Being creative and pushing myself to think outside of the box is one of the reasons why I absolutely LOVE Halloween!  Trust me, I was never this into Halloween before. C & I started the Halloween costume matching thing around 2008- not THAT long ago but I'm surprised that we've been keeping up with it since. It makes it that much more FUN and we know we can look forward to this holiday every year. I'm not going to lie, I love hearing the whispers around us when we walk by in our costumes every year...we "secretly" high five each other every time someone gives us a compliment. *high-five for pulling off another year of theee coolest costume*

C & J's Outfit: 

Tanks- Bought for $2.99 each at Charlotte Russe

Skirts- Bought sheets of fabric for $10 each from Jo-Ann Fabric then hand sewn

Stockings- Bought at an accessories store for $4.99 each

Belts- found in C & J's own closets

Boots- both from Urban Outfitters 

P.S. The other bf joined in on the fun this year too, as big bird (hat and boots also DIY!)

(Buy a bag of yellow feathers from any craft store and hot glue them onto any hat- hat also found at craft store. Cookie Monster cookies were cut out from felt, easiest cookies I ever made!)

 

We don't exactly have the coolest costumes because of WHAT we are it's the coolest because we spend less than $20 each every year- there's always a DIY involved with our costumes and although we do pass by people who are dressed as the same "character" we know...in our eyes, ours is better because ours was hand made, cheap-er, and fully thought out from head to toe ;)

It's funny because C & I aren't very "showy" in your face- attention loving people at ALL but when it comes to Halloween...we take pride in our costumes (maybe it's because were disguised as someone/thing else) and that's when our tiny alter ego comes out.

Once every year only in October!

Enjoy our quick steps to this years Cookie Monster & Elmo costumes- we had so much fun with these but I did feel my old self get a bit lazier this year. Usually we have two costumes but this year we were good with one haha

Until next year...HAPPY HALLOWEEEEN!

Love, C & J

I See Black & White

C's Outfit: Skirt- Target, Top- Forever 21, Shoes- found at a small boutique
J's Outfit: Bottom- American Apparel dress worn as a skirt, Top: Forever 21, Shoes- Steve Madden

Happy October! It's the first day of October- from this point on there's a holiday to celebrate each month...I can't wait it's my favorite part of the year. In celebration of Halloween coming up, we themed our post black and white- the two basic colors that go with EVERYTHING!

Does everyone have costumes in mind for Halloween? It's our FAVORITE holiday so stay tuned, it's going to be a FUN month of blogging for us. Every year we usually DIY our costumes, they're so much better and more fun then spending tons of money on store bought costumes...stay tuned, we haven't figured out what were going to be this year yet but it'll be GOOD like always ;)

DIY FRIDAY: Colored Hair Dye!

Today's DIY Friday is one of my personal favorites and with summer coming up, I really think it will be fun for you all to experiment with it at home too! For those of you who have been following us on instagram (@buylovegivelove) you know that Jamie dyed the tips of her pink for Coachella weekend. After a week though, the pink slowly faded- tip: color hair dye fades VERY VERY QUICKLY, the more you dye it though, the longer the color will stay. Since Jamie didn't want to spend more money at the salon coloring her tips pink again (esp since it's fades so quicky), after much going back and forth, we decided to try it on her hair ourselves and it turned out great!

Jamie's inspiration for doing her pink tips for Coachella! image via The Beauty Department

Jamie purchased the pink hair dye herself at a local Sally's Beauty Supplies.

DIY INSTRUCTIONS:

1. you must use color on already blonde or pre-bleached hair

2. use a sandwich bag or plastic wrap to dip hand into the dye

3. put the color on the blonde or pre-bleached streaks you want colored

4. leave the color in for about 30 minutes

5. wash out the color with cold water

And the that's all! :)

It's always a little scary dealing with color on hair, but after trying it once, it definitely was a lot easier than we thought! The best thing about this is you can save so much money by doing this at home. You can always ask a friend to help you too so you can have an extra set of hands and make it a sleepover night! Hope this helps and good luck!

DIY FRIDAY: Flower Crowns!

We can't believe it's COACHELLA next week (already?! and yes, we are both going!). We thought it would be fun to surprise some of our close girlfriends who are going with us with flower crowns so we can match and feel young again next weekend :) In preparation for the much anticipated coachella, we decided to do a DIY this friday for flower crowns.

Our inspiration for this is from The Beauty Department- they have so many cute ideas on this site that you can easily make in the comfort of your own home. As you can see however, we tweaked the idea around a little for it to work for us. For our DIY all you need is some yarn, fake flowers (roses, daisies, be etc!), thread/needle or hot glue gun. Use the braided yarn as a foundation to stick each flower stem through and all you have to do is hot glue or sew the stems down on the other side. Follow each step of the photos above and you can easily create the perfect, ever-lasting flower crown.

We are excited for next weekend, maybe we will see some of you there!

DIY FRIDAY: Team GALE Shirts!

Being huge fan of the Hunger Games series, Jamie & I were super excited to watch the movie. To celebrate the release of the movie, our DIY friday is “Team Gale” Shirts. When Jamie read the books first, she immediately told me that she preferred one guy over the other (but didn’t tell me who so it wouldn’t ruin the books for me). I guess great minds think alike because after I finished the series too, we both agreed that although a lot of people were TEAM PEETA, we were definitely TEAM GALE!!!

Our Team Gale shirts were very easy to make. We just took old t-shirts and cut out letters with felt. We added the arrow/heart for a special touch and done! Sadly, we both didn’t like the movie very much (books were sooo much better!), but at least we have these shirts to represent our beloved, Gale. haha

DIY Friday: Curling your own hair!

It's Friday!! Tonight is one of our good friend's birthday so we felt it would be the perfect time to do a DIY on curling your own hair. For a fun night out, the easiest way to dress up your look is to curl your hair, especially when it's normally straight (like Jamie & mine). You'll see below how easy it is for you to do this- all you need is hairspray, some clips, and a curling iron (the one we used is Hot Tools 1"):

Tip: clip up half of your hair to make it easier to curl the bottom half, also allowing the curls to stay longer! Remember to curl all the way up to the root of your hair.

Tip: After finishing the bottom half of your hair, hairspray the curls first so they stay, then put down the top half. For the top half of your hair, make sure to curl AWAY from your face as you can see in the photo above.

And you're finished! See how easy that was? Of course, it's always easier and more fun to have a friend there so you can help each other get ready. So grab your bff, and make it a "getting ready" pre-party. Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

DIY Friday: Lo-cal Samoas!

It's Girl Scout cookie season! Jamie & I have already devoured a box EACH of our favorite, samoas. We don't even want to think about how many calories we each took in. Luckily, Self Magazine provided an article on how to make a lo-cal version of samoas so we decided to give it a shot. They turned out delicious, but of course, nothing beats the original.

Ingredients:

Caramel Madness (makes 24)
1/2 cup sweetened coconut
24 reduced-fat nilla wafers
parchment paper
12 chewy caramels
1/4 cup skim milk
1oz dark or semi sweet chocolate chips (3tbsp)
** based on our experience, use less milk!**