vote for leko!

the alumni association at our university is having an alumni pet contest for valentine's day.  of course we just had to enter a picture of our pride and joy!

the pet with the most "likes" wins.  to vote, click here to view the alumni association's pet contest photo album, click on leko's photo, and click the "like" button.

vote for this cute guy and tell everyone you know to vote too!!!

love, laurie

a clever props master

ryan's aunt sandy emailed me this article that she found in quiltmaker magazine called "a token of appreciation" and i love that it shows how our theatre industry rallied their sewing machines and 3-D printers to help make masks and face shields during the pandemic.  this props master came up with a clever way to acknowledge the machines that worked during this time.  nice to see a little good news.  thanks for the article, aunt sandy!

love, laurie

yeah, sometimes our smart devices can be insulting

we love all of the technology and the devices that make our home smarter and our lives easier, but every once in a while they take on a life of their own and say/do the strangest things.  

we've worn our apple watches and loved them for over 4 years now, which is why i had a good laugh when the holderness family made this video about if the apple watch was a person.

as a bonus, i stumbled across another video on facebook where a clever girl did an amazon alexa parody to the "a little bit alexis" song from the "schitt's creek" tv show.  oh i'm laughing!

enjoy!

love, laurie

celebrate your spouse today!

today is national spouses day and i don't mind having an excuse to rave about my incredible spouse!  here are a few photos of us from this past year.  

hey, ryan . . . you're my best friend and i thank the universe every single day that i get to spend my life with you.  together we're my favorite team!

love, laurie

some snapshots from the weekend

ryan had to work all weekend, but leko and i were able to get a lot done at home.  the weekend was filled with grocery shopping, trying new recipes in the instant pot, a long talk on the phone with a friend, several loads of laundry, a much needed tire alignment for my car, a much needed car wash for ryan's truck, working out at home with a screaming kitten, finally getting around to sewing 3 pairs of pants and a tablecloth, finally getting around to updating the outdated operating system on the ipad, clearing tons of files off the desktop computer, trying out a new nail polish color, and catching up on tv shows with a kitten on my lap.

love, laurie

we're here for the bernie memes!

by far some of the best entertainment to come out of this week has been the plethora of memes about bernie sanders at the inauguration.  there are dozens and dozens of them flooding the internet and they're all so, so good.  the holderness family picked out a few of the memes and, of course, wrote a song about it to keep us all entertained.

happy friday!

love, laurie

national hug day

january 21st is national hug day (not that we need any excuse to give our beautiful little fur baby a hug)!  

you may not want to go around hugging strangers today since we're in a pandemic, but remember to give your loved ones an extra squeeze today in honor of national hug day!

hugging releases oxytocin which can help you feel better, reduce stress, lower blood pressure, reduce pain, ease anxiety, and sleep better.

spread love (but not germs!)

love, laurie

hello, spring semester

we're back to classes today at the university where i teach.  fingers crossed for a smooth spring semester.

love, laurie

what we've been watching lately

even though we're in a pandemic, we're still plenty busy with our various jobs.  however, we do have a little more free time most nights due to the fact that we're not in theatres as much working as many shows.  when it's cold outside, we can't spend our evenings hiking, biking, etc. so we've been snuggling up on the couch in our pjs with leko.  here are a few of the series we've been watching recently . . .

girl meets farm

superstore

you

dead to me

high seas

virgin river

sweet magnolias

tiny pretty things

bridgerton

on pointe

the magic of disney's animal kingdom

what else is good?

love, laurie

happy monday!

here's something beautiful to start off the week . . . students from the dance theatre of harlem dancing around new york city!

Stunning — students from the Dance Theatre of Harlem dancing in New York City 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿
pic.twitter.com/KpxwfN5Tay

— Karine Jean-Pierre (@K_JeanPierre) October 18, 2020

have a lovely monday!

love, laurie 

thanks, holderness family

thanks to the the holderness family for keeping us entertained when the world seems too crazy to take.  here's their latest.  happy friday!

love, laurie

playing with lights video

i mentioned yesterday that we had fun this week playing with lights in the theatre.  here is the finished promo video that was shot over two days on our stage.  i love how it turned out.

love, laurie

playing with lights

one of the companies that we work with frequently in our theatre recently purchased new lights.  they wanted to come to our venue to set up the new lights on our stage in order to get some video of the lights in action to use as promotional footage to encourage clients to rent the lights.  

we had a lot of fun over the course of the last two days playing with these new lights on stage.  they filmed their video and i took a ton of photos (over 90!) of the lights doing all sorts of neat effects.  their promo video turned out great!

here are just a few of the many photos i took while we were playing with the lights . . .

love, laurie

birthday celebrations

since my birthday fell on a wednesday last week, we all got together to celebrate this past weekend on saturday.  my parents and ryan's parents came up to our house for dinner and dessert.

for dinner, we made cauliflower stuffed shells with butternut squash sauce, balsamic spinach with mushrooms, and lemon parm green beans with pine nuts.  yum!

for dessert, i made an oreo confetti cake.  it was three layers of cake with fudge in between the layers, covered in cream cheese frosting, and dripped with chocolate ganache!!!  i love the look of how it turned out and it was tasty too!

after dessert i opened presents from my parents and ryan's parents.  it was so nice to get everyone together.

love, laurie

leko's own theatre

for leko's ninth adoption anniversary last week, we bought him this adorable double decker theatre-themed cat scratcher house that we found on sale at target.  we thought it was absolutely the cutest thing since we work in the theatre and the fact that it has nutcrackers around the outside of it really sealed the deal.

it was delivered last monday and we promptly assembled it when we got home from work.  leko investigated it, but refused to go in it.  during the week, i tried to coax him into it by putting his dinner plate inside.  finally on saturday, i looked over and saw that he got in it all by himself!  i grabbed the phone to snap photos to show ryan!

his little face peering out of the box office window was just too cute!

love, laurie

we're not setting new year's resolutions for 2021 but we are guiding the year with "answers"

we've never been ones for resolutions, but we have set some goals in the past at the start of each new year.  this year, for the most part, we're just gonna roll with 2021 and see how it goes.

thanks to the holderness family for continuing to make us laugh as we start a new year!

also, this keeps circling the internet and let's all agree to be good, please . . .

recently, someone said "there are years that ask questions and years that answer them."  last year was definitely a year of questions, so this year is going to be a year of answers.  i like that.

love, laurie

around the theatre

even though we didn't have a show the week between christmas and new years, we were in the theatre doing a little bit of work on the stage.  i always love when it's quiet in there and it's just the two of us working.

after work, it was time to take advantage of the long, long hallways at work and practice on the hoverboard that ryan bought us for christmas.  we didn't want to break our bodies so we got one of the walkers out of storage and used it as "training wheels" to get our balance on the hoverboard!  we were laughing so hard at the sight of this!

love, laurie

it's my birthday!

okay, 36 . . . here we go!

love, laurie

ringing in the new year

we celebrated new year's eve on thursday with our families at ryan's parents' house.  we got together to eat (of course) and watch the christmas vacation movie.  we had a lot of fun playing with their kittens too!

on saturday we went down to my parents' house and spent the day with them (eating again, of course) and watching some netflix while loving up their kittens!

the common theme for ringing in the new year was definitely eating, kitty loving, and sitting on the couch to watch tv.  not a bad way to say goodbye to 2020 and welcome 2021 if i do say so myself!

happy new year!

love, laurie