Broadway Musicals

"If you could do or be anything and not fail, what would it be?"
Has anyone ever asked you that question?  What was your answer?  Many list off the typical and expected answers:  professional athlete, famous musician, movie star, famous author...

For me?  My answer has been the same for a while.  I'd be a.........

Broadway musical performer!!!  

Can you see it?  I've always joked that God must have forgotten to give me an amazing singing voice, because man do I love to sing!  I always have.  Don't get me wrong; I can carry a tune just fine.  But you certainly won't catch me making public singing debuts ANY time soon.  Singing and acting were always things I loved to do when I was a little girl. Some days I would step into my petal pink, floor length, polyester dress-up "evening gown" with a sequin bodice, slide my Little Mermaid soundtrack cassette tape into my Huggabunch boom box, stand on my bed, and sing "Part of Your World"...into a pen or pencil.

When I wasn't pretending, I sang and acted in my church youth programs and school musicals where I held a myriad of dramatic roles: an alien scientist traveling to Earth to speak with Christians about the meaning of Christmas, (odd? Yes. But trust me on this one--the play was super cute), a sassy ladybug singing about a mean boy who captured her in a mason jar, a 50's girl on rollerskates, a mouse, the Virgin Mary singing to Baby Jesus (I was 5, and still remember every lyric!), the list goes on and on.

Alas, those days are gone.  I have faced the music.  I will NEVER make a name for myself in the musical theater world.  But I still have to get my fix!!  Enter: BROADWAY MUSICALS!!!!!


My mom and aunt are huge fans of Broadway musicals, so they started me, my brother, and my 2 cousins out young.  My first Broadway musical was around 1990--Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis, TN.  Starlight Express was a rock musical that followed a child's dream in which his toy trains came to life and competed to see who was the fastest train.  The cool part?  All of the actors in this production performed wearing rollerblades!! Because I was so young, I don't remember much.  But I do remember the main song; I used to sing along with it on the cassette tape soundtrack.


Mom frequently took me and my brother to Broadway Musicals at the Orpheum Theater, and we loved the whole experience! Getting a little dressed up, driving 1 1/2 hours to the city, parking along Beale Street, strolling to the theater, taking in the lavish tasseled brocade draperies, the enormous crystal chandeliers, the golden ornamental plasterwork, the occasional lady wearing an evening gown and fine furs, the glossy photo souvenir play book we would purchase, the red velvet seats, the HUGE pipe organ, the orchestra, the stage, the MUSIC!!!!  It was always the perfect night!!

Since my childhood, I have had the opportunity to see many more Broadway Musicals all over the nation.  Here they are in order of most to least favorite:
(Click on the links to see some of my favorite clips).

Phantom of the Opera (Orpheum & Broadway)
Les Miserables (Orpheum & Ford Theater in Chicago)
Wicked(go to 5:28, Orpheum)
Aida (saw original cast in Broadway, Orpheum)
Jane Eyre (Broadway--original Broadway cast)
Rent (Walton Arts Center)
Miss Saigon (Orpheum)
The Secret Garden (Orpheum)
Beauty & the Beast (Orpheum & Walton Arts Center)
The Lion King (Broadway & Orpheum)
Mamma Mia! (Orpheum & Walton Arts Center)
The Color Purple (Walton Arts Center)
Hairspray (Walton Arts Center)
Avenue Q (Walton Arts Center)
Starlight Express (Orpheum)
Spamalot (Walton Arts Center)
The Full Monty (Orpheum)
The Producers (Orpheum)
Spring Awakening (Walton Arts Center)
Cats (Orpheum & Walton Arts Center)
Fosse: The Musical (Broadway)

Nowwwww is it obvious how much I love Broadway Musicals??  I love the music and the feeling of being moved by certain songs and scenes.  For 2-3 hours you are completely removed from the rest of the world as you enter into the play's story and the characters' lives.  Unlike a movie, the characters don't get the option of retakes to perfect a scene.  The live aspect of musical theater makes it that much more enjoyable.  These actors and actresses are using their pure, God-given talent. 

There's just something about the whole mix of the musical theater experience.  It's charming, almost old-fashioned, a little refined, and oh-so entertaining!  Now if only we could just bring back the evening wear and formal affair-feel to it all...

 And this is why Broadway Musicals are one of my 

FAVORITE THINGS!!!

(See you at Les Miserables at the Walton Arts Center in May)!!

