First Carnival
Where my boyfriend and myself are very familiar with the carnival festivities around this time of year in our home country, our daughter didn't experience this in her previous years at the kindergarten. Honestly, I didn't even remember it was a thing here, until I read the note about the "parade" at school. I remembered that during her first year, they had something similar but she was ill that week. Last year, everyone was home as the kindergarten was closed around that time.
The hunt for an outfit
I honestly feel most of these outfits are not worth the asking price, ever. And I should have just ordered one long upfront in China, lol. As that's where they all come from anyway. But thankfully, we have plenty of second hand stores and by coincidence I walked into the second hand store filled with carnival clothes for kids. Unfortunately, none of the outfits felt like they were fitting or worth the money. In that store you buy clothes by weight and that means heavy clothes often turn out more expensive than the original price. If the outfit is super cool, I can manage that, but this store had none that I'd consider buying.
I remembered another store
This same chain has another (bigger) store not far from the store I was first and I decided to give it a try. When entering, I saw a lot less outfits but my eyes were drawn to this little red riding hood outfit right away. I love this color red, and guess what, the size seemed perfect! I did another round in the store and also found a 1-piece pajama with unicorn hat on it. I knew my daughter wanted another of these pajamas as the previous one was too small. I figured this would be a great reserve outfit in case the riding hood outfit turned out too small after all. Then I'd try to sell it to someone else. I took both home and both fitted!
Looking closer at the outfit
These outfits are produced not to last long, that's clear looking at the fabrics of most of these dresses. This one wasn't an exception. The only exception here is the red cape, it's solid quality and heavy too!
After she took the outfit off and checked where the cape is stitched to the dress, I noticed this:
Aha! You see, this cape is indeed too heavy for the dress. I should have checked this in the store, but the excitement of finding her an outfit got to me and I forgot. I knew if I wouldn't fix this, the cape would probably tear up the dress further and/or come off completely. It's weird that anyone would think this lasts when the cape is so much heavier than the dress. But that's probably the marketing strategy. I pulled out my needle and thread and quickly fixed it:
Seems solid enough for a day of carnival festivities. Thankfully for me, she doesn't have to do a 4 day in a row carnival events like we did when we were younger.
Little Red Riding Hood ready
Although carnival is new to her, she was super excited days upfront and talking about it constantly. So cute! The night before, she fell asleep the usual time, but at 3 AM she said: "mama, it's already getting light outside!" I looked at my phone and said "no it's only 3 AM still a few more hours to go honey". Thankfully, she fell asleep again, but it was clear she couldn't wait!
She had loads of fun and unlike the Elsa's & Anna's, she was the only Little Red Riding hood out there. Of course, when we arrived home, she wanted to wear the outfit until she had to go to bed. <3
Credits
- All images used are my own
- The text divider is my own design, where I sometimes use images from Canva Pro or in other cases, my own images.
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