Oscar Party

Last night we held our 2nd Annual Oscar Party. Last year we mostly invited people from my office. This year, it was our friends from church, LAFSC (Matt's film program), and from WipeOut. We also used this festive event as an opportunity to promote our upcoming 5k, which we are running for Team World Vision. We are currently fund-raising and everything we raise will go to World Vision's efforts in Haiti.

{Btw, have you read this article regarding WV? It really is fantastic. Read it now, and then rejoin us here.}

As part of the WV team, we are supposed to raise funds. I think typically this means sending out letters/emails to our friends and family asking them to support us. So many people have already given so generously towards Haiti, and we just felt a little strange about asking people out of the blue to give more. So we decided to use our Oscar party to help us reach our very small goal of $250. We invited almost 50 of our LA friends, with hopes that at least 10 could come. In the end, I think we had around 25 stuffed into our tiny apartment. We had $10 buy-in for Oscar predictions and came up with some pretty sweet prizes, if I do say so myself. We must have had 16 people play, because we raised $160.

Here are a few pics from the party:

This was early in the evening. The event started at 5:30pm PST, which is awesome, because everyone was gone by 10pm.

Later in the evening...

Yes, the party even carried over into the bedroom. We have small TV in there, so we added some folding chairs and enjoyed the view from a comfy bed.

Prize corner! Everyone who played got a prize, with the winners choosing first and then working our way down from there. The winners chose 2 movie tickets w/ 2 free drinks. Other hot items were movie posters, a signed concert poster (w/ Oscar-winner Ryan Bingham's signature), restaurant gift certificates, skin care/make-up products and homemade cookie "IOU"s from me.

We're so grateful to all of our friends who supported us last night and shared encouraging words for our marathon... which I gently reminded them was just a 5k. :)

If you would like to lend your support, you can visit this website. {Katie & Matt's TWV page} 100% of the money raised will go to WV's work in Haiti.