Riot and Frolic

Smooky 2

November 8, 2012

Halloween was like any other holiday around our house: I had too much makeup on, The G was wearing my clothes, and 2 out of 3 little ladies were crying.

the sleeping beauty cast

I kid. Sort of.

Back story: Sleeping Beauty, of the Disney variety, is obviously the best princess movie. The music is classic (adapted from the Sleeping Beauty ballet by Tchaikovsky), Aurora/Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty [her multitude of names is not confusing at all] has an amazing voice, Prince Phillip is funny and brave, and Maleficent has the greatest name AND is the baddest villian of all time.

"Now, shall you deal with ME, O Prince – and all the powers of HELL!" – Maleficent

Watching the movie shortly after Halloween last year, I decided it'd be hilarious to make the little ladies be the three fairies (Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather) and G and I to be Aurora and Prince Phillip.

Of course, I didn't start on these costumes until 4 days before the blessed event.

After cutting out the girls' dress pieces, I decided I would be Picking Berries Aurora, and not Getting Married Aurora, because Picking Berries involved pulling some neutral-colored stuff out of a closet and Getting Married involved an elaborate gown and sparkles. (It's surprising I'm a ballroom dancer, isn't it?)

Here's what G and I used for a template…

i know you, i walked with you once upon a dream

Except I really wanted G to have a cape, as seen here. Strangely, I didn't want the hat. People thought he was Dracula unless I was close by. Even with all of us, I think only one house really "got" who we were, but that dude said we were the best costume of the whole night. Who cares, people kept putting candy in my Picking Berries basket, so I'm happy.

could be robin hood

The fairies were based off of this scene…

pretty dresses, wings, and tea

V reminded me that the real fairies had long sleeves and capes, but she still thought her dress was "juuuust bea-u-tiful!" The wings were also a huge hit.

flora

We had to tell Mae Cake that she couldn't really fly, it would just look like she could. Mae Cake also insisted that she WAS NOT Fauna, she wasn't a fairy. She was Tinkerbell. Don't tell her Tink is a fairy, okay?

fauna, or tink

Zoo just wanted to eat candy and have someone carry her around the neighborhood.

fat merryweather

I didn't use a pattern for the dresses, just laid down some clothes that fit each of them on the fabric, cut around them and hoped for the best. Turns out my best was good enough!

the fairies with their haul

Next year, I think we'll do the cast of Annie. Orphans, Daddy Warbucks, and MISS HANNIGAN!

i will make my own bathtub gin, for authenticity

Do you plan ahead for costume parties? What are your favorite go-to costumes? Any plans in the works for next year?

One year ago: Crazy Bread.
Goofy Stuff from the Internet

November 7, 2012

Since around half of the nation is super-ticked off this morning and about 100% of us are hungover on politics and election results, here is my antidote:

First up, we have the "mattress for cuddly couples", aptly named the Love Mattress.

you weirdos

Does anyone else have the ear suction problem when putting their head on their man's shoulder like this chicky is on the top left picture? I'm pretty sure my brains are going to sucked out from trying to snuggle with him.

Adorable finger puppets? Okay.

Hilarious and informative food posters? Yes. Note: bad words abound. So you know it's good.

This is just the greatest line from The Office ever.

Dancing? Check.

For my lady readers, doesn't Ryan Gosling just need to STOP? [read the article] He's ruining it for everyone else.

adorable overload

We need to add to his list "stop dressing so well", by the way.

Guys, if you didn't read the article mentioned above, at least walk around doing this on your next date:

yes

And last but not least, Hyperbole and a Half. The funniest blog of all time.

Happy day after the election!

One year ago: There's No Crying in Ballroom.
The Garbage Challenge – Food Fight

November 6, 2012

Since today is voting day, let's talk about garbage.

Last week, I mentioned how food (mostly its packaging) was the biggest speed bump in my journey to save the earth. But I've come up with some awesome news for me. And you. Whatev.

First, I happened to buy some Bear Naked granola a couple weeks ago. I've liked their goods for a while, but they also gained points when they provided a free mix-your-own-granola stand at the Warrior Dash.

MIX YOUR OWN!

"Can I add more chocolate? How about now? More? Oh, hell, can I just have a bag of chocolate? What? That's not granola? YOU'RE not granola!"

And NOW, I'm reading the back of the packaging and discovering you can send in your granola bags for neat stuff and they recycle your bags into other neat stuff through their Sustainable Packaging Project.

