Halloween weekend was quite amusing. On Friday, I went to Harbor View Club's (the "nice" restaurant on base) very first Masquerade Ball. There were three reasons why I was already stoked about this event.
1. I got to design all the media for it! This includes banners, flyers, posters and even tickets! I had free reign to design it however I wanted. My direction from Luis, the event coordinator was: "I want it dark and eerie, but elegant!" I even went ahead and designed the tickets to look like masquerade masks. People raved about those :) But they were quite the project -since we had to hand-cut every one of them. And for even MORE fabulousness, each ticket had 3 little
crystals adhered to the outer corner of one eye.
2. Planning only for a small, intimate event, they sold nearly 100 tickets! yay!
and 3. The "ball" encouraged guests to dress up. Whether it be all fancy-like, accompanied by a mask -OR- wear a costume. I decided a "dressy-costume" would be best suited for myself.
Even though last year I had made Daniel a Daniel Larrusso (Karate Kid) costume and a Cobra Kai costume for myself, he REALLY wanted to be Cobra Kai this year. I didn't mind, since that would mean less work for me (since I'd obviously be making HIS costume too) and more time to do my costume! What kinda sucked was how much better he looked innit than I did! :\
I decided to go with a futuristic, space-girl look. And so I ordered a simple (more importantly, cheap) A-line bridesmaid gown and altered the heck out of it! Before I was finished with it, I had a skype session with my girls, Heather and Sarah. I showed it to them and Heather exclaimed "Oh! you're going to be Cinderella!" ...hrmm... not the reaction I hoped. I told them it was going to be a "space dress" and they both looked a bit puzzled. That's okay, that just meant I had to work on it sommore! Because no matter how cheap that bridesmaid dress was, if I didn't wear it at all, it'd be a total waste! -it's not like I can wear a bright aqua-colored bridesmaid dress on just any old occasion! ;) ...and so, I managed to finish my costume a week before the ball. I proudly called it the "Cyberella."
Anywho, onward to the Ball!...
After getting dolled up, (or in Daniel's case... just getting dressed) We both decided it would be best to catch a taxi to the event. When we got there, we met up with Cary and 5 local japanese friends in the lobby. Cary was dressed as a Rastafarian Car Salesman and everyone else had cute halloween hats on. Except for Yuki, she wore a cape and devil horns -which I thought was awesome for her -since the others seemed to be more on the shy, "un-costumey" trend. When we stepped in we were all in awe. The place looked awesome! Like Luis said, it was dark and eerie
but elegant! In hindsight I wish I took pictures of the place, but I was more focused on talking stories, enjoying all the fantastic "horrors" d' overes, drinks and atmosphere. And I really DO mean fantastic! The hors d'oeveres were SOOO good! Among them were these tasty mini quiches, tender & juicy slices of BBQ tri tip beef (I swear I could not stop eating those -Sarah don't freak out, they were SMALL slices) chicken salad croissant sammiches, little sticks of teriyaki chicken, macadamia nut crusted chicken, some kind of lemon butter grilled fish, and a couple more I can't remember.
In the beginning while people ate, they projected the movie "The Haunting" on 3 large screens. Great idea in concept, but since most people were talking and eating, the movie seemed a bit too quiet. I think a subtitled, muted version of the movie, overlayed with cool eerie music, would have been a better choice. After the movie ended, there was a magic show. Well, actually, it was more like a guy doing silly tricks and trying to entertain with slapstick comedy rather that real magic. His starting trick was dropping his hat on his foot then kicking it up -catching it on his head. His ending trick was getting out of a straight jacket while riding a tall unicycle. Even with that said, our local Japanese friends were totally entertained! I'm guessing watching a live, american magic show (that is probably better suited for kids) was quite a treat for them!
As soon as the magic show was over, the costume contest started. But this wasn't one of those stand-up-on-stage-and-look-pretty contests. This was a dance-while-judge-floats-around-eliminating-people-one-by-one. Since Luis, the host of the party pretty much knew everyone, he decided it would be fair to pick a random person from the party to be a judge. The judge he picked was a japanese lady (looked like in her 40's), wearing a puffy pink tulle dress. I had no idea what look she was going for but I figured she'd be a fun judge -Boy was I wrong!
