Hey Seattle, Beard & Stache Fest Contest

Hey Seattle, Beard & Stache Fest Contestant Pictures are TODAY! Come see us at The High Dive! http://ow.ly/8JWGp

Sunday Funday

I realize that MTV2 is conveniently hosting Boy Meets World marathons this weekend (and I’m totally indulging)…

BUT!

It may do you some good to get out of the house. I’m on my fourth consecutive episode…Cory is about to discover how to talk to girls…Shawn is learning to read…Eric just got caught making out on his PARENT’S bed (gasp!) but alas I think it’s time to peel myself off the couch, out of my sweats, and into the real world.

I had the pleasure of meeting the one and only Mr. Jay Buhner on Wednesday at the Seattle Sports Awards and it re-sparked my love for the Mariners. And it’s come just in time because this weekend happens to be Fan Fest and you can bet I’ll be there! From 11-4 today and tomorrow  you’re invited to what can only be described as a baseball extravaganza. There’s games, food, lectures, and some pretty big names. Dan Wilson ring a bell? It should. And he’ll be signing autographs tomorrow, along with many other amazing ballers. I’m bringing a ball to have signed to give to my dad-I’m entering the Daughter of the Year Award and need something to give an advantage.

Are you wondering if studly men in tight pants the only thing Seattle has to offer this weekend? If you are, and even if you’re not, I can answer that.

Absolutely not.

Sunday afternoon beholds one of the most beloved Seattle events of the year. TWIF’s annual Contestant Picture Party for our studly, fuzzy men participating in Beard and Stache Fest is happening at the High Dive in Fremont from 1-4. Benefiting the Treehouse organization, Beard and Stache Fest is one of the area’s most creative fundraisers of the year. Contestants will be mean-mugging for the camera tomorrow, and their pictures will be placed on individual cans that will soon serve as donation containers for the month of February. Tomorrow you can expect an afternoon filled with some fantastic TWIF staff, some fine drinks, and some seriously fuzzy faces. Not to shabby, albeit very shaggy, for a Sunday.

Enjoy the weekend!

Apples to Oysters

Between being snowed into my tiny apartment for a week straight, having no power, AND my car breaking down in a non-snow related incident on Friday…let’s just say I’m well-prepared for 2012 to take a turn for the better. Now that snowmageddon has vanished, leaving only its slushy, gray remnants in the gutters for us to remember it by, we can all safely go back to being awesome and adventurous like I know we all resolved to be. And lucky for us, there’s a TON of good stuff happening this week to help even out last week’s cabin fever.

Look at my poor doggie. Even she had cabin fever

Here’s a lovely little list I’ve thrown together to get you out of the house and into some pretty cool places.

Monday: The Princess Bride at Central Cinema

Princess Bride is still showing? Inconceivable! For only 6$ (advance ticket price) you can enjoy the likes of Wesley and Buttercup on their quest to for true love. Mawwage was what bwought them all togwether; but you’ll probably be lured by the cheap admission, cheap booze, delicious snacks, and a rowdy crowd who loves to chant out the lines. Show times are at 7 and 930, come early for the best seats.

Tuesday: Game Night at Forza

Want to get out of the house and make some new friends? Dying to play the Pictionary game your crazy cat-lady aunt gave you for Christmas? Simply just can’t get enough Apples to Apples? Whatever. Just get yourself to Forza (located by U-Village) at 7 and get ready to bring your game face. And your game(s). The best thing about this coffee shop is that it sells booze (true story), so if you need a little PBR with your R&R, they’ve got you covered.

Wednesday: Trivia Night at Seattle’s Favorite Kiwi Bar

Unofficially voted ‘Seattle’s Favorite Kiwi Bar’, this Aussie-ran bar has been officially voted one of my favorites. The trivia here is tough, let’s be honest. And to make matters stickier, the man that reads the questions off has an Aussie accent so thick that you’re either straining to make the words out or so pleasantly distracted by its inaudibility that you miss the question entirely. Erroneous on all accounts, however. Kangaroo and Kiwi has some of the funnest trivia Seattle has to offer.

