Lantern Time Already?

Every October for the past five years my community has entered the Mount Holly Lantern Parade. The theme for this year was announced at the end of last year's parade, and it is "The Wide World of Sports". I'm not going to lie, none of us are excited about this theme. Our goal is always to have something that engages the children along the parade route, as well as having enough lanterns for the many residents in our community who want to walk in the parade with us.

We really struggled with coming up with something that would be fun for us to work on. We actually considered not participating this year. But finally we came up with an idea that we thought would work for us. I doubt that any of our competitors read this blog, but nevertheless I will keep what we are doing a surprise. It encompasses many sports, so I think that will appeal to a lot of people.

We have begun deconstruction of our larger lanterns from last year. We repurpose the interior framing and light packs when we can. I took one last picture of all the sharks together for posterity's sake.

Baby Shark & family

Speaking of surprises, my husband will be turning 70 this year. I had planned a surprise trip for him, setting up an activity that he really enjoys. I have kept the secret, and all he knew was that he would need his passport, and to dress for warm weather. But yesterday, the group that I organized the trip through sent out an email to HIM and not to me. They were aware that this was a gift for Jim and were told not to contact him. So much for the surprise!!!

I am really aggravated about it, and am trying to get over it. They have yet to reach out to me to apologize for their error. But I don't want our trip to start out on the wrong foot, so I'll need to be gracious about it. Jim is excited about where we are going, so in the end that is all that matters.

Lighting Up Mount Holly

seahorse lantern

Last night was the 8th Annual Mount Holly Lantern Parade, and for the 5th year in a row our community had an entry in the parade. Also for the 5th year in a row we took 1st place in the Group category. This year's theme was "Into the Deep Blue Sea". 

As we plan what we want to do we take a couple things into consideration: What is going to resonate with the kids who line the parade route?, and how can we involve the large number of people who want to walk in the parade with us? We have a core group of 8-10 people who consistently show up each week to build the lanterns. But we normally have 30+ folks who want to walk down Main Street with our group.

This year we decided to do "Baby Shark", the wildly successful YouTube video featuring a family of sharks and a few sidekicks. Mommy, Daddy, Grandma & Grandpa sharks were five feet long, not including their tails. Baby Shark was four feet and his buddy William the pilot fish was three feet. The other main character, in our minds, is Pink Fong who is kind of the mascot for the show. 

Once we built those lanterns, we moved on to ancillary items. We made a seahorse, three jellyfish, three schools of fish containing twelve fish each, seven starfish and four clams that were our first attempt at hand puppet lanterns. A crowning late addition was a coral reef that was worn around the waist of the carrier. It could have been an entry all by itself.

coral                                                banner

An Imagery banner led our entry, followed by a baton twirler with a lighted baton, then a decorated wagon with speakers playing the Baby Shark theme song on repeat. Two residents dressed as the little boy and girl from the video came next, running away from the sharks. We also had four people handing out shark-shaped small bags of candy. At the end of all of our lanterns was a wall of wavy blue streamers complete with lighted bubbles to signify the end of our group. All in all, we had 39 folks in our unit including two of our own parade Marshalls to keep us in order.

Imagery Lanterns

Though the night was a little cooler than previous years, it was a beautiful evening to be out. The parade went off mostly without a hitch. Baby Shark decided to act up and his pole disconnected inside his body. This caused him to drop down on top of my nose. Ouch! I was able to get him somewhat situated before we passed the judges station, but after that I just hand carried him for the rest of the parade. Bad Baby!

It was rewarding as always to be named First Place as we have been working since April to pull this project together. After the winners were announced, the organizer released the theme for next year - the "Wide World of Sports." All I could think was, ugh. The theme does not excite me, and I wonder what we can pull together that makes sense with the theme but will still engage the kids. What a challenge!

Mount Holly Lantern Day Parade

Lantern Parade

With all the drama surrounding the theft of my rental car (and there are zero updates there), I forgot to post about my community's entry in the 7th Annual Mount Holly Lantern Day Parade. This was the fourth year that Imagery has entered the parade (our community was only formed in 2019).

The theme was "The Fantastical World of Flight", and the options of what to build were endless. Our design team takes into account the fact that we have many people in the neighborhood who, while they may never help in the building process, want to walk with us in the parade. So obviously we would not choose to build one large lantern, like Dumbo for example. We like to have a number of lanterns in our entry. The second consideration is that we want to appeal to the kids, as there are many of them along the parade route. For those reasons we decided to go with Santa and his reindeer.

We constructed a six foot long sleigh for Santa, and built his nine reindeer, each of whom was five feet long. We added ten twelve inch square gift boxes, four lollipops and four candy canes. All of these were constructed of wire, lit with fairy lights, then covered with two layers of tissue paper. We also have a lit banner with our name - Imagery - in from of our entry. We had 32 people in our unit, including two of our own parade marshalls to keep people in line and five of the Singing Elves from our community. 