She proceeded to eliminate pretty much every creative and original costumed character on the dance floor. My co, Sarah, who came as a greek muse (the girl in white, pictured above) and her friend Dora were eliminated right in the beginning.. then Daniel got axed... then me. Waah. What she did end up with were 5 people/couples dressed in what cleary looked like store-bought costumes. A pair of pirates (there was a BUNCH of people who came as those!), a pimp & ho, a french maid, who's costume looked JUST like the one they sold at the NEX) a lovely "masquerade ball" dressed girl (who BTW is a friend of mine, so it's was okay for her to be up there..hehe nah, for reals, her's was pretty nice.) and a beer bottle. And who ended up winning? The Pimp & Ho. *sigh* I guess the japanese lady didn't "get" what we were supposed to be :\
...What?! Noooooo, I'm not all salty about losing! :P
After the contest ended it was "everybody dance" time. That was pretty fun.. until they started playing a string of salsa then reggaeton.. then country music? Hoo boy. We decided it was a good time to leave. Luckily the taxi got us back right at midnight so I turned into a pumpkin at home.
All in all, for a first-time event, it was "alright"... but on that same token, a few days later, our Japanese friends told us they had so much fun, they were already thinking about what costume to wear to the Ball next year!
On Saturday, I volunteered at the Haunted House & Carnival. Even tho we worked for 6 hours, it went by super fast. We had to quickly set up all the games, run the games for the hundreds of kids flooding in, then break everything down at the end. It was funny hearing all the kids screaming from the nearby haunted house. Some of the poor kids were too scared and redeemed their house entry ticket to play a carnival game. I manned the "Add 'Em Up" game: you know that game where you have to roll a bunch of balls down a slope into numbered slots? But instead of regular balls, we had ping pong balls painted as eyeballs :)
Anywho the coolest thing this weekend was Sunday's Saga Balloon Fiesta! After enduring a 2.5 hour drive filled with the constant, glass-shattering screams of two toddlers (both from the same parents) who sat 2 seats behind us, everyone was relieved and happy to finally reach Saga. Iwanted to kick myself for not bringing my headphones to play PSP.
After getting off the bus, we realized that we had to walk quite a ways to get to the food and souvenir tents. It must have been at least a mile or 2 long. When we got there, the booths seemed endless! An endless row of Yakitori, Tako Yaki, Grilled Corn, Yakisoba, mini candied apples and other fruits (which I thought was weird at first), Okonomiyaki, French Fries and so on...
We didn't want to make the same mistake of buying from the first booth we saw because last time we did that -and it sucked! And then we saw like FIVE other booths selling the same thing for cheaper and looking like theirs probaby tastes better! And so, with that in mind, we walked thru the whoooooole stretch. By the time we got to the end, we were starving! Daniel got desperate and almost bought a pack of stale-lookin' fries. Cary and I had to stop him and coax him out of this nearly devastating move.
Then there was an excited stir around us. It looked like the event had started. With packages filled with well-thought-out food choices, we headed back to a long open grass field that we had passed on the way in. We set up pikinik on a small steep patch of hill. It was pretty uncomfortable, but the place was crazy packed, so all the prime real estate was already taken.
We looked up and there were a bunch of hot air balloons in the sky, approaching pretty quick! Balloons would come down one by one to the field in front of us -it was then that we noticed the big bright pink "X" marked in the grass. We realized that this was an actual compet
ition! The balloon that dropped it's marker the closest to the big X would be the winner of the fiesta. After realizing this, the event was much more exciting! The black balloon (pictured here) came the closest to the target and when he dropped his marker, (almost a bullseye hit) people were cheering, "Yatta! Yatta!" (You did it!" x2) While some balloons drifted slightly away from t
heir desired course and nearly hit some of the spectators! -That was awesome too ;)
We even visited one of the balloons that crash landed in a different field. Even tho the fiesta is called the "International" Balloon Fiesta, we were still pretty surprised to discover a Hungarian pilot!
Cool event, it's likely we'll be checking this out again next year :)
Have a great weekend folks!