Terracycle, the company that Bear Naked uses for the recycleage (totally a word) of their boxes and wrappers, works with a BUNCH of different companies to offer recycling for hard-to-recycle stuff. I mean, couldn't we all join the Candy Wrapper Brigade at this point? Can't you see us combining efforts to get a set of these for The G?

duh, M&M eco speakers

Locally, Eureka Recycling wants to get curbside compost into the St. Paul city budget, but it didn't get approved by the mayor for 2013. Eureka is still making an effort to get my Greek yogurt containers curbside and is trying to go waste-free by 2020.

Clearly, they were drunk when they made that resolution, but I salute their BHAG.

I mean, waste-free is no joke. That's a lot of conscious consumerism upgrades you have to make. First, you read food labels for calories, now you're looking for the little numbered triangle.

only 1 or 2 here, suckers

Then, as you're potty-training your child or your dog or your llama, you have to think if you should use a paper towel to clean up their mess, or a regular towel. And then you have to worry about your carbon footprint from turning on the dryer after using the regular towel. And then you wonder if the term "carbon footprint" is still a thing because you haven't heard it for awhile and then you "do a Google" and find out it's very much still a thing and then you realize your computer is probably the devil and …

Well, that's where I draw the line.

i love computer

So yeah, I'm recycling some more and throwing my food in the compost bin and using my computer and have all the lights on and life is good.

i'm ignoring the election and focusing on skyfall
List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

November 5, 2012

– the cutest and most thoughtful gift from a friend (and reader): personalized frames for each of the little ladies. [insert imagined picture here, for anonymity's sake HAHAHAHA! but seriously]

– dang, a lot of people are awake and in their cars at 7am. Is that what you all do? How do you stay awake past 2pm?

– my sewing machine worked! Last time I attempted something on that doohickey, we got in a fight. We had to separate with irreconcilable differences. But now that we've both cooled off, we're trying to work it out. We're off and on like that. Classic Sam and Diane.

i'm not taking the pins out; Frances will be mad

– HAVE YOU GUYS HAD THESE?

FROSTED ANIMAL CRACK

They are delicious. First of all, if you haven't had plain ol' animal crackers in 20 years, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how fantastic they are. Then, you can take your animal cracker love to the next level by covering them in, what tastes like, the cream from an Oreo cookie. SCORE! Thank God I have small children to regulate my ingestion of these.

"Mama, why do you get more than we do?"

[hunches shoulders and drops head] "I don't. We all get the same amount." [divvys up hoard of cookies to happy babies]

– that's right, I'm saving tinfoil to reuse it. Garbage challenge accepted!

REUSE!

– I'm also washing out Ziploc bags! Crazy hoarding reality shows, here I come!

– got to yell at some college kids for almost two hours about dancing. It was glorious.

– on a completely related thread, I walked through the ye olde campus and rode the bus for the first time in… a long time. It made me feel old and young all at the same time.

– I finally picked up that WIP again.

– and duh, we went trick or treating, but more about that later.

How was Halloween? Did you get trick or treaters? Did you buy 7 bags of candy knowing you'd only get 3 little kids? Are you in a sugar coma? How about Daylight Saving Time? Did you get to church an hour early by mistake? Good times.
On Watching Your Videos

November 2, 2012
A video of your ballroom dancing is a really great learning tool. You can see your own foot faults and weird lines, notice bad facial expressions, get an overall impression, and have a visual of what you look like (instead of an often-distorted self-image).

That being said, watching said videos is a not a really great way to spend your free, and previously happy, time.

Here's some advice for watching your own dancing:
- have a strong beverage in your hand, preferably alcoholic.
  
  old-fashioned, anyone?
- pretend you are about to watch your grandmother* perform ("wow, Gramma can really move!" is much more optimistic than "what the hell am I doing there?!").
- be alone in a room, where you can cringe, peek out from behind your fingers, and otherwise be physically appalled by… your grandma. Maybe the occasional naughty word slips out, I don't know. [Thanks to Nightmare's Fear Factory for the picture.]
  
  i hide behind my sandals sometimes, too
- watch the video several times. The first time is to get it all out of your system: the yelling and the crying. The second time is to get the general gist of what you did. The third is for serious evaluation (see following tips).
  
  this is what you look like, too; don't laugh
- remember your grandma might not be perfect, but she was working on something when this video was taken. See if you can see an improvement from the last (now, completely offensive) video.
  
