List of Twenty Four: Things I'd Love to Do

This list is constantly changing, and has even been transformed multiple times.  This is actually a list I think I've been making (and re-making) my whole life.  Thanks to my dad's constant goal-setting lessons.  Some of these are goals, and some of these are wishes...

1. Be in a Musical
2. Live in NYC for a while
3. Watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
4. See a concert of some sort in London
5. See Adele in concert
6. Learn pattern-making and create my own clothes
7. Illustrate a Children's Book
8. Watch all the Star Wars movies in one day
9. Become a more proficient Art Historian
10. Learn Tchaikovsky's "grand pas de deux" on the piano
11. Become a gluten-free baker
12. Take ballet classes again
13. Learn to play tennis
14. Learn to ICE SKATE (like Michelle-Kwan-style)
15. Go to the Grand Ole Opry
16. Sleep on an overnight train
17. Go skydiving
18. Learn to re-upholster furniture
19. Buy a fixer-upper and completely re-design and decorate it
20. Meet Prince William and Princess Kate
21. Earn a Masters Degree
22. Get sealed in the Temple
23. Design my own Wedding Dress
24. Have a baby (or actually maybe a few)

(hahaha See?! I've secretly ALWAYS wanted to be in a musical;

thank you dearest sister Sophie and cousin Kirsten for making

my dreams come true!!)

Grateful for:
Kindness.


Quote of the day:
"You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights."
--Dr. Seuss

All I Want for Christmas...

I already know what I want for Christmas!  The 1986 NUTCRACKER MOVIE.  When I was really little, I used to watch our tv-recorded version over and over and over and over in our apartment, and then I'd dance around our living room to our nutcracker cassette tape.  It truly inspired all the years I took ballet/lyrical/jazz, and even gymnastics and drill team dance classes.  I really think it's the reason I LOVE classical music (the secret's out!!), and I'm not kidding; cry when I go to a ballet. 

With sets conceived by Maurice Sednak (who wrote "In the Night Kitchen" and "Where the Wild Things Are") it is unabashedly 80's-tastic with its gross overuse of pastels and too many velvet-y textures, but I think that's what makes it such a delightful, dreamy masterpiece.  It's waaay too under-rated, but this overly-sugary-almost-indulgent rendition of one of the most famous ballets of all time is very much my  favorite.

My breath still catches in my chest when I find a clip of the Prince and Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux on random websites (and yes, I'm always searching for them!).  Patricia Barker's technique is an outrageous combination of perfect technique and delicacy.  25 years later, it seems like ballet has become much more athletic and forceful and striking.  1986 was right in the peak of this explosion of soft colors and makeup and too many fabric flowers--and the result in the world of ballet was this smooth, delicate, sweeter technique.  I love it.  Even if it means the Nutcracker Prince himself is a slightly scrawny dude.. and has a creeper mustache... it's alright, I still get a crush on him when I watch him dance in this pas de deux.

Seriously!!  Crazy legit talent and grace!

(I won't make you look at his face up close...)

It's decided.  I shall buy it for myself for Christmas.  I may need to buy a VHS player as well.

Grateful for: My mum.

Quote of the day:
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway."
-Eleanor Roosevelt