Thursday: 1st Annual Local 360 Oyster Shindig 

Think of this as a large, orchestrated, snot eating contest. Personally, I can’t stomach the little suckers. They just look like huge boogers to me. But for all you oyster lovers out there-this event is for you. Contestants will have 3 minutes to shuck and slurp as many oysters as possible. Judges will then examine your bounty, rewarding you for a shell well-shucked. To the man that shucked the most guck out of the slobbery shells? He’ll receive a $250 grand prize, a night at the Roosevelt Hotel, and a $40 food voucher during your stay. All that for mowing down mollusks? That’s a shucking good deal.

Check back later this week to see what’s in store for the weekend. Of course there’s TWIF’s Beard and Stache Contestant Picture Party on Sunday, but obviously that’s not all the fun in store for the last weekend of January.

 

SNOWBALL FIGHT!!!

 

Do you have anything better to do tonight than to participate in one of the biggest orchestrated snowball fights of the season?

I think not.

Tonight at 7 at Cal Anderson Park people will be swarming the fields, forming icy balls, and battling each other for the ultimate inner-child glory! Be sure to bundle up, it’s sure to be a cold one.

And don’t be like this guy…

Happy snow day!

New Years Resolutions

I’m not one of those people who like to make gargantuan New Years Resolutions every year. For example: resolving to give up sugar (yeah right), exercise 5x a week (definitely not), quit cursing (hell no), or quit eating fast food (sometimes you just NEED a frosty). I tend to make more reasonable, attainable, and enjoyable goals.

I’m going to share with you a personal New Years resolution in the hopes that it inspires you to do the same

This year I’m going to make an effort to stretch further out of my comfort zone and explore more of what Seattle has to offer. Especially if its free. I’ve been finding myself inside at home after long days of work and gym and errands and cleaning and all of that. And while there’s sincerely nothing particularly wrong with that, it’s just not as much fun.

So this on weekend’s agenda?

Georgetown’s Art Attack and Big Al’s Soup Tasting.

The second Saturday of every month Georgetown hosts its own art walk from 6-9 at various venues like American Pie, Calamity Jane’s, and The Nautilus Studio. Patrons can walk from shop to shop enjoying the scene and sipping on free wine and chatting with the other friendly art walkers. Afterwards people tend to migrate to the Georgetown bars to continue their night away from home. I’ve heard good things about 9 LB Hammer and The Mix, if you have any suggests please leave me a comment!

I’m honestly most excited for Sunday, however. I’ve never heard of anything like this in my life. It’s a FREE soup tasting, at a brewery, where local beer drinkers fix up their best pot of soup and lug it in for everyone in town to taste and vote on. Um, yes please. If you knew how much I love to cook you can only imagine how fast my mind is spinning right now trying to decide which pot of soup I’ll be blessing the soup suckers at Big Al’s. It starts at 4 and you don’t even need to bring in soup. You just need to bring yourself and an empty stomach. I checked out the website. This place is definitely more Paula Deen than Barefoot Contessa, I’m thinking it’s time to whip out the heavy cream and butter and make a to die for Clam Chowder….Yum! It’s a little bit of a hike out to White Center, but definitely going to be worth it when I take home that first place prize and all the glory

And while on the subject of getting out of the house, don’t forget to mark your calendars for January 29th when we’re hosting our Contestant Picture Party for Beard and Stache Fest! It will be from 1-4 at the High Dive in Fremont and it promises to be one fuzzy, fun filled time!

 

 

Operation Sack Lunch Success!

Happy Tuesday TWIFfers!

Hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying your start to the week. I’m looking forward to tonight’s monthly staff meeting- can’t wait to relay to you all the fun stuff we’re working on!

Here’s a little blog from Nell, a part of the TWIF team and a participant in this weekend’s successful Operation Sack Lunch endeavor:

“A huge group of TWIFers, 18 to be exact, assisted Operation Sack Lunch on Saturday with the weekly OSL dinner for the Compass Center and assembling extra sack lunches to be distributed o Sunday on the streets. Merry times were had by all as we concocted a tasty and nutritious meal of mashed potatoes, mac and cheese and barbecue beef; a full starch load for the cold temperatures! The volunteers also learned a valuable lesson, complete with a new adage (which was gleefully recited to me by the group with the coaching of the Chef), “Never put something in the oven before it’s preheated”. Thankfully, the apple crisp managed to make it to the table despite my best efforts. Dinner was served to over 60 men from the Compass Center’s program and sack lunches were prepared for their trip outside into the hands of the hungry. Operation Sack Lunch makes over 17,000 meals per month and relies on donations from local restaurants.”

