les mis in pictures: act 1

There were a ton of people that didn't get to see Les Mis, so for those folks (shame on you) I thought I'd post some production photos to give you a taste of what you missed and a couple of behind the scenes random nuggets. 

I love that I wasn't on right at the beginning. It gave me time to relax and listen to the show to get myself going. 

Before the dudes of the cast got in their places, they would do a chant of Row, Row, Row Your Boat like football players in a circle down in the pit. Dorks. 

"I've done no wrong, Sweet Jesus hear my praaaayer!"

Jesus, I mean, Valjean.

OH, SNAP! He gets caught. This was when I would head down to the pit to get ready to ride the stage up for At the End of the Day. 

 Casey (who is Jesus/JVJ) is nailing a high note right here. "Another story must begiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!"

Cue the rest of us down in the pit. It was during this note that it was time to load the stage below Casey (the rest of the stage other than that circle he is on, is lowered). We usually were scaring each other, saying inappropriate things, having dance parties, etc., as we were getting into our places. There were also some shoving and stepping on each other's feet on purpose, burping.... just for fun. You know, being professional and getting into character. 

 "At the end of the day your another day older. And that's all you can say for the life of the poor!"

"Fantine better give it up to the foreman, or she's gonna be outta here..."
"Totes. And I hate her."

"Fantine has a little brat! OMG!"

"We just wrestled on the ground and I LOST! UGH! Oh, and she started it. Bible."

"That's right. She totally started it. Plus, she's a slut and has a kid. Doesn't that make you supes jellie?"

"I'm freaking pissed someone had you before me. I gotta show that I'm in charge so you are the weakest link. Goodbye!"

"I just got fired, I'm wearing a purple Barney dress, and it's SNOWING?!!? FML!"

Erin Carlson has the stupidest voice. She killed I Dreamed a Dream every. single. performance. It's a challenging song and she made it sound easy. I need a moment for her low notes. So rich and powerful.

 Her song was also the time when all the other ladies, including myself, had a quick change into our Lovely Ladies get up. I wore my complete whore costume under my factory dress. It was crazy hot.

 Before we went on, we had our own huddle (like the boat dudes), but we just said a word. Our word was related to being prostitutes. For example, syphilis, herpes, boobs, whore. Again, we are all professionals. 

Back to Fantine.

During this cart scene, the girls in my dressing room were changing from prostitutes into our named roles (Eponine, Cosi, Madame T) and we would mock this scene a little. Not because they didn't do a good job, just because it was funny to here an ensemble sing, "The load is heavy as hell!" and there were these random electric guitar "whaaam"s when Javert is contemplating if the Mayor is actually JVJ....which he is. Maybe you just had to be there.....

 Guitar WAAAAAM!

 2-4-6-0-1!!!!! 

Fantine is dying. Probably from chlamydia. 

I told Erin to make sure she never went full E.T.  with her death makeup (you know when he's all white and dying in the little stream....) She listened. Plus, she really rocks the Bon Jovi hair-do. 

Testosterone! 

Enter mini-me. Her Castle on a Cloud was freaking heartbreaking. 

Debauchery ensues with Master of the House.

JVJ finds poor Cosi, plays with her rag doll to make her tell her where she lives (creeper), bargins with the T's to buy her from them (creeper) and carries her away with promises of other children to play with and castles (creeper). 

Our little Gavroche was the freaking cutest and super smart on stage. One time his mic went out and he went right to Enjolras and sang in his mic. He's eight. 

Every performance after Stars, I would find Mr. Adam Dietlien (above) and slow clap for him. I would be in the back hallway, in his dressing room, right by his exit, in the green room, just slow clapping for him. I had a lot of time on my hands, OK....

 "The color of depaaaaaaaaaaaair!"

Do You Hear the People Sing was my cue to finally get on stage and sing my little heart out as Cosette. I would enter right where this angry mob leaves and I would always get grabbed in all locations as I made my entrance. WE ARE PROFESSIONALS! 

 Singing faces are always special. Plus, see that first row right behind me? Perhaps now you can appreciate this post a little more.