  this guy's picture comes up when I google "self-evaluation"
- take notes on what you like and don't like. Yes, there has to be a "like" column. Even if it's your toenail polish or tie, or the floor, or your partner, say 5 positive things about ol' Granny.
  
  omg, toes are odd
- have someone else watch the video- your teacher, coach, partner- and compare notes.
- go forth and conquer!
One year ago: Let's Talk About You, all the awesome stuff

* I know a lot of hot grandmas, and great-grandmas for that matter, so just imagine someone old and frail and that you'd want to be nice to.
The Get Smart Book Club – Book Club vs. Book Club

November 1, 2012
The previous week was the perfect storm of my literary world:
- The book club that I was generously invited to join, and have woefully unattended, informed me it was my turn to choose a book.
- I had also just completed the 91 Books to Make You Smarter list and looked at the titles of about 700 books in the process of making it.
- People (seriously, more than 1) were wondering which book I would check off first on my list.
Book Club choices are tricky, because I don't know the Ladies of the Club that well and they seem freaking coooool, so I wanted something interesting and fun and smart. That you could mention in passing, over a glass of sangria and piece of cake.

The only book I could think of was The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I had seen it on one of the lists and I couldn't shake the idea that I'd love it.

even the cover is sarcastic… *love*

Here's why this is the best bet EVER…

The Golden Choice:
- it's a movie, so if I approached the Book Club meeting date and was still 280 pages from the end, I could Clif Notes that sucker by watching the live-action version.
- it's an AWESOME movie. And the book is always better than the movie, right?
- multiple friends had copies.
- it's on my list of 91 books.
- I loved it after 2 pages.
- the little ladies want me to read it to them because it has the words "princess" and "bride" in the title.
And so begins the Get Smart Book Club. If you'd like to read the novel also, we can swap book reports at the end of the month. I'll even make it easy and have a questionnaire. Or a spreadsheet. Or a COMMENT FORM. Or something.

It feels a little bit like cheating, what with picking one book for two book clubs, but I'm all "reduce/reuse/recycle!" up in here now, so suck it.

No, just kidding. Read it. You can buy it for $5.12 on a Kindle or $3.36 in paperback from Amazon.

Reading. Book reports. Fun.

One year ago: Clever Tart – yum. Breakfast things.
Smooky

October 31, 2012

It's Halloween, people. Maybe, since you're still hungover from the "Halloween" party from last weekend, you forgot, but October 31 is the actual date of All Hallows' Eve.

And since I haven't started listening to Christmas music, don't ring in the "New Year" at 9pm (yet), or let off fireworks for every night for three weeks (that's you, neighbors!) before July 4, the little ladies have not put on their "smooky" outfits yet.

But I will give you a preview.

Can you guess what we are?

it's no shinny fringe, but they are a little farkly

random neutral colors

serious surf hair

Let me tell you, I'm a little proud of the ladies' dresses. 'Cause I made them. No pattern. No swearing. And completed.

he doesn't seem scary at all…

One year ago: LLLL, a case of vertigo and getting used to "backward" scrolling
The Garbage Challenge – Battle of the Bags & Compost City

October 30, 2012
The morning after I wrote about my quest to save the world, I did this…

d'oh!

Yeah. Morning and thinking do not go hand in hand.

But I have made headway!
- I put grocery bags in my car and have actually used them. It's now the little ladies job to bring them in to the store and they freaking love "important jobs" and their little brains remember these things better than I do. Although I may be teaching them the wrong meaning of "important".
- We bought a compost bin!
  
  hot garbage! awesome!
- And a little compost bucket for the kitchen! I've never been so excited to make garbage!
  
  there's egg shells and pomegranate remains in there, too
That's it, really. But 3 things! That's something!

Some setbacks? Tea.

Yeah, that's right. Tea.

I'm a big fan of fresh beverages, just like the next person, but why does tea have so much packaging?

tea, tea bag, tea bag's bag, and tea bag's bag's house

tea bag's see-through bag. saucy.

Food, in general, is also troublesome. Milk bottles are recycleable, but my beloved Greek yogurt's carton is not blue-bin friendly. Also, ice cream buckets – not green.

Does talking about kitchen scraps count as a "Foodilicious" post? Do you compost? Do you seek recycleable packaging? DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR REUSABLE SHOPPING BAGS? If not, I can lend you my children. But you have to feed them.

