Well, the church program was this weekend. Made it very busy with two dress rehearsals (Monday and Thursday) and three performances (Friday,Saturday and tonight). I will post photos later...
My friend, Diana, and I choreographed one song: Sing We Now. The song includes a medley with various styles of music so we had 3 teams of dancers involved in a big production number for this one. We had to choreograph, coordinate rehearsals, meet with lighting and drama directors, shop for and create costuming, and then for each of these 2 dress rehearsals and 3 performances, dress, do make up and hair for 15 children!!!!
We had 4 boys (ages 8-10) who did a African rhythm instrument thing. My son, Noah was part of this team. We also had an older boy playing conga drums, but he required almost no work at all! We bought those ridgy rhythm instruments that look like fish. (Have you ever seen those?) They wore black sleeveless t-shirts, black athletic pants with a red stripe down the side of the legs (that Diana painted with a zig-zag pattern... looked cool!) and we made wide fabric sashes to drape over their shoulders of a African looking multi-colored fabric!
Then, we had 4 girls (ages 12-14) who did an Irish step dance thing! My daughter, Kaitlyn was a shoe-in for this part. We had them curl their hair in ringlets and wear sparkly headbands (two wore purple and two wore pink). Then, we found black long-sleeved T-shirts with sequined snowflakes in purples and pinks on the front. Diana made pleated skirts for them. We searched MANY stores and found this great black and pinkish-purple plaid! LOOKED pretty! We had them wear black shorts under their skirts for modesty and then they wore white knee socks and black booty socks on top of that to give the illusion of black dance shoes ($2 a pair for socks vs. $35 a pair for shoes!)
Thirdly, we had a group of 4 little girls (ages 6-8) and 3 big girls (ages 9-12) who did an Israeli-style banner dance. We made them long robe/gown. The 3 big girls wore purple, 2 little girls wore yellow and 2 little girls wore turquoise all with gold trim. They wore their hair in "crown braids" with ribbons pinned into them and danced with beautiful banners of gold, purple, hot pink, royal blue and turquoise. The little girls also had sash/belts that were two toned purple and yellow around their waists. This portion was almost entirely done by my friend, Heather. I helped make costumes for two of these girls (the turquoise ones) and did hair, as well.
The medley of music included "Sing We Now", "O Come Emmanuel" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and concluded with all of the group joining together for a circle dance!
It came out very nicely!
Most of the children in this number were also involved in our church's children's choir and had to rush into our room and change costumes very quickly... they were soldiers, mice and ballerinas and had to make a quick change. The biggest challenge was one 6 year old who kept accidentally pulling out her "crown braid" when she took off her mouse costume. So I would have to dress her and very quickly re-do her hair. Tonight I was able to stop her from pulling off the mouse hat and only had to touch up her hair instead of completely redoing it! Whew!
I am really glad that is all done!
This weekend I also got my mom's Birthday gift done... I'll take pictures. I also got her Hannukah gift done (she is a Messianic Jew). I made her a sweatshirt jacket for her birthday and a table center piece and 4 placemats for Hannukah.
I still have a bit of sewing to do... all for my friend Tanya and her children (my godchildren)
Everything else is now packaged up and ready to go to the post office tomorrow except for Tanya's stuff! I did package up a bday gift for her and one for her daughter too (Sierra will be seven next week!)
Okay, enough rambling. I will post photos of all of this stuff soon!
Remind me to tell you about the cool early gift I got that really helped me get my work done!
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