A Fairly Fabulous Day

This summer has been surprisingly busy busy so far. Both Porter and I are taking the summer off from doing shows....and I thought I would have so much free time! Ha, that's a good one. I finished up the school year teaching at Dancing Moose, and then I went right into teaching at the University of Utah's Youth Theatre Program. Currently, my company is producing a version of "Jack and the Beanstalk" written by yours truly. We perform in one week from now. Then I get a whole week off! I am super excited, it will be the first trip for me in a long time. Well, big trip. We did go up to Lava Hot Springs a few weeks ago, but that was just over night. This time, we will be gone for a week to Montana. My friend, Kim is going to house sit for us and watch the dogs..............umm, I hope she is still my friend when we come home! The puppies can be....challenging at times. Our garden is growing so well this year! I am very happy. We have already gotten to eat a some things in...

We had a wedding on Saturday. Porter's little sister, Mckenzie, got hitched! I feel like it has been in the works for so long, I can't believe it's done! They were planning since January, and I was helping Kenzie with her hair and make-up and other misc. things so it's seems like we were planning for so long, and then suddenly the wedding was here. We got up at the crack of dawn, alarm goes off at 5:45 am, and we get up and start the crazy day. Porter went and picked Kenzie up so we could get started with the beautification process. It was very fun. We did a lovely hair do with loose curls and a few choice pieces swooped up. I thought it was so funny, she thought that I was putting to much "poof" in the hair. I on the other hand disagreed, I was like," you should see some of my theatre friends, they can have major poof in in their bumps!" And p.s. I LOVE volume in hair, so I kept trying to make nice and voluminous. I think we reached a happy medium. ...

Porter has really jumped onto this whole natural food kick I've been on. Which is fabulous! It makes eating together, and discussing our grocery list so much easier. He even has been cooking alot more. He makes me breakfast every morning, and not just pop tarts and a box juice, I'm talking about fresh made egg sandwiches with sauteed mushrooms! He is turning into a 5 star chef! We've been trying a bunch of new recipes lately. A few nights ago, Porter was like, "we should try to make our own veggie burgers." So, we began slicing, shredding and cutting up many different veggies. Everything was going well until we got to the part where it said we should use a food processor....well we don't own a food processor, but we had a magic bullet. Let's just say, it's not so magic. It took FOREVER to grind everything up. But, an hour later we had delicious veggie burgers! We even put A1 Steak Sauce on them. I think A1 is the reason I loved steak so much. They were...

We haven't cut the puppies hair since the fall. Not counting the horrific haircut I tried to give Daisy. (She ended up looking like an old man dog, seriously) So, as you can imagine with their curly hair that is thicker than thick, there was a lot of hair to be dealt with. We try to brush it, but they don't hold still, and it can be quite a challenge. We took them into Petsmart, but I don't think the ladies there were very excited. They told us, they would have to shave them down a lot because the hair was just too thick. We were fine with that, after all $100 ish dollars later, we wanted the hair-do to last a while. So, 5 hours later this is what we got Before After

Lately, I've leading a revolution in my kitchen. I have been trying to rid my cupboards of all processed, unnatural, salty, sweet, oily goo that I used to think was food. This all began with the reading of a book entitled Gorgeously Green and The Gorgeously Green Diet both by Sophia Uliano. She talks alot about all the crap that is in our food and personal products that we don't know about. Also, a great movie, Food Inc. shows how corrupt the food industry is. My research has left me in shock, sadness, and anger over what has happened to our food. It isn't even food anymore, it's processed sugar and fat that has to be fortified with minerals and nutrients so that is can be passed off as "good for us." Why should food have to be fortified? Shouldn't it naturally contain everything we need from it? I am also appalled by the meat industry. The treatment of animals before, during and after slaughter is horrifying. In the book Skinny Bitch it details about ...

First, I must apologize for how long it has been since my last post. And second, I must thank one of my students for finding my blog and asking when I was going to post something new. So, thanks Buddy! Spring is finally here, the weather is warmer, the grass is getting greener, my tulips are starting to appear and I have a cold. A nasty cold, that has held on for 3 weeks! It is very frustrating, especially when I'm trying to perform and teach voice lessons. So, I been trying a new herbal remedy, Kombucha, it's this herbal tea that has been fermented. It's an ancient 'elixir of life' from China and Russia. It was thought to have made you live forever. I sure know I feel alive when I drink it! It has quite a kick to it, it's very tangy. My favorite flavor is the berry and hibiscus. I think the label said the one bottle contains over a billion organisms! So, I'm hoping those little guys will get to work and make me feel better. With spring in the air, Porter ha...

We went to my work Christmas Party last week. I was an ugly sweater party. I got really excited, because who ever had the ugliest sweater would win a gift card to Nordstrom. So, I decided to make the ugliest sweaters imaginable. For Porter, I bought a nasty pastel yellow sweater from the DI and hot glued a snowman with a dog peeing on it. Then, for myself, I obtained a brightly colored kids sweater and proceeded transform it into a Santa fan club shirt. However, upon arriving, everyone thought they were so cute. Wrong answer! They all couldn't believe I had made them. It was really easy thanks to the help of my friends Gus the glue gun, Fantasia felt and their cousins sequin and silk flower. Needless to say, we didn't win the ugliest sweater contest. For dinner, we were served steak, a butterfly medallion cut. I had no idea that they were anything special, and since I was starving I at 2. My boss came up and asked if I enjoyed dinner, and I happily told him I liked it so much t...

This last spring I was so excited to plant a garden at our new house. We had six beautiful beds just waiting for seeds to be sewn. Me, being frugally minded, bought the cheapest seeds I could find. Unfortunately, I could find any cheap carrot seeds. So I spent a whopping $3.00 on a bag a carrot seeds. As the summer progressed, the garden didn't do as well and I had imagined. The peppers were tiny, the beets non-existent, the cucumbers were bitter, the pumpkins never got past the pretty orange flower stage and so on. Every vegetable had something less than desirable about it except my beautiful carrot patch. It became the saving grace to my sad little green space. Today we decided to make organic stew, so it was time to harvest the carrots. We had a blast digging up all the different sizes and shapes and a few mutant carrots as well. So lesson of the day boys and girls: you get what you pay for. Next time we plant a garden I am buying good seeds, heck the best seeds I can find!

Tonight we closed 'Little Shop of Horrors' at the Empress Theatre. It was such a fun show! I will miss playing Audrey on Skid Row, quite possibly one of the funnest roles I've ever had the privilege of playing. And I just adore the cast! What a talented group of people with such vibrant personality. I heart them! Things I will miss about the show: Getting eaten by Audrey II (the giant plant) every night singing and sharing the stage with my fantastic Seymour (Danny Eggers ) my pre -show hot caramel apple cider from starbucks falling in love every night my pink frilly night gown watching Shawn backstage performing the voice of Audrey II playing would your rather with fellow cast members the do-wop girls dancing backstage with Ben (the dentist) crazy wig hair after the show

So today in my class we were doing an experiment with turning liquids to solids. I decided to have the class make butter by taking whipping cream and shaking it until it separated into milk and butter. When discussing milk, I asked the class where it came from. One boy said 'it comes from the store.' To which I replied 'where do the stores get the milk from?' Again he calmly stated that the stores just have milk, it comes from the store. Oh my heck! I couldn't believe it! What are we teaching kids these days? Needless to say, we had a nice long discussion on how milk comes from cows and and that cows live on farms. Oy!