blog on!

i have not posted any halloween festivities yet. the day just sort of got away from me. and certain things snuck up on me.

things like...



my blogiversary!!

thanks for giving me so much this year, blogosphere. here's to many more!!

spt

let the hallowe'en festivities begin!!
please feel free to add links to your spooky spts all week long. i can't wait to see what YOU were for hallowe'en...


(i am currently drooling over this photo of how my dining room *would* look if i had an unlimited budget and a staff of stylists!)

check back later for my photos. we will be doing trunk-or-treating tomorrow night.

in the director's chair

apparantely, this is what i look like when i am deep in thought.



someone took this photo of me at rehearsal the other night. and i'm looking at it, thinking, that's not me. that does not look like me.

and then i realized, that, almost a year after launching spt, i have gotten accustomed to seeing my image in my "natural spt state." you know, from an arm's length away. with just the right tilt of the head as to avoid unnecessary chins and all that.

same person. different photographer.
interesting...

spt - trick or treat

When witches go riding, and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers, ‘tis near Halloween. -19th century Halloween postcard

here is a little photo history of my favorite trick-or-treater.

spidey 2003

mummy 2004

sharkboy 2005

yoda 2006

do you celebrate Halloween? do you go all out with costumes, or do you prefer to lay low with the porch light turned off? did you enjoy Halloween as a child? what was your favorite costume? will you dress up this year, or leave it for the little ones?

since Halloween falls on wednesday this year, feel free to post your favorite images throughout the week. but please make sure to capture your own image also (however spooky it may be!!)

break a leg

do you know anything about mike skupin?

the picture fits, so i had to throw it in.
here is my blog post from Godspell today:

when I said "break a leg," I didn't mean it...

If you've spent any time at all around the theatre, you've heard the expression "break a leg." An odd phrase, for sure, but what exactly does it mean? According to the Dictionary of Catchphrases, there is a theory that

"Break a leg" originated as a translation of a similar German catchphrase "Hals- und bienbruch," with which German actors wish their colleagues "a broken neck and a broken leg." The German phrase seems to have begun life among aviators, possibly during World War I, and gradually spread to the German theatre and then to the British and American stages.

But why, I hear you ask, would someone wish injury and ill-fortune on a comrade embarking on a perilous mission? Simple -- popular folklore down through the ages is full of warnings against wishing your friends good luck. To do so is to tempt evil spirits or demons to do your friend harm. Better to outwit the demons (who must be rather dim, it seems to me) by wishing your friend bad fortune.
Just this morning, someone wished me "good luck" with the show. He caught himself, and uttered a very quick "break a leg," and we both chuckled. However, I had already had that gut-wrenching thought, "oh, no, he didn't just say that!" Theatre superstitions are not lost on me!


Fast forward to this afternoon. I've just gotten off the phone with one of my cast members. She has, you guessed it, broken a leg. (Fractured an ankle, really, but I have to make sure the irony of the situation really sinks in here.) A broken ankle. A week away from opening night. An aspirin for the director, please...

It will be a challenge, for sure. This cast will rally around. We will tweak blocking, modify some choreography, alter a few costume pieces to accommodate her cast... We will hope that this is the biggest challenge we face during the coming week.

Now, get out there and buy your tickets!! And be sure to send us your "best wishes." We don't need any more "luck" right now...

spt

here's what i like about my black and white photo:

i don't see the ruddiness of my complexion that comes across in color photos;
i think my face looks thinner (less bloated);
i don't see as much gray in my hair;
my lipstick reflects a lot of light

here's what i don't like about my black and white photo:

i can't see the green/hazel of my eyes;
my pink hair looks gray;
i can't see the color of my light-reflecting lipstick;
i feel like i've taken way too many spt's sitting at my desk;
and... you can't tell that i am actually wearing my orange shirt in this photo!!

spt challenge - riddle me this

Q: what's black & white, and READ all over??
A: next week's spt challenge!!

an easy one this week - is it really easier to see your "true colors" when the photo is black & white? what do you see?

crunch time

(this post originally appeared on my Godspell blog way back on... oh right, it was just this morning!!)



I am tired.

The past few weeks have been a blur of working, rehearsing, working, driving and rehearsing, with a little sleep thrown in for good measure. We are sticking to our three-day-a-week rehearsal schedule, which means squeezing 138 minutes out of every two hour practice. The show is blocked, the cast is (mostly) off-book, the musicians are hard at work, and there's only one more dance to choreograph. All in all, we are exactly where we need to be.

