Pageant Ready

Thanks to Kecil's Skool's recent move to a new building, the Skool decided to combine 2 celebrations in one for this year: United Nations celebration and the Christmas party.
You might remember last year's United Nations celebration (where Kecil represented China) and Christmas party (and the rehearsal, too!).
Well, this year, as you can see, Kecil got to represent Cambodia.

This Mama does not know much about Cambodia beyond the country being the seat of Angkor Wat, the world famous temple, but a quick search on the Google Image quickly brought in results such as these:

Images from here and here

It would appear that traditional Cambodian clothing (for girls) is centred around a woven cloth known as sampot. Sampot is worn in different ways, an elaborate style usually being worn by dancers. But since this Mama's aim is more on the 'casual while still being distinctly Cambodian', Kecil is so not wearing any dance costume. So, the pics above seems to be a good place to start.
Then the sight of the top right sampot started to seem familiar...

It would also seem that there are many similarities between the weaving technique practiced in the neighbouring countries of South East Asia, because the weave is certainly look quite similar some clothing this Mama got from Thailand, as well as Indonesia itself. A quick trip to the deep recesses of Mama's wardrobe resulted in a long scarf (Mama's) with a similar pattern.
So... yeah... that 'skirt' of Kecil above? ... was actually Mama's scarf.

Given the nature of the costume, Mama decided not to have this year's costume custom made at the dressmaker. The scarf was simply folded in half (it was by far too long for Kecil's tiny waist!), given a few pleats at the back (to further shorten the length), and secured by 2 safety pins, a tie and a belt. Ha! The smaller scarf was also found in the house, I think it was used for wrapping some gift basket the previous Christmas. Mama needed only buy Kecil the plain white T-shirt (she did not have one! Not one PLAIN T-shirt!). I'd say the result is not half bad.

Kecil seemed happy enough with the whole get up. The 'skirt' was wide enough (plus it had a slit in front!) for her to be her usual running, jumping, active self. She wore her shorts underneath, because this Mama 'knew' that Kecil wouldn't last long in the skirt once the party/ceremony is over. (Plus, just in case the safety pins fail, who knows?)
And so... once we arrived safely in Skool, followed closely by the arrival of her current buddies, we just had to take pics: