PHAMALy Presents: Disneys Beauty and the Beast

Several years ago i was working with PHAMALy on costuming. After I was hired at Miller i found that even volunteering for the evening show portion was too much- 5 to 1am.
Thursday I found that the girl i used to do cosumes with, was back in town and helping with the show. i showed up to help dress fro 2 nights. It as fun to be back. PHAMALy is an amazing company.

This years production was Beauty and the Beast.

The review in The Denver Post.

oh Etsy. you make my heart flutter.

i was going to post about our trip last weekend to Yarmony Grass. But alas, my camera's battery charger is no where to be found.

I have been looking around Etsy lately, always amazed at what i find there. thinking aobut opening a store. Seems like as good a time as any to get into the faery crown buisness. [besides i have some supplies, might as well try to sell a few.]

I always find so many wonderful things at Etsy.

Love this woman's jewelry- especially these unique constellation rings.Sagittarius, of course.

A beautiful leaf and floral scarf.
To, fun steam punk goggles.I really try not to spend too much time here.

jelly and so much more

the weather was perfect this year for fruit trees- even early blooming Apricots that almost always get frozen out. I believe its been close to 15 years since my mother apricot tree produced more than 3 pieces of fruit.we are now quickly finding various ways to preserve this bounty of fruit.
i actually started a couple weeks ago with making Cherry Bounce. a simple recipe caught my attention and i figured it would make great gifts.previously we have tried to make apple butter and plum jam and have not had luck with the seals working correctly. my friend Mary sent me a couple recipes out of the book she uses.

today i made apricot jelly and apricots in rum- following the same theory as the cherry's.
yesterday i started making apricot leather. and i hope to add apricots in light syrup, and apricot habanero jelly.
assuming these projects go well, i may see if i can get my hands on some more free fruit. apples and peaches are both popular in Denver.

Oregon Trail: The Musical- update

we mentioned this a couple weeks ago, and had some enthusiasm. we are aware that someone has it on youtube already, but we think we can do better.
beyond some enthusiasm, nothing much has happened on the project. unless Tim is secretly writing songs when I'm not around so he doesn't have to hear my helpful lyrics.
i have pretty much been forbidden to write lyrics.
So that is where it stands. i would really like to see this project actually happen. it could be fun and creative. and we had a blast helping Adam make is Dr. Horrible Henchman application.

music video of the week

Love This: Jonathan Coulton - First of May - ASL Song

ouch, my kidney

well, really Her kidney.


a friend of a friend who we have met on numerous occasions took a spill while out mountain biking Wednesday. She hurt Her kidney and had internal bleeding. She hopes to be out of the hospital soon, but doesn't have health insurance and cant return to work for a while. Below is the official write up from the Colorado Mountain Bike Association.

Help Nancy Kelly!

Nancy Kelly, Founder of the Dirt Divas and COMBA Board of Directors member, sustained an injury to her kidney while leading a Dirt Diva's ride at Lair o'the Bear on Wednesday July 22nd. She is currently in Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge while doctors monitor internal bleeding that resulted from the trauma. Luckily, Nancy's condition is improving rapidly and she hopes to be back home soon. Please send her your love and healing thoughts.

Nancy is a cornerstone of the local riding community. Through her work with the Dirt Diva's, COMBA, and local shops, she has introduced hundreds of women to the sport of mountain biking. Unfortunately, helping your community does not always come with large financial rewards -- or even health insurance. Nancy's stay in the hospital will hopefully be short, but she has already amassed a large amount of medical expenses for testing and hospital stay.

Join us in coming together as a community to help one of our own. While Nancy is resting and healing her body, we can help her heal the financial wound by contributing using the secure button below. Thank you!

If you prefer you may send checks to help Nancy with her medical expenses to:

ATTN: Nancy Kelly Medical Fund
COMBA
PO Box 280415
Lakewood, CO 80228-0415

Kinko Fry

i have really come to love KinkoFry. this comic makes my heart go pitter patter.

road trip to the balck hills

A couple weekends ago we headed to the Black hills for a family wedding. the wedding was held at the Flying V in New Castle Wyoming.

Bride and Groom

Family

After the wedding, Mr. T and i headed over to the Black Hills of South Dakota. We took a Lantern Tour at Jewel Cave- which was awesome.
We lucked out and had a cool rainy trip- instead of 100 deg and humid. We Found a homemade pie and ice cream shop in Custer SD.
Then we ventured over to Custer State Park, where we walked and climbed around Sylvan Lake. It is beautiful and different than we would have found in Colorado. My interest in Sylvan Lake steams from a family road trip photo album from the 1920s. My great great aunt and some friends borrowed dads car and took a road trip from north eastern Nebraska to the Black Hills of South Dakota. the camped and stopped to make jam along the way. Below are the photos i took and a couple of the photos they took.
Ladies on a hike. in the book, they write that they got up very very early to hike to this point, hoping to be there when the sun rose. i believe that the sun rose quicker than they could hike, but they had a good time anyways.
A fish made from a car at Carhinge in Alliance, NE.


