Author Archives: themetaphorgirl

Ellie Frederickson

Posted in cosplay, sewing by

I need to wear this dress more often. That’s really the biggest takeaway from this. I like this dress and I like this pattern.

Way way way back in 2011, a friend of mine was getting married and since I had done her alterations, I wanted to make a dress. I picked up Vogue 2960 and some really nice floral print cotton that a vintage vibe to it, and got to work. It’s a shockingly simple pattern, especially with the changes I made. The original pattern calls for the dress to button up the front, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

I cut the front bodice pieces on the fold and inserted a red zipper (a fancy exposed zipper!) in the back. It made it so much easier to assemble, and honestly it made it simple to wear too, since I wasn’t worried about my boobs popping out as they are wont to do with a button front anything. I did make a full bodice lining as well, which gave a little more heft and a little more opacity to the fabric.

A few years later, when I was teaching, I needed an outfit for Spirit Week for fictional character day. For some reason my usually overactive brain completely stalled out when it came to what I wanted to wear, so I ended up pulling this dress out of my closet so I could be Ellie Frederickson from Up. I added a red cardigan, red heels, a petticoat borrowed from my sister, and a Grape Soda Ellie Badge pin borrowed (begrudgingly) from my mother.

Lanyard of teacher keys optional.

I ended up revisiting this pattern for my Dapper Day Wendy Darling dress, and still love it- but I’ve since learned I need to take some of the ease out of the back. It makes more sense if you read that post; you can see where things didn’t quite work out as easily as it did with this dress!

“great pate, mom!” (that one time I finally did Heathers)

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HEATHERS. IT’S THE DREAM, RIGHT??

I discovered Heathers on Pandora about two years ago- I was playing my Broadway playlist on my way to work, as one does, and “Beautiful” came on. Well, it’s a long song, so I sat in the parking garage at work listening to the end (and was almost late clocking in, oops. But so worth it.) I just don’t understand why more theaters don’t do it- I’ve been waiting for someone to put it on in my area ever since.

Luckily, not only was CTCO doing it (fifteen minutes away from where I live!) but my friend Taylor, who played Horton in Seussical with me, was directing it. So I was over the moon to audition. I sang “What It Means to Be a Friend” from Thirteen and called back for the ensemble. Was I disappointed to not be called back for a lead? Absolutely. But a lot of incredibly talented people auditioned. And I also went into this knowing that I was probably going to end up in Evil Dead, and the rehearsal schedules would overlap. There was no way I could feasibly play leads in both shows. The callback for Heathers was a lot of fun, and to my surprise Taylor held me to read for the role of Veronica’s mom. I ended up getting the part! Usually Mrs. Sawyer is doubled with Ms. Fleming, the teacher, but we went with this instead and it was a blast!

Rehearsals got a little bit tricky, though. Heathers overlapped with Evil Dead, which performed out of a theater ten minutes down the road, so usually I would attend the first hour or two of Heathers rehearsal and then go down the road for Evil Dead. Poor Shane barely saw me- I was rehearsing six nights a week, on top of my new job! (Because of course Movie Ride closed during the rehearsal process and I had to start training for Safaris immediately. Yikes.) And for a short time, the It’s a Date cabaret overlapped too. Ugh. No wonder I was so stressed for so long. The only way any of this worked, though, was communication. All my directors and stage managers knew exactly what was going on, and they were really flexible. So if I had to miss Heathers rehearsal completely for the Evil Dead photocall, I could, and if I needed to miss Evil Dead for a Heathers full run, I could. I’m so glad I didn’t have to pick, because I’m honestly not sure which one I would have chosen.

The music for Heathers is super complicated. Like yeah, I knew the lyrics for the most part because I’ve played through the cast recording approximately a million times. But the parts. OH LORD. “Yo Girl” is literally the most complicated thing ever; I was honestly not too upset when I found out I didn’t need to sing that song after all since Mrs. Sawyer had to be onstage for bits of it. So if you end up in a production, don’t think you can slide by since you have the OCR memorized. It’s so specific.

Our choreography was great; both our choreographer and our dance captain are Disney entertainment and they are so good at what they do. As for me? Well, dancing is not my strong suit. It’s not. I know this. So I struggled, especially since I inevitably missed rehearsal time (because I was also learning Evil Dead choreography and struggling there equally!). There was a lot of checking in with the dance captain and with a couple members of the ensemble that I trusted to make sure that I was remembering things correctly. (Usually I wasn’t. But I finally caught on by tech week. Finally.)

