My Top Ten Moments From Star Wars Celebration 2022

For those of you who haven't been obsessively stalking the Celebration coverage all weekend, here come my top ten moments I've found from fans and cosplayers:

1) This Bantha distributing swag:

(Cosplay by @LisaMeiLingFong)

Aaaand now I need to cosplay something with a giant tongue.

2) Literally everyone doing the Spider-Man meme:

(photos via this thread on the Celebration FB page)

They're all pointing different directions and I'm not laugh-crying you're laugh-crying.

3) Tusken Raiders of the Lost Ark

(@GrinningGeeks)

The C3PO statue! The staff! And could that be a Sallah-cious Crumb?

4) The famous "Running of the Hoods":

Boba Vet's Debut At MegaCon!

I've been told Epbot is a welcome break from the world and the news on weeks like this: a spot to soak up some nerdy joy, even for just a few minutes. I want this to be that place for you, and I also want you to know I am just as shattered and angry as you are.  Epbot is my One Thing: how I keep moving, how I defiantly offer hope and community when the world seems most divided. I'm not hiding my eyes or turning away, but I will be here with my silly posts, my affirmations that you are loved, and my reminders that we are family, anytime you need them.

::hugs::

*****

With Star Wars Celebration happening this weekend in California, I thought it'd be a good time to officially unveil John's long-delayed Star Wars cosplay, which we carted out last Friday at MegaCon.

Let's start with a ridiculously dramatic video:



Awwww yeeeeeeeeeah.

Who remembers this?

Yep, MORE puns. It's who we are.

We did a quick test run of Boba Vet last year, but had to shelve him the rest of the season due to Covid. These critters have been waiting a long time to come out and play, and one in particular was easily distracted:

I shall dub her Dotty. Dotty the Dianoga.

I forgot to take any pictures from the back, so here's a reminder of what the tank looks like:

If you've been here a while you might remember we began building all this last July, and then how I beat-up Salacious Crumb, with no regrets:

WE'RE HOME: MegaCon Orlando 2022

WHEW.

Y'all.

What a weekend.

For our first convention of 2022 John and I dove in head-first with Florida's largest, the appropriately named MegaCon. To give you an idea, Mega is bigger than even Dragon Con, hitting 100K attendees several years ago and growing steadily up 'til Covid. This year they came back strong and broke all records with 140,000 attendees - and more than 70,000 of those on Saturday alone. It's big. It's overwhelming. And once you navigate the hours of traffic gridlock and parking nightmares to get inside, it. is. GLORIOUS.

The calm before the storm.

John and I attended all 4 days as Press, and we set a goal of filming, editing, and uploading a new cosplay video to YouTube every night. It's a massive amount of work for four days in a row - we both get very little sleep - but also SO DANG FUN. The cosplay, merch, and crowds were all off the charts, and I never wanted it to end.



In between filming for YouTube I also captured lots of photos and video for my Stories on Instagram/FB, which some of you have been following. Plus on Friday we delayed filming for a few hours so John could officially bring out Boba Vet to play:

Our Jungle Cruise Scavenger Hunt: Video Tour & How To Make Your Own!

Happy Friday, my boop-able bumbersnoots!

Now I know, I know, it seems like this party will NEVER END.

This is it, though, the last big reveal from our Jungle Cruise pun party! And I hope you'll steal some of these ideas, because they're a hoot.

 So, owl you ready to go on the hunt?

John and I spent the last several days making this video, so hopefully you can feel like you're here with the rest of our friends:

(Can you tell I picked the music? :D)

This is a fairly simple scavenger hunt, and most of it you can recreate yourself with only a few props and purchases. So c'mon, lemme walk you through it clue-by-clue, and show you how!

1) My favorite punny prop is definitely the butterfly display. This one is the most subtle, so it's easy to walk by without noticing what's tucked in the flowers:

Just a pretty little floral arrangement on this side, AND THEN:



I made this with a charger plate we already had, some old florals stuck in pink foam, and a plastic cloche cover from Dollar Tree. You can use an existing flower arrangement, though, and just add the butter.

The stick of butter is pink insulation foam that John stacked, painted, and wrapped in a (cleaned) butter wrapper.


