Summer Theater

Alright....so we've been a little busy. Jason and I spent 2 months in New Hampshire working at a summer stock theater called The Summer Theatre in Meredith Village. It was the first season for the theater and it was never dull!!! Sorry we've been so bad about the updating but I'm sure it'll get better now that we're back. What else is there to do in NYC?!


Before we left for the summer, we took a short trip to Arkansas to visit the new babies in our lives. This is Audrie Cornett, daughter of Jamie and Rachel. She was about 3 months old when we met her in May.

This was an artistic shot that Jason got of her when the sun was pouring through a window.


And this is Ben Burrow. He was born about 2 days before we got there. He is Jim and Emily's first child and our first nephew!!! We are already proud and planning the spoiling.

And now the summer. We were in Meredith, New Hampshire. It was situated on the west side of Lake Winnipesaukee. Such a beautiful backdrop for the summer. If it ever got hectic, and it often did, we could just look up and take in all that was before us. A great testimony.



This is one of the bed and breakfasts that overlooks the lake. Beautiful...gorgeous....wish you were here...


We had every other monday off and on our first one, we went to Boston for the day. These are our friends: Scott, Brittany, and Curtis. Brittany lived in Boston while she was at Emerson College and she introduced us to many of Boston's treasures including Indian Pudding. Delicious.


And of course, we had to have clam chowder (chowduh) in Boston....duh!

Here we are at one of the many sing alongs we would do late at night after shows were over. Jason plays the piano and everyone takes turns singing solos and duets. Some good, some very ridiculous. A great outlet!

The cast parties for all the shows were at a bar called "The Mug". Every time we were there it was Karaoke night and of course, we were all over it! Someone even put Jason's name in once and he had to sing. Jason doesn't do the Karaoke-haha!

Here's the cast for "Always...Patsy Cline", the first show of the season. It is a two person show but the band is onstage so they get to be in costume. Jason played the piano and sang onstage and Sam worked backstage.

And...the best part of the season. We did "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story". Jason played the Big Bopper and sang "Chantilly Lace". I snapped hundreds of pictures of course. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Stay tuned! More to follow!

I know our blog doesn't seem organized but I guess our life isn't either. We work, go out with friends, work, sit at home, work, and go out with friends some more. The 2 of us are our family and we absolutely love it. We can't wait to go home this week and see our extended family and best friends in the world!

Last weekend we went shopping a little. We went to Macy's at Herald Square and found some adorable stuff for me. I bought a dress and a black and white print skirt. I was sooo excited to wear my skirt on friday and I was feeling G-O-O-D when I put it on and trotted myself to work. When I sat down on the train, I noticed that my skirt made a funny sound against the plastic seat. I looked down and what did I see? The magnetic tag that they're supposed to remove when you purchase the garment. Boy oh boy did they get a kick out of me at work. Jason came and brought me some jeans and he went and took care of it. It's because we bought it at the make-up counter and they don't have one of those stupid things that removes the tags.

While Jason was getting it removed, I thought "Hmm, I'll bet they didn't take it off the dress I bought either." And sure enough, when I came home and looked at it, there it was....staring at me and grinning. That stupid magnetic tag attached to the left side of the dress!!!

So here's the dress. It really is adorable. I haven't bought a dress in years.

And here's the tag...still attached. Argh!!

We have a roommate right now. His name is Ryan. He moved in with us until he leaves for the summer to go to a theatre. His birthday was this week so we all went out to celebrate at one of his favorite Mexican restaurants. He worked at the Barn with us last summer so we used this celebration as an excuse to get all the kids from the company out and have a little reunion.

When you have a birthday at this place, they bring out a piece of chocolate cake with a big sparkler in it, turn on the disco ball, pump up the music and play a random medley of birthday songs mixed with La Bamba. They also bring a shot of tequila and a sombrero for the birthday person to wear. Its crazy but hilarious, as you can see from my face...

These are some of our friends from the summer. This is Colleen and Bobby.

This is our friend Caroline.

