RENT Reviews...

So the first weekend or our show has come and gone and we have two weekends left (we close August 4th)! We run Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 7:00pm with a 2:00pm matinee on Saturdays (*Note: I DO NOT play Joanne in the matinee, I'm in the ensemble during that 2pm performance, however if you're not coming to see me PLEASE come see our wonderful matinee cast leads, they are AWESOME!!). With opening weekend come critiques of course, including: Backstage Utah who's review can be found here, and Utah Theatre Blogger Association's review found here. Thank you to everyone who has come to see the show, and for those of you coming in the next couple weeks! I have felt so much support from friends and family with this show, it' been pretty amazing! 

5 years down, an eternity to go!

This past weekend I had the most lovely time spent with family and with my sweet Matthew. This weekend was extra special because we celebrated our FIVE year wedding anniversary. I still feel weird saying that. I feel like I've known him for forever and yet at the same time it feels like just yesterday that we both were nervous wrecks on our first date. I'm so grateful for him. For all of his wonderful qualities, and for all that he contributes to our life together. He is my other half, and I can't even begin to fathom life without him. These past five years have flown by and I can't wait to see what the next five hold for this little life of ours. I made a short little slideshow for Matt set to the song we had our first dance to. It was really fun to put together and I thought I'd share it here. Hope you like it, I kinda thought it was cute...

Friday Five

Happy Friday! So I thought that since I'm such a terrible blogger that this would be a nice way to push myself to blog at least once a week. We'll see if it sticks... Here are this week's favorites:

Favorite instagram

For those of you who haven't met my dogs, Killer is SUPER laid back, while Bruce is, well....not. When we first got him he didn't necessarily hate Killer, but he wasn't his biggest fan either. Let's just say he tolerated Killer being all up in his business as Killer CONSTANTLY sniffed and tried to cuddle him. He's come a long way. Bruce LOVES killer now and here's the proof! Killer was completely passed out when Bruce slowly crept toward him and decided he wanted some snuggles.




Favorite Song

So pretty much every week I get obsessed with a song, that I'll listen to over and over AND over again. This week it was originally this song

And then I heard this song this morning and was hooked! Both of these songs are awesome though so I recommend giving them BOTH a listen. This Ben Sollee guy gives me hope for music. The only way to describe this song is: cello, Blues, R&B, a Blue Grassy solo, and SOUL thrown into a pot and stirred together. It would be a crime to not click on this video...

Favorite News

Found out that I will be doing this show with Centerpoint Legacy Theater in Centerville

Woot Woot! For those of you who REALLY know me, you know that I LOOOOOVE musical theatre! It's been about a good 7 years since I've auditioned for/been in a show, so I was very nervous to say the least. My goal was to audition for 5 shows this year and hopefully get into at least one ensemble. I love South Pacific, and am so excited to be apart of this show! It runs April 23rd- May 19th.

Favorite Quote

"Be kind to me or treat me mean. I'll make the most of it I'm an extraordinary machine." -Fiona Apple extraordinary machine

Favorite Find

If you were to walk into my house you would be able to see that I'm obsessed with making my own chalkboards,but making your own chalkboard paint takes it to a whole different level. I'm going to have fun with this. THANK YOU a beautiful mess!

Pillow talk

If I had the time (and money to buy lots of fabric) I'd sew pillow after pillow...after pillow. They're so simple and can bring so much to a room. Here are a few I've recently made:

One day I was rummaging through my fabric pile and pulled out some yellow felt I'd had sitting around for ages (I'm pretty sure we'd used it for a Halloween costume back in '09), found this cute tutorial on Purlbee.com and put myself to work. I didn't follow the tutorial exactly I just went off the design idea. I used whatever fabrics I had and eyeball'd my measurements, but this tutorial has a really nice step-by-step for first time pillow makers.

I really love making fabric flowers for hair accessories so I played with them a little bit and stuck them on a pillow. I made the flowers and then sewed them each on individually. It took a while(I'm not the quickest or best seamstress), so I decided to stop after the 13th one. Yup I'm a quitter, but I personally like my crafting to be fun rather than a painstaking process:) This post over at Sweet Coconut Lime has some great ideas for making your pillows a little more fun with textures and paint!

I'd say my favorite thing about making pillows is that you can make a big impact; without out all of the tedious little flowers and such, by just picking out a fun pattern. I'm currently obsessed with black and white; which my mom often tells me is so boring:) But look at this lovely hounds tooth fabric! I love how fun it is and best of all it was on sale!

I'm most definitely an amateur when it comes to crafting, which is why I love pillows! They're SUPER easy!

