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Archive for October, 2007 
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On October 26th, 2007 members of the Maveron team, a leading venture capital firm with a portfolio including eBay, kinetix and TerraPass and their families gathered for a Halloween Bash. Community notables such as former Washington State Governor Gary Locke and Maveron Co-Founder Dan Levitan were in attendance. Everyone was entertained by a mime, a clown and a cupcake decorator while the children participated in story telling, pinata smashing and a rousing rendition of the mummy game. Hosted by Maveron. The event was held at Maveron corporate offices in the NBBJ designed 505 Union Station building in Seattle.
Come join us! The Adventure School will be decorating the Baltic Room in Seattle for an All Hallow’s Eve Monster Mash. Ruff Gemz is a weekly club night in Seattle. It features a resident crew of The Stranger’s music columnist, Eric Grandy aka D.J. F.I.T.S., Sam Rousso Sound System and DJ Porq aka Marcus Wilson, the fabulous founder of uber-super-Capitol Hill party dance club party spot, PONY! Be prepared for a Spooktacular Zombie Birthday Party Rave with special guest DJ Pretty T of Death of the Party fame.
On October 20th, 2007 the Anthony Chavez family of Sacramento gathered together friends and relatives in honor of their beloved wife and mother, Antoinette. To celebrate her 60th in style, the Chavez’ selected a quaint Sicilian restaurant, Soprattutto! Salumeria for an afternoon soiree. A good time was had by all as they dined on chicken and eggplant parmigiana, homemade fettucine alfredo noodles and much more. Speeches were made, songs were sung and everyone was delighted to be part of this celebration in the idyllic neighborhood of East Sacramento.
To give our client, Rivet Magazine, the most bang for their buck, The Adventure School fabricated everything used at their art auction by hand for almost no cost. It meant that our hands were black for days and my circle cutting hand was sore for a week, but it also made for a good day’s work and a good nights sleep (as usual). We made one hundred and twenty five Connect-the-Dots auction paddles. The were very work intensive but it was worth it to see sophisticated art-hunters giggling with joy at writing their numbers on their paddles. First, we purchased a box of tongue depressors to use as the bid number paddle handles. Then we spray painted them black on both sides. With the paddles completed it was on to decorating the event venue. We decided to stick with seven inch circles, but for this part of the project they would be made of vinyl that we found (luckily) at the Northwest Sign Supply Company. These dots were then connected from the ceiling to the walls to the floor using black duct tape. Amazing! Cheap, conceptual and totally great looking. Now, that’s HOT (and immersive)! The event venue was finished off by small touches such as creating a series of “Dot Family” portraits behind the bar, which ended up being manned by the Managing-Editor of the magazine, Nick Katsilometes. The gallery’s courtyard was also given the dot treatment. We spray painted a series of 3 foot-long dowels and 4 inch styrofoam balls to be sculpted into three-dimensional connect-the-dots structures. The Adventure School then set up an outdoor lounge with tents for the Seattle rain, Ikea chandeliers and borrowed benches kept costs down and maximized fun, completed our part of the look and feel of the event. Many thanks go to the entire Rivet crew for being relentless in the honorable task of making a magazine and cultivating a diverse and exciting group of donating artists for the successful live and silent art auctions. We were really glad to be the decor part of the auction team. Special Thanks to Rivet Staff including the be-polka-dotted editor, Leah Baltus, the Art Director, Allie Manch and the Design Director MichaelVincent Santos.
The Adventure School is housed in a noodle factory (no, really) in Seattle. It is called Noodle Works. Apparently, someone used to make noodles here in the basement. And now, THEY’RE BACK. We decided to celebrate by having a building wide open house at the Noodle Works Studios. The building houses many artists’ studios, a few lofty industrial apartments and our place, Studio Six. A place of magic and of fun. We co-create in Studio Six with several other cultural creatives. Studio-sixers design, produce, make photos, drawings, haute tees, music and mischief. They include: Other people in the building include Yuki Nakamura and Victoria Gentry from Vain. We are lucky to be surrounded by such creative people.
The Adventure School was hired to style a shoot with renowned photographer Anne Mathern. The shoot took place on the California Coast. First we had to get there. We loaded up the rented SUV with an impossible group of numbered bins containing everything from mini bananas to Aqua Net to a giant magnifying glass with a horn handle. Then we hopped on the five and headed south for about 12 quick hours; I personally became best friends with the giant beauty dish that was smashed up against me in the backseat. We took our journey seriously, stopping only to grub on Portland’s cheap sushi and stop at a Les Schwab in some desolate Californian town. Ultimately, we knew that our hotel in Trinidad California couldn’t be far off when we saw Babe the Blue Ox peering down at us from his home at the site of The Trees of Mystery looking like the devil himself. The next morning, bright and early we took some shots on the beach. While Michaela got cold feet, literally from standing in the ocean, The Adventure School set up our steamer and clothes rack in the parking lot. Here is the first time, we were asked by tourists if we were selling something. We should have said, “Yes, we are selling one pair of denim overalls – size 2, do you want them? We also have some biore facial washcloths”. What? A totally insane restaurant, by the name of The Apple Peddler best exemplified this wacky land. Home of the Tuna San, Cold Pork Sandwich and the world’s most disgruntled ex-con-ish servers, it provided a near-psychedelic dining experience. Next it was onto a night drive on what is probably the West Coast’s most treacherous road aka Lake of the Woods Highway leading from Medford to Klamath Falls. With ravines to the right, no guardrails in site and glowing eyes of deer surrounding us on all sides, this was a real nail biting-wheel gripping ride.
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To create the ultimate Halloween party, we decided that we would need pumpkins. . . a lot of pumpkins. Being the deal hunters that we are, we realized that the biggest pumpkins for the fewest dollars came straight from the farm. We found a very lovely family farm by the name of Schuh Farm in the Skagit Valley. We hopped on the Five and drove an hour north to Mount Vernon and soon we were greeted by a huge barn boasting a forty-foot-tall pumpkin. Nice! We proceeded to see about the pick-yer-own patch. This special patch was across the street and was full of mud and rotting pumpkins and stretched for a little bit shy of “as far as the eye could see”. We pulled our rig up through the back-way only to begin a battle with a very small, very loud dog. Being a dog lover, I was afraid I would run over the poor little guy and hopped out of the car to shoo it away. This worked for a minute, keeping him safe enough for us to park and change into our pumpkin picking boots. We picked through the rotten and misshapen pumpkins, only choosing the very finest most distinctive looking pumpkins. The misguidedly ferocious pup did manage to bite me before we were through. A mere scratch, but a real let down, I wanted to believe he was a harmless little yapper, but clearly he was out for blood. This motivated us to pick fast. In just about an hour, we managed to pick 50 pumpkins. Some of them as big as fifty pounds.
Then it was time to transfer the bounty to transform Maveron’s offices into a cornucopia of harvest and BOO-tiful cheer.
We also jazzed up the bathrooms by framing actual connect-the-dots pages from coloring books.
