recital dress

I have had a super hard time finding a dress for my recital. I have a dress that my mom bought me for my concert in October, but I wanted to find another one. I had gone to David's Bridal on sunday to look at dresses. I found a dress that I thought I liked but they didn't have it in my size.

Yesterday I called the store to find a store that had the dress in my size. Turns out, NO store in all of colorado has my dress. My only option would be to order it from NEW YORK and hope that it gets here in time. I didn't know if I wanted to chance that.

So last night, my wonderful boyfriend decided we should go look at more dresses. I wanted to make sure what dress I want before I order it. I spent an hour trying on different dresses in 3 totally different sizes (because every dress fit differently...of course). I was so glad to have Daniel there! He was SUCH a good sport and was a huge help!!

And now I have a really pretty dress that looks like this:

I want to run and hide!

When I get stressed, my only desire is to run and hide under my covers, ignoring that I have to do anything! I find myself longing to have "free time" or "veg time". Movies, tv shows, and the internet scream my name, as if plopping myself down to watch something would make my to-do list vanish into space!
Through many years of dealing with this, I have learned that procrastinating just makes my stress worse. When I AM productive, it does not turn out to be as time consuming and difficult as I had thought.

So why is it that I still hear my covers calling my name? Why is it that, when my to-do list reaches the ceiling, it is still SO hard to get out of bed and actually tackle it? Have I learned nothing in the last 20 years?

That being said, today I vow to be productive!

Avalanche

Last night Daniel and I went to an Avalanche Hockey game. We had so much fun! We got tickets from my friend, Stephanie. Stephanie and I roomed together my freshman year of college. 

We tried to take our own self-portrait....

 

     ...then Stephanie helped us out by taking our picture.

We sat across from the net. It was fun to watch the goalie!

Unfortunately all of the goals were scored at the other end of the rink and the Avs lost in overtime.

But it was a great game and a really fun opportunity that we were excited to have!

Thanks Steph!

A Fine Line

This weekend I watched the movie, "Black Swan". I left the theater shocked by how accurately the movie captured the struggle performers experience. The movie very accurately portrayed the fine line between driving for perfection and letting your emotions flow through your performance. A performer spends hours slaving away to the perfection of their art, then must let all of that go during the performance. They must trust the work they have put in and let go, letting their emotions fill them and spill out into the music.

As a performer I have struggled with this awkward moment several times. Particularly, i am struggling with it now, as I prepare for my recital. Right now I am struggling with Bach. I put in the effort learning the notes and memorizing. I am able to reach a state of comfort with the memorization that I can let the flow out when I am practicing. However, when I get in front of an audience, the comfort of the notes disappears. The emotion is still there, but the accuracy has escaped me. How do you play accurately while still letting yourself go?

Cold!

It is very cold here in Denver. It has been in the negatives all week. We had a snow day (or rather a freeze day) from school on tuesday because the temperatures were too cold for the little children to ride the bus to school. I didn't complain :)

 Tonight our bible study was canceled because of the snow, so I took the opportunity to have a quiet night in with my boyfriend.

I made buffalo chicken

Put on my favorite slippers (made by mom)

covered up with my favorite blanket (also made by mom)

. 

And snuggled on the couch with Daniel while we did homework and hung out!