it was an awesome trip.

and new begins

Thursday i was fired. i suppose i could say laid-off, but since it was just me and fir job performance, fired seems more correct.
to be fair i have been waiting to be fired for 2 years, and have been unhappy at my job for 4.
i am sure i wasn't doing a good job, because i felt that i was told a number of completely contradicting terms, with out explanation of what they really wanted. and they felt that i should just "know." there was a section of the "process" that i really didnt know, because my former boss did her best to have her assistants do all of the work, but not have quite enough information to be successful if they ever got out from under her. to the prase "just do it like Susie does." is really not helpful, since i was never involved. then there was the woman i worked with in another department, who would tell me everything was good and fine and then complain to the department head that i was doing things wrong. well, yes, because i didn't know that you wanted it done differently than the other 4 people in the department i have previously worked with, since you didn't mention it to me. i have to say, i am happy they fired me instead of moving me back down. i would have quit.
so now i am free... and out of health insurance at the end of July. i am hoping to find something, even if its not a career move, that has health insurance, and we will see what we can do.

Where have we been?

We went:

bowling at Lucky Strike
dress shopping
to a neighborhood festival
to the vet w/ all three cats in tow
Ren Fest
to see Christo speak
for a pedi
to the swimming pool

we are not:

keeping up with the weeds
and the lawn mowing.

it seems we are never home, or at least that we work way more than we have time for fun.

i suppose there will be years where we are not busy, and the garden will be fantastic, and the chair and the door will get fixed. and the sprinklers will work right and we wont eat dinner at 9pm every night.

i think i will like that time too.

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance (Banjo Cover) - Anna Vogelzang

Like her

Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel

Old Crow Medicine Show

song for this week: Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show.

movies- Milk

We watched Milk a couple nights ago. before the movie started Mr. T was kind enough to tell me the guy gets shot in the end. thanks honey. i hadn't remembered that bit on my own.

it was good. i know nothing of Harvey Milk- before my time and never mentioned in history class.
i only hope it was portrayed accurately. i always have to wonder about movies that portray a single side to the story- as most do- just how realistic the portrayal of the hero character really is.

i do admit

i do admit that faery things have a very very very fine line between fun, elegant and enchanting and absolutely bat shit nutty.
i actually like very few actual faery things. a few art pieces, flower faeries, movie looking things like the below post.
please. do. not. buy. me. anything. faery.
or anything cat. we don't need anything w/ cats on it either.

faery tale wedding.

i recently stumbled upon photos of the most beautiful faery wedding.

if i had a dream wedding, is would be it. more or less...

CAMPING 2010

Camping was successful. we managed to only have adventures that we wanted to have.

i only took 1 picture. mainly i decided that the multitude of photos i took last year were good enough.
we ended up with 8 people the first night and 6 the second.
the campground was packed, but we were able to get a section on the far end, that worked out rather nicely.
Tim went on a 16 mile hike with our 2 friends in the army to find a waterfall. Boog was also sick so he and i did a more leisurely 3 mile version on the hike.
the weather was beautiful and the company grand.

cant wait for our next trip.

i have so many pictures to get off my camera. tim w/ hair. the peep party and so forth. want a clean camera before we head out camping this weekend.

headed on another epic camping adventure this weekend. sadly it looks like it will only be Tim, Boog and i on this trip. I'm a bit worried because the 3 people combination was how we ended up on the most epic camping adventure ever, last year.

the place it really beautiful, i wish a few more people could join us.

it wouldent be a blog post if it wasnt about the weekend.

i can barely sit up on my own this morning. sooo tired.

got something like 140 plants planted this weekend- and i didn't even weed the back garden or get seeds in. or mow the lawn.

i did get the car washed, waxed and cleaned out.
we did help tim's dad w/ mulch
watched some fun movies [leagaly blond, Sherlock holmes, princes diaries & julie/julia
went out for drinks with friends
went to a high school graduation. [congrats to the grads this yr.: michelle, molly, medora, cecil and amy.]
and some how didn't sleep nearly enough.

also, i don't blog about the week much because i am afraid that it would end up an endless tirade about my job. my job is alright. it could certainly be worse. it could be better. but its easy to start bitching and never stop. people are nuts [in a bad way], and i try to not let it completely dominate my life.

a non weekend update.

recently, it seems, i only update with a run down of the weekend. mostly, i think this is related to the fact that our week is fairly scheduled.
most of the time things are good.
Tuesdays are game night and banjo lessons.
Wednesdays are kickball
and Monday and Thursdays are figuring out groceries or what ever.

in kickball this week, it was theme night. we went as ninja turtles and lost to the care bares. clearly the Care Bear Stare really does trump all.

Tuesday we hosted D&D and had mac n' cheese.

we also started watching season 1 of Mad Men. apparently Angel's son is just an asshole- or at least no one will cast him as anything else.

tomorrow i am headed to the high school graduation of a childhood friend. she's headed to CU at Co. Springs in the fall.

now, hopefully the meeting that was supposed to happen in my office an hour ago, will happen soon, so i can go home.