A SKAMy Summer: The Recap.

And just like that, its fall. The flurry of activity it took to get here, and now we all just sink back into budgets and rain and statistics.

Although today the blue skies and fluffy clouds are trying to convince me it is warm outside, when in fact, today feels like the first clear sky cold crisp day of fall.

A Recap. This summer we currated and produced a festival with 16 performance companies. Rob and I's basement was a revolving door of friends come to stay as artists for Theatre SKAM. That was an overwhelmingly wonderful experience. Before I even had the time to count the money or play the bills from Bike Ride, Marcel was on his way home from our basement to Toronto and Jay was moving in to start rehearsals for Smalltown: A Pickup Musical.

SKAM got a truck. Then SKAM built that truck into a stage and 10 people performed a beautiful little play on the back of it.

We toured that play around parks for four days and then ran it for two weeks over at the Victoria High School, right beside The Belfry Theatre. And we partied.

We partied before the show opened.

We partied because the show opened.

Saskatoon Berry Pie

Rob and I threw a party at our house to wind down the run.

And then we partied when it closed. And the next day everyone went home and it was all over. It felt like summer ended right then and there. Another week went by and SKAM's summer staff went back to school. I took a week off to recover and here we are in a quiet office with the heaters on post CRD Operations Grant trying to sort out the mess that was left behind in the whirlwind.

It doesn't normally look like this, but there is some major storage reconfiguration going on back there.

Please don't call Work Safe. 

Panoramic.

Now if you excuse me, if you need me, I will be under the pile of paper work on my desk.

(I apologize for a lame post that says much of everything I've said before)

But now that life feels routine again, I promise to be back more often

(yeah, yeah.)

First Ever Monthly Curtain Call

To try to keep my blogging up, I plan to post a roundup of the month in the last few days of every month. So here is my very first Monthly Curtain Call!

I'll start it off with Something I Ate!

One afternoon when I had to be downtown for something, I happened to be parked next to one of my very favourite diners in Victoria. QV Cafe & Bakery. There is nothing particularly special about it. It is open 24 hours and it was an old garage.

Which makes it very charming to sit in in summer time with the big garage doors open. It looks out across at China Town, and at night the gates and paper lanterns are lit up. One of my favourite views in the city.

And they have Amazing Enormous desserts.

This one was chocolate mousse for Rob.

And a homemade oreo cookie the size of my face for Max!

And I bought the world's largest cupcake.

Seriously. I had to give half of this way!

If you come to visit, I'll be sure to take you to QV's!

And of course we ate figs.

And more figs

And more figs

Did you eat anything interesting this month? Maybe some fair food or bush pies? Share your favourite food and recipes with me!

#SundaySnapshots --- Smalltown: A Pickup Musical and two weeks of Theatre SKAM

Guys.. All I've wanted to do is write an amazing blog post about premiering a musical on the back of a pickup truck, and how little me managed to get the cheques written and two parties thrown in two days. And somehow in the midst of that canned an overwhelming amount of vegetables from the garden. An then throw another party at my house and stand in for the Stage Manager one night of the run, but this past two weeks I've been doing all of that, so finding the time or energy to write anything about it has been scarce.

So... Instead, a photo roundup, starting over two weeks ago when the Smalltown/Theatre SKAM truck became a reality.

The truck arrived.

And unpacked into a show.

The chairs were delivered.

We traded Figs...

For Ice Cream!

We Christened the truck

(it's hard to see here, but his name is Bob, in honour of Bob Milne -- Standing on my left)

We took the show on the road and previewed it in parks around the CRD.

While we scrambled to preserve everything we could.

I broke down and bought a canning set. Unpacking it was like Christmas and I had no idea how much it would revolutionize preserving.

Pickled Beans

Round 2.

We ate more figs. This time fried in oil and honey.

With a side of Cold Comfort Pina Colada Sorbet.

We baby sat our adorable niece.

Before heading into the run of Smalltown: A Pickup Musical... we threw the cast a pizza party.

With the help of some lovely board members.

The show opened, and we celebrated.

My lovely date, Pat Rundell

(and Kate photo bombing us in the background)

Jello Shots, love - the Playwrights.

Anna learns how to use draught taps.

Flowers from my amazing Best Friend.

We devised a rain plan (and were never once fully rained out!)

I did some Stage Management time.

We spent some (more) cuddle time.

I started refusing to want to get out of bed.

We got some more canning done.

(Pickled Zucchini!)

And we threw another party!

This time at our house. A barbecue for the whole cast and crew!

Saskatoon Berry Pie

Salad for everyone!!

Munro came to supervise.

And Ladies and Gentleman, this brings us to closing night!

and another party! off to ice the keg

Good thing too, Rob just showed me the forecast for the next week. Rain, rain and more rain.

Now that we have some breathing room I will try to find the time to actually tell you all about everything you see here.