Alyssa's Prom

So, the hairspray and the eyeliner has been put away, the dress hung back up and senior prom is over with.  Today is a day of relaxation.  Take a deep breathe and let it out - one event down.

It was indeed a busy day in our household yesterday.  Between the preparations for prom as well as getting food on the table, it was pretty hectic.  We're a military family with one income, so our resources were pretty limited. First was finding a dress that was beautiful and appropriate but within our budget.  Believe it or not, I found the dress she wore on Amazon for 50 dollars.  I took a chance but it paid off.   Limited income also meant that it fell on Mom to do hair and makeup.  I'll start by saying, I do NOT have a license in cosmetology and can barely make my own face up without looking like a clown. Thank God for Pinterest.


Luckily, we were able to start a few of our preparations the night before with our charcoal face mask and her nails.. Charcoal masks are always funny and I did manage to get one photo of her in the process of pulling it off.. lol

We started our countdown to prop at 6 hours ahead of show time.

First on the list, hair needed to go up in rollers.  Alyssa has very long, thick straight hair.  Did I mention it was long?  And I'll be honest, my rollers are old as the hills - I got them when I was 15 I think. But they still work well so I haven't updated.  While many of the new rollers are ceramic, mine are wax core so we had to cheat just a bit for her hair.  I wrapped each one with foil to hold the heat in while she kept them on for over an hour.

Snapchat fun to pass the time

Might as well do some makeup while we're at it.. Since we were doing contouring for this event, she needed a bit of time to "shake and bake".. So, she got to spend a good bit of time looking pretty ridiculous.

While she baked, I went ahead and got dinner finished up (did I mention I was doing dinner prep and cooking this entire time??).  Alyssa wanted chicken wings for dinner, so we had sticky honey buffalo wings that turned out absolutely yummy.  I typically make traditional wings but I wanted to try a dry rub recipe and they were amazing.  I think this will be our new go to wings.. lol

With dinner over, it was time to get back to business.

Hair done.   Lots of curls.  We decided to keep her hair down, first because she does have such pretty long hair and second because the back of her dress was pretty simple so no real reason to show it off.

Makeup and hair done.  We went pretty simple with the jewelry. Since her dress was peacock themed, we picked up this really pretty Aurora Borealis stoned set that somewhat resembled peacock feathers.  Again, Amazon to the rescue - we picked up the necklace and earring for a whopping 12 bucks.

Alyssa being the quirky individual that she is raided my closet and jacked a pair of knee high books that I have.

All set and ready to go

The prom was located at the Grand Ballroom at the local university. Alyssa didn't have a date for this dance, as the guy she likes wasn't going so she instead met up with some of her friends and just made it a friendly hang out event.    Since she was dateless for the night, we dropped her off and picked her up.

She had a great time with lots of compliments on her dress, hair and makeup. Which made mom happy as I was upset with myself for not being able to take her somewhere to have it done professionally. However, she stated that many of the girls asked where she went to have it done because it looked amazing and they assumed she went somewhere, so that made me feel much better.. LOL   Many of the girls also asked about her necklace and commented about how pretty it was so I guess our 12 dollar piece passed the test..

At the prom, they were served a nice meal and had plenty of deserts. She said they had a really cool chocolate fondue that most of the kids hung out at and she came home raving about chocolate covered pineapple.. LOL

The only bad point was that nothing was mentioned that there would be a bar with mixed drinks (non alcoholic) that would be a separate purchase.  Since this wasn't mentioned to us, we didn't give her any cash for this event as we kinda assumed everything was included in the $85/person ticket price.   Someone did purchase her a drink, which she said was called a Bull Moose (named after the Bull Moose party) which she said was raspberry juice with Sprite and she says it was very good.

Her only complaint for the night was that the music was VERY loud.  She called us around 10pm asking if we could start heading over to pick her up as she was starting to get a headache and her friends were starting to head home anyway.

Since we were already in town, we all decided to pick up a ton of tacos from Jack in the Box to have a late night snack while we heard all about the dance.

And my sweetheart of a daughter even brought home a cakepop as a surprise for me :)

Next week, we get to have a bit of a repeat of last night as Alyssa will be getting dolled up for the ROTC ball.  Luckily, this isn't quite as formal but it provides some difficulties as makeup and hair have to meet specific requirements since she spends the first half of the event in uniform for dinner before switching into a gown for the dance. She will be wearing another dress for this event since the dress she wore last night takes two people to help get her ready..

One Senior event down.. In addition to the ROTC ball, we also have Night at the Museum, her Senior trip to Disneyland and then a few Graduation activities leading up to the big event - Graduation itself.  Did I mention I've started finding grey hairs this month??