DIY Plate Collage

Turning our little place into a home has been quite the process this time around. We have a little more space than we've had in the past so there's so much I want to do, but at the same time we don't own our current place so I can't make as permanent of changes as I'd like to. It's also been somewhat of a long process because I like to do things on the cheap So a lot of the stuff in our home is DIY. DIY can definitely be more time consuming compared to just going out and buying some wall art, curtains, pillows etc. but it's A LOT of fun, and more personalized I think.

We have a little dining area/nook in our home, that was just plain boring. There are two big windows on 2 of the 3 walls, which is nice, but it was definitely still lacking. I'd been wanting to do a plate collage for a LONG time, so I finally just took a night and got it done. This is what I ended up with....


Simple yet cute and very easy to do. I've had a few people ask me how I knew what plates to pick, how I hung them etc. So I thought I'd share a step-by-step:) Keep in mind that you can expand this and make it much larger or even have a little row of just a few plates. Whatever floats your boat.

What You'll Need:

- Plates (of whatever color, shape, pattern and quantity you choose)

- Strips of fabric or ribbon about 3 inches long (You need one strip for each plate. This will be your hook to hang the plate).

- Hot glue gun and glue sticks

- Nails

STEP 1: Pick out your plates
I picked up a total of 11 plates from the always wonderful D.I. (second hand store) and spent a whopping $8! I love the D.I. I'm surprised they don't know me by name there. The awesome thing about this project is you can pick any color, pattern, or shape of dish that catches your eye and goes with your color scheme. I personally was looking for dishes for a blue, yellow, and white scheme. Here are a couple that I loved:

I love those scalloped edges

I don't mind "clashy" patterns as long as the combination of colors "feel" right to me. But I've been coming even a little more out of my comfort zone lately and clashing colors too (pillow post to come).

Another thing I'm REALLY into right now is texture! I look for it when I'm shopping for fabrics or trying to add a little something extra to any project really. So I kind of felt like I could make the collage more interesting with not only colors and patterns but with textures as well.

I FELL IN LOVE with this blue plate when I first saw it, aren't those edges beautiful?

This one was fun too. I love how much freedom you can have with this project!

Step 2: Prep Plates for Hanging:

The first thing I did when I got home was wash and dry plates. Dry the back of your plates really well. There are many different ways to hang plates on a wall: special hooks, those lovely metal plate holder things etc. I wanted a really clean look, so I cut some strips of (thick polyester) fabric about 3 inches long. You could obviously use some ribbon as well, I just happened to be out. Take the ends of the ribbon together and place them on a dot of hot glue on the back of the plate(Be very careful to not burn yourself!). I put my glue spot about an inch underneath the little edge on the bottom of the plate. After pressing the ribbon edges into the glue I took my glue gun and and covered the ends of the ribbon with glue as well for extra strength. And now you've got yourself a little hook to hang your plate.

It's not the prettiest sight, but no ones going to see it anyway and it gets the job done:)

Step 3: Hanging Your Plates

A lot of people have a different process when hanging/organizing a group of items on a wall. Lots of people will trace the item; in this case a plate, onto paper, cut them out and tape them to the wall to see how it will look. I on the other hand am not a very patient person and don't take the time to do that. Maybe my projects would look better if I took the time....hmm. I just organized my plates on my rug in different ways and then took a picture of each idea. Once I decided on the one I liked best, I measured/figured out where the center of my wall was, and then took the center plate and worked my way outward from there by looking at the picture that I took of the grouping I'd picked. But you can do whatever way makes most sense to you:)

Again like I said before, with this project you have LOTS of freedom, so you can organize your collage ANY way you'd like! I wanted an organized yet not organized/perfect looking collage if that makes any sense at all. It's like at first glance it looks symmetrical, but then your brain starts telling you that it's not. I like that. I'm weird.

This project is a lot of fun! It's great for someone who wants a decorating project but not something that's super hard, and it's nice for someone who who wants to take it a step further because you can spend A LOT of time getting creative with your plate selection. I think the best thing about this project is that there is no perfect way to have your collage look. What YOU personally like is all that matters!

And this is what I like:)

Guess who dropped the ball this Christmas...

Let me start out by saying that our Christmas was absolutely lovely this year. Really. The only thing missing was snow...uh and Christmas dinner. yup. I forgot Christmas dinner.

Let's back up. It all started the week before Christmas when Matt and I officially decided that we would have our first "real" Christmas this year. Meaning not hauling all of our gifts to my parents, spending the night, and opening our gifts at their house Christmas morning. We did that for 4 years, and were feeling done. I absolutely LOVE my family, but Matt and I have been wanting a low key Christmas where we do our own Christmas breakfast and gifts in our own home for a LONG time. So Christmas Eve we packed up (just) my family's gifts in the car and drove up to Bountiful to have our first Christmas Eve dinner with the Crows. My SIL Leah hosted and it was wonderful! She made the most delicious ham and lots of yummy sides. We spent a few hours in Bountiful and then rushed to my parents' house in Herriman. We had a lot of fun hanging out with my family and my mom made her amazing (salvadoran stlye) turkey. We exchanged gifts, watched some movies, and headed home to sleep in our own bed:)

Christmas morning was a dream! We watched the Christmas devotional in bed, went to church, and then came home and opened gifts. I made Christmas breakfast including Matt's very favorite sausage and cheese biscuits and we spent a wonderful relaxing morning together. Come 2 O'clock Matt asks me "So what's for Christmas dinner?". The only reply I could give was a blank stare. I'd COMPLETELY forgotten Christmas dinner. The day before Christmas Eve, I did all of my last minute shopping for gifts, food for Christmas breakfast, but no items even coming close to passing as a holiday dinner. Ball officially dropped.