 This was only my second time wearing this dress. Since the first time I fell to my death (well, to my tailbone's death), I was still traumatized and lifting that skirt for all it's worth. I soon became much more elegant....I hope.

 With that first row so close, we could hear them talking about us as if we weren't right in front of their faces and in clear ear-shot. People would say things like, "He's voice is so good." "She's a good actress." What's that in his beard." "That dress is pretty." "How do they memorize all those lines?!!?" Also, when Casey and I would exit to let Marius and Eponine enter, we would leave arm in arm and Casey would always flex his massive bicep and saying stuff like, (while we're still on stage, mind you) "The Shake Weight is really helping." Or we'd comment about urinating in the street. If the audience even knew.....

While the following scene was going on. Brad (Marius) and I would sit on opposite side of the gate and say so much crap. The audience thought we were flirting and being in love, but we would talk about inappropriate things between Cosi and JVJ (obviously), about our real lives, make up more crap about other characters, find words in the "poetry book" which was really a dictionary.....obviously we would go to inappropriate words. So much professionalism, guys!

"Must be Javert! He's found my cover at last! I've got to get Cosette away before they return!" These lyrics were constantly in my head. Seriously, they never left. I would find myself saying, "Must be Javert!" for no reason. Don't ask me why....

 Whenever I came off stage to run up a flight of stairs to get to my spot for One Day More, Mr. Javert aka. Adam, would be at the door to the stairs and open it for me. He would also ALWAYS say, "Hurry, Cosette!". So dumb!

"One Day Moooooooore!"There you have it, Act One! Looking at these pictures made me miss these crazy fools. So much talent on that in-the-round stage. I wanna get together and do a sing-thru just to listen to all their gorgeous voices. Not one screeching cat in the bunch! You really missed out if you didn't see the show. Act Two will be next!

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strawberry-lime shortcake w/ coconut whipped cream

Monday night our friends, the Beans, had us over for dinner and asked us to bring a dessert. Immediately, I thought of this one. It's crazy delicious and people think you're impressive when you make this. Your secret will be that it's easy as far as cakes go and is more about assembly than anything else. I discovered it in one of my favorite cookbooks, Our Best Bites. The ladies that wrote the book, have an awesome blog with a ton of their recipes and tips. You really need to check them out. I've used sooo many of their dishes. 

You gotta make the pound cake first and here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, room temp (I cheated and used them straight outta the fridge)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 sour cream (Monday, I forgot the sour cream when I went to the store, but had plain greek yogurt in the fridge and substituted that. Just as delicious.)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350

Using a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt and forget about it for now. 

Beat the butter and sugar until nice and fluffy, usually about a minute.
Continue beating and add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and sour cream (our plain greek yogurt). Slowly add the flour mixture and beat until just combined. DO NOT OVER MIX (it'll still work out if you do, just the texture will be a little different and you'll have tunnels in your cake). 

Pour batter into a greased 8 or 9 inch bread pan and bake for 50-60 minutes or until skewer (or knife) comes out clean. Cool for 10 min and then take that bad boy outta the pan. 

While your delectable pound cake is baking, you can prep the strawberries and whipped cream. Or you can wait. Whatevs. I prepped my strawberries and waited to do the whipped cream until right before serving. 

Strawberry-Lime Ingredients:

4 cups sliced fresh strawberries (I just used a small container of strawberries and sliced those suckers up)
1/2 cup sugar 
4 Tablespoons of fresh lime juice (about 2 limes)

Directions:

Mix berries, sugar, and lime juice. Set aside. You want to let it settle for about 15 minutes so it can develop a light syrup. Keep in the fridge until serving. 

Coconut Whipped Cream Ingredients:

1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons coconut extract (I always add a little extra to give it more of a coconut kick)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Pour cream into a bowl and beat with an electric mixer for about one minute. Slowly add powdered sugar and the extracts. Continue beating until soft peaks form. 

Toasted Coconut Directions:

I do this right after I take the cake outta the oven, because the oven is already hot!

Spread your shredded, sweetened coconut (however much you like) on a cookie sheet. 

Pop it in the preheated oven and bake for 3-5 minutes. 

