May the Fourth Be with You

Happy Star Wars Day! For those of you who don’t know, May 4^th is considered Star Wars Day because, obviously, “May the fourth be with you,” and, “May the force be with you,” sound a lot alike. Gotta love those puns, am I right? Anyway, I don’t actually like Star Wars that much (gasp!), but I love any excuse to make a costume, and the fact that I had some company join me made it all the better! Keep reading to see what unique household materials we used to create these outfits and to read about my fun May quarantivities idea!

I think in a past life I was a costume designer. It’s always been a dream job of mine because a) I love costumes, clearly, and b) a costume designer seems like the perfect balance of fame—you get to attend all the fancy award shows, thereby wearing a gorgeous gown, but you never really have to be in the spotlight like an actress would. While it’s fun to dream, I think I’ll just stick to creating my own b-lister costumes from random items around the house. It’s much more enjoyable that way… I mean, look at our Walmart versions of Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker! You can see our inspo pic here. (I’m pretty smitten with how our looks turned out.)

For my Princess Leia outfit, I started by browsing my closet for anything white…and it turns out I don’t own much in the color. Ideally, Princess Leia’s look could easily be recreated with a white turtleneck top, white mock-neck top, white long sleeve sweater, or white bell sleeve blouse. But I own none of those items! Nor do I own a white maxi skirt or maxi dress. So naturally, I had to get creative.

In my brother’s closet, I found this very old white chef jacket, which now fits like a crop top, and layered it underneath a towel-like neck scarf thing, for lack of a better word, that my dad found in our ski supplies. The chunky textured turtleneck isn’t the most flattering of looks, but I felt that the high collar was a must for Princess Leia’s outfit. Next, I took it back to the toga days of high school and broke out a classic white sheet. With a tight belt and a single safety pin, I managed to wrap myself in the fabric and strategically cover the embroidered name on the chef’s jacket. Top off the look with white soccer socks in lieu of shoes, and the clothing was complete.

Now onto the hair, makeup, and accessories. It wouldn’t be Princess Leia without the iconic cinnamon roll hairstyle, and as no surprise to anyone, Carrie Fisher clearly had hair extensions, a wig, or something to make her buns so big. I started by parting my hair in the middle and tying pigtails over my ears. I then separated each pigtail into two parts and twisted the parts together, tying it off at the end. Obviously, these twists didn’t stay very tight, but then I wrapped them in a bun, pinning it down as I went, and the double twisting seemed to add some volume. In hindsight, I think some hairspray and maybe even some teasing in the twists would help add more volume and secure all my flyaways, but I figured, not bad for my first try!

For makeup, I opted for a dark brown pencil eyeliner to add a thick line above my top lashes and a thinner line beneath my lower eyelashes, as I thought a black pencil liner would be too harsh. I then applied black mascara and a rust-ish colored lipstick and voila! The perfect Princess Leia face. Lastly, for my weapon, I found this apparatus in my other brother’s closet. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I think it might be some sort of stand for a Go-Pro camera. Regardless, it was the right L-shape for a handgun!

Some notable features of Han Solo’s and Luke Skywalker’s costumes:

• Han’s fanny pack gun holster.
• Han’s gun (yes, it’s the extendable arm of our vacuum cleaner).
• Luke’s chest hairs peeping out of the girly cardigan (I’m dead).
• Luke’s pants aka Ace bandages wrapped around his shins.
• Luke’s green lightsaber, which is really just an extended water gun. I’m sure real Star Wars fans would be mortified that Luke is holding a green saber (what color should it be, blue?), but we did our best.

Yesterday as I was taking these photos out front, a woman walked by on the sidewalk. I embarrassingly waved at her and she replied, “You look AWESOME!” While the words were on the tip of my tongue, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “May the force be with you.” I’m still kicking myself with regret.

On a somewhat unrelated note, on May 1^st, my parents and I decided that for each day of the month of May, we are going to do something different and fun to spice up quarantine life and lift our spirits—I think I’ll call it May quarantivities, until someone comes up with something better or tells me that my mashup doesn’t make sense. On May 1^st we gave each other blind makeovers (you know, where one person is blindfolded and has to do another person’s makeup), on May 2^nd we had a chalk art competition, and on May 3^rd we did some beading. Now, on May the Fourth Be with You, we’re dressed up as Star Wars characters to truly embrace this “holiday.” I encourage you to try a fun new activity this week, too, and stay tuned on Instagram Stories this month, where I share each day’s quarantivity!

As my mom pointed out, Star Wars has a lot of lessons relevant to the current situation. Light versus dark, good versus evil, blah blah. Right now, we all have to team up to defeat Lord Covid in order to save the galaxy. And while difficult, we all must remember that the force is within us—the force to stay positive, to stay smart, and to stay safe. Lately I have let the Dark Side consume me, filling me with “anger, fear, and aggression.” Yet, I need to remember what Yoda would most certainly tell me in this situation: Remain hopeful, I must. And dare I say, I need to find “A New Hope.” Lol.

Ok. That’s quite enough sappy, extreme nerdiness for now.

I hope you enjoyed this post and these fun edited photos. For today’s shoppable widget, I decided to link some Leia appropriate pieces that can be transitioned from galaxies far far away to this summer, here in our own galaxy, and beyond. Have a great weekend, and May the Fourth be with you all!

Miles of smiles,

Grace