All Dressed Up

...with so many places to go.

One of my favorite things to do is to get dressed up, whether it's just wearing nice clothes or if it means getting to wear a costume. Over the past couple months, I had the opportunity to get decked out for quite a few different events.

#1 - Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade Ball

A group of us went to the Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade Ball up in LA over the summer. After a lot of debate and thought, I finally decided to go as a Sea Nymph and make my own costume (dress and headband) at the very last minute. My dress turned out pretty well considering I had less than a week to make it, but unfortunately I failed to get a full length photo of it that night.

#2 - The Magic Castle

My sister-in-law invited the hubby and I to go to the Magic Castle in LA with her. I had always wanted to go, so I was super excited to get the invite. For those who don't know, it's an exclusive club for magicians and to make it even more awesome, you have to get dressed up. I had never been to a magic show before, so I really enjoyed it. Plus I even got called up to the stage during one of the shows to be the magician's assistant!

#3 - Wedding in Santa Barbara

We got an invite to go up to Santa Barbara for a friend's wedding at the end of July. It was held at a gorgeous mansion in the hills with an amazing view. It was a great setting for such a romantic day.

 

#4 - Buccaneer Days

Oh, Bucc Days...pretty much the best weekend of the year. The village of Two Harbors on Catalina Island turns into a pirate town for the first weekend of October. Everyone dresses up in their best pirate gear, camps or stays on a boat - we've been lucky enough to actually get campsites for the last couple years, seeing as they book up a year in advance! We already have a site booked for next year with some friends - and drinks grog for the weekend. This year, my brother and his girlfriend flew out from NY to join us. They had such a good time, they are already talking about coming back next year. 

#5 - March to the Sea VIII

MttS is a pub crawl that some friends organize in Santa Monica. It's 3 miles, 8 or 9 bars, teams and challenges and if you make it to the end, there is treasure buried on the beach. This time around the teams were Toga vs. Golf/Tennis vs. White Trash. None of these themes really resonated with me, so when I found out that I was on Team White Trash I decided to dig around in my closet instead of wasting money on something new. I enjoy putting together items that I already own in new ways to make outfits that I wouldn't normally wear.

 

# 6 - Halloween

Quite possibly my favorite holiday, Halloween this year was awesome. We went to a house party on Saturday, to which I went dressed as a shark. Then on Sunday evening, a group of us went up to The Edison in LA, all dressed as Victorian Vampires. 

For my shark costume, I wore a dress that has been in my closet for about a year, and I made fins for my arms and back.

For the Victorian Vampire costume, I was a bit more ambitious. I picked up a pattern for a Victorian dress, as well as yards and yards of fabric, and made my own dress complete with bustle and train. I was again sewing up until last minute, I always seem to underestimate how long it will take, but I think it came out pretty well.

 

Next opportunity to dress up....holiday parties!

The Life Aquatic with Mega Shark

 1 - Arriving at Avalon

2 - Dive Park

3 - That's me in the middle!

4 - kelp

5 - garibaldi

6 - Mega Shark attack!

7 - After dive lunch at Armstrong's

 (underwater photos by S. Dwyer) 

Scuba diving has always been something I wanted to try, so when one of my friends invited me to go over to Catalina to go diving my immediate response was YES! Previously unbeknown to me, there are places that will do introductory dives for people, like myself, who have no previous experience.

So last Friday, four of us boarded a ferry in Newport Beach and headed over to Avalon. Upon arrival, we stopped at the dive shop, filled out some paper work and got sized up for equipment. Since our dive time wasn't until the early afternoon, we sought out some food (coffee and gooey cinnamon rolls, yum!) and hung out for a bit before heading down to the dive park.

Once we got down to the dive park, we met up with our instructors and started to get suited up. Wetsuit, booties, gloves, hood. Putting on all of that was exhausting in itself. Add a weight belt, vest with more weights in the pockets, an air tank, mask and flippers and I could barely move. But before we got completely decked out in our gear, we got some basic instructions...how to breathe through the regulator, equalize your ears, clear your mask and some basic hand signals that we would be using underwater.

Once we were briefed and ready to go, we made our way down the steps and into the water. We half swam, half floated out to an anchor line and then began to make our descent. Woah, this is weird. I can see everything (the visibility was amazing) and I can breathe underwater?! It was a little trippy at first and took me some time to get used to the idea of it all. After a bit I was able to relax and get into it, but unfortunately my ears did not want to cooperate. Everytime I got to a certain depth, my ears would not equalize (ow!) and since I didn't want to push it, I didn't get to go as deep as I would have liked or swim around too much. I did end up going down 20 feet, which is still pretty amazing, and while I pretty much hung out at the anchor line, I still got to see some great fish, like garibaldi, schooling sardines (or were they anchovies?), kelp bass and of course plenty of kelp.

Overall it was an incredible experience and I definitely want to try it again. And well, as for Mega Shark, either you know or you don't know.