Charm City Comedy Project

Hello!

**All photos in this post were taken by either Megan Wills or Keith Becraft!  These photos and more can be found on the awesome Charm City Comedy Project's Facebook page!**

I've been getting to do so many fun things with Charm City Comedy Project recently!  My main group, Moonbot, has continued to have our monthly shows, plus an extra show here and there when we're all available.  Those are always super fun and it's so great getting to know my group better!  The more we practice and perform together, the more fun we have.



Photo by Megan!
This is Moonbot, Safeword (an awesome improv group from DC), and Championship Air Wrestling.

I've also gotten to perform with a couple of other CCCP groups, too.  One group that I've performed with twice so far (we have another show tomorrow) is the Ladies All-Stars!  It's all girls, obviously, and it's so much fun!  It's a mix of people I know well, sort of know, and don't know at all!  It will probably never be the exact same group which is fun, too.  Megan, who is the co-founder of CCCP with Keith (who is in Moonbot with me), runs our Moonbot rehearsals, but she performs too when we have the all-girl shows!  I'm really excited to be part of this group.



Photo by Keith!
Here are the Ladies All-Stars and the stand up comics from that night.



Photo by Megan!
This was after a show where I performed with Moonbot and the Ladies All-Stars.

Last weekend, I played a small role in a totally different kind of show, Championship Comics.  It is a sketch/improv show based off of comic books.  I was a thug, along with fellow Moonbotter Scott.  I really had no idea what to expect, and it was really fun (and funny!).



Photo by Megan!

Next month I'm going to be a character in a Championship Air Wrestling show, too!  I'm so glad that I was able to find this group (thanks to a member of my improv group in Arizona, Tucson Improv Movement)!  I have felt welcome from the beginning and we always have so much fun.  I'm looking forward to the Charm City Comedy Festival, which will be happening this Spring for the second year in a row!  It sounds like it's going to be awesome!

Thanks for reading!

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

Hi!

Guess what!  This is my 100th blog post!  I've had so much fun writing these posts and I can't wait to write more!  I've also just recently passed 5,000 views.  Thank you so much for reading! :)

On our Puerto Rico trip I read the book Yes Please by Amy Poehler, which I got for my birthday!  I absolutely loved it.

I had the best spots ever to read while we were in San Juan :)

The book is split up into three sections: Part One: Say Whatever You Want, Part Two: Do Whatever You Like, and Part Three: Be Whoever You Are.  Amy describes her book as part memoir, part advice, and part essays, and each sections contains several of each of these.  There are tons of old pictures, papers, etc. "taped" into the book, and those are so fun to see!

She talks so much about improv, which I loved reading about.  She tells the story about when she first realized that she liked being able to choose what came next while she was on stage.  You get to read all about the different groups she was part of and/or started, such as the Upright Citizens Brigade, and how they grew and evolved over time (even currently!).  She tells stories about the people she performed and worked with and how she moved to Chicago and then New York City.

I loved hearing about her time on Saturday Night Live, too!  She tells what the process is like every week during the season, writing sketches, reading them, finding out which get to be on the show, rehearsing with the guest hosts, staying up until the early morning on Saturday, the day of a show.  It sounds so fun and so stressful!

There are lots of stories about her baby boys, some about her ten-year marriage to Will Arnett, tons about her childhood, growing up with her parents and younger brother in Massachusetts, the drugs she's done in the past, and the ones she's stayed away from.  Just a lot of good stuff!  She doesn't try to make it sound like she's had a perfect life, but she acknowledges that she's lucky to have grown up in a safe and loving home.

Her show Parks and Recreation is another huge topic, of course, and I loved hearing about what it was like to work with the cast of the show!  It sounds like they had such a blast.  Alex and I watched the two new episodes of the last season last week and it was even more fun to watch it now that I've read her book!  She talks about how they're like one big family and you can tell that they all must be great friends!  I'm sad that this is the last season of the show.  It's so hilarious.  

