Carnaval 2009 - An overview
(if you wanna skip straight to the photos, move along using the link above...)
Carnaval 2009 was wonderful. I am later than I EVER have been getting the photos online, and truthfully, one of my only motivators this year is FORBIDDING myself to work on my 2010 costume without having first gotten these photos up!! I hope that you can think of this as "getting your motor primed" for 2010! That's how I feel!
This year, my first goal was to spend as little money as possible!! To do that, I decided to cannibalize one of my first and one of my favorite Carnaval costumes: Carmen Miranda. The year was 2003 and I was 10ish days pregnant with Lila, my daughter, who is now 6. TIME FLIES! Basically, I meant to use the fruit from the headdress. So fruit.
I have been thinking about Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) makeup for a while now. The "sugar skull" decorations lend themselves to WILD makeup. If you just do an image search for related terms, you'll see what I mean. Lots of people have LOTS of ideas and they are ALL amazing. I collected a lot of images online, let the colors and shapes marinate for a while and then created my own design. For fun, as a dry run, I did just the skull for Halloween. I loved how it came out. :) It did scare a few kiddos though, and I had some people have NO idea who I was!
What I ended up with when all was said and done was a fabulous Carmen Miranda/Day of the Dead bride costume. I was calling it Dia de los Carmen, but a friend suggested Carmen Muertos, and I like that A LOT, so probably for posterity, that's what I'll call this costume.
J9 continued to be Totally Awesome this year, and Jennifer too. I was THRILLED to have Cara with us this year. I'm sorry her sister couldn't make it (I think she had a baby??) but it was fun to have her back in OUR posse!! :)
I'm not sure how much time went into this year's costume. The bones were very time-consuming. I stressed over getting them Just Right, but it was nice not to have to sew much, just the gloves.
ANYWAY!
I am THRILLED to report that we continue to WORSHIP AND ADORE our Carnaval Home Base Hotel - after being kicked out of that horrible Hotel Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken two years ago - OK, it was the Hyatt! Don't stay at the Hyatt. Listen up, boys and girls, because if you're traveling to Austin for Carnaval, you need to stay here: Embassy Suites - Downtown/Town Lake
Shall I say that again? Stay for Austin's Carnaval at the Embassy Suites - Downtown/Town Lake location.
It's wonderful to be completely welcomed somewhere, smiled at and loved. Such good energy to head out to Carnaval. I wouldn't go anywhere else.
The staff at the night desk were so friendly, and all of the people at the hotel were nice. The HOTEL is beautiful and clean and they have a great lobby for photos. They didn't mind when we stood up beside their water feature and up on chairs to get higher for photos, nor that we wanted to pose in their glass elevators. Embassy Suites welcomes Carnaval folks and thinks that they are all part of the "Austin flavor" they are so proud of. We were treated us like honored guests, and we couldn't have asked for more. Please, if you are traveling to Austin, show this place your support. I can't tell you what a difference it made to our night to start out the evening with such a positive experience.
Once again, I was linked off the official Carnaval website and received a lot of email from folks just saying hi or people looking for costuming tips. Lots of people asking me what I was wearing so they could look for me there. It was so nice to head to Carnaval and be looking for friendly faces to put with screen names. My intro page I made for the Carnaval website was the highest hit page in Jan & Feb on my site; lots of people are sweet enough to stop by and visit! I'm sorry everything is so late this year, I really am. It's ridiculous and I know it.
MUCH CARNAVAL LOVE TO MIKE QUINN, the Samba Master Extraordinaire! One day, we shall meet!!
Also, don't forget to shop at The Bazaar for all of your costuming, makeup, wig, false eyelash, glitter, risque' clothing needs. Whether you need a full costume or just a few little embellishments, you can get a lot done with one trip to the Bazaar. The Bazaar is the best!
That said, let's get on to why you're here: the PHOTOS!!! I hope you enjoy. Thank you to all of you who "donated" your photos to my Worthy Cause of a website. So many of you made your photos available to me this year and allowed me to pick and choose from your personal photo albums. Thank you! Because of your generosity, I am able to present a really amazing selection of photos that I never would have had otherwise. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
PS, as another note, I apologize to those of you who are basically blocked from my site because I use words like "nipples", "breasts" and "pasties". Really, you'd be surprised how many places block my site for how obscene it is. LOL. As if. I block all actual nipples in the live photos, so the worst you'll see on my site is pasties, big black bars, and maybe a little naked hiney. FYI. I should be SFW in case you're wondering.
Let the more than 500 Photos Begin!
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