I mentioned our musicians, and I must take a moment to thank our pit (that's musical theatre speak for "band.") The quartet is headed up by the terribly hip Michael Stringer, and features Anne "community theatre" Richmond on keyboard, Katrina "church lady" Fairbank on drums and Nick Giana..., Nick Gianast..., Nick Giannatasio on guitar and guitjo (and if you don't know what a guitjo is, that is one more reason for you to come out and see this show!) Last week, when we put musicians and singers together, I just knew that this show was going to become everything I've been imagining for the past 18 months.

My biggest anxiety to date is that I have to finish creating, finish choreographing, one big number. I've mentioned before that I am not a "dancer." I am certainly not a "choreographer." It takes me four or five lines of chicken scratch in a notebook to describe one movement that I want to teach. More often than not, when I go back and read over my notes, I don't even remember what the movement was supposed to look like!!

But somehow, I'm really happy with the way the first four dances have come together! Last night, following a lovely potluck dinner, several of the cast members and I put together one of the final numbers. It is lively and energetic, and now that half of them know the dance, it will be so much easier and faster to teach it to everyone else on Sunday (I hope!)

So that leaves me with one last dance. I will be scribbling away in my notebook for the better part of today and tomorrow, so that it will seem effortless when I have to teach it on Sunday. Once that is done, once we are remembering the lyrics and harmonies, once we are clapping and scooping and stomping in the right places, we will be ready to put the finishing touches on this show. It's hard to believe we are so close to opening night! See you there!!

spt

i am a big fan of comfort foods. among my faves are
grilled cheese & tomato soup
homemade mac & cheese (no Kraft for me!)
warm apple crisp with french vanilla ice cream
Yorkshire pudding

all of these dishes transport me back to my "growing-up" kitchen, with the avacado colored walls, double stacked oven & marble-topped table. a newish favorite comfort food, from my "i'm-a-grown-up-now" kitchen, is tater tot casserole. it's one of those crowd pleasers, and i always seem to have the ingredients on hand.

but when i was thinking about this challenge, trying to picture myself taking a picture of myself with a comfort food, this is the image that i kept seeing:



me and a mug of something. these days, it's usually coffee. i love the smell of roasted coffee grounds. hot coffee reminds me of camping trips, of late nights working in a bagel store in college, of lazy saturday mornings.

in the evenings, it's decaf herbal tea. add a little honey to some lemon tea, and it soothes a scratchy throat and makes the eyelids droop in readiness for a great night's sleep.

in the cooler months, it can be hot cocoa with jack. we've tried to make it from scratch, but found that our palattes were more accustomed to the instant variety. my mug steaming with milk chocolate goodness, jack's cooled with two ice cubes and brimming with miniature marshmallows.

when i was a young girl, i was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with my grandparents, who are big tea drinkers (my grandfather moved from England to America as a young child.) for a time, they lived a few doors down from my piano teacher. i would walk to their house after my weekly lesson, and join grabbie for a cup of tea at her kitchen table. my favorite was Russian Spice Tea, and she would always drop a starlight mint into the bottom of the teacup. ( we always used *teacups,* mind you. coffee mugs are too thick for daintily sipping tea.)

comfort for me most definitely can be found in a steaming cup of something. i find it amusing that here on my desk right now are no less than 4 mugs!! a girl has got to be prepared!!

here is a recipe for Russian Spice Tea. i hope you find time to curl up with a *teacup* full of it this fall!

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup instant tea powder
1 cup sweetened lemonade powder
1 cup orange-flavored drink mix (e.g. Tang)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves


DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl, combine instant tea, lemonade powder, orange drink mix, cinnamon and clove. Mix well and store in an airtight container.
To serve, put 2 to 3 teaspoons of mix in a mug. Stir in 1 cup of boiling water. Adjust to taste. (starlight mint optional!!)

spt comfort food

finally, FINALLY, the weather here has turned colder. we had an outdoor showing of "the wizard of oz" last night, and i was under a blanket, with gloves, wearing my winter coat over my, yes, you guessed it... pumpkin sweatshirt.

the cooler climate has urged me to break out my crockpot for the season. i've also been baking, and creating big pots of soup and the other day i indulged in a caramel apple cider. yes, that's right. a caramel. apple. cider. it was hot and gooey, and, oh yes, i had the whipped cream on top.

what do you crave when it's cooler? what is your comfort food? what does it do for you? will you share the recipe (or at least, the name of the place where you get it?)

