10 Easy DIY Halloween Costumes

This time of year always makes me remember that I haven't thought of a costume yet. Oops! I love Halloween, but I'm forever leaving costumes to the last second. In Australia Halloween isn't a huge deal (boo!) but I'm still going to try and get into the spirit by carving a pumpkin (except it'll be one they use for eating) and maybe even dressing up on the 31st! For all of you looking for simple last minute solutions, here are 10 of my favourite easy DIY Halloween costumes!

1. Amy Winehouse
This one is pretty easy if you have dark hair, grab a bump it, draw on some tattoos, add some winged eyeliner and a bad attitude and go! One year I went as a biker chick and actually brought magic markers along with me so people could give me "tattoos". An excellent icebreaker and pretty fun if you don't mind getting messy!

2. Bat Bow Tie

This is more for during the day or if you are "forced" to dress up or be festive and you don't really want to. Or if you're stuck answering the door for trick-or-treaters. Either way it's super cute!

3. Beer Can

With a little bit of cardboard, foil, and your favourite little black dress you can easily be a beer can! Plus if you're already drinking your fave beer you'll have the logo on hand from the carton!

4. Energizer Bunny

Wearing all pink, bunny ears, and a drum out of some cardboard you're an easy and cute energizer bunny. Bonus points if you drink energy drinks so you keep going and going and going!

5. Ghost

I love LC, and her big fluffy tulle costume is too cute! Lots of fluffy white tulle, pale makeup, and dark eyes and you're way more stylish than Casper!

6. Madeline

I used to love the adorable little French Madeline! This is a photo of a kids costume but with a blue dress, a white peter pan collar, a big blue ribbon and a yellow sun hat you have yourself a beautiful bit of nostalgia!

7. Mary Poppins

A touch more complicated than the others, but still has the potential to be extremely simple and adorable! A black bowler hat, a white collared shirt, a black skirt and of course a gigantic bag (which could so easily be filled with beer... or juice or something)

8. Minnie Mouse

I saw a whole heap of Minnie Mouse costumes that were unbelievably cute, but my fave thing about LC's is her giant hair bow ears! Just find a red and white polka dotted dress, some ruffled bobby socks, and a little bit of black face paint and you're the world's most iconic fashionista mouse!

9. Rosie the Riveter

A bandanna, a blue collared shirt and some red lipstick is really all you need to pull off this awesome vintage look, perfect if you're rummaging around in your closet for something to turn into a costume!

10. Sugar Skull/Day of the Dead Girl
This is a bit (probably a lot) more complicated, but for those lovely ladies good with hair and make up (teach me, please?!) This could be super easy. Grab some fake flowers, your favourite dress, and go wild with the make up in ways you never thought you could! Bonus points for body glitter!

What are your plans for Halloween? Do you plan your costumes way in advance or are you a last minuter like me?

                                      
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Happy Canada Day w/ FREE Printable! (and RIP Google Reader)

We celebrated Canada Day yesterday, because unfortunately here in Australia we don't get an extended weekend (which totally sucks btw)!

If you need some last minute Canada clothes and Old Navy is sold out of their $1 Canada Tshirts why not pick up a plain shirt, some iron on transfer paper and join "THE EH TEAM!"

Grab the printable HERE! It's already flipped and the size of a standard sheet of paper, so just download and go! Don't worry, it doesn't say Seductive Mania on it!

Also, just a reminder today is the very very last day of the glorious life of Google Reader! Even though I'm sure if you're reading this on Google Reader you're crying and burning prayer candles and stuff and don't need yet another reminder of your impending loss... Follow me on Bloglovin because that'd be really really rad of you!

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Inspiration Planner

I've been thinking about what inspires me lately... I always feel so creative when I take a look at my scrapbook with all the pretty paper and stickers and tape! 

So, I decided to decorate my day planner! Make it a little less uniform and a little more "me"!

Front cover

It didn't have the month of June (it was a financial year day planner) so I had to make one myself! Awkward... I was supposed to post this yesterday!

These two ^^ are my pages, which I'm sure will soon be filled up with doodles and happy things!

This is the regular book! I've decorated it with some paper tape, and I have a couple more ideas but we'll see! I'm already feeling more inspired!

What do you do to make you inspired on a day to day basis?

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Easter Egg Painting!

I'm a giant kid when it comes to holidays. I love Christmas, Halloween, Birthdays, Easter!! Anything I can celebrate I will. And I don't just enjoy the day, I celebrate hard! I can't wait to someday have kids of my own to pass on all of my family holiday traditions. For now I'll just pass on my holiday spirit to my new family of Australians!

