Neverland Party

The next major event on my calendar for early October was my 30th Birthday Party. This year I decided to celebrate in style and go out with a bang. So, I hosted a Neverland party. I knew from the beginning that I would be dressing as a fairy, but I had to decide my party layout and food – which took the most amount of time.

I decided to breakup my party space into different zones – Pirate Cove, Mermaid Lagoon, Lost Boys Hideout and Pixie Hollow. And I accomplished it by breaking up our back yard between the patio, the pool and the gazebo. I had been collecting decorations throughout the year since deciding on my theme back in January but a lot of the atmosphere came from the food which I strove to theme to the various areas. I’ll break it down for you:


PIRATE COVE:

Decorations included: mast and sail, lanterns, gold doubloons, golden goblets, guns. 

 
Food:
Cannonballs (thai chicken meatballs and lamb koftas)
Hot dog ships (mini chipolatas in dinner rolls)
Sea Scrolls (pistachio, pork and apple sausage rolls)
Golden Nuggets (chicken)

Seaworthy Muffins

MERMAID LAGOON:

Decorations included: shells, mermaids, glowsticks, pool.

Food:
Catch of the day (little fishies)
Seafoam sponge (blue sponge cake)
Clamshell cookies
King of the sea (prawn cocktail)
Octopus Dip (capsicum)

LOST BOYS HIDEOUT:

Decorations included: ivy, marbles, pan’s flute, Michael’s teddy, thimbles

Food:
Imagination Pie (from Hook – cheesecake)
War paint (onion dip, corn relish dip, toblerone mousse)
Pan’s Caramel Corn
Never Grow Up Punch
Star Sandwiches (egg salad)
Second Star Cookies (custard creams)

PIXIE HOLLOW:

Decorations included: fairy lights, oversized flowers, bunches of flowers, moss

Food:
Fairy Champagne Cake
Fairy bread
Lemon butter cups
Berry White Chocolate Mousse
Pixie Nectar (fruity punch)
Butterfly cakes
Citrus Cream Clouds
Jam Drops

I did try to get some photos of the night, but I was mostly trying to just have fun, so didn’t get as many as I would have liked. I did stop at the end of the evening and make my dad snap a few photos of my bestie and I in our Disney Fairy costumes. Diana Daring wore an outfit inspired by Rosetta and I dressed as Periwinkle. I love how my costume turned out and cannot wait to get some better photos of it taken. I’m planning to wear her to Supanova this month, so hopefully there will be some photos.

But overall, I had a fabulous party and it was a great way to welcome me into my 30’s. And after 13 hours of standing in the kitchen preparing all the food on Friday followed by a Saturday of setting up, more cooking and final party prep, I think it will be nice to take the easy route next year and skip the big party. But at least I went out with a splash! I love planning and setting up, but it is of a lot of work and really no wonder that I woke up the next day with the start of the head cold / sinus infection from hell.

OzComicCon Brisbane 2015

The next event on my calendar in September was one of our local conventions – OzComicCon. This year I attended with my bestie – helping her out with her stall for the weekend. Unfortunately this meant that I didn’t get to see quite as much of the convention as the previous year, and I got very few photos, but I still cosplayed for the occasion and I did get out from behind the rack.

This year, we were lucky enough to have Richard Dean Anderson attend along with a few Stargate Atlantis actors. The huge Stargate fan that I am saw this as the perfect opportunity. I dressed up in my Stargate Offworld uniform (with a few new pieces added) and toted along my Zat. I wanted RDA’s autograph added. He was lovely to meet, but I am sad that I missed seeing his panel and I regret not being able to afford a photograph with him as well. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles. It was great to wear my offworld uniform again. I’ve spent a lot on it making sure I am screen accurate, so I should really wear it more often. The problem – it’s way too hot for most of our Queensland conventions and it’s hard to travel with as I cannot take the weapons.

Sunday though, saw me cosplay as a pair for the first time. We were Sadness and Joy from the recent Disney movie Inside Out. We loved the film, and when we saw it together, we walked out of the cinema planning our costumes. While they were supposed to be “easy” costumes, we take accuracy a little too hard and spent a bit more time that I had necessarily planned getting it ready. I was lucky enough to find the perfect jumper to wear but I need to bulk up my wig by sewing two together, sew an undershirt and leggings and we decided to make glowing memory balls. So much for easy. But, and it’s a big but, our costumes were received so well. It seems that everyone loves Inside out and we had many complements throughout the day. The challenge for me was staying in character as Sadness. It is incredibly difficult to not crack up all the time and it feels very strange to not smile in photos. The makeup though, is what made me happy. I haven’t had a lot of experience with skin tone changes and going blue is one of the hardest (your skin undertone shows through pink). I chose to use a white and blue cream stick to mix up the correct pastel blue colour and rubbed it into my skin (over a primer of course). It’s much like applying normal foundation, just blue. I topped it off with white setting powder. A bit of blue eyeshadow, dark blue brow powder, pink blush, mascara and blue lipcolour and I was done. The best part is that it lasted most of my day. I put it on at 7am and didn’t need to touch up until 5pm. Quite the success.

And the couple of other cosplays that I did take photos of...