It was so fun to read about the different pranks/skits she did while hosting the Golden Globes with Tina Fey twice (the most recent time was too recent to be in the book!).  It sounds like so many of the famous people Amy knows and is friends with are just so nice and fun!  Like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Louis C.K., Seth Meyers (there are tons of great stories about them meeting and becoming great friends, and he also wrote a chapter of the book!), Maya Rudolph, all of her SNL and Parks and Rec friends, etc.

I already knew it, but after reading her book, I can just tell even more that Amy is such a normal, real, nice person.  Parts of the book are hilarious, because she is, but so much of it is normal stories about her normal life.  Some parts are a little bit sad, some parts talk about how lucky she knows she is to have her life, but also how hard she had to work to get where she is today.  It's a very good book and I loved it!

I would definitely recommend this book to anybody who loves Amy Poehler, likes comedy of any kind, or just wants an interesting, funny, book to read!  Have any of you read this yet?  What did you think??

Thanks for reading!

Club Orbit Improv Show

Hi!

Yesterday was the second Friday of the month, which means it was Club Orbit at Zissimo's with Charm City Comedy Project!  This time, I got to co-host the show with my fellow Moonbot member Nell!

We had a lot of fun!  We welcomed the audience, announced the lineup, introduced the groups as they performed, etc.  We had four groups last night, including Moonbot.  The other groups were The Soupstone Brothers, Only Rollercoasters, and Throwing Lobsters.  It was such a fun show!  We had fun wrapping up with Moonbot :)

The audience was full and they really got into each performance, which was fun!

Here are the Moonbot girls with some tiny candy cane bows I made for us to wear in our hair :) I got to go to a super fun workshop this morning that I will write about tomorrow!!  If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen what I made :)

Last night before my improv show, I went to another workshop!  It was put on by Make Tribe, a group that organizes all kinds of crafting workshops.  That sounds like my kind of thing!!  I just looked through the Event Archives on their website and they all look like so much fun!  I hope I can go to lots of these next year!

This workshop last night took place at Madewell, a cute store in the Towson Town Center (a mall).
  


We got to make wood and copper necklaces and it was really fun!  There were tons of different sized and shaped wooden beads, tubes of copper, and different types of string and cord to use.

The table setup was so adorable!

I used leather cord and a mix of all of the fun beads!

Here's a silly pic of me wearing my necklace after the show last night!  I'll take a better one the next time I wear it.  I might make it a little bit shorter, too!

I met some very nice people (someone even knew who I was when they walked in!) and it was really fun!  I can't wait to see what their next workshop is.

Thanks for reading!

Library Cards!

Hello!

This morning Alex and I went on a nice walk around the neighborhood!  It was in the 30s but we bundled up.  We walked down to the Washington Monument and then we walked over to the library!  We've walked past it before but never when it was open.  It was open today so we went in and got library cards!

We didn't stay in there very long (we got hot because we were wearing so many warm things!) but I can't wait to go back!

It's so pretty inside!


I got lots of fun mail today!  A package from my mom and my Birchbox!

So fun!!!  One of the things my mom sent me is a lettering textbook from when she was in high school!  I can't wait to look through it at all the fonts and practice!  I got so many great samples in my Birchbox, too!  I'll write more about them soon.

Last night my improv group Moonbot had a show!  There were four improv groups total and we went last.  It was so much fun!

Here's the poster for our show.

We took a group pic after of all of the performers :)

It was a fun night!

Alex and I just started watching Mildred Pierce.  We're on the second episode (it's a mini-series and there are only five episodes).  It's good so far!  A new SNL is on tonight!

Thanks for reading!

Toni and Guy Casual Sea Salt Texturising Spray Review

Hi!

Last week I won a full-sized bottle of Toni & Guy's Casual Sea Salt Texturising Spray!  I promise that's how you spell it :)

I won it through a Birchbox contest on Twitter! :)  I have tried it several times since then and I love it!!

