Epic Fail Wal-Mart....

Ok so a lot has happened in the last week. But it was all stuff that happens every week. (mostly)
Clean, serve meals, host, run ropes activities, repeat! Same stuff done in new and fun ways all the time. Something different that happened this week....

The interns have been looking for costumes to wear on Halloween at the corn maze and to a party later that night. It has been a difficult process for most of us. I for one had no idea what I wanted to be. That is till I talked to my sister. She told me about a costume idea that a friend of ours had a couple of years ago! (thanks Meredith, hope you don't mind my copying your idea, and congrats on the wedding!) I could be a crayon!!!!!! I love this idea.... so I decided that for Halloween I am going to be a green crayola crayon! That's right.. awesome... I know! I figured out what all I would need to make this costume and how I was going to make it so that it would be all of three things...1. warm 2. comfortable and easy to move around and work in 3. freaking awesome! With all this in mind Taco and I headed out to Wal-Mart last night. (Everyone else was busy or lame.) We decided that since the Wal-Marts in some of the closer towns had failed us in the past, we would go to the Super Wal-Mart just past the PA border line. (about 10 min. farther away in the opposite direction) When we got to the Super Wal-Mart we went to the toy section. There we found some cool stuff, got distracted a little, and found out that the sand pail that I wanted to use as a hat to be the sharp part of the crayon was a seasonal item. They didn't have any. Ok... re-think. No biggy, I half expected this. Plan B: a plastic flower pot! In the lawn and garden section we were told "No, we don't have any of those right now, we are getting ready for our Christmas decorations." !!!!!!!!!!!!!! CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS!!!!!!! How are people supposed to make Halloween costumes if all that is in stock are Christmas decorations!??????? (slight freak out/ laugh at the ridiculousness before moving on t0....) Plan C: a little basket we found on the clearance shelf that I could cover with green felt. Now, on to the body of the costume, my green wrapper. For this I need some fabric that I am planning on making into a jumper like thing. After wandering around Wal-Mart for 10 min and then asking the lady in sporting goods, we realize that Wal-Mart no longer has a fabric section. What is this world coming to!???? Ok.... on to Plan D: Standing there in sporting goods... trying to figure out what to do now... (because all the fabric stores are in the towns in the opposite direction of where we headed when we left RVR...) Taco spies a dark green fleece sleeping bag. It is pretty much just some fleece fabric with a zipper! It is on sale! I can cut it to the size I need and still have some left over. We then went to the craft section to find some felt for the black lettering and to cover my basket hat. The felt came in 8 x 11 sheets and was $o.47 a sheet! I would need like 6 or 7! Plus they didn't have a green that matched. Plan E: fabric paint would be better right? I told the nice lady in the craft section what I was doing and she told me that the type of paint they had wouldn't work as well as the felt because I was putting it on fleece. In other words... we don't have fabric paint, only puffy paint. Plan F: Taco spies some black duct tape! That will stick to fleece and I can stitch it down to make sure it stays. That means I can by a roll of tape for cheaper than I could paint or felt and I don't have to get fabric glue, just a needle and thread, which I needed to get anyway! Next step... get the needle and thread. They had all that! With hope restored we head to the clothing section to find a green sweat shirt that I can wear under my jumper-wrapper for my green body. They only have one color green and it doesn't match the green socks I was going to wear as the bottom. So I decide to get the matching sweat pants. By now I have a little basket, thread, needles, duct tape, matching sweatshirt and pants and a sleeping bag. All this improvising has made this costume a little more expensive then I had planed. And I still don't have anything to cover the basket. Plan G: We found a fleece blanket on sale for cheaper than the sleeping bag. I can use it just as well as I would have the sleeping bag and save like $6! cha ching! Problem is that the only color green sweats they have looks icky next the the only color green blanket. No one wants to be an icky color crayon. Plan H: forget the blankets... towels! There are a wide variety of green towels! Several of them look OK next to the sweats. The problem is that I would need to by two towels to have enough fabric and at that point the blanket is cheaper. Plan I: I got Beth to text me a picture of my green towels at home and decided that they would work since I use my pool towel at home anyway. On the way to putting the blanket back I see warm fleece hats! That would be better than covering a basket. Only they don't have green at all! Plan J: Get rid of the basket idea because I don't have anything to cover it with anyway, and buy and extra set of sweatpants to cut up and make into a hat that will be warmer than a basket and will actually match the rest of me! Wow... poor Taco has been following me around Wal-Mart, laughing and carrying random things for about an hour. I am sorry he had to see the train wreck that was my creative genius! We got out of there having told 3 employees about my costume idea, (one of them laughed, told me it was a good idea but that she wasn't creative and couldn't help me but good luck) having several people walk past as I was looking in the mirror with the basket on my head to see if it would work, and several more people walking past as I was wrapped in a towel trying to figure out if I would need one or two. None of this would have had to happen if Wal-Mart would have had what I needed! Then I wouldn't have had to improvise on the improvisations in the middle of Wal-Mart and end up on Plan J! Epic Fail Wal-Mart! Epic Fail! In the end I have what I need to make this costume work and I am pretty sure it is going to rock! (I'll post some pics of it when it is done! )