One more week (and a month) to go...

This past week has been awesome, in varying levels of awesome-ness. Of course, that means that with the good there was bad. Here is a photo montage of cool stuff and random-ness.

Photo #1: Amanda with a mask. She was using toxic smelling glue and doesn't want her unborn baby to have two heads.

Photo#2: A $3.00 CD in a $5.00 bin. Awesome. I did find a really great CD of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson on VH1 Storytellers. Only five bucks!
Photo #3: A costume idea that represents Utah for the upcoming Mrs. America pageant.
Hopefully it works out. We talked about her ideas and I sketched this out. It's for an former neighbor of my parents who is heading to the pageant this week. Vote for her here!

Photo #4: My set for Aristophanes' The Birds, for design studies. It's due tomorrow!

Photo#5 Eeep!

Nah, I'm just kidding. It's totally a joke.

Photo #6 Our new computer.
Our old one bit the dust so we gave in and bought a new one. It's so tiny!

And, with that, I'm going to sleep. It's been a long, productive weekend!

Oh! This is for Jenny:

Banana Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs at room temperature

2 large very ripe bananas, pureed

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Line muffin tins with cupcake liners (I wound up with about 40 cupcakes finished.)

Combine flours in a small bowl, set aside for later use. Add vanilla to the milk, set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter until smooth with an electric mixer. Gradually add the sugar and beat until fluffy. Add the eggs, one a time and beat well after each addition. Add banana puree, blend well. Add the dry ingredients in parts, alternating with the milk/vanilla mixture. Beat well but don't over beat. Fill the muffin tins 2/3 full, bake for 15-20 minutes until a cake tester is inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes in the tins for 15 minutes and then finish cooling on a wire rack before icing.

Hey Jenny, I fixed it! Now the banana cupcakes actually contain banana!

Okay, now I just feel like it's overkill....

Okay, so I realize I've posted a lot of pictures of this set but I hadn't posted any with the cool lights we have in class. So, it's okay...right?

Seriously though, I did add a few extra bits to the living room, namely the sconces and the junk above the fireplace. I think it really adds to it.

If I had really been ambitious I would have made the items dimensional. Seriously though, if cutting pictures out of a magazine gets the job done, I'll fall back on that.

And, here is ACT II with the painted backdrop.

I'm so glad this project is over!

Grey Gardens set design

As I am typing this entry it is 3:09...AM. Yep, I stayed up late but I FINISHED! Apparently we each get a turn to stay up late doing homework. Yesterday James was up until 4:30 finishing assignments. I'm surprised he made it through today. He's a champ and I love him

Any who...

I'll just add captions to these since I'm not really up for witty comments (then again, I'm not really that funny at other times.)
An aerial view of the main room/entry/drawing room set with 1/4" scale figure. My FAVORITE adirondack chair and the rocking chair of death (it kept tipping over so I filed the bottom flat.)

ACT I, full stage setting.
A full view of ACT II, all scenes combined. It's really crazy looking but that's sort of how it's supposed to be.This is another view of ACT I with the porch piece flown in. I'm not sure how I feel about it but it's 3:15 AM and it's due in less than six hours.

I wasn't too hip on the faded garden backdrop so I tried a different approach. I found a really cool painting of the Grey Gardens house on-line so I printed it out, glued it to illustration board and painted over the top. It really gives the set a different look.
ACT I with the porch piece.
ACT I without porch.
ACT I garden piece. I'm really pleased with how this piece turned out because it looked straight out of Camelot before I added the vegetation stuff.
And ACT I again. Apparently I didn't take any pictures of the ACT II set up with the painted backdrop. I'll let you use your imaginations...

SPRING BREAK!!!!

So the title is almost the same as the last one but there is a slight difference. Can you tell? Do you know? Okay, it's an extra !. I'm a little too tired to make up an exciting title for this entry. Spring break has consisted of homework, mainly. I finished writing a paper for my theory class and I worked on my set design for Grey Gardens. It kind of makes me feel ill when I realize how many small things I still need to do to finish the project. Ugh.The basic set for ACT I, set in the 30's in a summerhouse in the Hamptons.
And the set up for ACT II, same house but in the seventies. I realized after how crooked the picture wound up being. Oops. I really should just use my camera. Oh well!

The rest of the break was broken up like this:

Tuesday: New haircuts for me and James. Nothing super different, but needed!

Wednesday:Lunch at Applebee's with Grandpa Keller, it was a lot of fun!

Thursday: I had lunch with my friend Erin and then James and I visited his old boss, Esther, at the landfill. It was really fun, honest.

Friday: James had a gig at Flirts (complete with a belly dancer in between the band's sets. Weird!) I went out to dinner with his parents and worked on my set.

Saturday: Lunch with James' family and grocery shopping back home.

Is it weird that I feel like I need a break from the break?

Oh! I forgot to write about a REALLY weird dream I had during the break:

Apparently USU was preparing to stage Black Swan: the play! and I had been involved in learning the choreography during the rehearsal process. This would have been fine except for the fact that I can't make my feet move and my tights keep falling down. I'm in the dressing room, trying to help the other dancers with their make-up and one of the writers/directors/person in charge comes up to me and demands to know why I didn't say any of my lines. I told them that I didn't have any lines, I was just learning choreography. Then they tell me that I'm supposed to be the lead! Ahhhh! Scary! The funny thing was that we had a bunch of "guest artists" including Janeel Junker, Marci Muhlstein and Andrew Joy. It was so bizarre! Next thing I know I'm trying to convince the people in charge that Marci would be a much better choice and I start safety pinning the costume on to her because it's too big.

Ugh, I hate dreams like that! I don't even like letting people down or slacking off in my dreams.

SPRING BREAK!!!

Or, spring break-down could be a more apt description for today. I had an awful paper to write for a theory class and I was having a really rough time getting it together. A few hours and a crying session with James later and I had a first draft sent to my Mom for feedback. It was amazing how much better I felt about everything after that. Honestly. I'll finish and submit it on Monday. Awesome.

I also made a miniature baby grand piano for my set design class.
It still needs paint and details but it's basically there! We're sharing furniture for the class and I volunteered to make the piano. I'm going to make the rest of my furniture just in case I want to include this project in my portfolio. Spooky.

I'm glad that the break has started, I know that we both are in sore need of a break.

Oh! I have a funny story to tell about my cute new sandals:

They were supposed to arrive on Thursday which corresponded with James' field trip to Elko (the engineers have ALL the fun) but when I got home they weren't there. I didn't really think too much of it until my old roommate texted me. Her grandparents left her a message about a box that arrived for me, at their house. I thought about it for a second and realized that the last time I had ordered from 6pm was when I bought my wedding shoes when I was still living at the grandparents house. It was pretty funny. I picked them up the next day and they are WONDERFUL! I'm so excited to wear them because they are so comfortable and cute in a slightly hippie way.

That is all.