I ended up taking two tracks in Heathers, one as Mrs. Sawyer and one as a student at Westerberg High. The director was really great about us developing a real feel for our characters and finding unique characterizations. So of course we had the Nerd and the Republicanette and the other written ensemble characters, but we each had really specific characters for each ensemble member, which really made a difference in the strength of the show. I described my characters as “Carrie White, with no powers.” Basically me when I was in elementary/middle school, now aged up a bit- very sheltered, very anxious. I got to develop my own costume with the approval of the director, so I went with a plaid button up shirt, a denim jumper, lacy ankle socks, and saddle shoes. Originally I had a red bandana in my hair as a headband, but Taylor pointed out (and rightly so) that Heather Chandler should be the only one with red. So I borrowed a blue bandanna from another cast member instead.

Speaking of my hair, though, I had the most killer wig. I think the best way to describe it is “someone from the 80s time traveled to the 90s, saw Rachel’s haircut on Friends, and then went back to the 80s and tried to describe it to their stylist.” It was a mullet and yet not a mullet. It was stellar and I adored it.

I also had another costume for the party; in the script it actually specifies that everyone at Ram’s party is in different costumes as different, cooler characters than their school ensemble selves, so I ran with it. My dress is actually my original Eleven cosplay dress, minus the the white collar, but it looked really great as an 80s party dress. I swapped out the bandanna for a headband with a tiny bow and the saddle shoes for floral-print boots (the same ones I wore for Chris in Carrie.)

And then there was Mrs. Sawyer. My wig is a glorious Betty Boop/Betty Rubble pile of curls- they wanted me to look more like Veronica, and the blonde mullet wasn’t going to cut it. The shoes are just my basic black character shoes, and the skirt was made from fabric and a zipper I scrounged up in my stash. The shirt, you ask? You might recognize the shirt.

It’s definitely not my gangster shirt. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Heathers only ran for one weekend, but it’s a show I could do over and over again and never get tired of it, no matter what role I’m playing. But I don’t think it would be able to top the cast of this production. Everyone was so talented and brought their A game 100%. It was such a great time.

And of course people came to visit it me, including a couple of Deadites!!

I’m going to do a tutorial for Vlogmas next month about how I did my 80s inspired Heathers look; it’s going to be super chatty and I’m going to talk about the show, so ask me all the questions you have down below!! I want to answer all your questions, about the show and my experience and theatre in general!!

In the meantime, I’m going to go serve some liverwurst and pretend it’s pate.

It’s a Date! (my first cabaret)

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I auditioned for this cabaret on accident.

The company was holding a joint audition for both Heathers and the cabaret at the same time; I only planned on auditioning for Heathers since I had a conflict right before the scheduled date for the show. Better to not audition for a show when you know there’s a conflict than jumping into a mess, right? (I once went to an audition where the director saw that the auditionee would be gone for the whole week before tech week and he told her basically that she could audition but she wouldn’t get cast. Yikes.) But I came in and I sang for the (large group) of directors, and one of them is a friend of mine and she was like “Why didn’t you write down you wanted to audition for the cabaret?”

“I have a conflict,” I said.

“I’m putting you down anyway.”

I got a callback for the Nerd Girl and one of the hosts, and lo and behold, I was cast as the Nerd Girl. I’m definitely never typecast ever, right?

The cabaret was a loosely scripted format that relied on improv. The first part involved three bachelors and an audience participant as the bachelorette; the hosts would ask questions and the bachelors would improv their answers, interspersed with songs, until the bachelorette made their choice and the winner sang a solo. Then the whole cast would sing “The Money Song” from Avenue Q (it makes sense in the full script, trust me) and then the same format would repeat with three bachelorettes and a male audience participant as the bachelor.

The songs were more of a challenge than I expected because, for the first time ever, I was singing as an alto in the group numbers instead of a soprano 2. As a soprano 2 I typically have some harmonies here and there, but an alto is straight up just singing harmonies. And let me just say, I do not naturally have an ear for harmonies. Your girl had to WORK for this. But at the end of the day, it was really rewarding. I got to sing in a less-utilized part of my range (I have a really strong lower register and didn’t realize it!) and I got to learn a lot of techniques I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. So lesson learned- yeah, I was really nervous at first, but it was great.

