Sunday 29 April 2012

Calamity Jane



Thursday night saw me going out to review a performance of Calamity Jane from the Newport Operatic Society.  I have to admit, I didn't really want to go as I was really tired as it was the first week back in school and work for everyone.   But anyway, I went and here's the review:

Calamity Jane is a stage play loosely based on tales from the life of Martha Jane Cannary and was developed from the classic 1953 Doris Day film of the same name. Newport Operatic Society¹s presentation features many new songs added for the stage production and also retains many of the favorites from the movie including The Deadwood Stage, A Woman¹s Touch and the Academy Award winning Secret Love. The whole cast was flawless in their singing of these songs and performance throughout the whole show.


From the moment she stepped on stage Jackie Robins as Katie Brown gave an impeccable performance, her rendition of Love You Dearly with Dafydd Lansley was marvelous. It was also clear to see that the audience were really enjoying Rachel Woodsford portrayal of Calamity Jane and Adrian Bevan as Wild Bill Hickock.


With a history that includes running an International Doris Day fan club, I was hoping for an outstanding performance from Martin Woodsford as Francis Fryer the rather shy performer. He didn¹t dissapoint, as he lit up the stage, playing the bumbling character to perfection, really playing up the part where he has to act in drag. I also really enjoyed watching the love story develop between Francis and Susan, played by Jodi Bennett.


The best song of the evening was the Ensemble singing The Black Hills of Dakota in which they managed to produce some beautiful harmonies.


The show runs at the Dolman Theatre until Saturday 28th April 2012.

Sunday 22 April 2012

Cutting trees

One last page for Shimelle's challenges as I won't get any more time tonight.  This was the quickest page ever, made with 1 sheet of patterned paper (Amy Tangerine's Work in Progress paper) which I cut of the strip at the bottom of the page which is the green paper hiding the join, then cut a strip approx 4" in and used the yellow side for most of the page and then the coordinating side for the rest of the page.  I added my picture and some Amy TangerineThickers for a title and some journalling.  This description has taken longer to write than the page did to make!  I made it for the Two Patterns challenge.




Document 2012 cover

As stated in this post I had planned to do Project Life this year.  I have my friends and family give me Amazon vouchers for Christmas and my February birthday so I could purchase the page protectors and the Turquoise core pack when they launched in February.  I couldn't wait and spent most of January planning the way it would work for me.

Then the debacle happened. Project Life instantaneously decided to change the way they would sell the product to their own website and delivery methods. They announced the products would go on sale at 4pm on the Wednesday afternoon but they web site immediately crashed and didn't come back up before I had to leave for work.  By the time I returned home, the site had sold out of all available stock for February and March with a product wait for May delivery and this was the case for the products I wanted.  The prices seemed quite reasonable until you went to check out your basket where VAT and shipping was added.

Eventually I decided against doing Project Life and started work on Document 2012, based on Shimelle's Document 2010. I'm using American Crafts divided page protectors from Sarah's Crafts and some 12x12 page protectors I already have.  I'm currently working on January and February as, if I'm honest I spent about another month in crisis trying to decide between them.  So far I'm finding Document 2012 really easy to do as I'm using the Evernote app in my iPod to make notes about what happens each day and the albums function in Picasa to store all then pix I want to use.

So to tie in with Shimelle's colour adventure challenge I created this title page for Document 2012.  Can't wait to show you January and February pages when their complete.





Use your Scraps with Amy Tan Layout

Having spent a fun week with the Andy and the kids doing lots of things - reviewing the show Out of the box and the accompanying workshop, visiting Carmarthen and going to Llansteffan Castle I came home exhausted late Friday night.  So yesterday, when I should have been putting the clothes away I had a couple of hours scrapbooking, here's the first page I made to tie in with Shimelle's online crop challenge of Use your Scraps with Amy Tan.  Here I've used a picture of my Grandmother (Mama) and my mum with the 3 kids and added some of scraps from the pages I made last weekend as well as some scraps that are older with some of my favorite Washi Tape.  I love it!




Tuesday 17 April 2012

Steps at CIA



Last Friday night S and I went to review the Step's concert in the CIA in Cardiff.  I was an amazing night, not only was I surprised by really good customer service (the first time I have received the tickets without any problems!) but Steps and their 2 warm up bands were awesome.

A great party was had by everyone in Cardiff's Motorpoint Arena while watching Steps and their friends on Friday night.


Shockolady was the first act on stage and one of her highlights was a disco version of Bennie and the Jets, including disco light boots.


The next act was former Miss World, Kamaliya who entertained us with Ibiza inspired dance anthems. Not just a pretty face, Kamaliya knows how to present a song that makes you get up and dance. This she demonstrated to perfection on her new single Arrhythmia when she was joined on stage by 6 dancers that displayed athleticism gymnastics.


Then it was Steps turn to take the stage. Their opening act included A Deeper Shade of Blue closely followed by a Steps Dance section enabling the audience to learn new dance routines to old favourites Last Thing on My Mind and Better Best Forgotten.


All 5 members of Steps individually showcased their own voices in a solo section. Highlights included Lee’s performance of Moves like Jagger and H singing Don't Stop Believing.


Steps were also supported on stage with 10 phenomenal dancers whose movements ranged from classic Steps disco pop to flamenco dancing and even dancing on roller skates!


Other Step-tacular highlights included When I Said Goodbye showcasing how strong their voices are and a Better the Devil You Know mash up with Judas by Lady Gaga.


The concert ended on a high with one of my favourite all time songs One for Sorrow followed by Steps new cover version of ABBA’s Dancing Queen and the BeeGee’s classic Tragedy.

Sunday 15 April 2012

St Fagan's

Wow, three layout's completed today!  It's amazing what you can do without the children around.  This layout is again from Shimelle's Online Scrapbooking Weekend and this time it's Challenge 10: Something Bold.  I have had this green paper in my collection for years and never really knew what to do with it.  When I saw Jill's layout in this challenge the first thing that came to my mind was this paper.  I used a really bold picture taken at St Fagan's and matched to red cardstock as closely as possible,  I love the way it has turned out, a great way to use and unusable paper!




Roar!

I'm back again with another challenge from Shimelle.This time it's Challenge 1 where we take inspiration from a layout that Shimelle chose.  Here's my interpretation of the layout:




Journalling Reads: probably the only time we have managed to get face paint on Jonathan, during a trip to Roath Park in 2008.

First day!

This weekend Shimelle is running an online crop with ideas and inspiration. As the kids are away I've allowed myself a few hours to take part and get some layouts done. The first one I decided to do was Challenge 9: Take Your Pick because it allowed me to look back at one of my favourite classes ever 4x6 Photo Love. I had 3 lovely pix of the kids on their first day in school on September 2011 so using the layout for 3 pix I created this page:




Thanks Shimelle for running these weekends as it really helps getting pages done.