Puzzle hunt party, part 1

Yesterday evening I celebrated my 28th birthday by arranging a puzzle hunt for my friends. It was a memorable evening - not only was it my first time arranging a puzzle hunt, but it was the most friends I've ever had come to a party at once. It was a full house! I took many pictures at the beginning, and fewer as the time went by and the sun went down.

The first people showed up at 6 pm.

I had crackers and grapes ready, and a card with a message for the adventurers. After a greeting, it instructed them to sign their names and remain on the deck for further instructions.

And so they waited for more guests. Meanwhile, Chimera posed for the camera.

And Jacques stared at this owner in confusion.

The majority of the guests arrived all at once around 6:40 pm.

So many people!

Agnes noticed that I had sent her a text stating LOOK UP.

More people realized that they'd received the same text.

And they started looking up.

They noticed a string with a tag that said PULL.

Eddie dutifully pulled (after acquiring a stool, which was a good decision).

They lowered down a yogurt container which was filled with coins.

What does this mean?? They counted the coins. They added up the total value. They arranged them in different configurations.

After some prompting (this puzzle turned out to be the hardest one), they walked through the house and noticed a few bank rolls of coins in my room.

They started to empty the rolls, and Ray found a message written inside one: "empty apple."

Off to find apples!

An initial perusal of the apples in the kitchen revealed nothing. A closer look yielded one with a hole that was covered with the missing apple chunk.

Eddie bit into the apple and discovered a yarn needle.

Everyone peered into my sewing kit and started to remove the contents. Ray picked up a crocheted ball. She squished it and then looked remorseful. "I crushed your ball," she said. "Did you?" I asked, with raised eyebrows. She smiled and picked it back up, and proceeded to pull on the string to undo the top of the ball. (A cool thing about crochet - to undo it, you simply grab the yarn and pull. It makes it easy to go back and fix a mistake.)

The ball unraveled to reveal a picture.

After an initial "WTF, a furry?" someone recognized it as a play on the Firefox logo. Ray opened Firefox on my laptop, which was conveniently turned on and ready.

To be continued....