I didn’t do much in the first half of the show, since the guys were singing for most of it, but I did get to sing in the “doo-doo-doo”s for “Hey Good Lookin'” (from Dogfight). But then I didn’t do anything else until halfway through the show for “The Money Song,” so most of the time I looked like this:

(Snapchat courtesy of Rachel, who played the Princess bachelorette, and was just as bored as I was)

The three female bachelorettes were introduced using the song “I Know It’s Today” from Shrek, and this meant I got to achieve one of my life goals of singing the Medium Fiona verse. Seriously, that’s all I want. Cast me in Shrek and let me play Medium Fiona and a fairy tale character so I can sing “Freak Flag,” I’ll be happy as can be. Anyway, I got to sing my favorite part in that song and I was just like YES BLESS EVERYTHING.

The improv was very hit or miss. I could play off of one of the hosts really easily, but not so easily with the other one. So kind of frustrating, but sometimes it was super rewarding. Also, admittedly my improv skills are kind of rusty. I feel like I should take some classes. Anyway.

My big solo number…was a song I’d never heard before. I’ve listened to a lot of musical theatre, trust me, but I’d never heard of this song. And it was a challenging one for me, because by the end of the song I was supposed to unbutton my nerdy Her Universe Ewok cardigan and show off my (very modest, very unrevealing) bra to the audience. (I thought I was too shy and retiring to show off my bra to an audience. And then two months later, Evil Dead…)

Anyways, confused? Listen to the song and it’ll make sense.

It’s great, right?? I had such a blast once I got comfortable with it. It went straight into my audition book, I can tell you that much.

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(this picture was from a rehearsal so I’m not in my amazing unicorn skirt and my hair is a mess, but please enjoy my quality facial expression.)

The big problem was that after the bachelor contestant from the audience picked his winner, the two losers had to sing a duet. Good news: it was “Secondary Characters” from [title of show], which is an amazing and hilarious song. Bad news: remember when I said I struggled with harmonies? Yeah, this was not a great time for me. I won for one performance so I didn’t have to sing it that night, but I lost the second performance so…well, it was underwhelming. It was all right. It could have been worse. Let’s just say I learned a lot.

The finale was “Burnin’ Love” from All Shook Up, the Elvis jukebox musical, and that was a lot of fun. The choreography was a lot of fun for that one especially, and my solo bits were super great.

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All in all, I wasn’t expecting to be a part of the cabaret at all, but it turned out to be a lot of fun and fairly low key, all things considered. I also got to wear my favorite cardigan, my pink party glasses, and a gray and silver unicorn print skirt, so this was a win win all around!

Weight Loss Update

Posted in health and fitness, weight loss by

If you guessed that, with all the chaos in my life, my weight loss efforts have fallen completely off track…you’d be exactly right.

Yeah, there’s been a lot happening. Not only starting the new job, but being in three shows at once put me in a whirlwind. I was leaving my apartment for work at 7, leaving work and getting straight to Heathers rehearsal by 6, and then going to Evil Dead rehearsal afterwards from 8 till at least 10…and then starting over the next morning. And then once I got into Evil Dead performances, I wouldn’t get home till 11- 2am if it was a midnight performance- and I would get McDonalds breakfast in the drive through on the way home. It was just too much.

Luckily I did at least try to slow my roll, so to speak. I didn’t have any time to work out, but at least my shows kept me moving. Heathers and Evil Dead both had dance numbers, and Evil Dead was an incredibly physical and high energy show. So that at least made sure I wasn’t full sedentary.

My eating habits weren’t great though. I relied on a lot of fast food, but I did start to order smaller portions and healthier options rather than mega burger meals every single time. I also started picking up burrito bowls and juice from Wawa on the way from work to rehearsal- basically knockoff Chipotle. Again, not great, but a lot healthier.

Now that things are settling, I’m doubling down on my efforts. I’ve started doing Pop Pilates again, which I know will help. And I have a 5k to run tomorrow; I do really enjoy running and I need to do it more often.

I also gave myself some from motivation. I have tons of cute dresses in my closet that I can’t wear since I gained more weight. I ended up measuring each dress and pinning a note with the bust and waist measurements, and put them in order in my closet from biggest to smallest. My goal is to lose enough weight to wear everything! I even have three Betsey Johnson dresses that I can’t wear- I want to lose enough weight to wear them!

