a night out on broadway

Updated: With photographic proof after the jump!

I may not have mentioned that I have a love-hate relationship with New York. I think I can safely say that the majority of New Yorkers have this relationship, so I'm not alone. So a part of my life project is taking advantage of the elements of New York that you can't get anywhere else. Or most places, that is.

We take advantage of going out for dinner at 10 at night (as we did after we Flor'd) plenty often. We take advantage of not having to own a car every day of our lives (and sometimes, when lugging around bags full of 23" throw pillows, 9 yards of fabric, and a hammered aluminum bowl, we wish we had a car).

We don't often go to Broadway shows.

I grew up watching musicals and listening to the soundtracks on vinyl. My mom had an awesome collection that included the staples of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Camelot, and who knows what else. I also listened to a bunch of Simon & Garfunkel. I have extremely good taste. I grew up thinking that Gordon MacRae was the hottest thing on feet. (I later discovered Hello, Dolly and the joy of Tommy Tune, along with Singin' in the Rain and the inimitable Gene Kelly.)

I saw touring companies of Miss Saigon, Fame, Rent, and Chicago growing up in Rochester. I saw Sebastian Bach in Jekyll & Hyde (twice!) during college, and even dragged my mother along for the ride. I saw Cabaret at Studio 54 and went back to see Rent when Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp re-joined the cast. (Adam Pascal dared to be sick that day.) I've seen Spring Awakening sans Lea Michele and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark for no particular reason other than my undying love for U2. (So undying that I love them even after paying good money to watch that train wreck.)

This sounds like a lot.

I have lived in or around New York for 11 years. That's not nearly enough.

Until now.

Inspired, perhaps, by missing my dear friend, The So-Called Wife, who really took advantage of her time in New York and saw a truly impressive number of shows, Husband and I will be seeing not one but two amazing shows within the span of a month.

I was also inspired by the big, big, BIG names headlining these shows.

First, there is a Broadway event we simply cannot miss. If you don't know the piece of pure entertainment joy that is Hugh Jackman, well, you really need to get out more. I had just graduated college and had zero dollars to my name when Hugh starred in The Boy From Oz, so I wasn't able to see that. I also think you couldn't get a ticket if you had lots of dollars, it was that popular. (The same is probably true for A Steady Rain.) So when I heard Hugh was doing a one-man show for ten weeks only, I couldn't pass it up. I repeat: A one-man show. That is Hugh Jackman (the second greatest person to portray Curly in Oklahoma! since my dear Gordon MacRae), singing and dancing practically by his darn self on stage. And interacting with the audience. And generally being the amazing song-and-dance man that he is. 


Who wouldn't want to stand out in the rain for him?

Never mind my weird face. I was super-excited!

getting seasonal

Guess what? I'm not done talking about things we did on Saturday. It really was a big day.

Yes, I told you that we went fabric shopping on Saturday, but that was not the beginning nor the end of our travels. First we stopped at CB2 to return a throw pillow liner that had unfortunately been sliced long before we bought it and was spewing down everywhere. Thanks to CB2's great customer service, they overlooked the fact that the return period had long since passed in order to provide us with something that wasn't basically broken. We also checked out their lamp selection, as mentioned here and ended up saying "meh" to just about everything.

We didn't leave the store empty-handed. We left with these cuties:

Aren't they adorable? Subtly seasonal but totally appropriate to have out now. We should probably pick up some new tea lights, because the ones pictured are both a.) completely useless and b.) the last ones we own in the universe.

We didn't stop there. After our trip to The City Quilter, we dropped in at a flea market across the street (the best use of a parking garage I have ever seen), looked through some vintage post cards and otherwise enjoyed ourselves without buying a thing.

We then ventured on to West Elm to check out some other lamps we'd been thinking about. We are now in a lamp holding pattern because we hate everything. The ones I thought I liked at West Elm seem entirely too tall. I need to figure out how tall table lamps should be. I think I need some sort of decorating encyclopedia. Does such a thing exist?

But we didn't leave that store empty-handed, either. After pondering a couple of their Christmas trees, we decided to think some more about our eco-friendly tree selection. We couldn't resist this little display:

We picked up a star anise-covered decorative ball and paired it with some bright green acorns in one of our crystal bowls. I wish I had smell-o-vision so you could get a whiff of the star anise. It smells as subtly festive as it looks!

Last, but not least, is the bowl I could not leave the store without:

It is currently packed with 8 pounds of apples (which all fit, by the way), because I asked Husband to pick up some apples for apple sauce. I may have written "8 pounds" on his shopping list. I did not actually intend for him to buy that many, but the more the merrier for this awesome hammered aluminum bowl and our future apple sauce!