i will be on the run tuesday, so everyone gets an extra day to whip up a batch of comfort! come back on WEDNESDAY to check out what foods are soothing us this season.

sticker shock

for some time now, both my car tag sticker & car inspection sticker have been overdue. and i won't even tell you how long it's been since i had my oil changed. for some reason, taking care of these pesky items is a great chore for me. maybe because i'm uncomfortable in the Quick Lube setting, with the smells and the grayness and all of the other customers who obviously get their oil changed every three thousand miles (like they're supposed to!!)

anyway, as i drove by this morning, there was no line, so i pulled in to await the inevitable scolding from the technician. all in all, they were pretty easy on me, and two stickers, an oil filter and some wiper blades later, i'm happy to report that my car & i are both feeling like respectable citizens again.

it's a beautiful morning here, and i couldn't resist waiting outside. it even occured to me to snap a picture while i waited.


do you ever put off pesky chores, even when you know you should just tackle them?

aware

yesterday, i screwed up my courage and went to a salon (a real salon)( *gasp*) for a little color.



i am sporting this little pink extension in support of breast cancer awareness month. you can read about the project here.

spt

here's a funny story for you...
after posting last week's challenge about embracing the color orange,

after i plainly stated that i only own one orange shirt & that i maintain a hard and fast "never outside of october" wardrobe rule for wearing it,

after i made what might have been construed as a *snarky* comment about bedazzled t-shirts...

i got home to find this laid out on my bed

a brand new pumpkin shirt lovingly picked up by my husband.

i would have modeled it for you, however, the shirt is long sleeves & slightly thermal, and it happens to be 90 degrees and humid this morning. even my love of spt has some boundaries, people!



even i have to admit it's a little cute. and for the record, those are seed beads, NOT rhinestones!!

spt challenge orange you glad it's october?

i can't even believe we're almost a week into october already!! where has this year gone?

this challenge was inspired by marie's passionate pumpkin preoccupation! if you haven't already, go now and check out her pumpkin spt, complete with orange shirt!!

orange is a color that i've largely avoided outside of october. i own exactly one orange shirt, and i will only wear it between october 1 and october 31. while my home is cheerfully decked out with orange accents for fall, you won't find any other orange decor in my home.

so, my question to you this week is

how do you feel about the color orange as a fashion statement? as a color in your home? are you picky about the hue? do you own a halloween shirt that says "boo" spelled out with rhinestones?? are you passionate about the *pumpkin color*??

spooky new traditions

i love reading about other family's traditions. i have come across many amazing ideas in the blogosphere. over the past year, i have incorporated so many new ideas and traditions, so it seems only fitting that i share the joy.

one tradition that i learned about last year was the tradition of *spooking.* you can read the blog post where i first heard about spooking right here. i had totally forgotten that i wanted to give it a try this year. and i'm so thankful that i stumbled upon this post again to trigger my memory!!

last night was the perfect opportunity to get our spook on. taylor went of with matty to his football game (does it concern any of you when your husbands play rec league sports?? there seem to be a lot more aches and pains as we get older...)

jack and i got busy putting together some treats, and then the spooking began. we were both downright giddy with the fun of it!! it was the perfect way to turn around a day that had been pretty stressful.


little ghost buckets waiting by the back door


jack the "spookmaster"

thanks to kristi for the idea (and some cute graphics, too!) and thanks to all of you for all of the ideas & traditions you share on your blogs!!

do you go *spooking* with your family?

spt

one of my favorite signs of fall in my house is my collection of Martha Stewart Living hallowe'en issues. every year i put them ceremoniously on my coffee table, to be lovingly thumbed through while drinking coffee in the mornings.



it's definitely a Good Thing.

what once was lost...

...has now been found!

somehow, this past weekend, i managed to find it!! that one thing that has been eluding me for oh, so many months now. TIME!! i found TIME to do fun stuff!! (it's amazing how much time you can lose working 6 days a week for 4 months).

here is a sample of some of the fun stuff i did:


yummy, yummy bars from a recipe i snagged over at momentary madness. i swear, amy s is my new rachel ray!

fun youth day with hours and hours of free bouncing castles. got to sell a lot of hotdogs, with the profits going to our playground project. (this is my sister, jen, setting up for the big day.)

my favorite bowl, a wedding gift that i only bring out in the fall. here it is, full of the remnants of apple pie making.

*easy* apple pie, recipe snagged from BHG's *100 days of Holidays.*

the lovely cast of godspell. only one more month until opening night!! you can read about our adventures here.

i am so happy to have found time to do all of it, and more!