Family Summer Vacations

Ahhh summer vacation as a kid. School's out. I can FINALLY watch The Price is Right at 10am--someone could win a Coleman's Camper or a hot dog stand!!! Mom makes a lot of macaroni & cheese, chicken strips, and applesauce--my fav meal! My brother & I take swimming lessons. My friends and I bike around the cemetery, (don't hate until you see the endless smooth pavement in my hometown's cemetery. Be jealous). My brother and I climb trees and pretend to be spies. We eat wild blackberries. I host a few lackluster lemonade stands on our dead-end street where I sell Country Time to my loyal customers: my grandma, a kind lady who lives on our street and waters her flower beds daily, Radar our Welsh Corgi, and my grandpa as he takes a brief break from his rural mail route.

Rewind....I left out my most favorite thing about my childhood summers...

Family Summer Vacations.

There was something so magical about going on family vacations during summer break. It was an adventure! I get so nostalgic when I reflect on the family vacations we took when I was little. Mom would always make snickerdoodle cookies for the road. Dad would take the Dodge Chrysler Caravan to the shop for a tune-up. My grandma would agree to watch my beloved cross-eyed, half Siamese cat, Cleo, and our 2 dogs while we were away. Dad would load all of our luggage into the EsCARgo. And we were off!!

Frequently we would motor to Branson, Missouri and visit Silver Dollar City. Dad would try to get me and my brother interested in watching a man blow glass or an old lady make brooms. Really we just wanted to ride the Log Ride over and over again and wave at Dad filming us on the RCA Shoulder Mount Camcorder as we plummeted down the watery chute. I would purchase a wood-carving of my name to set on my bedroom desk or perhaps a puff-painted umbrella which I would do absolutely nothing with. At night we would see a show at the Grand Ole Opry. I remember seeing Louise Mandrell, who I thought was gorgeous and looked at me several times. I remember not getting any of the jokes at the Ray Stevens show but loving it because my big brother did!! And lastly, I remember John Davidson--the old host of Hollywood Squares--serenading me and ending it with a kiss on the cheek. I was furious at him for doing that!! But mostly, I was furious that my brother called John Davidson my boyfriend for the rest of the trip. Alas, all was well once we rode go-carts and bumper boats, as you can see from our smiling faces below.
A trip to Branson was never complete unless Mom got to shop in one of the thousands of Christmas shoppes around the city. I never understood why she wanted to shop for Christmas when it was June, but few people love Christmas quite like my mom does. Here we are in one of the cute shopping centers that was home to Mom's favorite Christmas shoppe. And P.S. please disregard my...outfit??


Other times we visited Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Dad would burn out his lungs blowing up air mattresses, while my brother and I wore huge goggles and searched for buried treasure (aka--rocks). My brother taught me that spitting in my goggles would keep them from fogging up so much.
There were other trips to Disneyworld; Opryland, USA in Nashville, TN; Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN; and Gulf Shores, AL. And so it continued each summer until our lives were too full of basketball camps, church camps, and other teenager things. Eventually my brother left for college, and a couple of years later I moved 305 miles away.

Sifting for "precious gems" in Pigeon Forge!!

Now instead of 10am episodes of The Price Is Right, lemonade stands, and eating snickerdoodles in the backseat of a minivan, my summers are full of work, trips with my friends...and the occasional visit home to see my incredible family. Although summer family vacations are over for me to experience as a child, I cling to these memories. I hold them tightly in my heart. But I like to leave a little room for new memories. New memories I plan to make once I have a family of my own. Because when I reflect and think about it, the location and souvenirs aren't what made our family summer vacations so special. It was the other stuff that did--my brother and I playing games over the bench seats in the mini-van, Dad making up funny songs about our trips, Mom taking time to always educate us on what we were touring, Dad once refusing to leave our hotel until he found my lost, cherished puffalump, Pesky Rabbit, and my parents' determination to always instill tons of love and fun into our childhood.

And this is why Family Summer Vacations are one of my favorite things.....

Here We Go!!!

I've always wanted to blog. I just wasn't sure what I had to blog about. Then it dawned on me.... The only reason I DVR Oprah is so I can be sure to catch her Favorite Things episode! You know that episode. She unveils her favorite things for the season--from food to refrigerators to monogrammed soaps to pajamas and maybe a dog sweater or something. The best part? She gives everyone in the audience each of her favorite things...por gratis!! So I asked myself, "why should I have to wait once a year to focus on what Oprah's favorite things are when I can just do it myself?!....minus giving everyone everything for free, of course." Hey, I live off of an education salary after all!

Welcome to Sparkles & Applesauce!! The blog about all of my favorite things. No, sparkles & applesauce certainly aren't my top 2 favorite things. (I'm not quite sure what my top 2 fav things are, yet)! But I do believe that you can never have enough sparkles, and I could eat applesauce on just about anything.

So join me in saying HELLO to all things delicious, hilarious, pretty, inspirational, SPARKLY!, dear to my heart, memorable, or just plain random--so long as it's something I LOVE!!!

ENJOY!