I had been pondering the perfect fruit bowl for our lovely yellow table, and I can't tell you how amazing I think the silver looks with the yellow. With the addition of our folding chairs (which lived in Philadelphia with Husband for two years), I think the kitchen is coming along just as steadily as the living room without putting so much effort into it!

And that's how we do festive at the Philirao house.

the one about holiday decorations

I must be getting old. Or turning into my mother. 

I don't mean this in a bad way. I simply mean that the period from college and a few years afterward--often called "my twenties"--is drawing to a close. And at the same time, so is my rebellion against Christmas decorations.

My dear mother is an amazing craftswoman. She quilts, she cross-stitches, and she has absolutely spoiled me with her ability to make curtains, throw pillows, and pillow shams. There was even an interlude during which we make a duvet cover without a pattern. Putting the duvet inside the cover involved me crawling inside it. Obviously.

And she loves the holidays. It starts in the fall when she gets out all her leaf-pattered paraphernalia and her 99 stuffed pumpkins. There are table runners, table toppers (note the different), place mats, wall hangings, and it's all very thematic. Autumn is her favorite.

And then there's Christmas. She's toned it down over the years--she says this and I believe her due to the lack of bows on the curtain rods when I get home--but my adolescent home is still where the holidays begin for me. I have never decorated as thoroughly as my mother, so I don't really feel it until I get there.  And I love it.  

This year, as it is my second and final year in graduate school, the lead-up to the holidays coincides with finals. Also, Husband and I don't live in the same apartment. For these reasons, buying and purchasing a Christmas tree seems idiotic. (We are also those people who have to throw away their tree on, say, December 17th because we leave town for the holidays and don't want the tree to turn into a pile of match sticks and burn.)

This year, my brain is thousands of miles away from grad school, and I have rebelled from writing papers, doing research, or otherwise being productive by decorating the apartment at very spontaneous intervals.

Examples:

• Last weekend, after getting back from Husband's parents' house for Thanksgiving, I came home and almost immediately hung up the needlepoint mitten garland my mom made for me in college. (Yep, I had decorations in college.) This was inspired by the overnight transformation from Thanksgiving to Christmas decorations in my in-laws' house. I was suitably impressed.
• Later last weekend, when Husband and I were dutifully writing papers across from each other at the kitchen table, I got out the Christmas place mats my mother made me (gingerbread-people fabric, of course), the gingerbread man salt-and-pepper shakers that have been sitting on the window sill all year, and put them on the table. I also insisted we plug in the multicolored lights that hang over the window all year long. We worked hard, but we were festive.
• Last Monday, I came home from a harrowing trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a comforter (another adventure in putting a duvet in a cover--this time with 100% less of my body inside it), which involved people on stilts dressed as nutcrackers singing in Lincoln Center, and a general inability to walk on the sidewalk. Also featured: a distaste for holiday consumerism in New York. And when I got home, Husband had cracked and bought a wreath from a Christmas tree vendor, desperate for the smell of pine. As we have no over-the-door hanger for such an item, it sat on the floor for a week, but it did smell nice. Saturday night after a late dinner, I came home and said, "I am hanging that up." I looped the attached wire over the door and it proceeded to slide down the door. I said, "We need leverage. Give me my umbrella!" Yep, on the outside of our door, we have a pine wreath. On the inside, we have an umbrella. It's like decorating with Rhianna.  (Cue a chorus of "under my umbrella-ella-ella, ay-ay-ay-ay...")
• Sunday afternoon, I cracked. I wanted a tree. Lots of friends had posted pictures of their trees on Facebook, and I was sitting watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape for the second time in as many days (for research purposes). I popped open the hope-chest-of-holiday-decor and unwrapped my ceramic tree. Husband moved the bed to plug it in. We picked a few choice ornaments to lay around it like presents. And we counted down when we lit it.

This led me to realize one important thing: Although, when starting our collection of Christmas ornaments, I had a theme in mind, another theme has cropped up unintentionally. I intended gingerbread men. Food has supplanted this. Both my own mother and my mother-in-law gave me cupcake ornaments. Gingerbread men are food. There the traditional German glass pickle. A pop-up toaster, complete with bread.

So, as our other newlywed friends post pictures of their blended decorations, we realize our greatest compromise in decorating has been the same compromise we have in cooking: sweet versus savory. Husband and I love food, and gosh darn it our holiday decor should reflect this. Someday we'll have a tree covered in cupcakes. And it will be delectable.

Happy holidays, everyone!  Once finals are over, we'll be jetting* up to my parents' house and making edible holiday items. Aka: cookies. Mountains of cookies.

*By jetting, I mean, "train-ing"  A slow, decrepit, train that is only on time 44% of the time.  Or is late 44% of the time.  Either way, I'm glad husband and our headphone jack splitter will be there.