Halloween 2015: Mario Kart Party Photoshoot

This is coming at you about a bajillion times later than I had hoped.
Reason 1: I severely underestimated how many photos I took during the shooting process.
Reason 2: I severely overestimated how much time/energy I had available as well as my proficiency in Photoshop.

Essentially, I bit off way more than I could chew and so here I am posting Halloween photos in December like some crazy person.

But better late than never right? Photos are done at last *weeping tears of joy and relief*

Choose your character (click to enlarge)

My first two photos came out within the first couple of days.  I was all hyped up and excited with the big (read: overly ambitious) plans I had for the photos, and was still running off the motivation and momentum from the shoot.

#squadgoals #ridetogetherdietogether

Who else would I be in a lineup with?

And I was so, so, SO excited to play with Photoshop - which I previously only used to add my signature to the corners of my photos (or sometimes the middle if I'm feeling particularly edgy and creative).  But November was a particularly busy time at work and I more often than not came home and crashed immediately, so I didn't have much time or energy for editing photos.  And if I did manage to stay awake, it'd only be long enough to eat dinner and watch a bit of Netflix before I passed out.

But enough blabbering, let's get to the "who's wearing who" segment of the program.
I gotta say, I was super impressed with the quality and attention to detail in everyone's costumes.
If at any point you're confused by our poses, do a quick Google image search and it'll all make sense.
Trust us, we did our homework ;)

Bonnie as Mario

Me as Luigi

I think I mentioned in my last Halloween post, but Bonnie and I really wanted to reuse our overalls from our Minion costumes.  I'm not really as fashion forward as I'd like to be so I hadn't worn them since last Halloween (not that I didn't try, but I always ended up looking like a kindergartner...)  It's pretty obvious we clearly had the laziest easiest costumes so we tried our best to pay attention to details, such as the little yellow buttons on our overalls, and making sure we wore white gloves.  And oh, you'd be surprised how hard it was to find a green t-shirt when it's not St Patrick's day.  Our hats were the only legit piece of costume we bought (from Amazon) because they were just too hard to make.

John as the tallest Toad I've ever seen

I also helped put together John's Toad costume -- the vest he's wearing was a t-shirt that I cut apart and sewed on yellow stripes, and the headpiece is my scarf wrapped around a stuffed animal (for the extra poof) with little pepperoni cutouts stuck on.  His white Aladdin-esque pants are from his samulnori outfit so that was a done deal (who just OWNS white poofy pants?)

I want to turn the spotlight onto this next individual...

Anita as Bowser

To be perfectly honest, we kind of pegged Anita as Bowser as a joke, with her being so nice and not a fire-breathing dinosaur.  And I did tell her as an aside that she can choose a different character, but as you can see, she adopted her new persona quite naturally.  Her shell was 100% original sewing work and is actually quite the comfy pillow on the non-spiky side.  I also noticed her red headband which was a creative and stylish way to mimic Bowser's red hair.  Finish it off with my moto-gloves for a punch of badassery and you've got yourself a full-fledged dino-villain.

We were also in the presence of royalty, with our two resident princesses:

Amanda as Princess Peach

Carlie as Princess Daisy

They absolutely nailed their characters without having to recreate the identical costume -- which I thought was amazing.  I think costumes should really capture the spirit and idea of the character rather than being an exact replica.  They got all the right colours and details (their jewels, gloves, and tiny crown) and Amanda even had the same red shoes!  Chalk that up to being great shopping buddies.  They did take different strategies with their dresses though; Amanda wearing a tank + a dress folded down as a skirt, while Carlie re-purposed an old dress by sewing a new skirt over it.  Tres impressed indeed!

Tony as Waluigi

Tony had one of the tougher costumes to put together, because like with Toad and white poofy pants, which male person do you know owns purple overalls?? But he miraculously found everything he needed in stores at a pretty affordable price too.  Someone is secretly a super-shopper! (Or maybe it's not a secret?)

Jimmy as Shy Guy

Last but not least, we have Shy Guy!  The backstory I came up with for Shy Guy for our "arrested/Mario criminals" concept was that he was just a poor little dude trying to take out money at the bank and he just got arrested for "masked robbery".  I know, I'm hilarious.
I actually made an extra costume and since it wasn't practical for Jimmy to wear a mask the whole night, I got to shoot an extra character!

BONUS CHARACTER: Yoshi

How adorable is this??  My only regret is not making a little dino-egg prop, but I still think it turned out pretty well.  A Yoshi costume isn't as difficult as you might think, although I got away with skipping some of the details because I knew they wouldn't be in the photo anyway.  For this costume, I just sewed little orange triangles to a green hoodie and got a white shirt for Yoshi's white belly.  A full costume would need a tail as well as red boots and a red seat on the back, and maybe giant eyeballs on the hood as well, if not accompanied by Mario at all times.

Here are some other paired photos:

Happy couple #1

Happy couple #2

Mario Bros family reunion

Oh no! The evil Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach!

"Muahahahahaha"

And then the princess waits for rescue...

Daydreaming princess

But our hero is having a bit of trouble...

to be continued...

I know there weren't that many photos per person but due to lighting issues, a lot of photos sadly came out blurry.  I tried my hardest to pick the best ones as well as some I thought I could salvage.
Hope you enjoyed the photos! Thanks for reading!