In my defense most traditional Hispanic families(at least mine and most of the families I know) don't make a big deal about Christmas day. It all goes down on Christmas Eve. Not ONCE as a kid did we ever do a big Christmas dinner, and the past 4 years Matt and I have spent the holiday weekend with my family, we haven't done one either...so that only makes sense right?

Well, I still felt absolutely horrible. Here we are so excited that we are going to have our very first official Matt and Carolyn Crow family Christmas and we've got frozen pizzas, egg rolls, and wontons on the menu for our Christmas dinner. ugh. Matt was really sweet and laughed it off but I refused to believe him when he said that all of the grocery stores were closed so I threw on my shoes and proceeded to drive around Salt Lake. He was right, but it wasn't over yet. Although I was bummed about my slip up I refused to let it defeat me! The day AFTER Christmas I made the most delicious home made garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli and cheese casserole, steaks (Matt was ham and turkey'd out)and rolls for dinner. I set up the table with a pretty linen and candles and we sat down for a lovely "Christmas" dinner.

It's too bad that about 5 minutes in I was as SICK AS A DOG. All day I'd been feeling achy and had a sore throat, but my husband was getting a Christmas dinner darn it! By the time we sat down I had a fever, chills, swollen glands and felt sick to my stomach. Turns out I caught a NASTY virus and would later get pink eye on top of it:) I'm so glad 2011 is over.

If you've made it through this post kudos to you! I'm a pretty terrible story teller. Your reward is that you made it to the picture part of the post:)

The night before I realized how horrible of a wife I am:)

I caught them sitting together under the tree

The tree

Since we got Mr. Bruce this year we decided to get a puppy for our 2011 ornament

...we got a beagle too so Killer wouldn't be jealous:)

We decorate new stockings every year. In Matt's defense he was working double shifts for the two weeks before Christmas so he didn't really get a chance to decorate his.

He did start his stocking and then Killer got a hold of it and ate half of Matt's name

This was mine. The glitter pens don't photograph very well but the finished product was pretty cool looking.

Killer's

Brucey's

Call me lame but I love my dogs! Don't worry their stockings only took me about 10 mins. each and they each only got some raw hide and puppy treats for Christmas, so I'm not that crazy. right?

Warren.

Back in October I got to go with this handsome fella...



...to see this brilliant man perform live




Warren Haynes (of the Allman Brothers) came to The Depot in SLC; which is now officially my favorite venue in Salt Lake. It has a very intimate atmosphere and the sound/acoustics are amazing because you're not in a gigantic arena. We showed up a couple of hours early because the tickets were general admission, but it was WELL WORTH IT, to end up smack dab at Warren's feet. The concert was delayed about an hour and half because the band's flight was delayed, but Warren came out before his band got there to play some solo acoustic stuff for the crowd. He is such an intense and sincere performer that he puts on a great show even without a band. Overall the show was beyond amazing.


During the show Warren would throw a pick out into the crowd after he had played with it and I got one of them, and Matt was given Warren Haynes' set list during the intermission. After the concert we were like giddy school girls walking out of the venue with our memorabilia, when all of the sudden we spot Warren with a small group of people around him! We went straight up to him got an autograph, exchanged a few words and shook his hand. I couldn't believe that after a long night of performing he STILL came out to sign autographs. He was a very humble and gracious southern man. Matt and I were pretty smitten lol.




In other news my little (sister) Lilly turned 6! Holy cow that went by fast. I still remember getting a call from my mom while I was away at Utah State, telling me that she was going into labor and for me to come home as soon as I possibly could after my finals. Lilly and I have such a special little bond and I am so grateful for that. She's my little buddy:)


We celebrated her birthday with my family on the actual day and then had a little sleepover the following weekend with Laurel and Addie:)




Posin' with the cake:) Lilly wanted a Barbie cake and Laurel and Addie were GREAT helpers with decorating the cake and picking out the Barbie. Don't you love the proportions of Godzilla Barbie to the little ocean lol???








The girls HAD to have a picture in front of the tree...




Happy Girls:)

Happy Birthday Lilly bug!


*Christmas related post to come soon:)