This is actually a picture we took several weeks ago. We were walking somewhere on the upper west side and we came up on this restaurant that looked really familiar. It's the restaurant from "You've Got Mail" that Tom Hanks stands outside of while Meg Ryan is waiting inside to meet her secret email crush. We love this movie so we had to have our picture in front of it.

And then I made Jason try and re-enact Tom Hanks standing at the gate in front. He just wouldn't get into it though. Ah well....this will have to do.

Here are more pictures from work. This is one of the girls I work with. Her name is Mariela. She and the girl in the background (Stephanie) work with the draper next to me. This is a boa for Wicked. Its H-U-G-E!!!! The feathers are dyed specially and then the whole thing is put together by someone outside our shop. Its not even for a neck. Its a sleeve. The girls couldn't resist playing around with it when it was delivered.

This is Steph wearing it like it will be worn eventually.

We've been working a lot of overtime lately because we're shipping out Wicked Australia soon. My shop works on all of Glinda's costumes and all of the Emerald City costumes. Hence all the green things. My team makes 4 or 5 different costumes. This is a collar that I worked on. I wrapped the wires in fabric, gluing every once in a while to ensure it wouldn't unravel...

and then I covered it in fabric. Then a bunch of trim is applied.

Here's something really exciting. Shrek is coming to broadway. My shop is working on Shrek, Fiona, and some other random characters. The team next to me is doing Shrek so I snapped a couple of shots from my table of the fat suit they're working on. She's using a bunch of different materials to create different looks for padding. The new material that is all the rage right now is micro-beads. People are discovering all kinds of things to do with them.

The bottom of the belly is accomplished using the micro-beads shoved into long tubes and stitched in the u-pattern you see.

And of course, what post would be complete without our crazy feline friend, the Devil. I've been working like a mad woman to finish a couple of quilts to take home to the new babies in Arkansas and for some reason, every time I leave one of them unattended, the cat finds the spare batting hanging out and curls up on it. Its really weird. I think we're just going to buy her some so we don't have to wash all of the quilts 4 and 5 times.

no clue

We'll be better about posting this month......we hope. I kind of wanted to post a bunch of pictures. I love taking photos. I've actually started taking headshots as a side business venture...because I don't have enough to do.


Here is the upper east side on a cloudy spring day. All up and down park avenue they have these tulip beds on the boulevard in the middle of the street. I guess its New York's way of showing off nature.

Heres the reason for us to EVER even be on the east side. The Marymount High School. Its an all girls private school that Jason got hooked up with doing Les Miserables. The kids are fantastic so we hope to stay involved with them.

Here are the Sisters P. Rita and Laura Pietropinto. Rita is on the right and Laura is on the left. They run the theatre department at the high school and are both proud graduates from the High School. Laura directed Les Miserables and Rita produced it. Rita's husband is a musical composer and musical director. She's working on getting Jason in contact with her husband to see if they can work together in the future.

This is our friend Marco. He's from London and worked at the barn last summer. He's fantastic. He was in town for a visit to audition for AMDA (a theatre conservatory in the city) and he stayed on our couch. This is us drinking my favorite drink in the world! A black flower. Its frozen margarita and sangria mixed together. Its probably a good thing the rest of this evening wasn't documented...

We saw this guy on the street. He has a cane made of a clarinet. It was awesome. We asked if we could take his picture and he happily obliged. He was really quirky. Probably been living in his apartment on 26th st. in Manhattan since the 60s or something. I love New York!

This is our friend Nic. Another barnie. He's actually my gay boyfriend. He's the one who started getting Jason students down at NYU. We love him.

Theres a place called Red Mango. They make frozen yogurt. But not what you normally think of as frozen yogurt. Its not ice cream. Its actually yogurt frozen. Like the soured milk yogurt. Its definitely an acquired taste. You order your flavor and then your toppings. I enjoy vanilla yogurt with strawberries and granola. Jason had vanilla with pineapple and dark chocolate. Yumm!

More pictures soon...I promise!

Broadway!

EEEEEK!! It's been forever since we posted anything. We must be pretty busy.

