to take of the girls but they just didn't work out well enough. A lack of natural light in our apartment, grey days, uncooperative children and me just not having enough time to get everything done got in the way.

But we did get there in the end and I think the result was pretty cute.

Wishing you rainbows and happiness for a special Mother's Day

Mother's Day card

I had hoped to take a photo of the girls up on our rooftop garden with the beautiful San Francisco Bay in the background. As luck would have it we were having rainy weather and the view was completely shrouded by cloud - which is often the case on sunny days anyway! I figured I'd make the most of the rainy weather and have the girls pose under Ava's umbrella. I then added a little Ava magic to the card by adding in a rainbow and hair bows from some of her drawings.

The original photo of Lola and Ava in the rain

Little sisters in the rain

 One of my earlier ideas had been to have the girls play dress ups with my clothes, shoes, jewellery and make up. The had a great time dressing up and I really wanted to use photos from this little shoot but the lighting just wasn't good enough. These were taken on the same rainy day as the photos above. As our apartment faces onto a central courtyard in our building it doesn't have the best natural light on gloomy days.
Maybe this is something we'll have to try again for another card idea (Mother's Day 2013, perhaps?) and hope for better lighting conditions.

Little Mummies put on their lipstick

Applying blush

Working on their makeup at the bathroom sink

All made up and ready for a little shopping!

High heels

My original idea for Mother's Day cards this year involved making paper magnolias. I had planned to make masses of pink and white magnolia blooms and take beautiful photos of the girls with them. The flowers were easy enough to make but quite time consuming. I ended up only making three before I was running out of time to get the cards done. I think the magnolias came out quite well though so I'll get around to making more of them at some point and they can adorn the girls' bedroom.

You can find instructions and a template for these paper magnolias at marthastewartweddings.com

Paper magnolias

Ava also drew a lovely Mother's Day picture for each of the Grandmas and Great-Grandmas and we included these with the cards. I love the attention to detail in these pictures. Granny C (my maternal Grandma) has a prosthetic leg and uses a wheelchair. Ava drew Granny C in a wheelchair and made sure her two feet looked different from each other! Granny O (my paternal Grandma) was given a walking stick and all the Grandmas and Great Grandmas were given grey hair. I also love the whimsical touches - rainbows spreading colour over flowers, love heart flowers and suns, a girlish bow in Granny O's hair...
There's one more Mother's Day drawing for my Mum, but as she will be joining us here in America in just a few day's time I don't want to spoil her surprise :)

The girls with Nanna (Kim's Mum) as drawn by Ava

The girls with Granny C  

The girls with Granny O