Kristina and I waited outside of our polling place for an hour and a half this morning for our chance to cast our votes in this historic election. The line was moving along quickly but there were just too many people. I posted more photos from my phone on my blog.
How was your election day?
0 ResponsesOn Halloween this year we had a couple of couples over to our apartment for a fun Halloween party! You can’t have a Halloween party without costumes and I couldn’t wait to see what everyone was going to dress up as. Unfortunately, Russell and I were stumped on what to be. We ran through a couple dozen ideas but nothing really stuck or seemed fun enough. Finally I said why not an old time King and Queen. Since Russell’s identity in most places is “KingKool68“, I figured it would be a good fit. Then while looking online for inspiration I stumbled across the King and Queen of Hearts!
I looked at about 3 or 4 looks to pull from and combine. I couldn’t decide on which single look to stick with and I really liked certain parts from each picture and I knew they could combine well to make a great costume. I knew that we were going to match and I wanted the look to be a little cartoonish or Disney like.  Below are my pictures of inspiration when I went to the store.
Since our costumes seemed pretty elaborate and were not easy to come by, making it was the only option. With me having a lot of time on my hands it was a great opportunity to have a project to do the week of Halloween. I tried to come up with a game plan without reinventing the wheel. I have not made many clothes, but boy can I make a mean blanket (you know only straight sides, so my sewing abilities are limited).  I figured I could go to the thrift store and find the base pieces to the costume (the dress for me and the robe for Russell) and then embellish and layer the fabric on. This way I was not spending a lot of money on new materials and not spending time following a pattern when i have never made these clothes before.  Well with luck I was able to find a prom dress for me to layer and an old blue graduation gown for Russell’s outfit. Also every Monday at the thrift store was 25% off everything in the store.  I also found a fuzzy robe for the fur details and a sparkly red dress I could cut up and use that for details on the dress. This way I didn’t have to buy this fabric at the store. After the thrift store I headed to Jo-ann Fabrics Etc. in Columbia. I love this store. They have everything you will ever need in materials and fabric.
So once I got home, I made some sketches, planned how my materials will be used and attached to the base. As for picking the colors, I knew we needed a royal, vibrant, silky and rich looking red (duh hearts = red!!). The blue fabric had to match the blue graduation robe but the new fabric had more of a sheen to it. I wanted to add gold fabric as an accent color but not too yellow or I would really resemble Snow White from the Disney Movie. For the dress I attached these fabric panels to make a new layer on top of the existing dress. Another issue that came about was the dress wasn’t poofy enough so I bought tulle to make it poof out more like a real princess dress. Some of the last minute details that I incorporated on the dress were the high fur trimmed collar, the custom heart on the chest, the fur trim of the skirt and lastly the custom gold belt for the skirt of the dress. There is just so much detail on the dress that it would be too hard to explain everything in this post.
Russell’s costume was a snap, I sewed on the stripes to the robe, made a poncho-like cover and embellished both with fur and more fabric details. Russell’s costume was so much easier to make because his was not fitted to his body. For my costume every step of the process has to work sequentially together and fit well, if it doesn’t then I couldn’t move on to the next step of the process, which made for a more difficult costume. Well I really love how they turned out and I told Russell we could wear them again for Valentine’s Day. You can really tell from each inspiration photo what I drew from to incorporate in the final looks.  Well what do you think?
Check out Russell’s post and the costumes from the other people at the party!
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So after 7 years of being together, I finally popped the question to my girlfriend Kristina. I got a call from the jewelers this morning that the ring was ready. I left work early to trek from Georgetown, D.C., to Columbia, Maryland. On the way I got in touch with Kristina’s roommate to coordinate the video/photo taking so we would have this moment recorded.
After I picked up the ring I stopped by her parents house to get their approval. They were shocked but happy for our forthcoming engagement. I also swung by my parents house to give them a preview. Finally I made it down to Kristina’s apartment in College Park where apparently she was asleep. I snuck into Kristina’s roommates room while we coordinated our plan. Then Kristina called me on my cell phone! I rushed to her roommates bathroom and pretended that I was home at my apartment. She totally took the bait.
While she was on her computer checking e-mail, the time was right to strike. I knocked on her door and then got down on one knee. See for yourself:
As you can see she had no idea what was coming and she said YES! We’ll be starting our own blog at RussellAndKristina.com or KristinaAndRussell.com. I own both of them but we still need to formulate our design. We spent the rest of the night calling friends and family and sharing our joyous news.
P.S. Save the date, March 20th, 2010!
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