I’m still sitting about 170, but my goal is to lose at least thirty pounds by next October. Fingers crossed!

Back to Blogging!

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Hi, friends! It’s been a while. A lot of curveballs came my way! A big one came in the form of Photobucket- I had worked so hard to upload all my photos so nicely onto Photobucket, only for them to change their policies and charge several hundred dollars to link photos from their site to my blog. Yikes. What a mess. I’m still fixing a lot of broken links, but I’m working on it! (Comment if you see any photos I might have missed!) I’m going to host a lot of my photos directly on WordPress from now on, and store the rest on Flickr.

My other major curveball you probably saw if you follow me on Instagram. My beloved home attraction, the Great Movie Ride, closed its doors after nearly twenty-nine years. We only had a month of warning, which meant we all had to switch it into high gear to close out the attraction and immediately go to our new locations. I only had about twelve hours between walking out of Movie Ride for the last time and starting on my day one of training at my new location. It was so much happening at once, and honestly it was really emotional. I spent three and a half years at this attraction and loved it, and I loved the people there. It was a huge change to lose the attraction, the work, and the people all at once. I’m now a safari guide at Kilimanjaro Safaris, and I like it well enough. It will never be GMR, but it’s a good job. I’m looking into some other places within the company as well- I think it might be time to move into a backstage area of the company rather than being front line. But it was a lot to handle at one time.

Now add to that that I was doing three shows simultaneously. I did a cabaret called It’s a Date in June, I did Heathers in September, and I did a production of Evil Dead: The Musical in October. So between everything going on, I barely had time to breathe, much less blog!

Now that things are calming down (I’m feeling more settled at Safaris and I’m only working on one show), I’m ready to work on my blog and my YouTube channel again!! I’m going to aim to post new videos on Mondays and Fridays, but I might pop up with more videos as interesting things happen. I’m also planning on spilling all the beans on the shows I’ve been in recently, as well as talking about my sewing projects, Disney, fashion, books, weight loss, and beauty stuff! I love talking to people, so feel free to comment or get in touch with me on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, or Tumblr! Let’s be friends!

The Uninvited by Tim Wynne-Jones

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The UninvitedThe Uninvited by Tim Wynne-Jones
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I THOUGHT THIS BOOK WOULD NEVER END.

I’m not a quitter. I’ve never not finished a book. So I finished this one. But I’m pretty sure it took 84 years.

The pacing was slow. So slow. Not “building the intensity” slow but ACTUALLY PAINFULLY SLOW. I don’t care if the main characters went out for margaritas. I don’t care if Mimi changed her clothes for the sixth time. I don’t care if Cramer skulked mysteriously for the millionth time in a row. Nothing was happening.

Mimi was literally the most insufferable heroine. She’s forcibly quirky, to the point that you feel like there’s a neon sign flashing in front of your eyes saying PLEASE SEE WHAT A MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL I AM. I literally felt the strain of reading any parts from Mimi’s point of view, as if someone was stretching out a long string of silly putty. And right from the beginning she’s an unrealistic character, because what girl goes on an all day road trip wearing just a sports bra (imagine the seams of your car upholstery digging into your bare skin for hours on end) and then, upon arrival, changes pants outside in the yard. (I also didn’t need the elaborate description of Mimi’s butt and thong either.) Overall, Mimi was shoved down my throat so much that when I was supposed to care about her and her plight, I didn’t care. (And it didn’t matter, because her plight was solved with a phone call.)

Jay was a useless character and Iris even more so. I honestly can’t give any information about Jay other than “plays guitar.” He was completely forgettable. His big dramatic reveal is dropped with little fanfare in like the second chapter, and not only does it not add anything interesting to the character, it cheapens the later reveal for a later character. Iris was marginally interesting to read about, but did absolutely nothing to further the plot. Just another detour in a long, painfully rambling narrative.

Cramer was the worst. He’s supposed to be mysterious and ambiguous and tortured, but I just wanted to throttle him out of annoyance. His character veered far too far into “nice guy” territory. I half expected a description of him wearing a fedora and posting online about how he’s such a nice guy and girls don’t understand him. He proved to be a weak antagonist/antihero and I hated him so much.