 

It's surprisingly satisfying holding a fake stick of butter in your hand, y'all. As my friend Kristi wisely said, "You know someone is friend material if they're impressed with your fake stick of butter."

(I told John we need to make a bunch of these and sneak them into friends' fridges when we visit, for maximum harmless chaos.)

For the final touch I added paper butterfly wings to the stick of butter. Seriously, these magnetic butterflies have neverending uses.

2) The Jungle "paradise" cost $10 from Amazon, come in lots of colors, and have plastic dots that are easy to write on with pencil:

Eurovision 2022: Our Costumes, Food, & Favorites!

We interrupt this overload of Jungle Cruise party posts to bring you... another party post.

But this party is for Eurovision, so it's less punny.

You might remember I watched my first Eurovision ever last year, and how I was instantly hooked. "Song contest" doesn't come close to describing this experience. It's more like a candy-coated rave that bounces from soulful ballads in spinning laser-light sets to psychedelic polka rap and dancers in foil astronaut suits.

That was a fun sentence to write.

Happily our same friends streamed the finale again this year, and made it more of an event by inviting more people and asking us all to dress up, plus bring fun European foods to try.

John and I hit up our local thrift store for something appropriately fabulous, and this jacket immediately threw itself into my cart:

YESSSS.

A few aisles over I found a hot pink tulle skirt to complete the look:

Unfortunately we couldn't find anything nearly as interesting for John, so he spent the night before making his own outfit. Here's a peak at his prop:

Full reveal of John's costume right after these car selfies of my big hair:

I also tried some stuff with my eyeliner.

 

I really struggled with these photos 'til I realized trying to keep my eyes open when I smile makes me look distant or annoyed. Finally I said, "screw it," smiled like I meant it, and got a picture I actually like:

Yep, here for the happy squinty eyes! And also dino necklaces, because dino necklaces are cool.

Now. Who's ready to see John's Eurovision ensemble?

Our Jungle Cruise Pun Party: All The Costumes & Food!

Get ready to roll your eyes, groan, and slow-clap your way through this post, gang, because our Orlando friends are punny PARTY ANIMALS:

... and I have all the pics to prove it.

In fact Christie & Robyn here made their entrance by kicking open the door, blasting music & air horns on their phones, and dancing through the house for a solid 2 minutes:


Later they exited the same way, haha.

I asked for costumes that were either "Jungle Cruise era adventurers" or puns, so our guests would have lots of options. Because our friend group is full of insanely creative artists, cosplayers, and designers, we had the full gamut of both, and everything in-between:



Traci here is a mashup of Jane from Disney's Tarzan and Imogen from Critical Role.

Imo-Jane.


I'll let you guess Bianca's costume:

Did you get it?

She's an Investi-Gator.

And she's investigating... IN-TRAP-MINT.

Though she was quick to point out:


... she's just a gumshoe.

If you found that painful, buckle up. We're just getting started.

Matt and Rachael explained they were "Jungle Cruise adjacent" with their costumes:

The Pirates ride is next to the Jungle Cruise one in WDW, so that's already clever - but it's not all! Did you notice the menus on his hat and her corset?

Our Jungle Cruise Pun Party: Full House Tour!

Our Jungle Cruise Pun Party was last weekend, and bots and babes, it was soooo gooood. For the first time since Covid John and I packed our house with amazingly creative friends, every one in costume, and we played games, ate, laughed, hugged, caught up with people we hadn't seen in years, and hugged some more.

We partied from 6pm 'til 2am, by which point my voice was completely gone, so I spent all of Sunday whisper-croaking to John between naps and cups of hot tea. It was a long week just finishing everything for the party, so I'm still bone-tired - but also way too excited to wait any longer to show you THE GOODS.

John and I've been working to photograph and video every last detail for you, so I hope you're ready for a pun party barrage. Despite only having a little over a month to work on this, we still managed to cram in a bunch of builds: decorations, games, a custom scavenger-hunt, the works!

SO.

::eyebrow waggle::

Shall we start with the house tour?