WARNING! Coconut goes from white to black very quickly, so you're gonna want to keep your little eyeballs on it and pull it out when it's golden brown. 

Now, the fun part. Assembly. 

Slice your cooled pound cake and take a slice or two and put it on a plate. Spoon out some strawberries and place on top and don't scrimp on the syrup (It's so yummy. Especially when it soaks into the cake a little.)! Place a dollop of whipped cream on top and sprinkle your perfectly toasted coconut on top. 

Finally, get that goodness in your belly!

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our big party

I realized I've never blogged about our reception and since it's be almost a year, I figured I should get around to that. With the Mr performing in Peter Pan right now, I have some time on my hands. 

For our reception, we both just wanted a fun party. Nothing too stuffy, but still classy. I also wanted to keep it as simple as possible. Mostly, so I didn't become a Bridezilla. Another key factor was Chancho. We wanted him to be able to join in the festivities, duh!

With all of that in mind, we settled on an outdoor party and found a beautiful spot up Provo Canyon called South Fork Park. We also decided to have our big party the night BEFORE we got married. Why? Because it's our wedding and we do what we want!!! JK. While that is true, the park was reserved for our actually wedding day AND we had discussed before we even knew about the park about having it the night before so we didn't have a crazy long day and could just get married, say, "peace out!" to everyone and head on our honeymoon (we dated for a long time, folks....).

After finding a place, the next thing was food. We really only checked out one place and knew it was the place for us after meeting with them. It's Marvellous Catering out of Provo. You guys!!! Their food is so baller! We had pulled pork sandwiches, an awesome spinach salad, the best artichoke dip in the world, chocolate cream cheese cake, and strawberry shortcake. Since their food is so good, customers begged them to open a restaurant and they listened. If you ever find yourself in Utah County, you must try Molly's. They are only open for lunch, but they do serve dinner on Fridays. My mouth is watering thinking about their delicious food. Although we did serve cake, I'm not a huge cake fan. So we didn't opt for a traditional wedding cake. Instead, we had a wedding pie. Mr G's mom, Sharon, made her award winning peach pie that we topped with our lego miniatures and a mini Chancho. I made the "mr + mrs" banner too!

As far as decor goes, I let nature take care of most of it. The tables had burlap runners made by yours truly, mason jars with a few stems of white orchids in them, lace doilies, other decorative jars, and finished off with assorted pink frooties. I freaking love frooties! We hung some tissue paper balls in some trees, where we greeted our guests, and in the food canopy. What's a wedding without some dancing? We had a small dance floor with some bistro lights hanging above and around it. We rented the tables, chairs, and canopy tent from Alpine Event Rentals. I highly recommend them, because they were affordable, punctual, and had great stuff.

Since it was our party, we wanted to enjoy it! So we had a line for people to wish us well for about an hour. To make sure it stayed to just about an hour, we planned a short program after the line so we had a reason to leave our guest. 

The program consisted of Mr. G and I singing to each other and with each other. I sang Somewhere from West Side Story, Mr G sang a John Lennon classic, Grow Old Along with Me, and then we sang Lucky by Jason Marz and Colbie Caillat. Traditions came next with the garter and bouquet throwing. My sister's NOW HUSBAND caught the garter (guess it worked) and my niece, Allie, caught my bouquet (I decided on a baby's breath bouquet. I thought of a lot of different bouquets, but in the end baby's breath went along with my simple, but classy theme and matched the lace in the decor). Then we started off the dancing with I Got You Under My Skin by good old Frank Sinatra. 

We carried on with more dancing and actually getting to eat some of the food. Imagine that! Then we just spent the rest of the night chatting and enjoying all the love and support from our people. It was perfect. 

Then it was time to go home and get some beauty sleep and prep to become Mrs. Mr. G.

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new york, it got me!

My man and I took a little visit to New York last week (I'll blog about that later) and I was reminded of a moment I had in my first months living there. 

When I moved to New York, Mr. G would always tell me, "Don't let New York get you!". Meaning, don't get raped, killed, mugged....In other words, don't become an episode of Law and Order: SVU (which I had to stop watching after I moved. It freaked me out recognizing places they filmed). I didn't live in a super sketchy area, but I wasn't living in the poshest of places either. I lived in a neighborhood called Hamilton Heights in Upper Manhattan on 136th street, between Broadway and Amsterdam. It was a cozy, quiet street with an elementary school, tennis court, and basketball court, across the street. 