I got it at the perfect time, too, because I've just about finished my bottle of mark. Curl to Curl Reactivate and Defining Mist that I mentioned a few posts ago.

I've used it after showering on towel/turban-dried hair.  I put about a nickle-sized amount of Miss Jessie's Leave-In Condish in my hair first, I scrunch it all over, and then I use the sea salt spray all over and scrunch a little more.  It makes my hair very shiny and soft and it somehow manages to add texture while smoothing out my frizz!  It also seems to keep my curls more defined than they usually are on the second day.  The smell is so good and subtle.

Here's a pic from the first time I used it.

Like I said, I've also used it on the second day on dry hair to give my hair a little more volume!  That works great, too.

I used it again today after washing my hair and I still love it!  I would definitely recommend this sea salt spray if you want to give your hair some texture and hold!

It's really cold today...in the 30s!  We will have to bundle up when we go to my improv show tonight!

Thanks for reading!

Craft Fair Preparation

Hi!

I talked about it a little bit in a previous post, but I am going to be a vendor at a Christmas Market craft fair!  I have been making several items a day to sell and I'm having so much fun!

I've made a bunch of ornaments filled with hair ties.  Some have holiday colors, some neon colors, some with polka dots.  I have small-sized ornaments with eight hair ties each and a larger size with twelve hair ties.

I had fun making the tags for them!  I have been using my Big Shot from Stampin' Up like crazy!

I also made a few head band sets today.  Some baby-sized and some child/teen-sized.  I'm going to make some sets with the holiday printed elastic tomorrow!

I'm also going to make some head band sets in cute little jars!

My improv group, Moonbot, has a Facebook page now!  You can like it if you want updates :)  Here is Charm City Comedy Project's page, too.  We have a show tomorrow night!  I'm excited to see the other groups that are performing before us!

Thanks for reading!

The Exchange at Exit the Apple

Hi!

Today Alex and I went to a cool event called The Exchange at Exit the Apple, which is a really neat space that is used for all types of things!  You can rent it out for your own events, too.  I read on their website that the man in charge of it is a film maker and artist of many things and he and his wife also own Oyin Handmade, "a line of natural hair and body products".



The Exchange is the second Sunday of every month and I've known about it for a few months but we just haven't been able to go until today!  Thanks to Instagram, I've seen tons of pics of past events and I've started following a lot of the vendors that sell there every month.  Here's their pic about it:



There were probably nine or ten vendors there selling all types of things.  Clothes, jewelry, candles, body products, makeup, etc.  There were a few places giving out samples of food too!  We got to try pie from PieCycle, a food tricycle in Baltimore!  Alex tried the salted caramel apple pie and I tried the salted lavender honey!  Both were soo good!  We also got to try yummy juice from Grind House Juice Bar, a vegan cafe!

I've seen lots of stuff on Instagram about Oyin Handmade so I was really excited to look at all of their stuff there today!  The woman working at the table was so nice and told me about all of their different products.  I bought a shampoo bar that I'm really excited to try!  We also got a cute little lotion sample, too :)  

They have a new salon in their store so I want to go there to get my hair cut soon!

We had an abbreviated Moonbot rehearsal tonight and we did some fun warmups and games.  We have another show this Friday so that will be fun!

I've been eating apples with peanut butter a lot!  Tonight I tried a sample of Justin's Almond Butter with my apple and it was delish!  I got two samples of the maple flavor in my last Conscious Box and finally used one!



I kept trying to figure out what the taste reminded me of (it reminded me of almonds...duh).  It was really good and it would be fun to try their other flavors!  Some people are getting the chocolate flavor in their Birchbox this month!  They're sampling a few different treats so we'll see what I get!!

I'm gonna go start reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children where I left off a month or two ago!

Thanks for reading!

Cold, Windy Day!

Hi!

