And All That Jazz!

There comes a time in every young woman's life when she is forced to clean out her costume closet at her parents' house.

That day came for me today.  My mom wants to put some of my grandmother's things in the closet formerly known as my costume closet, so my things have to skeedaddle.  As I was clearing it out with my dad, I looked at him and said, "You know, at some point in my life, you spent money on all this stuff."  I have a feeling that Lila might be my payback...and I don't mean a financial payback.

 If you happen to need black character shoes, black tap shoes, black jazz shoes, tan character shoes, or tan character shoes with taps in a size 8, let me know.  I might know someone who has some.

I thought I might give you a general overview of the types of ensembles you could put together upon perusing my costume closet.

Now this is a nice combination of sparkly top hat and gold embellished vest.  The vest was actually a vest that my mother used to wear.  Very lovely.

There is certainly no lack of sparkle in this closet.  This jacket I wore as a gangster in one of my dance recitals.  I am not sure what type of gangster I was supposed to be.  The next year I was a gangster too, but I wore maroon velour pants and a maroon pleather jacket that year.  The graduation cap from 2005 is a nice finishing touch.

My mother wore this lovely little number as a bridesmaid in a wedding.  I thought about paring it with a beret, but I think it holds its own very nicely.

This dress I actually really do like and wore to many a 70s day at school.  I found it in my grandmother's basement after she passed away.  I also found a fabulous black Breakfast at Tiffany's style dress that my sister wore to one of her high school dances.  

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, folks.  I'm holding on to all of it because I loved playing dress up in my mom's old clothes, and I'm hoping that Lila will enjoy it with mine.  My circle of friends also has an exponentially larger amount of costume parties than anyone else that I know.  Just wait for Lila's upcoming first birthday.

I'm Ready for My Close-Up, Mr. Brown

I'm sure that most of you know me from my extensive theatre career at Blue Valley North High School.  My talents and abilities ranged from roles like Girl At Party in Dylan to Caterpillar/Centipede (I don't remember which it was) in James and the Giant Peach.



While I was busy memorizing all my lines like "Is Dylan Thomas at this party?" and stick out tongue at Young Cosette, I also participated in BVN's improv group, Comedy Troupe (or Comedy Club as my mom still likes to call it).  Now I didn't actually "audition" or "have talent" for this Comedy Troupe.  For some reason my Freshman year, the Senior boys who were already in it decided that they liked me and would put me in as a sort of pet if you will, so I did shows for four years without really deserving to be there at all.

Long story short, I really did enjoy all the time I spent performing throughout high school.  I also loved teaching drama and improv along with directing Little Shop of Horrors at my last school in Philadelphia.



Since Lila seems to be taking forever to learn improv games and show tune lyrics, I was really missing the proverbial spotlight.  Lucky for me, Brian our youth pastor at church, let me take over the game portion of youth group on Wednesday nights.  The kids are super talented, and I love watching them learn the improv games and make everyone laugh.  We had a lot of fun tonight playing Questions Only, The Alphabet Game, and Freeze.

It's always a good time when you have scenes involving llama poop, snipers aiming at Luigi, and lots of yelling for no apparent reason.