The view from my fire escape

My bedroom was tiny, but hey, it's New York, most are. The bed was placed right again the wall with the windows, with the window to the fire escape in the middle of the bed. See below. 

Upon waking up, I could look right out the window and see what the weather had in store for me.

One morning, however, I woke up and saw, not the weather, but movement behind the curtain. As my eyes adjusted, I realized that movement, was a man. Crouching. I thought:

"It's happened. New York got me! SVU here I come. Only I don't get to meet Mariska!"

Once the initial panic started to subside, I snuck to the foot of the bed by the wall, closest to the left side of the window, to peek behind the curtain to see my rapist/murder and figure out just how close he was to pouncing....and to see what my chances were. 

Now, you may be thinking, why didn't you just leave your bedroom? To that I say, rational people may do that and many other wiser things, but I was in no such rational state.

Anyway, what I saw when I carefully moved the curtain back, just so, was a man in a paint-suit, crouching to paint the fire escape. Not a crouching rapist. Phew! 

After the relief set in, I wanted to become a murder myself and kill the super who had not notified us that someone would be painting the fire escape. The super was not the sharpest tool in the shed (I could write many a blog about him...). 

New York may have not gotten me physically that day, but it definitely got me mentally. Thank you, Steve the Super....

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vote aurora!

Hey guys! This is my little brother's band (he's the tall creeper on the far right) and they are competing for a chance to play during Warped Tour when it's here in Utah. Now, it's not particularly my favorite kind of music (I'm not a Screamo type of gal), but they are good at what they do. Plus, I do like the chorus when there is singing and my little brother kills it on lead guitar. Help them out, if you will, by clicking here to vote. You don't have to register or anything and it honestly takes like 10 seconds to vote. Thank you and here's hoping they win! How cool would it be for these local boys to jam during Warped Tour?!?!

#MKGlam

So the latest VoxBox (a box full of free goodies) I received from Influenster was a bunch of Mary Kay products. Now, it had been a good while since I've used their stuff (Sephora addiction over here...) so I was excited to try them out again. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked them. 

First up, eyes.

I got the Lash Love Mascara, Gel Eyeliner (Jet Black) & Cream Eye Color (Apricot Twist). 

I love the cream eye color! It is beautiful golden color and really pops with the gel eyeliner.  I usually like to use powder as my liner, but for a bolder look, the gel liner is amazing. I haven't tried yet, but I'm sure it would be awesome for a cat-eye look. As far as the mascara goes, I wasn't sure I wanted to try it, because I'm so in love with Benefit They're Real Mascara, but not wanting to be ungrateful, I gave it a go anyway. I was impressed. It definitely lengthened my lashes and was super pigmented, which is great. The only thing I wish it did a little bit more of was thicken up my lashes. So, it was a great mascara, but I'm not giving up on my true love, Benefit. 

Next up, cheeks. 

The blush came in Shy and I will be using this daily. It's the perfect pop of pink and you don't need much on your brush. I'm not a huge bronzer person, so you may want to get another opinion, but this one was pretty good....I think. It came in light-medium and it did give me a nice glow.

Lips are coming up!

The VoxBox sent the NouriShine Plus Lip Gloss in Mango Tango. Honestly, I was afraid of this color. I thought a more orangey hue was gonna look gross on me, but it wasn't too bad. It may not be my go-to color (I'm really more of a blue-red gal), but I admit, I've worn it more than once. The feel of this gloss doesn't feel like glue on your lips (bonus!) and it really is nourishing. 

And to finish it all off, powder.

This stuff is baller! It supposed to protect again shine all day and does just that. Win. 

Here is my look with all the above on my face. Don't pay attention to my crazy long bangs....I got them trimmed up today....finally. 

Overall, I loved these products. What was my favorite was how pigmented they are so you don't have to use much and you can make your dollar go a little further. Boom! For you, Influenster gave me some more invites! So if you wanna join, lemme know!