Some more of our amazing volunteers hard at work…

A BIG thank you to everyone who came out and helped make this event so successful! If you’d like to participate in our next Operation Sack Lunch opportunity, please check our events page and sign up! Invite a friend or head stag and get ready to make some new ones. Either way, you’ll be happy you came!

Check back soon to learn about everything we’ve got up our sleeves for the new year. Rumor has it that there are definitely a lot of beards and mustaches involved

One week down, 51 to go!

With the first week of the year now behind me I find myself finally feeling rested and ready to start getting out of the house again. After the holidays I felt the need to hibernate in my room with my new kindle and just decompress a bit.

But now that that’s behind me there’s plenty of fun things coming up to look forward to!

Tomorrow some fun loving TWIF volunteers are assisting Operation Sack Lunch by assembling tons of dinners for those in need at the Compass center. Want to sign up? You can’t, it’s full. I told you last month to sign up early! In fact, for those of you in need of new years resolutions I highly suggest considering ‘sign up for TWIF events a full month in advance’ to be one of them! You can always check our events page on our website to see what we’ve got going on. January events are looking pretty booked but February has some opportunities open. Don’t forget about our brand new program, Kitchen Challenge, where you get to use your master culinary skills to whip up a meal with only the surprise ingredients on hand and the help of an accomplished Seattle chef!

This weekend marks the opening to the highly anticipated Smash Putt! mini golf adventure in SoDo. Appropriately themed- 2012: Final Apolcalypse, promises golf ball cannons, amazing feats of gravity, scratch and sniff technology (and I have to say that I am EXTREMELY interested in learning how they’re incorporating scratch and sniff technology into my mini golf experience) and tons of other hijinks and mechanized madness. There’s also drinking and music, as if you needed any other encouragement. Tickets can be bought on their website  for the upcoming weekend. As expected this event sells out quickly every week so log on early to secure your spot!

And I’m choosing to leave you with this amusing little blog post I found on someone else’s facebook the other day. I’m sure some of you have seen it, simply reread it. For those of you who haven’t stumbled upon this little gem- happy new year! Let us all be thankful we live in the great city of Seattle where all our buildings are made up of compacted dust of every other major city on the planet and symbolize Seattle’s domination over them

Click here to read why our hometown is better than everybody else’s.

Start the New Year with a Karma Groupon!

It’s 2012. I’m sure you know all about Groupons and how you can get totally awesome stuff for way less money. Unless you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve sincerely never heard of the Groupon phenomenon.

But what you might not know is that on top of all the super cool offers for stuff you think sounds awesome but in reality probably will buy and then forget about, you can help TWIF with our super cool cause that in reality once you buy you will immediately up your karma points.

For TWO MORE DAYS  you can make a special 10$ donation via Groupon for TWIF’s influential feeding program. We’re aiming to supply more than 3,600 meals to food-insecure Seattlites in 2012 and your 10$ donation immediately will provide 4 of those meals. Rest assured that 100% of your donation goes solely to food; thus ensuring you the most karma points possible. We’re partnering with organizations like Jubilee Women’s Center and YouthCare’s Orion Center to feed our community and are in desperate need of your help!

We’d love it if you also wanted to pass the word onto your friends. You can shoot out a quick e-mail, make a funny facebook status, or tweet a little tidbit on your twitter. However you choose, just know that you’re reeeeally helping us out. And by helping us out you’re actually reeeeeeally helping the community out. And that just upped your karma points even more. BAM! It’s only the 3rd and your  year is already off to a fantastic, philanthropic start

Calling All Manly Mustaches and Bearded Beauties

Take a look at yourself in the mirror.

Do you see a gnarled beard? Have yourself a handlebar mustache? Can you even see your face behind the bushy mass upon your face? Have you ever, even once, been mistaken for a lumberjack?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, or if you know of anyone that answered yes to any of these questions, or you could answer yes to this question if you just gave yourself 4 weeks without a razor, you have yourself a ticket into Seattle’s hairest event of the year.

