Best Cards Ever!

Because we had so much fun, we wanted to thank our producers from our Uncommon Threads shows. The girls and I decided to put our creative juice together again and custom-make Alana and Steve thank-you cards that are reminiscent of the projects we worked on.
Aren't they cute?!

Alana's Card:


Steve's Card:

As a joke, we decided that Aubrey should make this a dead cat, and I don't know if you can see the tag, but this dead cat's name is "StepOut."

champagne might be the devil...

I'm not quite positive on that yet but i'm pretty sure. Yesterday my day was spend recovering from trying to keep up with Jeff's boss' wife on Sat night.
They took us out to dinner and before we even left there house we had polished off 2 bottles of Moet. Dinner was at Oceanfront 21 (i think that was the name of the place....memories are still a little foggy) in Newport and it was awesome but then.....oh lord. The grossest 2 dive bars in the world - The Beach Ball and The Class of 47 (where i am sad to say that Jeff and I used to regulars and i'm sure glad those days are over) where many vodka containing drinks were consumed. Leslie (the boss' wife) is a mad woman but she's so much fun.
Jeff and Rick just watched us wild women in action and made sure we didn't get into trouble.
Yesterday we had to go do the HB rounds of family visits. Since we live in tha bario we go to them, they don't come to us. Plus James & Lisa (bro-in-law & his wife) were down from Ventura so it was nice to see them.
By the time we finally got home last night i planted myself on the couch and tried to finish the one skeins worth of knitting that i have to do before i can sew together the remainder of my Jess coat and i couldn't even follow the stitch pattern. I knit a few rows, realized the were wrong, ripped them out, tried again, failed misserably and gave up. My brain just wasn't functioning AT ALL.
What a loooong, too-much-fun filled weekend it's been! I feel tons better today and have a busy week ahead of me!

Wine Makes Everything Better!

Posing with the lovely Allison Whitlock:

Episode #265: Meowzers!
Day 2 of our taping occurred on Sept. 6. We showed up bare-faced (dark circles and all) in regular (and rather untidy) street clothes. You see, we were instructed to showed up "camera-ready" and fully made-up for both taping days, by Sonya, the associate producer that works with Alana, producer for the Shelly project. We were good little girls and came fully primped that first day, we knew better for Day 2. On Day 1, we had to change out to street clothes so we didn't get our dress clothes dirty with all the rehearsals.

This 2nd day was so much more relaxed and fun. In part, this was because we already knew what to expect, and our producer, Steve, was really cool and funny. Alana was also really cool and super nice, but it was a little challenging to rehearse without her for most of the Day 1 morning. Alana had a taping, so she had Sonya, who is also nice, rehearse us by herself. We didn't know what to expect, and because Alana wasn't readily available for us to consult with, some parts were made more challenging than it should have been. Anyway, back to Day 2...

Day 2 was so laid back that Aubrey, Zona and I even had time to knit while awaiting our turn to tape! (Rachel was only able to do the previous day.) On Day 1, the entire show was dedicated to one project, whereas, on Day 2, we did our project, then Allison Whitlock (host) demonstrated her project and then we did a show & tell of other stuff we had made.

The step-out table with all the stuff and materials we needed for our project:

We struck a few poses on set while waiting for taping to start.

A few behind-the-scene moments:


Last, but certainly not least, I must tell you about our awesome producer (and it's not just because he gave us alcohol, well... he did score some extra brownie points!). Not only did Steve make us laugh throughout the day, he surprised us with a gift after taping in our 80's rock-ish decorated dressing room with poufy black leather sofas. He had set up a bucket of beer, a bottle of KJ Chardonnay (one of my faves at the moment - he must be a mindreader too!), and a lovely thank-you note. Earlier, Steve had told us that since we were the last episode and last taping of the season, we'd have the opportunity to celebrate with the crew with some beers. Well, their schedules got switched and they still had to tape some filler and tidbit stuff after taping our episode, so we didn't get to celebrate with them, but of course, its totally understandable. I mean, it would've been the icing on the cake, but we weren't disappointed or anything -- we already had tons of fun on both days. Anyway, Steve wanted to keep his promise, so he surprised us!!

The funny thing is that no one had a corkscrew, and we really wanted to toast and drink the wine.

Handy Tip of the Day: So, what do you do when you need to open a bottle of wine and don't have a corkscrew? Use a drill and a screw! This tip was brought to you by the über-crafty art department of Uncommon Threads!


We were all very huggy. Hope we didn't scare Steve! Thanks to all the Screen Door Entertainment/Uncommon Threads crew! Everyone was super duper nice. :)

Argh!

I was all ready to post the about the second taping, and I even downloaded some of the pics, but alas, blogger was having problems...and I lost my post. ARGHHH.

"Intern! Where's my latte!"

