handmade arcade!

i am slowly trying to collect all of the pictures and videos taken of the event this weekend, so be patient.

but man, i don't think it could have gone any better.

when we were trying to find the convention center and a place to park, i noticed people looking at me and laughing. i was still in serious mode, and said to myself, "what the heck is so funny people?!" and then i looked in my back seat and remembered the giant balloon costume, and then i laughed at myself. my brother michael and his girlfriend heather were in the car in front of me. heather had put on one of the helmets and was riding around like that for who knows how long.

here are some pictures of my brother michael, heather, and myself. we got there a little early, so we started playing around...i mean..setting up...

i couldn't figure out why no one was stopping by. i thought it may have been because people couldn't figure out what they had to do. so heather and i started demonstrating.

 teamwork.
 (...it dawned on me later that the doors hadn't opened yet..oops).

since we weren't selling our toys this time, i made these balloon business cards to pass out. in order to get the contact information, you have to blow it up. and for an added bonus, i drew a monster on them. i had michael video tape it....anything to get people to come over and play. (i edited the footage to go in reverse first, because that entertained me)

the doors finally opened and there was a sea of people, which was equally overwhelming and incredible.

you can see the giant pizza in this picture. starting from the top, there's the dough, the cheese, a pepperoni, an olive, and a banana pepper.

we never had enough people at one time to have 3 people to a team and race. instead, we would get one or two people and they would pick which costume they wanted to wear, and would race against each other. and that worked out just as well. it kind of turned into whatever the kids wanted to do. some of the time, it was just a free play area, because the kids were fixated on making a pizza over and over again. and other times they wanted to put on the balloon costume and pretend to fly away. and other times it was just a dance area.

some of the kids were too young to understand what they had to do, so we would change the game around to where they picked a costume to put on, and would have to catch all the pizza pieces like a ring toss. but no matter what version people decided, everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and that was awesome to see.


this little girl was great. she ran up and jumped on the pizza, and made a bed out of it. she was there for a good half hour.

a lot of people asked if we were a performing group, and if we did kids parties and stuff. michael and i looked at each other and said, "....uh...we do now.."

there was a lull for a hour or so in the middle of the day, so i danced to the music.

i brought my monster coat too, which drew a lot of attention. it was entertaining to see which kids were terrified/confused and which one wanted to tackle me.

we have some videos of kids doing the race, but i'll post those tomorrow (hopefully).

it was pretty cool to see a lot of adults getting involved as well. it's always a challenge to get them to let their guard down enough to put on a costume and act silly for a few minutes. but that's why i love working with kids so much. they don't have those walls up yet, and they don't know what embarrassment feels like yet. that is something i try to keep in mind, and something that inspires me.



there is more to come to this post!