The rest of the cast and the plot are rounded out with forgettable, unlikable caricatures. Cramer’s mother is a plotline that I’ve seen a million times before and this didn’t offer anything new or exciting. Stooley Peters was supposed to be a red herring, but you can see right through him. I still don’t know who on earth Waylin is or why he matters- Cramer talks about it as if it’s super obvious who he is and what his relationship to the other characters is, but it’s never explained. And Mimi’s parents are literally the worst. Jay’s parents are a lot more interesting, but are relegated to one scene and a couple of half hearted mentions.

In short, this book nearly killed me. I read quickly, I read voraciously, and this book literally exhausted me to the point that I had to keep putting it down and taking breaks because I was so bored that I couldn’t keep going. I finished it, because I’m stubborn, but seriously, I would never touch it again.

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Baby’s First Cosplays

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I’ll admit it- I was bit by the cosplay bug when I was still very much in my weeaboo stage. I was a sophomore in college, and I was intrigued by the idea of dressing up like characters that I liked. So I headed to the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention for a…very strange weekend.

It’s been a long time, so I’ll just say that I’m no longer friends with any of the people I attended the con with, and since hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz, I totally understand why I had an absolutely miserable time there. It also didn’t help that I knew absolutely nothing about conventions or cosplay and I was woefully unprepared. But it makes for some hilariously terrible pictures!

I tried cosplaying as Anna Kyoyama from Shaman King for the first time. It wasn’t great. I bought an ugly black dress from Goodwill and wore it with a pair of Skechers slides that were way too big and a piece of red fabric that I don’t even think I hemmed. The bracelet and rosary were all right, and I was even able to use the rosary for the second time I tried the cosplay. But overall, not great. Especially since my idea of hair and makeup at the time was…not good.

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I also tried cosplaying as Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket, in an attempt that can only be described as “what on earth was I thinking?” I wore a navy dress (also from Goodwill) that for some reason I thought looked exactly like Tohru’s school uniform (spoiler alert: it did not) with yellow ribbons, white knee socks, and brown mary janes. I also didn’t know anything about wigs, and while there are a lot of great cosplays that allow the cosplayer to use their own hair, this was not a good choice for me. But I was excited, and that was the most important part.

The most important part of this whole ill-fated attempt was that I finally tried sewing for the first time. One of my roommates in college had a sewing machine; she taught me the basics and set me loose. I bought McCall’s 4948, their token Alice in Wonderland pattern, and gave it a try. Overall it wasn’t the greatest construction, but it also wasn’t terrible. The fabric especially was beautiful; I honestly wish I could find it again so I could remake the whole piece. I didn’t do a horrible job, but I never added the collar, the seams weren’t finished, and the zipper was…not the best.  I also made a petticoat dress underneath using McCall’s 5095 (a sundress pattern) that didn’t offer a lot in the way of fluff but still looked pretty cute peeking out from under the skirt.

The pinafore was a little more misshapen, but again, I made a wearable garment for the first time, zipper included. As you can see I once again didn’t wear a wig and showed off my great MySpace styled hairstyle instead, but it could have been worse. And yeah, some kids made fun of me because I was more Disney/storybook Alice than American McGee’s Alice, but I was pretty happy with how the costume turned out.

I had such a negative experience with that con that I didn’t try again until Akaicon in 2015, but it turns out I do like cons when I go with the right people! And at the end of the day, all that really matters when it comes to cosplay is that you have a great time. So if you’ve thought about trying it, go for it!

Evil Dead the Musical

Posted in theatre by

It’s official!! If you watched my what’s in my audition bag video, you know that I auditioned for Evil Dead the Musical this past week, and if you follow me on Instagram or Tumblr you’ll know that I’ve been cast as Cheryl! I’m super excited. Cheryl is the younger sister who starts off as a sweet, easily spooked college girl who then gets turned into a foul mouthed demon- so a little different from what I usually play! I’m super excited (and now I have three shows to do in the next three months…yikes!!)

Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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MarinaMarina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a ride. The writing is beautifully atmospheric and absorbing, and the draw of the plot is incredibly alluring- the idea of the gothic underworld in the sewers of Spain. However, most of the story is given through exposition rather than action, or even in a flashback, and it fell flat to hear about these great plot twists in a kind of stagnant past tense. The ending also seemed to peter out. The book built to a fantastic climax, and then, instead of ending on a high note, unraveled into an unsatisfying and prosaic conclusion. Overall, the book is beautifully written, but the plot kind of felt like eating a bad angel food cake- delicious, but leaves a weird taste in your mouth, and you realize that it wasn’t even filling in the first place.

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