The sun doesn't set 'til 8pm here in Orlando, so most of our party areas have both a day and night look. By day our front door looked like this; by night it had a flickering orange spotlight for a fire effect. (You'll see video of that at the end.) The sign is pink foam - details here - the spears are craft foam and PVC pipe, and the netting was a lucky thrift find, only $3!

Once you step inside, you get your first big wow moment:

Ta-daa!

Our JC boat photo opp has a shimmering foil waterfall behind it, kept in motion by a small fan. The paper flowers are hooked onto thin strips of plastic lattice, which is in turn hung on the wall with Command strips.

The boat is open on the right side, so you can walk behind and through the falls to the room beyond.

Beside the boat is the most labor-intensive thing we've ever made with our Cricut, our Skipper Menu:

(click to embiggen - did you catch the Moana reference?)

The board is made of pink foam insulation that I striéd with red paint to give an aged wood effect. Everything else is vinyl we designed and cut on our Cricut. (This foam board is re-purposed from the Winnie-the-Pooh baby shower we threw a few weeks ago, as are some of the big paper flowers!)

These inflatable monkeys from Amazon were a last-minute addition, but so worth it. Only $15 for 4!

And so stinkin' cute.

The other three are hanging out over the dining room table:

The rainbow paper garland is from Walmart.

Our boat has a wheel that turns and a throttle that moves, for those exciting action shots:

It's also on wheels, so we can move it completely out of the way if necessary:

WDW's Spring Dapper Day 2022: Sunday Looks From Hollywood Studios!

Happy Friday, you delightful dapper dish, you. Mrow.

I'm back with my favorite looks from last weekend at WDW's Hollywood Studios, and once again all of today's photos are courtesy of my sweet friend and volunteer photographer, Traci:

(@MeridaAnn)

Hi, Traci!

Her outfit for the day was a bound of Keyleth from Critical Role.

Traci was attending solo this year, and she reports having a mission (find and photograph EVERY DAPPER) made the day more fun, if also more draining. It takes a ton of social energy to do this, so huge thanks to her for pushing out of her comfort zone to bring us these sweet pics. (She sent me batches straight off her phone throughout the day, then I did all the editing.)

A lot of dappers match their outfits to the parks, so Sunday is when the Star Wars looks came out to play:

Can you ID them all? First two from the left are easy with those purses. After that I believe we have C3PO, possibly Chewie?, and Ahsoka on the right.

Gorgeous Padme - love the dress and headband! - and Anakin.

Chewbacca and Rey:

I'm impressed Chewie is still grinning despite wearing fur in this heat!

Ohh now this one made me squeal:

First, dapper Salacious Crumb on her shoulder. YES.
Second, Jabba the Hutt's never looked so good, love that dress!
And the cherry on top, dapper Boba Fett with arm garters. Amazing.

So many lovely looks - and did you catch the subtle Vice Admiral Holdo on the end?

Speaking of subtle, I love this interpretation of Queen Amidala's famous red gown:

Dapper Day Spring 2022: My Favorite Looks At Epcot!

John and I don't have Disney passes at the moment, so I asked a couple friends attending Dapper Day last weekend to take pictures for me. I expected maybe a handful of photos, so imagine my delight when my friend and FoE Traci spent her entire time at both Dapper Days taking pictures for me!

So for everyone wondering how I took your photos without actually being there, meet Traci my proxy photographer, the redhead on the right:


  Traci is also an awesome local cosplayer and theme park geek, you can follow her on Instagram at @MeridaAnn.

I've had a blast the last few days sorting through all Traci's pics, editing, and selecting my favorite Dapper looks for you - so are you ready to see??

Let's start with the family Madrigal, from Encanto:

 Luisa with the weights on her skirt, Isabela with her flower garland...! This group makes me happy.

Traci also found tia Pepa & Félix:



Outside shot so you can see Pepa's umbrella and fabulous rainbow purse:


SO GOOD. All of them! (Pepa is @HeyBlondieOnline, btw, give her a follow!)

A Princess and The Frog group:

I'm pretty sure the 2nd from the left is Evangeline, the North Star - my cat Eva's namesake. D'awww. Also love the gender-swapped Tiana with that lilypad fascinator!

A subtle Aurora & Prince Philip on the right: