White walls are boring.

Just moved into a new apartment. A permanent, temporary home to live when I am in SLC. Which looks like it might be for the whole summer! So this is the project that we took on. The apartment was a one bedroom with a huge, some what divided, front room. Well we decided to make it our project and for much cheaper rent we turned it into a two bedroom!


These are the white walls before we splattered our personality and creativity all over them. The far room with the balcony is now my bedroom after we divided it with curtains and a faux-wall using various mirrors, clocks and photos, and of course some of our personal artwork :) and the boring white walls had to go as well. Most people do a little planning before painting but I just picked up a pencil and as I started drawing, Jeffrey started painting. It was very spontaneous and we let them creativity juices flow! It now looks like this.


Furniture from DI- $100
Paint/curtains/supplies- $20
Opportunity to get your hands dirty and make something your own
and then have your cat slowly destroy it all...... - PRICELESS!

oh 2009.

It is really hard for me to imagine 2010 to be better than 2009. It was a pretty awesome year.

The easiest way for me to categorize the years and events in my brain is by associating them with what shows I was in. I am sure many of you theater people understand. Here is a quick list of things I liked about this year, sorted by show.

THIS IS YOUR LIFE! (on tour through the east coast)
-met a crazy girl, who likes to call herself my friend, named Lizzie.
-strengthened the family ties with my long lost brother Allan.
-Got to travel spending virtually not a dime of my own money. :)
-oh yeah, and I enjoyed teaching kids valuable lessons through the art of the theater...yadda yadda yadda.

GUYS AND DOLLS! (Sugar Factory Playhouse)
- Choreographed my first full length musical!
-Strengthened the family ties with the ma and pa.
-learned to re-appreciate the dedication and passion of a community theater...yadda

GREASE! (J-Hole)
-managed a restaurant like a real grown-up.
-had annoying songs running constantly through my brain.
- made lasting friendships based on the fact we had similar things to complain about.
-lived in the middle of fascinating wildlife and scenery all summer long.. (that i never got a chance to appreciate.)

GREECE!(Not a show, just a country)
um...just plain amazing.. thats all.

CHRISTMAS SHOW! (j-hole, round 2)
-100% freedom as an actor and choreographer. (sometimes its just easier to have someone else tell you what to do)
-By January 3 learned almost all the lyrics to pretty much every Christmas song ever written.
-slept in everyday, in a cute cabin, in the middle of a winter wonderland....can't complain.
-Tried very hard to impersonate Rosemary Clooney, and then gave up cause no one knows who she is anyway.

SOOOO.
-First year out of school- Holla! Hard work pays off.
- Hit approximately 15-20 states and 4 countries!
- Gained some friends.- (weird I know)
-Had a lot of fun. Who knew that being a grown up would be so much fun?!



NEXT YEAR>>>>>hmmmm

-5 countries?? or better, more than a month in one foreign country.....Yes.
-survive another year with out a boring 9-5 job.
-lose 5 pounds.. work-out everyday....oh! be able to do the splits again.
-eat less sugar --GASP---i know. :(
-Be a better friend. This is no secret. I suck at keeping up good friendships.
-find an adorable place to call home, even when I am away for long times.
- be a better mom to my kitty. I will start by not forcing him to stay in my arms while I pretend that he is a cuddly kitty.
- learn how to format my blog so it doesn't look like a three year old uploaded and spaced it.(Just added this last one as I am trying to put up pictures, looks like you don't get pictures this week.)
- I am also up for some friendly criticism on 2010 goals.

peace.

What are YOU Thankful for?

My cat, FAMILY, great friends, a country where I can do what I love.
Oreos, Dr. Pepper, candy, CHOCOLATE,orange chicken.
the power of music, GOD, freedom of EXPRESSION, discovery, COMPASSION
Theatre, LOTS OF LAUGHTER, game night, MY DOG, health, HUGS
Kareoke, POKER NIGHT, fuzzy blankets, UN-BORING CAREER, CSI at two am.
HOT showers, FRANK SINATRA, mashed potatoes and gravy, dollar menus and YOU Seriously.

The long awaited video

Lizzie put this together.

Delphi, Athens and Rome.

The last week of our trip!
(the temple of Athena. Painted Camouflage.)


DELPHI
It was a struggle getting to Delphi because this was our first real experience where NOBODY spoke English and we couldn't even tell what the road signs were saying. So we hopped on a few buses and just crossed our fingers that it was taking us the right place. We even rode for free because we didn't really understand the whole buying a ticket process. (ooopsy)

Delphi was great we took a short pilgrimage up half way to the Sanctuary of Apollo (just like Socrates and many others) but unfortunately the top portion of the ruins is closed because it was built on a giant fault and it may crumble at any moment. We also saw the training grounds of some original Olympic athleates. Lizzie and I even ran a foot race on the track. Guess who won?
We were lucky to just barely miss the rainy day in Delphi and we headed out of town back to Athens.

ATHENS!
(this is the temple of Thesion in Agora)
We saw way too many ruins for me to tell you each one. Ruins were literally around every corner, surrounded by shops and metro stations. The highlights for me were... the Parthenon actually all of the Acropolis. The theater of Dionysus and the Herod Atticus theater. I actually sang a note while standing (almost) on stage. Now I can say I have performed in those theaters :)
While the ruins were mind boggling and spectacular, Athens itself leaves much to be desired. I am glad we waited to the very end to see Athens cause it is much busier and less attractive than the islands. But I did like the bakeries on every corner, and the gyro places that lined the streets. We would order a gyro and before we had even finished, we had bought our selves a second. We watched the changing of the guards for quite a while, because it was very interesting the way they marched and such. (and the boys in uniform didn't hurt keeping our attention)
We stayed the night in the very finest of places. A youth hostel, six girls to a room and a shared bathroom, with a very loud sleeper who was growling in her sleep. Plus the ipod decided to stop working. I never thought I would wish to be sleeping on the beach again.

ROME

I know it seems pretty random to suddenly be in ROME! But we were pretty lucky to have a 14 hour layover in Rome. SO although Rome wasn't built in a day we put in a solid effort to see it all in a day. Unfortunaly the transportation methods getting to Rome weren't really going our way, and resulted in me being extremely cranky and hungry because we we only had a couple more hours of daylight to see EVERYTHING! Once we finally arrived we were very cranky but Lizzie and I can't kill each other now only because we have already made it this far. We caught one of those very touristy hop on hop off buses and within an hour had already seen the Colosseum and other major sites. We even got to the Vatican before it was too dark, but unfortunately couldn't get in. Just another reason we have to go back to Italy.
We then ate an authentic Italian meal and had gellato as the very last thing to eat in Europe. And yes it was fantastic.

Santorini Continued...

Sorry about the short one.. Internet time ran out.

So we spent the first night in Thira and in the morning decided to find a beach! well we walked from our hotel to the city and by the looks of our map, the beach couldn't be much farther in the opposite direction....or so we thought. We ended up walking an hour to the beach, which didn't have anything to offer for snorkeling anyway, so spent maybe 30 min at the beach and walked 1 1/2 hours back to the city. then we went out to the city of Oia. This city is famous for this photo op

. and the sunsets here are better than anywhere else. We casually walked through the streets taking many photos and talking to the very nice shop owners until it was time for the sunset. The streets are built all on top of eachother, and so you could easily hop onto the roof below you, and we saw all sorts of animals hanging out on rooftops. The sunset was quite spectacular, but we haven't had a night with out a beautiful sunset. We crammed into a very crowded bus and had dinner on a very romantic rooftop, dimmly lit with music and a view and couples in love. And then there was Lizzie and I. Awkward....

Food list

Greek salad (I was very disappointed, didn't realize that it didn't have lettuce, only more tomatos and cucumbers which i don't like)
More crepes

Lamb

CRETE!!....Er...Naxos?

So the next day we had our Ferry tickets in hand and went to double check our boat with the local ticket booth. The receptionist causally matter-of-factly told us it was cancelled. So we had a couple of options...stay in Santorini for a few days more or pick another island at random. We picked Naxos. and in less than an hour had to get ourselves on the boat.

Naxos, a town full of octopus and squid, was pretty big compared to the other islands. I am getting pretty good at bargaining for a hotel room and "Nick the Greek" took us to our hotel and was very friendly to tell us about all there was to do on this island. We decided to rent a four-wheeler and concour the island ourselves! We strapped on our bags the next morning and set out find whatever! We visited many little villiages through the very steep mountiany terrain, and stopped at this villiage, pretty much in the middle of no where for dinner. We went exploring through the little streets, as usual but the thing that was different with this city was that it wasn't near the coast. Meaning we had no landmark to find our way to the exit. We ended up wandering through the streets for over and hour, with no people around, just taking wild guesses on which corner to turn. It seems that the stairs up never ended. Fortuantly we found this little lady hanging laundry. YAY! unfortunatly she didn't speak english... she spoke French. So with the very little French I knew this little angel showed us the way to our ATV. We then went to a very remote beach and did some snorkeling and saw some more octopus and fishys. The sun was setting and we still didn't know where to stay the night. It was getting darker and darker and we still didn't have a hotel.. so we could either go back into town......or there was a very cool beach that we could camp on for free......hmm. We chose the adventure! although very cold, it was free and easy.

Santorini...the romantic destination.

So the island of Santorini is all built on a volcano, which means EVERYTHING is stairs. So after a long day of hiking to the beach and ten spending a day going up and down stairs, our legs are feeling it. But it was so worth the energy because the views are out of this world! Sorry i can't talk anymore! love you all!