When I was a little girl, I would put on my best dress up clothes and grab the oldest-looking book I could find on the bookshelves (later found out it was a biography on William Penn - random!) and tell my mom that I was off to Prince Charming's ball to learn how to read.  And to fall in love with the Prince, of course.  (But reading first ;)

Somehow I think 4 year-old Samara knew me better than I do now.

Then someone sent me Kelly Clarkson's engagement photo (see below)  Super cheesy?  Eh, maybe.  But it looks the stuff of my childhood dreams.

And those dreams are still whispering to me from old-looking books.


[via]



Guess what??

I've never grown out of playing dress up.

"No really, Samara. We couldn't tell. Sherlockian cubicle parties weren't like a tip off or anything."

Yah, but seriously. Thanks to be homeschooled through 2nd grade, I got to spend a majority of my formative years dressed for a part with a wild imagination to match.

I've been made aware, recently, that not a lot has changed in that department.

So yah, I love dress up. And being such a fangirl, I love dressing up as favorite characters! Which apparently is called cosplay. [When did "dress up" get replaced with "cosplay"? Oh wait...just looked it up. "The term cosplay is a portmanteau of the English words costume and play. The term was coined by Nobuyuki Takahashi of the Japanese studio Studio Hard while attending the 1984 Los Angeles Science Fiction Worldcon." Thank you, Wikipedia! Well, portmanteaus are cool...because Lewis Carol made up portmanteau, which is itself a portmanteau. But that leads back to me cosplaying ;]

So...yes. I get off on cosplaying. As demonstrated on my blog. Several times.

[Alice]

[White Rabbit]

[Hobbit]

[Sherlock]

I also (as demonstrated on my blog several times) L O V E the LBD, which relies heavily on costume theatre, which is quite similar to cosplay. And since its given characters specific costumes, it makes cosplaying those characters especially fun. I had actually been hoping to cosplay a particular character at some point.

All that to say, guess what happened today???

I had a newsies cap bequeathed to me!! Ok. Not exactly bequeathed... It was up for grabs & I took it.

And once I owned the hat, I just had to look into finding a red bow tie. One thing led to another and...well, the bow tie is on its way :D

And - even more exciting - I'm hoping to have a reason or two to cosplay soon. Details to come.

[It really is :]

Christmas Party tonight!!

I actually get to take pictures this year - yippee!