Kawaii at Vox's anniversary raffle results! (^_^)

Thankies to everyone that entered my Kawaii at Vox annivesary raffle! The event was extremely successful. Before I get to the results, I'd like to talk a little about what my experience has been like here at Vox, and I'd also like to show how much has happened in the past year-- through me, a person, and through a website as wonderful as Vox.

A year ago, one of my best friends, Celena, wrote about switching over to a new blogging site in a Livejournal post. (Yes, I used to be an avid LJ fanatic!) I was curious about the site called Vox and wrote an email to her to ask for more information about it. She immediately sent me an invite, and I got down to business, meaning, I had to pick the aboslute perfect name for my brand new blog. The cool thing about starting up with a site that's in its beta version is that all the names that a person wants at a site that has been up for years will most likely be available at a new website, like Vox. Sure enough, the name "Kawaii" was available-- I snatched that baby up.

Kawaii in Brush

I had picked up the term "kawaii" from a lot of my dolly friends. We're all into the same cute things: dollies, vinyl toys, Sanrio (Hello Kitty), adorable stationary, etc. I figured that "kawaii" could somehow bring together everything that made me happy in life. According to Wikipedia, kawaii is "cuteness has become a prominent aspect of Japanese popular culture, entertainment, clothing, food, toys, personal appearance, behavior, and mannerisms. Foreign observers often find this cuteness intriguing and sometimes strange because the Japanese employ it in a vast array of situations and demographics where, in other cultures, it would be considered incongruously juvenile or frivolous (for example, in government publications, public service warnings, office environments, military advertisements, and commercial airliners, among many others)."

Through the alias, Kawaii, I've been able to grow as a Vox member by expressing myself, sharing my interests with others, and learning new aspects of cuteness through other members. As I've continued to post in my blog, I've been able to share many parts of my life that aren't so cute, which has allowed me to come into my own as an individual more than anyone may ever know. So for this, I thank all of my Vox friends who have given me the privilege of sharing their lives with me, and allowing me to share personal parts of my life with them in return.

I've never been able to chart my life in such detail before. In fact, I don't think I've ever grown so much in just one year! The Narcissist in me won the rest of me over and decided to pull together a collage of photos to show how I've changed from August 2006 to August 2007. Although I may look the same on the outside (for the most part), looking at all the photos together makes me realize how much I have changed, on the inside and outside. I feel good about myself because I know I'm finally an adult in the working, blogging and friending (heh) world-- the real world.

My appearance and inner self isn't the only thing that's been slowly evolving. My actual Vox blog has been, too. ^__^ The beta version of Vox didn't allow its users to use their own banners to design blogs, and even without that option, I found that I was able to express my personality through the templated designs. Knowing that I can look back at Vox and my life, and combine the two together to show how much we've grown, is a pretty cool thing.

The main goal I had with this blog was to share the fun and creative parts of life with other people, whether the people were friends or strangers. That's why this anniversary event was so meaningful to me. With this event, I was able to actually share, in a physical way, bits and pieces of what I've shown you through the internet. Over the year, I've shown you my dolls, vinyl toys, photography, cute pieces of stationary, and other miscellaneous items. I hope that this event allows all of you, whether you're the winners of the raffle or not, how important it is to have fun with life-- be colorful, be creative, take photos like crazy, look at the positive even in the pinnacle of negativity. Like I say in my video (several times, I think), you guys are awesome.

And without further delay (as if this entry wasn't enough), here are the winners of the Kawaii at Vox anniversary raffle!

I wasn't planning on doing a video to announce the winners, but there seemed to be an interest for another raffle video, so I went ahead and did the drawing of winners that way. ^^ So people who can't view the video still know who the winners are, here's the list:

First Place: Maggie, extraordinarilynice
Second Place: Jen, tristessa
Third Place: Cindi, cynddylan
Fourth Place: Ayana, sillyani
Fifth Place: Cindy, mms0131

Again, congratulations to all the winners! I really hope you enjoy all of your prizes. I will be contacting you within the next two days (probably on Sunday) with an email of congratulations and questions about addresses and wrist sizes (for the bracelets). I will hopefully be able to send out the packages early this week. ^_____^