1. I got to design all the media for it! This includes banners, flyers, posters and even tickets! I had free reign to design it however I wanted. My direction from Luis, the event coordinator was: "I want it dark and eerie, but elegant!" I even went ahead and designed the tickets to look like masquerade masks. People raved about those :) But they were quite the project -since we had to hand-cut every one of them. And for even MORE fabulousness, each ticket had 3 little
crystals adhered to the outer corner of one eye.2. Planning only for a small, intimate event, they sold nearly 100 tickets! yay!
and 3. The "ball" encouraged guests to dress up. Whether it be all fancy-like, accompanied by a mask -OR- wear a costume. I decided a "dressy-costume" would be best suited for myself.
Even though last year I had made Daniel a Daniel Larrusso (Karate Kid) costume and a Cobra Kai costume for myself, he REALLY wanted to be Cobra Kai this year. I didn't mind, since that would mean less work for me (since I'd obviously be making HIS costume too) and more time to do my costume! What kinda sucked was how much better he looked innit than I did! :\
I decided to go with a futuristic, space-girl look. And so I ordered a simple (more importantly, cheap) A-line bridesmaid gown and altered the heck out of it! Before I was finished with it, I had a skype session with my girls, Heather and Sarah. I showed it to them and Heather exclaimed "Oh! you're going to be Cinderella!" ...hrmm... not the reaction I hoped. I told them it was going to be a "space dress" and they both looked a bit puzzled. That's okay, that just meant I had to work on it sommore! Because no matter how cheap that bridesmaid dress was, if I didn't wear it at all, it'd be a total waste! -it's not like I can wear a bright aqua-colored bridesmaid dress on just any old occasion! ;) ...and so, I managed to finish my costume a week before the ball. I proudly called it the "Cyberella."
Anywho, onward to the Ball!...After getting dolled up, (or in Daniel's case... just getting dressed) We both decided it would be best to catch a taxi to the event. When we got there, we met up with Cary and 5 local japanese friends in the lobby. Cary was dressed as a Rastafarian Car Salesman and everyone else had cute halloween hats on. Except for Yuki, she wore a cape and devil horns -which I thought was awesome for her -since the others seemed to be more on the shy, "un-costumey" trend. When we stepped in we were all in awe. The place looked awesome! Like Luis said, it was dark and eerie
but elegant! In hindsight I wish I took pictures of the place, but I was more focused on talking stories, enjoying all the fantastic "horrors" d' overes, drinks and atmosphere. And I really DO mean fantastic! The hors d'oeveres were SOOO good! Among them were these tasty mini quiches, tender & juicy slices of BBQ tri tip beef (I swear I could not stop eating those -Sarah don't freak out, they were SMALL slices) chicken salad croissant sammiches, little sticks of teriyaki chicken, macadamia nut crusted chicken, some kind of lemon butter grilled fish, and a couple more I can't remember.In the beginning while people ate, they projected the movie "The Haunting" on 3 large screens. Great idea in concept, but since most people were talking and eating, the movie seemed a bit too quiet. I think a subtitled, muted version of the movie, overlayed with cool eerie music, would have been a better choice. After the movie ended, there was a magic show. Well, actually, it was more like a guy doing silly tricks and trying to entertain with slapstick comedy rather that real magic. His starting trick was dropping his hat on his foot then kicking it up -catching it on his head. His ending trick was getting out of a straight jacket while riding a tall unicycle. Even with that said, our local Japanese friends were totally entertained! I'm guessing watching a live, american magic show (that is probably better suited for kids) was quite a treat for them!