  

Every year in my house we paint Easter eggs, but seeing as I'm on the other side of the world this year I decided to paint eggs here. Apparently white eggs do not exist in Australia. Go figure. Brown eggs are a lot more difficult to dye so we had a little bit more fun than usual with sharpies and paint trying to be creative!

For this one we cracked the outside of the shell and then poured a mix of blue and red food colouring over top of it. Peel off the shell and abracadabra dragon eggs!

These eggs are ceramic so we painted on them with some water based paints. Trent drew me Australia (sometimes I draw it funny) and I went from there!

Two of my favourite people! :)

Trent was so opposed to painting eggs but eventually got into it, he's a big kid just like me!

We seem to have this issue, every time I look good in a picture he doesn't!

Not the most creative eggs or the most Pinterest worthy, but we had so much fun doing it!

I love Easter and I had so much fun decorating eggs!

Do you have any Easter traditions? Did you decorate eggs this year?

21 Days of Christmas: Snowflake Tree!

Do you remember yesterday when I reminded you how to make snowflakes? And some people probably read that and were like "duh Bex, who doesn't know." But in my defense, my Aussie friend didn't even know what a paper snowflake was! Poor TJ...

Well here's what you can do with all of those snowflakes! Another quick, easy, and painless DIY!

Okay, so start with a big pile of snowflakes. A skewer, a flower pot (or something equal to a flower pot) and some floral foam. 

I'm sure you didn't see this one coming - put the floral foam into the pot. Yay! Can you guess what comes next? Stick the skewers into the floral foam. Then build up the snowflake tree!

I'm not sure why my .gif is backwards, but I hope you get the idea!

And there you have it, snowflake trees!

The smaller one is made out of scrapbook paper, it looks fantastic!

16 days until Christmas!

21 Shades of Christmas: Snowflake 101

Today I wanted to make some snowflakes for my room, but to my surprise, I had completely forgotten how to fold and cut snowflakes! After a little help from my friend Google, I came up with this Snowflake 101 for you!

First, turn your paper into a square. That's steps 1-4. What you want to do is take one corner of your paper, and then fold it diaganally across your paper until it makes a smooth top edge. Cut away the excess. 

Fold your paper in half, and then in half again!

Now fold your paper in half one more time, but diagonally this time!

Round off the top corner to make a rounded snowflake!

Snip snip snip away, and you have one beautifully unique snowflake!

Here are a couple of snowflakes I busted out this afternoon!

Now get creative and make some snowflakes!

17 Days until Christmas!

21 Shades of Christmas: Merry Christmas Banner

Guess who's back... back again. Becky's back. Tell a friend... (Eminem fix of the day!)

Okay you ready for this one? Ready? Let's gooo! We're going to make a pretty little banner. Yours can say whatever your pretty little mind wants it to say, but mine says  I used red, green, and cream felt. Cream for all the letters. But really, rules suck, do whatever you want. Seriously. Orange and blue and purple? Do it. 

I also picked up one of those nifty letter stencils at the dollar store ON SALE (did you know dollar stores had sales?) for 50 cents.

Okay so see what I did there? I traced out all the letters and then cut them out. No way, right? Who would have ever thought that step came next. But seriously. Look at at that. So easy.

Okay, now cut the red and the green into whatever shape you want. I wanted triangles but since I didn't have a ruler I was like F THAT, let's do some squares. Squares. Woooo! Now glue everything down. I didn't take pictures of that step, although my pretty pink glue gun could have used some close up shots!

Cut some holes, string some string, and baddaboom baddabing you've got a banner! Christmas-y and perfect and cheerful! 

17 days until Christmas!

50 Shades of Christmas: Hot Hot Chocolate!

See this pretty little jar? It is full of the most derricious hot hot chocolate mix you ever did drink. Yum. And yes, I meant hot hot chocolate. Because it has chili powder in it. Which makes it hot. And then you heat it up... which makes it hot. Perfect!

So here's the plan: 

3 cups icing sugar

1 cup good quality cocoa powder

2 tbsp cornstarch

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp chili powder

Okay wanna hear the best part?

Mix them all together. Done.

Mix 2 tbsp mix with 1/4 cup milk and some hot hot water.

Cuddle up in front of the fire and enjoy yourself. Grab a book, some Harry Potter maybe? Cuddle under a blanket. Just enjoy your spicy hot hot chocolate!