The Perfect Winter

I don't know about your hometown, but this LA weather has been super bizarre. One day it's freezing and all the clouds are black, then the next day it's beautiful outside, 80 degrees, and sunny. Can you say global warming? Anyway....

Chris and I are so excited about winter that we've already broken out the wool socks, beanies, fleece blankets, and candles. We've also already started to plan our trip to Park City with my sister and her boyfriend to visit my Aunt and Uncle for the Sundance Film Festival in January!

Due to my excitement, I'm going to ignore the perfectly sunny day outside, take advantage of my day off, pour another cup of tea, and show you a few things we love about winter!

Tea! A few of my favorites are PG Tips, English Breakfast, Green, and Peppermint! 

Dates by the fireplace! Chris is a picnic pro, inside or out of the house. I can always count on him to prepare a delicious snack for fireplace hang times.

Candles! You can never have too many candles. The best thing about winter candles are the amazing seasonal scents. My favorites: pumpkin, cinnamon, and spiced apple!

Cozy Socks! Well, all winter clothing will do.

As you may have read in other posts, this year has been filled with many firsts for us. This winter we'll be able to add so many more to the list!

- Chris's first Thanksgiving in the US

- Chris's first winter Christmas

- Our first Christmas together

- His first time seeing me perform in a ballet

xx D

Wedding Arms

Youtube has become my personal trainer and I'm absolutely loving it. $100 a session my ass, free is the way to go. I've been searching youtube for easy workouts I can do at home in between planning, running errands, and working.  

I've promised to not give up on my wedding body even with the stresses of everything and I figured I'd start from the top and work my way down so I don't get too overwhelmed.

My favorite video so far is for Wedding Arms, although I'm sure they'll look hot for any occasion ;) For these exercises I use 3 lb weights, but as she suggests in the video, the exercise is still helping even if you're holding nothing. Did you hear that?... Nothing, so no excuses.

Don't feel bad if you don't get through the whole video.... because then I'll have to feel bad for not finishing it either. Baby steps guys.

However, I do have to warn you, this chick can be super entertaining. Don't get distracted by her high voice and enthusiasm.

Now squeeze into that spandex click here, and enjoy!

before...

after...

Side note: I've decided that everyone who chooses to get married should get appointed a fairy godmother or godfather to magically help with all the wedding plans. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually having the time of my life, but I'm feeling a bit scatter brains at the moment.

xx D

Our not so Drunch Brunch.

So, Chris arrived at LAX on thursday night and I've been pretty distracted  from anything els since he's gotten back. It's weird how being apart from him feels harder now than ever. I wasn't expecting all the butterflies in my stomach driving into LAX. 

Even though he was on tour for only about 2.5 weeks, it reminded me of the difficult times living in separate countries. All the work and changes we went through to live in the same country and here we were skyping again. Of course it's not the same, but I've clearly developed a love/hate relationship with skype. Nonetheless, it's amazing to have my best friend back in town and to get a little extra help on our final wedding plans. Only 26 days!!!

To celebrate his return and get started on some wedding projects, we decided that on Saturday we would get out of the house as soon as I had returned from teaching my regular summer dance classes. 

First stop, Bloody Mary's! 

We decided to head to Echo Park to a fairly new restaurant/bar, Mowhawk Bend.

Chris and I are both big fans of Bloody Mary's and who on earth doesn't love a good drunch? (drunk brunch). Unfortunately we were too late to enjoy a brunch so we went with appetizers instead. Sweet potato fries and wing style cauliflower.  

I'm just going to be completely honest here and say that we weren't very impressed. I really wanted to like this place for a few different reasons, i've heard amazing things about their beers and the fact that they have 72 on tap. The fact that they only serve locally sourced food and drinks was also pretty enticing, as the carbon footprint discussion was one often had, growing up in my family's home.  Either way, the food isn't good enough for me to even recommend. And i'm afraid to say my Bloody Mary was more like tomato juice and a bit of vodka. Looks pretty good though, don't you think?

I've decided to save the second half of this post until AFTER our wedding. It involves our personalized wedding favors and I don't want to give away too much yet ;)

xxD

Who Disney Desires

This morning I work up around 8am to get ready for an audition for a live stage show at Disneyland. It's about an hour drive to the park, and maybe even and hour thirty during rush hour and on weekends.  Not exactly something I want to be contractually obligated to do. To be honest, I've never had any desire whatsoever to work at Disneyland, although I do know many dancers do. To me it's always seemed like a job you went for when you didn't have any other auditions coming your way, or when you were really wanting extra money. Oh boy was I wrong. 

First of all, some of these dancers were F-I-E-R-C-E! The combo was a tid bit more hip-hop-ey than what's in my comfort zone, but after learning the combo and the comfy pay rate, I turned on the power. there were about 100 dancers all together, most with agency's like myself, and a few freelance dancers. We all learned the combo together and were called 5 at a time to dance twice in front of the casting directors and choreographer. 

Something I was never taught in the ballet world but have learned from years of experience in the commercial dance world, is improv! There are always a few eight counts of music to get you prepared to break out the combo. Well, you don't want to look like an idiot waiting for the dance to start so you have to improv. One thing i've caught on to (although I wish I knew this earlier) is to show off your expertise, even if it may not be exactly in the style of dance you're auditioning for. For example, my forte is ballet, so I'm not going to pop my booty or do split jumps even if it's a hip-hop or lyrical audition. No, I'm the girl doing fouettes in heels to a grand jeté.

To make a long story short, I was in the very last group and by this time I had a pretty good idea of the people the were watching... short, hip-hop training, and DISNEY.... basically everything i'm not. Anyway, after attempting to make fouettes look mildly funky, i'm afraid I looked a little more classically trained than I wanted too, and I got cut. So, I rewarded myself for even going and went to in-n-out for lunch. The end. haha.

Bye bye free park entry passes!

xx D