Fancy Dress on Parade
My extended family love fancy dress. We are often invited to fancy dress parties and that starts the round of questions; 'what are you going as?', 'what is the theme?', 'are you buying or making your outfit?'
We have a family New Year's Eve party every year and fancy dress is compulsory. I always find it difficult to come up with ideas and was quite disappointed this year when the theme was originally announced as 'comic book characters'. This is great for men and boys but more tricky for women and girls. Thankfully the theme was expanded to book characters so I had more to work with!
When the lovely people over at Jokers' Masquerade offered to send me one of their kids Christmas fancy dress outfits I knew that I would be able to make one work for this theme so I was happy to accept. I had a look and decided to ask for the Toy Soldier Fancy Dress costume so Bud could be Prince Charming from Cinderella. His cousin reads this story to him often and he knows who 'Pins Sharmin' is.
The set arrived really quickly and packaged in a handy carry bag. It includes a hat, jacket, belt, sash and trousers. The jacket is lovely, bright red with gold trim and a white shirt effect on the front, it also has some great gold epaulettes. The trousers are black and have a matching gold trim. The sash is a thick gold band which meets at the end to form a holster for a sword and this held snugly in place by the black belt which easily fastens using velcro. I was so impressed by the hat. Bud has a big head and I felt sure that it wouldn't fit but it did and it was comfortable for him to wear.
I requested the outfit in size small which is age 3-5. Bud is large for his age and already wearing age 3-4 clothes., The outfit fitted really well and, as it was a cold night when we finally got him to wear it, had enough room for a long sleeved t-shirt to be worn underneath. The quality is really good and I am sure that the outfit will last a while in our dressing up box.
Bud is a very strong willed toddler, especially about his clothes. He point blank refused to wear this outfit when I first tried to get him to try it out so I could review it. We had a huge toddler tantrum in response. The next dozen or so requests were met with a very firm 'no' too. In the end we managed to get him to wear it for the day of our party by getting into our own fancy dress costumes and persuading him that we would all look different! Once he was in the outfit he liked it and he has played with various aspects of the outfit since. Sometimes he has the hat on, sometimes the belt or the jacket. He enjoys wearing it.
The Toy Soldier costume costs £16:99 which I think is good value for an outfit of this quality. Jokers' Masquerade have a wide range of Christmas outfits as well as an extensive range of fancy dress so I can imagine returning to make future purchases when the next fancy dress party rolls around.
