Monthly Archives: November 2014

With the growing popularity of “Ugly Sweater” parties, we think it’s time that you throw your very own. The ugly sweater party involves just that, your guests showing up in ugly Christmas sweaters or Freddy Sweater Costume. That’s simple enough isn’t it? What’s even easier is the party itself; you just have to make it as over the top and tacky as the sweaters themselves.

Throwing an ugly sweater party can be fun and it’s a good way to bring people together for the holidays. We have created a list of items not to forget when throwing your own ultimate ugly sweater party this year. Read along, print it out if you have to, and have a very merry ugly sweater party this holiday season!

Freddy Sweater Costume

Invitations Your invitations are essential as they are going to give your guests all of the information they need and it will give you a chance to let them know what to expect. You can even decorate them to look like little ugly sweaters if you like.

Decorations Speaking of decorating, be sure to decorate your home in a festive theme and remember, the theme of the party is tacky Christmas, go all out and create a wonderful setting that your guests will enjoy!

The Sweater You have to have an ugly sweater to throw an ugly sweater party, it’s in the official ugly sweater rule book! Ugly sweaters can be found almost anywhere these days and some of them even light up! Find one that suits your tastes, or lack thereof, and go with it.

Dessert Table If you are not serving a meal at your ugly sweater party, you should at least set up a dessert table complete with festive treats and maybe even some ugly sweater Christmas cookies. The possibilities are endless; be creative and watch your guests’ eyes light up when they first see the dessert offerings.

Drinks From mild to wild and everything in between, your ugly sweater party should have drinks suitable for your guests’ needs. One idea is a hot chocolate bar; you could set up an array of toppings and add-ins for the hot chocolate and let the guests create their own drinks.

Games There are many games that you could play to keep the party moving. From themed Christmas and ugly sweater games, to something as simple as a board game where you can choose teams by the color or elaborateness of their sweaters.

Awards Finally, offer various awards for the ugly sweater wearers and not always the Freddy sweater Costume . Most Outrageous, Funniest, The Most Lights on One Sweater are just some of the ideas that come to mind. You can choose how the winners will be voted and even set up an awards “ceremony” which will be the perfect photo opportunity as well.

Throwing an ugly Christmas Sweater party this holiday season can be simple and fun; start planning yours today!

Cosplay idea

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past decade or so, you have probably heard the term cosplay a time or two. Do you know what it means and how much a hobby like this could end up costing a cosplayer? If not, read on as we are going to explain the ins and outs of cosplay and what it takes to get started.

Cosplay is literally the combination of the words “costume” and “play” and it is the dressing up as one’s favorite characters from comics, video games, anime, manga, movies and television shows. The origin of the word says that in 1984, Nov Takahashi, founder and writer for the anime publishing company Studio Hard, was sent to Los Angeles to cover the World-Con science fiction convention. He was impressed by the fans' costumes and the elaborate displays at the masquerade, and when he returned to Japan, he coined the term to describe what he saw.

Today, almost everyone that attends a Comic Con event participates in cosplay and just as the people vary greatly, so do the costumes. Some resourceful cosplayers repurpose clothing and props they already own while others can spend hundreds of dollars to get just the right look.

The cosplayers who choose to go above and beyond to create something totally unique have been known to commission costumes from specialists or shop costume retailers online and get the costumes and accessories they need for their upcoming “adventure”.

One example of a cosplayer who went a little out of the way to get the costume she wanted is a woman who wanted a Giselle costume from Disney's animated movie "Enchanted." She requested a price quote from an online commissioner asking for specific, high-quality materials and hand-embroidered flowers and soon discovered that the price would be upwards of $850!

Now that may seem exorbitant, but cosplayers take their craft as seriously as golfers take their game and they don’t have any problem spending the extra money to pull it off. For cosplayers, the experience is nearly always worth the

stress of choosing a costume and dropping the money. It's an opportunity to be a hero, princess or otherworldly creature for a while and it might even be considered therapeutic to many of the world’s more serious cosplayers.

Now that you know what cosplay is, the costs that must be endured and the seriousness of the players, maybe you can see yourself as the next great cosplayer saving the galaxy from the evil squirrel horde from outer space. Or maybe just dress like your favorite TV character and have less of a back story.

Every year, it seems that we spend more and more on Halloween fancy dress and so far, none of us seem to mind. Halloween is that special time of year when you can dress like your favorite super hero or maybe even like one of your most secret alter egos. Whatever you dress as, you want to make sure that your costume is perfect so when you arrive at that Halloween party, you will get noticed for all of the right reasons.

Let’s take a look at the party now; Halloween fancy dress parties can be expensive as well when you factor in the food, beverage, entertainment and decorations. And remember, most of us are throwing a Halloween party for our children as well as our adult friends; that’s like two parties in one!

All of the fun and excitement of Halloween doesn’t come cheap. In fact, many studies have been done that show us just how much we are spending each and every year on this particularly spooky holiday.

Halloween Fancy Dress

Let’s break down Halloween by the numbers and see what we come up with:

Over 162 million people celebrated Halloween this past year and that number has steadily increased over the past decade.

Of those 162 million people, 20% of them made their own costumes to save money or show off their creativity.

$2.8 billion on costumes was spent on costumes in 2014 with a large percentage of that being spent the week of Halloween. This led to 20% of people making their own costumes.

$1.1 billion of the $2.8 billion total was spent on children’s costumes alone.

16% of Halloween costume shoppers turned to pop culture for costume ideas including companies such as Disney and Mattel.

23 million people dress their pets in costumes every year. Somehow we think many of the pets might have resisted.

In 2014, 33 million people will have visited a haunted house by the end of Halloween. The weekend before Halloween has been shown to be the busiest for haunted houses around the world.

54 million people throw or attend Halloween parties every year which is the reason for many retail stores to have later operating hours the next day.

Of the 162 million people who said they celebrate Halloween, 8% did not hand out candy.

In all, $7.4 billion was spent on Halloween this past year making it one of the most profitable, and expensive, Halloweens in recent