Excuse? I have no excuse!

Wow! It's been over a month since I've posted anything on the blog. Bad girl! Bad!

What's been going on? A little bit of this and that. Nothing momentous, just day to day living. I'm seeing plenty of theatre (the Fall season is awash with wonderful plays to see!). I've been crafting, editing video, watching the new Fall season tv shows, etc.

I'll be at the Eureka High School Craft Fair on Saturday, November 7. That's totally cool! I hope you'll come out to the fair. There'll be lots of crafters with all kinds of wonderful stuff on display. What a great way to start your holiday shopping!

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Which of the new TV shows are you watching? I really like FlashForward and Glee. And I'm happy to watch the return of The Mentalist and Lie To Me. Of course, House is as frustrating and wonderful as ever.

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I might have another craft show announcement soon. I'll let you know as soon as I do!

Vacation is good for you (me)

We recently returned from a mini-vacation to points South. After dropping The Boy off for his junior year at Tulane, we drove to Vacherie, Louisiana and visited Oak Alley Plantation. Below is a short slideshow video of pictures I took of the plantation grounds. Photography was not allowed in the house, so alas, no shots of the interior.

After the plantation, we drove to Natchez, Mississippi then on to Memphis, Tennessee. It was a short trip, but a really nice one. Absolutely gorgeous weather the entire time we were on the road.

Maybe someday we'll actually go on a vacation that does not include taking or picking up The Boy from school. smile.

Here's the video!

I'm a terrible blogger

It's been about a month since I've blogged. I've found that I spend much more time on Facebook these days then blogger.

One day I will update this... probably.

Shameless self-promotion

This weekend my business (My World's a Stage) will be participating the Big Ass Indie Art & Craft Show. It's my first time ever to be in a craft show and I'm very excited!

I've been selling online for a couple years but never tried to do a craft show because, well, I didn't know how to do it. Since this particular show is a "department" style event, it made it easy for me to jump in and give it a try. Easy because I don't have to set up a booth and I don't have to have a credit card system. The event organizers create all the displays and there will be departments... like housewares, jewelry, clothing, etc. Each participating crafter will have their items distributed throughout the sales floor. The craft show folks also take care of collecting payment for any sales.

Want to see what crafters will be at the show? Click here for a list. It's going to be tons of fun with live entertainment, a bar, and totally rad indie crafts. Please come out and support your local arts and crafts peeps.

Be there, or be square!

A very busy weekend!

This past weekend was the opening of St. Louis Shakespeare's 25th Anniversary Season. I hope you came out to see THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, but if you didn't you still have time! We'll be doing four more performances this week on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are still available. For more info, please click here. You don't want to miss this show!

Here's a review from Chris Gibson writing for BroadwayWorld.com. More links to reviews to come as I find them.

Part of the weekend's festivities was the opening night party at Vito's Ristorante. I was there with my video camera and interviewed several people who have worked with the company in the past (and some new participants as well). I've included the video's below (parts 1 & 2). Enjoy!

If you're a fan of St. Louis Shakespeare and you haven't visited our Facebook page yet, please join us there to keep up with all the latest news, reviews, video's, photo's, etc.

Besides attending (and video-taping) MERCHANT OF VENICE, I also saw two other plays this weekend: COLLECTED STORIES, the Orange Girls production at COCA, and THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW put on by [insert name here] Theatre at the Tower Grove Abbey space. There's still time to see COLLECTED STORIES. It plays through August 2, and is well worth seeing for its wonderful performances and interesting story. However, it's too late to see ROCKY as last night was the final performance. If you didn't catch it, you missed a really quirky and fun production.

And now for the St. Louis Shakespeare opening night party videos....

I know, I know!

Once again, here I am apologizing for ignoring my blog. I've been so very busy lately. That's my only excuse.

If we know each other in real life, I hope that I've seen you recently. If we know each other from the local theatre community, break a leg and I hope to be seeing you on a stage soon. If you're my family, I love you and thank you for allowing me all the time I need right now to get ready for the craft show later this month.

I spend much more time on Facebook and Twitter than I do on this blog. Maybe I'll see you in one of those places.

Until the next time I have a few minutes to write a post....

A few things, but not everything

There are never enough hours in the day, or days in the weekend.

As I've written before, I will be one of the vendors at the Big Ass Indy Craft Show. I've been spending almost all my free time in my basement studio doing my crafty thing trying to get ready. The deadline to turn in all my product is July 26. I know that may sound like I have plenty of time, but because most of my craft items include embroidery, it's a very slow process.



When I'm not spending my free time in the studio, I'm at the theatre. I saw seven (yes, count 'em) plays in June and so far I have four scheduled for July. I used to write about each of the plays I'd seen, but since I'm seeing some of them as a Kevin Kline Awards judge, I feel that I shouldn't write about them anymore. That's too bad in a way, because I really did enjoy telling you about some of the great stuff I'd seen. Oh well.