So I work at a broadway costume shop...right? This may sound glamorous but most days its just the same ol' same ol'. My technical job title is "assistant". I'm a draper's assistant. The next step up would be a draper, which is pretty much as far as I could go unless I tried to own the shop...which I definitely don't want to do. I would love to be a draper some day just not any time soon. I'm still learning too much every day. My day starts at 6:30 every day when I wake up. I spend the morning alone usually because Jason doesn't have to be up as early. I leave the house by 7:40 to walk to the train (sometimes I can catch a bus down to the train station but most mornings I just walk). I get off the train station at times square and walk down to work and I'm usually there by 8:25. Just enough time to prepare a cup of tea and get myself settled in for the day. Then, depending on whats happening in the shop at that time of the year, I get started with my projects. Lately I've been doing a lot of different stuff.

This is a dress I worked on recently for a touring show in China. Its for Disney...yes its the Cinderella ball gown. I worked on this project for about 3 weeks. I know you can't tell but there's a very sheer layer of light blue net that is the outside layer of the skirt. There are small glued on jewels all around this piece of net. I put each one on individually. It took me 4 days. Heres a more detailed picture.

I also work on The Little Mermaid. Again, I put a lot of heat set jewels on the wedding dress for the end of the show. These are just process shots. I actually have to ask permission because its Disney. So this post could disappear. We'll see.

I also work on Wicked and Mamma Mia alot. I've been doing some work on some dance pieces too for the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn. I actually got to go to Brooklyn for the fittings. This was a very big deal for me.

There are actually a lot of people we know up here. Friends from both schools we've attended live and work here. So this is our friend Betsy Jilka. We went to school with her in Arkansas and she now lives here with her husband Milan. We met up with a bunch of old friends from Arkansas about a week ago just to catch up. This is at a bar in Little Korea on the top of the LaQuinta Inn. Of course it is. Leave it to the Arkies to find the bar in a hotel to hang out in. It was actually very nice. The Empire State building was right next to us.

Jason at Marymount

Jason has recently started working with the Marymount Girl's Highschool on the upper east side with their production of Les Miserables (school edition). He's been having a great time and has been really great with the kids. I got to go to the school today and take a few pictures with him and the kids. They really love him...its kind of amazing.

The students sang the finale of the show today and they sounded great!! Jason worked with them for about 15 minutes and they sounded ready for broadway! Incredible.

Then we all had to drink about it. This is our dear friend Ryan. Jason made margaritas and fajitas and we all had to partake.

I had my 1st ritzy New York City salon experience yesterday. I went to Devachan Hair Salon. Thanks mom!! Its a salon that specializes in curly hair. Of course it is. I paid a ridiculous amount of money for a guy to basically tell me how to do my own hair. It was amazing though. I finally know how to make my hair curly all over and not frizzy. Yay!!

So it might not look a lot different to everybody but I'm kind of obsessed with it.

I've NEVER been able to make my hair curl this evenly all around. Its amazing to me. I know I must sound NUTS!

"new" apartment

So I know we've technically lived in this space since January, but I figured it was new to all of you so I thought I'd put up some pictures to show our lovely hovel. We really love it. We're slowly working on acquiring things like lamps and bookshelves and things. Its enough for us that we have our HUGE king size bed.

Jason had to tell our cat, Gypsy (lovingly referred to as "the Devil") to stay quiet in the new apartment so that noone would know she was living here.

So this is our bedroom. Please disregard the mess. This is the night after we moved all of our stuff in. So thats why there are bins and things all over the floor.

The apartment is a "railroad" style apartment. So its really long. This is the living room, which is connected to the bedroom. The front door is on the right. Again, pardon the bins...and tiny TV. You can see into the next room which is...

KITCHEN!! This is the view from the other side of the kitchen into the living room. Again...mess.

So this is what we're calling "the red room". Its like an office and will eventually have some form of a piano in it. This picture is taken from the kitchen.

This is the final room of the place. Its the spare bedroom/costume studio/closet/office, etc. So when all of you come to see us, this is where you'll stay. One more time...pardon the bins.

And of course, the bathroom. This is the only picture I could find of our bathroom. Just imagine more blue and tiny, tiny, tiny. But isn't SHE cute?!