Ah yes, it's true we are officially Supah Stahs now! Here are a few of the pics i snapped while in Burbank last week.


Here we see a few camera guys and jason, the prop guy on the set.

Here is Shelly and all his/her pieces in a pile of recycled sweater hell!

Rachel, Anne & Aubrey slaving away making extra step out pieces for Shelly. Look Aubrey, It's your secret enemy in the yellow shirt, Barry! Watch out he's sneaking up on you!

Patiently waiting in the green room (which wasn't even green) Aubrey is ready for her close up!

Uncommon Threads does little segments on unusual needle arts projects and this was one they were getting ready to film while we were leaving on Tues night. It was a full length coat made from stuffed animal pelts!

Steve (super producer extrordinair) and Ann going over the cat bed for the next days shoot.

3 out of 4 Supah Stahs on the way home. Rachel left the night before.

Sleep? What's that?

Episode # 241: Shapeshifting Sweaters.
Our little foray into the world of TV began late Wednesday night. I drove my pimp mobile (a rental Chevy Impala since some b*tch hit and ran into my 6 months old hybrid car!) to pick up Zona and Aubrey. We stopped by to do some last minute shopping. You know, we all have full time jobs on top of all this stuff.

Screen Door Entertainment, who is producing the show for DIY, was awesome enough that they realized how far the girls and I would be driving. Technically, we're "local" but the drive to Burbank from North and Central Orange County is not that "local," especially since they wanted us at the studios at 7:00 a.m. BOTH days. So...they got us a hotel room literally nearly steps from the studio. YAY!


Above: We are such dorks and just HAD to pose with Buttons the giant sock monkey made of burlap!

Aubrey and I shared a room, since we're both night owls. I realized that there were more step-outs than I thought I needed to do. (Hey, in my defense, I was very busy doing my friend's veil and wedding, had multiple visitors for like 2 months straight, including in-laws from Jakarta that stayed 1 month.) Anyway, Aubrey was sweet enough to stay up late to help and I think she finally fell asleep at 2am, whereas I slept at 4am, partly due to the excitement. Zona got lucky she didn't end up rooming with us and go the room to herself (Rachel decided drive in on Thursday) or otherwise, Zona may have cursed me for any ugly undereyebags that she got.

We were told to arrive at our 7am call time, dressed and made up, although we were slated to be the 3rd show to be taped on Sept. 5. Sonya, the associate producer, was very nice, but she made us rehearse like 5 times. Alana, with whom I mainly corresponded from the beginning, was taping a show in the morning, so she didn't meet with us until late morning.

Above Left: Morning rehearsals with Alana. Notice that we stripped off our clothes that we were going to wear based on the instructions to "come dressed and made-up at 7am"

Above, Left to Right: Rachel, Me, Aubrey, Zona, & producer Alana. Umm, if their eyes look funny its because white people tend to have eyes that turn red in photos and I suck as correcting the bunny eyes.

Apparently the film crew and producers had been experiencing everything taking longer than they had thought, they had to cut some projects. I think the time factor has to do with the network's request for things to be done more "real-time" like, instead like those older craft or cooking shows, where they don't even hide that they have something pre-finished or pre-started. I guess they want viewers to feel a true "magic of television" that things were all shot in real time, but they editted down to 30 minutes per episode. Oh well.

So, they decided to make my Shelly Tortoise project the whole show and they cut out Aubrey's cool slipper project, the sweater lampshade project that Zona and Rachel were going to demo, and my magazine file cozy. The cut projects ended up being a show and tell.

Above: The set. The woman in the right photo is the stunningly beautiful (and tall!) host, Allison.

Aside from the slight frustration that most of the step-outs weren't used and we had to sew a brand new tortoise, which we dubbed Shelby, on the spot, it was really fun. It was such a loooong day. Because we had to create a new one (and not use 2 whole step-outs I had made), we didn't finish taping until 7:30pm. Oh, step-outs are what they called all they separate steps that we had to pre-make during pertinent parts of the construction of the project.

Oh yeah - the sweater fuzz flying around wasn't too fun either. The entire crew, including the host Allison Whitlock, was super friendly and amiable. Dave, the art director/master prop dude was really funny and personable as well. I owe several apologies to the sound guy (AJ?) because I coughed several times, which apparently sounds really really sharp and loud with the mike on. It was those damned sweater fibers! I swear, if anyone had to do an autopsy on me they would have to wonder why I have so many weird multi-colored felted wool fibers nestled in my lungs. I don't need any more respiratory problems -- I've already got terrible allergies and asthma!

See Aubrey's account of the experience here (and ignore my cross-post).

I took one of the unfinished step-outs home and look at Whitey Coyote -- instant love! I don't think this floor pillow will ever get used by my house guests.