GO SEE A PLAY. Really. Go see a play. You'll love it.



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Here's a picture of an embroidery design that I digitized this weekend. Using a royalty-free clipart image from Dover Books' Classic Tattoo collection (the white half of the pic), I created this fun serpent coiled around a red flower. I don't auto-digitize. If I did, this probably would have taken considerably less time to do, but I prefer manually digitizing so it took me about 6 hours to get it the way I wanted it. I stitched it out last night (the black half of the pic), and it stitched very nicely. No problems at all.



Why does it take so long to digitize? Well, it doesn't take everyone so long, it's just that I'm really slow and I get easily distracted. While digitizing, I also checked my email, looked at Facebook, Twittered, embroidered a pillow, took time to eat lunch, talked to My-Guy and The Boy, etc. See, easily distracted!

Clean, cleaner, cleanest

Ahhh, the joys of manual labor! It's a wonderful feeling to actually work really hard at something and get such a fantastic outcome. Yesterday My-Guy and I borrowed my Mom's power-washer and cleaned the dirt and algae from the front of the house, the porch, and the sidewalk. The first pic below is the house before cleaning. Notice the green algae spots on the right side of the doorway. Notice also the dirty brick porch (the bricks should be bright red). The white stucco near the dirty sidewalk also needed to be cleaned. Well, the power-washer did an amazing job! It was hard, messy, wet work but worth the time and trouble.

The red brick porch is now back to it's original color as you can see from the photo below. Also, the algae is gone and the sidewalk is now clean. We plan on doing all of it again next weekend, just to be sure it's as clean as possible before we return the machine to Mom. I think we'll also do the driveway.... why not?

My entire body aches from the hard work, but the results are definitely worth the pain.

Doing the best I can

Guilt. I can't seem to get away from feeling guilty about working part-time. Not that I chose to work part-time, but still... I'm very worried and stressed about what the future may hold. Because of that I can't quite seem to enjoy the extra hours I now have to devote to my own personal creative pursuits. On one hand I'm ecstatic to have so much time; on the other I feel as if what I'm doing is detrimental to my family. I really need to be working full-time. I think once that happens, the guilt feelings will disappear and I will return to feeling "normal" again. Keep your fingers crossed for me that all will be well in the end.

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Good news: I've been accepted to be in the Big Ass Indie Art & Craft Show at MadArt Gallery, July 31, August 1 & 2. I've been selling online now for quite a while, but this will be my first craft show. And I think it will be the perfect type of craft show for me to start with because it's a "department" style show, which means that I do not have to set up a booth and have my own credit card system. Each crafter's items are displayed throughout the sales floor - there are no designated areas in which a particular crafter needs to set up their booth and/or display. The show also takes care of all money-handling at a main check-out area. If any of my items sell, I'll receive a check after the show has closed and bookkeeping has been finished. Works for me!

I hope you'll make a point of coming to the show. It will be lots of fun and if you've never been to an indie craft show before, you're definitely in for a treat. This ain't your grandma's craft show!

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Here are some pictures of the flat dolls I made last week. Enjoy!

I know! I know!

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted on my blog. You'd think that since my hours (and pay) got cut in half, I'd have all kinds of time to be blogging... but I don't. Or at least there seems to be a million other things that need to be done instead: updating my resume, looking for a job to go along with the part-time one I have, sewing, crafting, video editing, going to the theatre, updating the theatre website, etc. Busy! I've been plenty busy, folks!

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Ahhh, St. Louis in the summer! Hot, humid, rainy, then sunny, then rainy again. All that with a non-functioning air conditioner. Dang, it's hot in here! But help is on it's way. At least I hope so. There are two repair guys here right now, but things don't sound good on one of the units (we have zoned AC). Keep your fingers crossed that A) it can be fixed, and B) that it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

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I've been on a Battlestar Galactica binge! Yes, weekends are spent watching episode after episode of BSG. I'm enjoying it, although I may be on the verge of overdose. I think I watched about a dozen episodes over the holiday weekend. Maybe more! I'm now on Season 4, Episode 3. I may take the night off from watching and instead do a little crafting tonight.

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I am now a proud member of the St. Louis ShowMe Etsy Street Team! They don't have my Etsy shop name listed on their site yet, but I swear I am actually a member! I went to my first meeting a few weeks ago and it was fun and informative. Plus there was wine and cake! You can't beat that! I'll let you know more as I know more about this fun group of crafters. Right now I do know that they have a booth set up at the Tower Grove Farmer's Market, so be sure to stop by and check out all the cool indy crafty items!

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I'll try to be a better blogger and not wait so long before my next post. See ya!