Alex and I have been watching Season 3 of Homeland!  It's really good and intense, of course!  We also watched the second episode of Boardwalk Empire today (also good!).  It was pretty darn cold today so besides going to get groceries and then going to improv tonight, we stayed inside!  It's been really windy, too, and when we walked to the parking garage to go to Safeway we saw a huge tree branch that had broken off and landed on a couple of cars!  What a bummer :(

I read a lot more of Sharp Objects today and it's good and getting a little bit suspenseful!  Speaking of books, the Birchbox Book Club book for November is Yes Please by Amy Poehler!  I'm so excited!!  I love her so much.

(see full image)

See, we're very similar.  Almost like BFFs.

I guessed that it would either be Yes Please or Lena Dunham's book called Not That Kind of Girl (which I'm also super excited to read because she is amazing!).  I think Birchbloggers does giveaways for the book club books sometimes so I hope I can try to win a copy of Yes Please!!

Speaking of Lena Dunham, I also want to get this shirt that she designed for Planned Parenthood.  



They're to help encourage women to vote!  Here's the link, but they're sold out right now!  That's good, of course, but I want to buy one too :)  On Lena Dunham's Instagram she has posted a ton of pictures of awesome people wearing this shirt.

Moonbot rehearsal tonight was really fun!  Everyone was there (I'm pretty sure!) and we had lots of fun doing different types of warmups and improv games.  We have our next show on November 14th!  I think there is going to be a fan page on Facebook soon so I will post it so everybody can like it and learn more about what we're doing!

Thanks for reading!

Halloween Moonbot Show

Boo!

***Today, Alex found out that he passed the Maryland Bar Exam!!!!!  I knew that he would but he is so relieved since he got the results!  He took it in July so he has waited a long time to find out!  Woohoo!!!!!!  I'm so proud of him!***

This was before he found out about the Bar, but after getting a nice hair cut!

I hope everybody is having a fun Halloween!  Alex and I just got home a little while ago from my first improv show here!  Charm City Comedy Project had a Halloween party/show tonight!  There were actually two shows but my group was in the first one.  There were five stand-up comedians,  Moonbot (the group I'm in), and another CCCP group called Uncle Awesome.

Here's the poster for tonight!



The show was where auditions were, which is upstairs at a bar called Zissimo's.  The neighborhood where it is, Hampden, was sooo full of families trick-or-treating!  That was so cool!  Our neighborhood doesn't seem to have that many kids, so it was fun to see everybody out getting candy!  Lots of the businesses on "The Avenue" (36th Street where there are tons of shops and restaurants) were sitting outside handing out candy :)

We got there early so we could find parking and we ate at a Mexican restaurant called Holy Frijoles (hahaha we forgot that's what it was called).  It was pretty good but not quite like the Mexican food we're used to eating in Tucson :)

The show was so fun!  The room was decorated with tons of cool Halloween decorations. 

Everyone dressed up in fun costumes.  The stand-up and Uncle Awesome were fun to watch and I had fun in our part of the show!  We did a montage - a series of scenes loosely based off of each other and off of audience input - and we had a good time!  We all wore matching skull bracelets, too :)  Alex took lots of great pics!

What a fun Halloween!  We also got our car back from the shop (Alex got rear-ended almost a month ago) so that's good.  Anyway, we're tired!!


Thanks for reading!

Crafty Fun Things

Hello!

Yesterday I was invited to sell my hair ties and crafts at a craft fair in December!  I'm so excited!!  Today I worked on making a bunch of Holiday hair tie sets and I'm going to make some headbands next.  I also want to make cards, tags, and anything else I can think of so I have lots of stuff to sell!!

Yesterday I was near this outdoor mall so I looked around and I found a fun store called Becket Hitch.  They have so many cute things like paper goods, cute jewelry, things to hang on the walls, blankets, baby toys, lotion, candles, etc.  I didn't buy anything (it was all pretty expensive) but I got some good ideas of things I want to make for my Etsy shop!  

