A Happy Birthday

Hi, folks.

Thought I'd show you what I did for Jim's birthday was last week.  While I can't take credit for the initial idea, I did adapt it and made it a little more scrappy-ish by using a spellbinders die and a scallop square punch. 

I typed up 52 (he turned 51 plus 1 for good luck) reasons why I love him on cardstock and then punched them out with a scalloped square punch.  Then I found 52 pics of him which I die cut in a similar shape.  I adhered the reasons to the backs of the pics and then tied them to helium filled balloons.  When he and Logan came home from a baseball game, this is what he walked in to find in our living room.

We had our monthly gamenight that night so our friends also saw the balloons and since we celebrated 2 other b-days that night, the balloons made it quite festive.

You had to see me trying to cut the ribbons the night before.  What a time I had doing that.  My kitties were going nuts trying to grab the ribbon as I was cutting it.  

The funniest thing about this was how my married friends were shocked I still had that many reasons for loving him after all these years of marriage.   LOL

Hint: if you do this, be sure to use 12" balloons and fill them well.  The 9" balloons had trouble holding the weight and didn't last but a couple of hours. 

Wishing you all a happy day!

Combating Discrimination

Happy Friday!

As I mentioned yesterday, here is a little bit about the other event that took place during our very busy weekend.  I'm telling you, these kids keep us hopping!

Logan and Raja recently took part in a six week long video production workshop for young adults.  The workshop which met on Sunday afternoons was designed to give students basic media literacy skills by exploring the impact of media messages and enhance their knowledge about the human rights laws.  The kids were broken down into three groups and each group created a public service announcement video addressing bias, stereotyping and discrimination.  These videos will be used by the NYC Human Rights Commission in hundreds of their annual public presentations in classroom or community settings, new online training formats and in numerous links for web-based social networking.

Last Saturday, the videos were debuted at an event attended by local politicians.  Jim and I had had not seen the videos so we did not know what to expect but upon seeing them, we were blown away by their message and impact.   Here is the video Logan was part of.  I was told by the Commissioner that this was his concept they used.  Here is another video.  This one has Raja's sister in it.  This is the last video.

The lady on the far left is Patricia Gatling, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Human Rights.  She presented the kids with their certificates of 12 hrs of community service.

Here's a picture of all the kids who participated. 

 

Hopefully, the videos these young people who worked together to create will make a difference.

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy your upcoming weekend!

Romeo & Juliet

So, while we are on the subject of theatrics, I thought I'd show you a few pictures from Logan's stage debut last Friday night.  Apparently, last weekend was the weekend for the arts between Logan and Raja both having acting debuts. 

This was Logan's first endeavor into acting and while he specifically declined any of the lead roles as he felt he wasn't ready for that, he did have 4 small parts in the play.

It was definitely a low budget production as well as a modern take on Shakespeare's work.  It lasted just about an hour and it was quite entertaining.  It was evident the kids had worked very hard.  They made the sets and were also clever in how they went about it as you'll see below. 

Logan was part of the Montague clan.  Hence, the blue headband.  The Capulet side wore red. 

A little sword play.

The Capulets.

A little dancing at the ball.

Don't you just love their take on a balcony?  Clever, isn't it?  This got a nice laugh and applause from the audience.  Those 3 girls supporting the ladder were the narrators of the play.  They told the story in modern day lingo and kept the play moving.  They were very animated and entertaining.

Some more dancing, this time to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" when Romeo is exiled.  This was pretty cool as they did a shortened version of the dance routine used in Michael Jackson's video for the song.

Romeo is in the leather jacket. 

Applause for the drama teachers as they were presented with flowers. 

It was a very enjoyable evening for all who attended.  We were so proud of all the kids who worked so long and hard on this play.   I can't wait for next year's production.

We had another event happen the next day but I'll write about that later as lunch is nearly over and I have to get back to work.  

Have a great day!!!

Red Carpet Debut

Hi, friends.

Long time no blog, huh?  Guess I haven't had much to say or talk about lately.

But!  We had an exciting event happen to our son's best friend, Raja.  Last Sunday we went to the annual Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan to see Raja's feature film debut.  The name of the movie is "Future Weather" and you can read about it here.  He walked the red carpet with the other stars of the film, had his picture taken about a thousand times and was interviewed by the media.  We very much enjoyed the movie and afterwards the writer, producer and the stars answered questions from the audience for an hr.  It was pretty wonderful to see our "second son" up on the silver screen in a real movie.  We are so proud of him.

Here is Raja. (Oh, by the way, "Raja" is a nickname.  His real name is Anubhav.)

You might recognize these two people.  That's William Sadler (a/k/a Colonel Stuart) from "Die Hard 2" and Amy Madigan from "Streets of Fire" and "Field of Dreams". 

Thanks for stopping by!