Home Glam at Its Best for DIFFA!

Oh, Bellevue. Land of the stretch limos on a weeknight, douchebros taking out their plastic dates, and overpriced EVERYTHING. Where better to have people dig into their pockets for a worthy cause? 

Masins Fine Furnishings & Interior Design, in partnership with Luxe Magazine, played hosts to this year’s holiday-kickoff fundraiser party last night. The wine and liquor flowed quite freely, thanks to Dark Horse wine and Patron. Additionally, guests were treated to hors d’oeuvres on trays, eye candy from the local chefs and artisan designers, and (my favorite) a holiday cocktail contest. All very classy. I actually overheard some people saying they dressed down to avoid looking “too uptight.” Um, wait, what? For a chic event with big-ticket items? So confused.

The furniture store is definitely one of those places that only the Bellevue rich and rich gays could afford. Like if Oprah took you on a shopping spree to design your home, then you went to Neiman Marcus for a new wardrobe. Behavior ranged from That Middle-Aged Gay or Lady Dancing with Two Drinks In and “Can I put my glass here? Anyone have a coaster?” All in all, fun to watch! Also, great music for this tenth annual celebration.

It got a bit stuffy downstairs, so of course I was the first one upstairs to check out the cocktail competition. Materials were laid out in the form of candy, stemware, liquor, and mixers. Teams of no more than eight people got to create their own concoctions under the names of Santa’s reindeer. Two people with VIP passes and the rep from Patron were the judges, basing their decisions on taste and presentation. The teams had a half hour to create fabulousness. In the melee of amateur bartenders, some people got pretty competitive while others stayed clueless and grabbed ice. Fun!

It was pretty cute to see one guy get excited that no one out-bid him on a fancy dinner package [insert dirty joke here]. And really, amidst all the pretension and mock-pretension, there was definitely some money raised for DIFFA. Most items started at more than $450, so I suppose the awesome part is that people could actually afford what was being donated. Oh, I forgot! Gingerbread houses! Next to the best leather armchair you’ve ever seen. Naturally.

The biggest gingerbread house was a ski resort.

Examples of auction items:

All in all, a super fun night! I hope DIFFA made a butt-ton of money for HIV/AIDS research. I’d say the best part was seeing two older gays having fun and laughing together in the street as I left. Small moments are what reminds is to carpe diem, because people in the fatal parts of their disease don’t often get that chance. That, and any party I can walk away from with two drinks in and a handful of Reese’s Peanut Butter mini-Cups is fine by me.