We had requested to be last in the parade, and our wish was granted. What better way to end any parade than with Santa? We were greeted with many claps and cheers, as well as spontaneous renditions of "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" along the parade route. And we won First Place in the "Group" category for the fourth year in a row! 

Imagery Lantern Parade entry

Next year's theme is "Into the Deep Blue Sea". We have our thinking caps on...

Mount Holly Lantern Parade

Imagery and 101 Dalmatians
(photo by Bob Leverone Photography)

I'll get back to my national parks trip postings later, but Saturday night was the Sixth Annual Mount Holly Lantern Parade. For the third year our Imagery community has entered the group category in the parade. This year's theme was Heroes and Villains, and we decided when we heard the theme last October that we would do 101 Dalmatians as our entry. It has wonderful villains in Cruella and the Badun brothers, and super heroes with Pongo and Perdita coming to the rescue of the puppies.

We began the lanterns in earnest in June, and many, many hands participated in making our dream a reality. Cruella reached a whopping 8'6" height, and Pongo and Perdita were built to the size of actual Dalmatians. The remaining puppies were much smaller in scale so we didn't need 101 walkers in the parade.

We put puppies on stars, on poles and on hula hoops to make it all come together. All told we had 42 walkers on Saturday night, and enough people dressed as puppies with painted faces and lit up ears that we ended up with 101 Dalmatians.

The entry was a hit with the crowds as well as the parade organizers. For the third straight year we took first place in our category. That puts a lot of pressure on us for next year, the theme of which has not yet been announced. But I'm sure we are up for the challenge!

Mount Holly Lantern Parade

It's Lantern Parade Time

Dalmatians 

It's time for the annual Mount Holly Lantern Parade. Well, okay, the parade is not until October but it is time for us to start building our lanterns. For the third year in a row, Imagery will have an entry in the parade under the "community" category. The pressure is on as we have taken first place the past two years.

This year's theme is "Heroes and Villains", so that offered an abundance of opportunities for sure. We decided to go with "101 Dalmatians" since the story contains both heroes and villains. There are a lot of families with children who attend the parade, and we felt like they would get a kick out of seeing the Dalmatian puppies. I don't think we will have 101 of them, however! Let alone trying to build that many lanterns, we would struggle to find enough volunteers to carry them the night of the parade.

A small group of us have begun making some puppies because we will have a lantern-making workshop here in the community next Sunday night. It's an opportunity for new neighbors to see what we are up to, and hopefully recruit some volunteers. We will also get a jump on getting some puppies constructed.

We will have four stations at the workshop, and will have completed lanterns at each to show the process. The first station will construct the lanterns with wire, the second will add lights to the lanterns, the third will glue the specialty paper over the lanterns, and the fourth will add the black spots to the Dalmatians.

My specialty is stringing the lanterns with lights, so I will man that station. I did the structural wiring of two puppies in preparation for next week, and I really did not enjoy the experience. I'll leave that to the wiring experts and stick with lighting. One thing that is nice about lighting is that I can bring the lanterns home and do it in front of the television.

lit Dalmatians 

There are a lot of logistics to work out, but we have a very experienced core group working on this so I'm confident we will have a great-looking entry again this year. And the crowd will ask, "Who let the dogs out?" Who, who, who, who, who!

Granddaughter is here!

Our granddaughter was born Monday evening! She is little, but mighty. As I'm not sure how much the kids want me to share, I'll just say that we are thrilled that everyone is healthy. We can't wait to get our hands on that baby!

My Mohs surgery to remove my latest two basal cells has been scheduled for December 1st. I pray that Dr. Mu will be able to get clear margins after the first cuts. When she did my nose three years ago, it took five tries before she finally got it all. Hopefully that will not be the case this time.

The Mount Holly Lantern Parade took place last month, and our community won First Place in the Group Category for the second year in a row. We are two for two now, and that puts a lot of pressure on us for next year's entry. The theme was Written in the Stars, so we decided to up-cycle our minions from last year. We added space helmets, rockets and stars, and created a girl minion. We weren't sure if the judges would approve of us reusing lanterns, but I think we made enough changes that they could tell the amount of work we put into them.

2022 Mount Holly Lantern Parade

The theme for next year's parade is Heroes and Villains. We are already brainstorming on what we might like to do. Due to the large number of children in the audience, it's important to pick something readily recognizable to them, I think. The minions were a huge crowd pleaser, so we need something to generate that kind of enthusiasm from the crowd. We just had a wrap up celebration party with our team of volunteers. I made sure the minions had one last hurrah by bringing minion cupcakes.

minion cupcakes