What a busy morning!  I knew my friend Pal was going to be celebrating Festivale today (she TT’ed one week ahead) so I quickly rushed around my morning chores.  I was going to just run straight to the gate, but I saw Pascal on the Old North Bridge!  So of course, I ran back to my house to get the Scallop.  And he finally gave me the Sea View wallpaper I’ve been wanting!  But the timing couldn’t be worse, b/c I was going to re-do my house with Beach furniture.  Maybe I’ll put the Tropical stuff in the basement, and the Ship stuff on the main room with a bunch of lucky items?  But I also bought an entire Lovely series that I was going to put in the basement….  Oh dear…  I’ll figure something out!

Once I had dumped all my stuff in the house, I raced over to the gate to visit Cairnie!  And it was pretty busy there too!  Confetti was falling from the sky constantly, like rain!  It was pretty cute.  There was an upbeat tune playing.  I went over to the Town Hall, and there was the flamboyant Pavé dancing to a tune all his/her own.  (I think he looks like a drag queen so I’m going with that…)  

Here’s a breakdown of how Festivale works, in case you’d like a preview for next week.  Basically, you have to talk to Pavé and find out what color candy he wants.  Then you have to talk to the townies and try to get that color candy.  You need three pieces of the specific color candy before Pavé will give you anything.  

Sounds easy?  Well, it’s not!  If you are attempting to complete the Pavé Series on your own, I feel bad for you.  To get one piece of candy, you have to win a minigame with one of the animals in the town.  Only some games allow you to choose what color candy you will get.  Some of the minigames include:  Coin Flip, Rock Paper Scissors, Soccer Shootout and Psychic.  I’m pretty sure there’s something I’m forgetting, but that’ll just be a surprise I guess!  If you lose the minigame, you will lose either a) a candy, if you had one in your pockets b) 500 bells or c) something from your pocket, if you don’t have at least 500 bells.  The animals will NOT play a game with you if you have nothing to wager!  From my experience, the animals will take fish, fruit and shells for the minigames.

When you do get a candy, it will be either Red, Yellow, Green or Blue.  Pavé will tell you which color you need, but you have to talk to him first, and listen to his long song before he will tell you anything.

From my experience, it’s easier to just do a bunch of minigames, and drop off the candy you win in front of the Town Hall.  Don’t have candy in your pocket when you play a minigame, or you could risk losing it!  When there are three of the color Pavé asked for, bring them to him and he’ll give you a piece of furniture.  He’ll also tell you the next color that you need to collect to get another piece of furniture.  The furniture item Pavé gives you is completely random (but all are from the Pavé series, obviously), and it will take a WHILE if you are looking for a specific piece.  In essence, there is a lot of back and forth:  play a game, drop off candy, play a game, drop off candy and so on.  Talking to Pavé is never a quick thing either.  I highly recommend getting a friend to come and help you, if you can!  

Here is Squirt, Pal and Tan, feeling worn out after a day’s worth of Festivale!  As you can see, candy is strewn everywhere.  We tried to keep it organized and drop them in sections for each color.  And just an insider’s tip:  it helps a LOT if you can manage to ‘corral’ the animals behind dig spots (see the lower left corner of this photo, if that helps) so they are stuck in one spot.  This way you know where to find them for the next minigame!

Here’s another example of how to get the animals stuck in one spot.  It really helps to have a friend with this, because one person can engage the animal in conversation, keeping them in one place while the other digs holes around them so they can’t get away!  It’s a pretty funny process, so it’s definitely worth it to help you out a little bit more!  I certainly wouldn’t want to add running around looking for neighbors to the already long list of tedious things to do during this holiday!  

And one small note:  Townies inside their houses are not participating in Festivale, and will not play minigames.  They are party-poopers.

When I first arrived at Cairnie, I faced the ethical dilemma of deciding whether I should take the entire set now, without doing the actual activities, or really work for it.  I ended up taking the set, after warnings from Pal and her friends.  So I picked up the pieces (Pal had them strewn all over her town) and found everything except the Pavé Chair.  Pal said, “OK don’t worry we’ll probably get one soon enough.”  NOT!  It took us over a half hour of playing games, getting candy, and talking to Pavé (and getting like 10 Pavé Lamps instead…) before we got the Pavé Chair!  It was crazy.  I was thankful that I didn’t have to worry about getting every item of this set.  Not that I even think I’m going to use it, since it’s very weird looking.

I will participate in Festivale when it occurs in Shaolin next Monday.  Mostly because you get 12,000 bells for each piece of furniture!  Sounds like a good way to make some money!  But I won’t be playing all day, that’s for sure!  It was a LOT of work, it was even worse than when Franklin wanted to play Hide and Seek for 12 hours on Thanksgiving!

After visiting Cairnie, I opened the gates of Shaolin to visitors.  Pal came by to sell some fish since her Nook’s was closed, and then Matt came over wearing a crazy t-shirt designed to look like a bare chest!  He had a sailor cap on, so I guess it was fitting to wear something like that…  A new friend came to visit as well, called No Name, from the town Glitch.  (Some people have the craziest town names!)  I visited Glitch too, and it was pretty cool!  Yay for new friends!