Criss Cross
List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

October 29, 2012

– a haircut! This wouldn't be such news if I was a normal person, or had shorter hair, or listened to any advice ever given about healthy hair. But the last time I got a haircut, there was snow on the ground.

Ew.

I got 6 inches cut off and still have an unreal amount of hair (for me), so I decided that next year about this time, I'm going to go Locks of Love and get something awesome like this…

yes

– I made snacks! Proscuitto, basil, and fontina cheese on bruschetta, and some chicken sausage and apples. Crap. It was delicious.

yum

– finished up processing all the tomatoes from the garden. In an effort to find the best (read: easiest) way to make tomato sauce, I got out the Kitchenaid food strainer my ma-in-law gave me. It attaches to my mixer and whirred contentedly while I threw tomato after tomato into it. Easy peasy.

I didn't really get how it worked at first, though. I put a bowl under the spout to catch all the strained business, but hadn't thought about the… unstrained business. Until I had this coming at me…

hey-o!

Gross. There might have been some tomato "extrusion" on the floor. And by "might", I mean, there definitely was.

– got a great piece of advice. "If you keep asking a question, you're asking the wrong question." Example: every night before bed, you ask yourself "Why didn't I workout today?" Like every night. Maybe you should ask, "why didn't I get up earlier?" or "why did I watch 3 hours of tv?" or whatever. Great advice.

– I made spinach-artichoke dip with the help of an anime star, V.

kitchen elf

(Have you seen her lately? Under the striped shirt, there's a huge hot pink tutu, leggings, and rainboots. I'll post a picture sometime, but she dresses like a teenager from Tokyo.)

– I also brought back Saltine Cracker Toffee. So guess who bought broccoli today?

It's been a pretty boring week around here, as you can see. Please tell me about your week. Did you vacuum? Watch paint dry? Go bungee-jumping? Buy a monkey?

mitch rapp

One year ago: The Pinterest Project- Flapjack Friday Frills. Syrup. Yum.
Goldilocks and The Three Floors

October 26, 2012

Director's note: Goldilocks will be played by Kate in this week's performances.

Once, there was a little girl named Goldilocks. She was a total beeeeeeeach to practice with, because she was always complaining about something.

you wouldn't know it by this picture, but Goldilocks is a total wench

This week, Goldy is taking issue with every surface ever invented.

"This floor is too slippery."

"This floor is too sticky."

"This floor is juuuuuust right."

Unfortunately, this last set of boards has only happened on the competition circuit (but only when no Latin dancers are selfishly pouring castor oil on it).

So Goldilocks is getting in her fair share of complaining and learning something new every day about herself.

The floor is too slippery.

At her best and honest self, Goldy really likes this floor. But anytime she's actually standing on it, she's hating it.

Slippery floors are no good if Goldilocks is not going to pull her center in. And squeeze her legs together. And keep her head up. AKA, "WORK". All at the same time. Boo. Hiss.

Goldilocks likes dancing lazy sometimes and slippery floors only remind her of her tendency to slack off.

The floor is too sticky.

Learning where little G doesn't get her weight over her foot by falling right over said foot? Not the most fun learning curve. Goldilocks bites it a couple times while practicing her "lines" on tacky surfaces.

Turns out? Goldilocks wasn't using proper technique to do her tricks.

Hey, Goldilocks, why don't you practice doing your big checking line by actually doing a contracheck? You know, gather, use your supporting leg, all that nonsense?

The floor is juuuuust right.

Let's face it, Goldilocks knows this never happens. The beautiful competition floor with minimal cracks between the tiles and a glossy perfection of tack? There's people on it. People who are trying to take Goldilock's blond curls off with their rondés and such. Gridlock. Road rage. Bad drivers.

And while we're at it…

The floor is too small.

Oh, because Goldilocks doesn't know how to turn? She can't rotate? Because her choreography is sooooo epic that it won't be contained in anything smaller than the WDSF Open floor (275 x 123 feet – it was almost a football field, yo)?

[Read: sarcasm.]

The floor is too big.

This seems like a ridiculous complaint, but if Goldy came from a tiny studio space and went to USDC, she might get a little overwhelmed.

But, oh, the places she'll go.

Her legs would think it's a challenge and somehow she would be transported from one corner to another. Note: her teacher/coach would remember this sudden grasp of leg swing and will harp on her to find it from here on out.

Goldilocks has learned…

Your biggest obstacles are your greatest tools. The worst practice area will teach you to stand up, use proper technique, master your floorcraft, command a space. And getting over yourself will probably help, too.

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