Alex and I were going to go to the American Visionary Art Museum tonight because they had free admission from 4-7pm and they were also doing a lantern-making workshop that sounded fun!  At 7pm they started showing Ghostbusters outside.  We figured parking may have been kind of hard and I'm a wimp so I thought it might be too cold to watch a movie outside :)

Somebody in one of the restaurants in our building apparently was mad and pulled the fire alarm that set off alarms on the entire block.  Thanks a lot!  This was about an hour ago and luckily we didn't have to be outside very long at all.  We never see anybody in our apartment so it was weird seeing how many people live here, especially on our floor!  Funny.  We got inside in time to watch Scandal now and How to Get Away with Murder next!

Tomorrow is Halloween and my first Moonbot improv show with Charm City Comedy Project!  That should be very fun!

Thanks for reading!

Screen Printing Workshop and Moonbot Rehearsal

Hi!

The super fun thing that Alex and I did today was a screen printing workshop at Baltimore Print Studios!  We learned so much!  It was from 11am to 5pm.  The studio is owned by a husband and wife team and they both taught the class.

We learned every step of screen printing starting with putting emulsifier on a screen and burning an image onto it, to getting your table, paper, screen, and ink ready, to pulling the ink over your screen with a squeegee, to taking the image off of the screen when you're done.  It was so much fun!  After you take one of their workshops (they also have a  letterpress workshop that I definitely want to do) you can rent studio time for $15 an hour and print your own stuff!

The first print we made was of a(n adorable) supplies list!  In orange, my fave.



Then we each picked out a transparency with an image that we liked and did the whole process of getting the image onto the screen, mixing ink to a color we liked, etc.  I picked the mouse/rat and Alex picked the narwhal!

We got a 45 minute break for lunch and we walked to Sofi's Crepes.  So yummy!  We both got the bacon, egg, and cheese crepe but there were so many kinds that sounded good.

We got to make a bunch of prints of the image we picked so we could practice and so we could adjust how we were pulling the ink to change how they turned out.  We traded afterwards so we got to bring home one of everybody's prints!  There was also a fox, a pelican, a floral pattern, and a dinosaur skeleton.

Speaking of skeletons, then we got to do a really cool two-layer print!  The first print was the outline of this skeleton image that they had.  We did that in glow-in-the-dark ink on black paper.  We got to learn how to do pin registering.  That makes it so you can line your paper up with your screen exactly how you want it, which is necessary when you do multiple layers.  Then we did a top layer that was very detailed and had all of the bones and labels and we did that in black on top.  It turned out so cool!  I can't wait to go back!

Tonight I went to my first improv rehearsal with Moonbot!  After we walked home from the workshop, we grabbed dinner really quick and then Alex drove me there!  It was at one of the other member's houses in a cute neighborhood.  We rehearsed in her basement and it was really fun!  Everybody is so nice and we had a fun time.  We have a show on Halloween!  So that's exciting!

What a fun day!!  Thanks for reading!

Halloween Spooktacular

Hi!

Alex and I had a fun day today!  We walked to the Washington Monument which is a few blocks south of us and went to the Halloween Spooktacular in the East Mount Vernon Place Square.  There were cute decorations, snacks, and cute little pumpkins that everybody could decorate with all kinds of fun stuff!

It was perfect weather!  The Mount Vernon Place Conservancy organized this (they're the ones who also put on free yoga in the park/at the Belvedere, showed the free movies when we first moved here, etc.).  We had fun decorating our pumpkins!

I got a Conscious Box in the mail today!  It's my last of the three I got with a Living Social deal.  This time I got lots of things I'm excited to try!  Maple almond butter, some fun lotions, tea, root beer with natural sweetener.  I'll write about things after I try them!

Tomorrow Alex and I are doing something very fun!!  I will write about it tomorrow night!  I also have my first improv rehearsal with Moonbot!  I bet that will be fun :)

Thanks for reading!