As soon as the magic show was over, the costume contest started. But this wasn't one of those stand-up-on-stage-and-look-pretty contests. This was a dance-while-judge-floats-around-eliminating-people-one-by-one. Since Luis, the host of the party pretty much knew everyone, he decided it would be fair to pick a random person from the party to be a judge. The judge he picked was a japanese lady (looked like in her 40's), wearing a puffy pink tulle dress. I had no idea what look she was going for but I figured she'd be a fun judge -Boy was I wrong!She proceeded to eliminate pretty much every creative and original costumed character on the dance floor. My co, Sarah, who came as a greek muse (the girl in white, pictured above) and her friend Dora were eliminated right in the beginning.. then Daniel got axed... then me. Waah. What she did end up with were 5 people/couples dressed in what cleary looked like store-bought costumes. A pair of pirates (there was a BUNCH of people who came as those!), a pimp & ho, a french maid, who's costume looked JUST like the one they sold at the NEX) a lovely "masquerade ball" dressed girl (who BTW is a friend of mine, so it's was okay for her to be up there..hehe nah, for reals, her's was pretty nice.) and a beer bottle. And who ended up winning? The Pimp & Ho. *sigh* I guess the japanese lady didn't "get" what we were supposed to be :\
...What?! Noooooo, I'm not all salty about losing! :P
After the contest ended it was "everybody dance" time. That was pretty fun.. until they started playing a string of salsa then reggaeton.. then country music? Hoo boy. We decided it was a good time to leave. Luckily the taxi got us back right at midnight so I turned into a pumpkin at home.
All in all, for a first-time event, it was "alright"... but on that same token, a few days later, our Japanese friends told us they had so much fun, they were already thinking about what costume to wear to the Ball next year!
On Saturday, I volunteered at the Haunted House & Carnival. Even tho we worked for 6 hours, it went by super fast. We had to quickly set up all the games, run the games for the hundreds of kids flooding in, then break everything down at the end. It was funny hearing all the kids screaming from the nearby haunted house. Some of the poor kids were too scared and redeemed their house entry ticket to play a carnival game. I manned the "Add 'Em Up" game: you know that game where you have to roll a bunch of balls down a slope into numbered slots? But instead of regular balls, we had ping pong balls painted as eyeballs :)
Anywho the coolest thing this weekend was Sunday's Saga Balloon Fiesta! After enduring a 2.5 hour drive filled with the constant, glass-shattering screams of two toddlers (both from the same parents) who sat 2 seats behind us, everyone was relieved and happy to finally reach Saga. Iwanted to kick myself for not bringing my headphones to play PSP.After getting off the bus, we realized that we had to walk quite a ways to get to the food and souvenir tents. It must have been at least a mile or 2 long. When we got there, the booths seemed endless! An endless row of Yakitori, Tako Yaki, Grilled Corn, Yakisoba, mini candied apples and other fruits (which I thought was weird at first), Okonomiyaki, French Fries and so on...
We didn't want to make the same mistake of buying from the first booth we saw because last time we did that -and it sucked! And then we saw like FIVE other booths selling the same thing for cheaper and looking like theirs probaby tastes better! And so, with that in mind, we walked thru the whoooooole stretch. By the time we got to the end, we were starving! Daniel got desperate and almost bought a pack of stale-lookin' fries. Cary and I had to stop him and coax him out of this nearly devastating move.
Then there was an excited stir around us. It looked like the event had started. With packages filled with well-thought-out food choices, we headed back to a long open grass field that we had passed on the way in. We set up pikinik on a small steep patch of hill. It was pretty uncomfortable, but the place was crazy packed, so all the prime real estate was already taken.
We looked up and there were a bunch of hot air balloons in the sky, approaching pretty quick! Balloons would come down one by one to the field in front of us -it was then that we noticed the big bright pink "X" marked in the grass. We realized that this was an actual compet
ition! The balloon that dropped it's marker the closest to the big X would be the winner of the fiesta. After realizing this, the event was much more exciting! The black balloon (pictured here) came the closest to the target and when he dropped his marker, (almost a bullseye hit) people were cheering, "Yatta! Yatta!" (You did it!" x2) While some balloons drifted slightly away from t
heir desired course and nearly hit some of the spectators! -That was awesome too ;)We even visited one of the balloons that crash landed in a different field. Even tho the fiesta is called the "International" Balloon Fiesta, we were still pretty surprised to discover a Hungarian pilot!
Cool event, it's likely we'll be checking this out again next year :)
Have a great weekend folks!
1 comment:
Looks like you had an awesome trip! This was my first time as a volunteer at the Saga Balloon Fiesta, but I think I was the only foreigner living here to volunteer to help out. It was so much fun I was kind of kicking myself for not volunteering for the last few years. Definitely something worth doing if I'm still in the area next year. I managed to make a short video of the balloons on my blog over at http://mlr.inktails.com
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