On January 29th TWIF is hosting our annual Beard and Stache Fest kickoff at the High Dive from 1-4 and we want you to participate! We’re searching for 125 of Seattle’s manliest men to come and get their mug shot taken so we can plaster those fuzzy faces on some donation cans to pass around during 30 nights of cheap eats and drinks at some of the area’s most beloved bars.

100% of donations will go to proceed Seattle’s Treehouse Foundation, a fabulous nonprofit that is committed to improving the lives of children living in foster care. Participating beards and staches will be placed into teams of 5 and their pictures will be displayed on individual cans at select locations. If your can, or your team of 5, receives the most donations then there are some pretty great prizes in store for you!

And as if the photo shoot on January 29th wasn’t enough to get you super excited for our month of bearded booziness, on February 25th we’re hosting our annual kick-off party where you can check out all of our contestants and start voting for your favorite! We’ll be at Fremont’s Blue C Sushi, so grab some friends and get a head start on earning one of our fabulous prizes

Here’s a list of some amazing mustaches to get your creative juices flowing.

Hope you all have an amazing New Years! 2012 has some great things in store for us TWIFfers and I can’t wait for all of you to be a part of it.

TWIF Wishes You A Happy Holiday!

 

 

Prepare Yourself for the Challenge Flashing blades, merciless fire, scalding liquids, and…wait for it…vegetables! Yes, this is the world of The Kitchen Challenge, where you join a band of renegade, culinary-minded volunteers to do on thing: prepare food and feed the hungry. Even Steven Seagal would approve this volunteer action. If Steven Seagal were somehow infused with the essence of Gordon Ramsey and maybe white truffle oil. Volunteers under the guidance of a trained chef will create a meal for 80 people in 90-minutes or less.

Without mercy.

Additionally, to really astound us with your kitchen skills: this is an impromptu menu pulled together on site after assessing what food items are available from the Orion Center pantry. High Kick! The Kitchen Challenge will push your limits, hone your skills as an impromptu cook, and most importantly; help youth on the street keep body and soul together. The feeding program at the Orion Center is integral to staying in touch, building trust, and providing services to Seattle’s street youth. Meet at 4:30PM at the Orion Center to prepare the meal, and afterwards you’ll have the opportunity to serve this delicious dish to the youth that utilize the Center. Judo Chop!

The old standby of the suede cat-suit in burgandy or marigold is also frowned upon. Apparently after about 20 minutes or so one begins to smell like cumin. Who knew(I thought talc would be sufficient.) When in doubt, go with the “Coffee with an Ex” rule. If you would wear it to a casual, yet slightly awkward coffee meet-up (not a date) with an Ex, you can wear it volunteering. Or, you could ask the Volunteer Lead, which makes much more sense. Volunteer Coordinator TWIF  - volunteer@theworldisfun.org or (p) 206-414-8943

Polar Plunge

Ursus maritimus; the Polar Bear, indeed one of the most rugged of mammals. Enduring winter temperatures from -40ºF to -90ºF Polar Bears do not fear shrinkage nor diamond cutting.

They appear to embrace it. Not to be outdone by their Ursus brethren, at noon on January 1, 2012, a Homosapien off-shoot also calling themselves “Polar Bears” will pay homage to their namesake by throwing themselves into the 41º waters of Matthews Beach (9300 51 Ave N.E.)

To participate in the 10th Annual Polar Bear Plunge; and you know you do, arrive by 11 a.m. to receive a wristband. Refreshments and a 2012 Patch of Courage are available for those who immerse themselves neck-deep in the lake.

To hear the shrieking and crying from last years Plunge, click here.

 

If you make it out there keep an eye out for our very own Ty who has committed to taking the plunge  for his favorite charity! (Guess which one)

Yelpin’ Out

Yelp is kind. Yelp is good. Yelp has been a great ally and good friend to TWIF up to and including a kind message on our behalf.

We would like to return the favor and extend our appreciation and season’s greetings. The means that Yelp provides directly connect users and the businesses profiled on the site. This is very much like TWIF providing a bridge for volunteers and non-profits.

Thank you, Yelp and Yelpers for all of your feedback, praise and of course help.