April 27, 2015

Family Concerts at Severance Hall.

So! I am thrilled to be giving away family sets of FOUR tickets to the Cleveland Orchestra!


Wait.  Let me rewind.  The Cleveland Orchestra is one of our city's best assets.  It is literally one of the best orchestras in the country if not the world.  And Severance Hall is in a word STUNNING:

Severance Hall
Image from flickr here.
But!  With little kids I thought it was out of reach.  For us to go would mean babysitting which is few and far between.  And toddlers aren't exactly appropriate at the symphony.  So we'd take the kids to Blossom Music Center for a concert every summer and figured that was all we could do.

First trip to Blossom
Blossom way back in 2012.  We've gone every year since!
Turns out?  I was completely wrong.  The Cleveland Orchestra has an entire series of concerts specifically for children!  And they are awesome.  There are two types of concerts (from the Cleveland Orchestra Website):

PNC Musical Rainbows - ideal for children 3 to 6

Which instrument is bigger  violin or viola?  How many strings are on a harp?  What’s a bassoon?  Children will discover the answers to these musical questions and more during our 30-minute Musical Rainbow concerts.  These presentations are a fun, interactive way for our youngest listeners to learn about the instruments of the orchestra, one at a time.  PNC Musical Rainbow concerts are performed by Cleveland Orchestra musicians and guests, are hosted by local actress and singer Maryann Nagel. Children have the chance to sing, clap, and move to the music as they have fun learning all about orchestral instruments.  Musical Rainbows are performed in the 400-seat Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall.

Family Concerts - ideal for children 7 and up

Family Concerts are a great way to get kids excited about classical music!  These narrated, 60-minute concerts performed by The Cleveland Orchestra in historic Severance Hall, are structured around a theme and feature guest artists such as young musicians, mimes, dancers, actors, and more.  Family Concerts offer a unique and fun-filled opportunity for families to spend quality time with their children, enrich their lives through exposure to the musical arts, and share the excitement of live music performed by one of the world’s top orchestras.
All Family Concerts are preceded by free activities, including hands-on Instrument Discovery, throughout the hall that enhance your child’s enjoyment of the performance.
 We took our kids to a Musical Rainbows concert on Saturday and they had a great time:


Family Concert at Severance Hall

It was super fun.  The concert was exactly the right length to hold even Tiny's attention and was interactive and fun!  They loved it:

Musical Rainbows Concert
The concert was held in the Reinberger Chamber Hall - a smaller more intimate venue than the main concert hall - but equally beautiful:

Reinberger Chamber Hall
Image from here.
Really everywhere in Severance is beautiful.  Such an amazing building and space.  I was proud to share it with my kids for the first time:

Severance
ART DECO MAKES ME SWOON.
So I am very happy to be sharing the opportunity to go to one of these great concerts with my readers!  I am giving away 2 sets of 4 tickets for each of their upcoming children's concerts - Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery on Saturday, May 3 and The Vivacious Viola on Saturday, May 9.   Feel free to enter both contests!!!!  


Cleveland Orchestra

PNC Musical Rainbows Concert - The Vivacious Viola – May 9


Disclosure:  My family and I received tickets to this event in exchange for this review.  As always all opinions are my own.

Family portrait at MOCA. Although i wish i had noticed that the camera was in front of my face! @mocacleveland #stevensonpartyoffive #thisiscle #cleveland #cle #clevelandgram #lifeincleveland
Bonus family portrait in MOCA.  We walked there for lunch after the concert.  It was a lovely way to spend a Saturday in Cleveland!

April 24, 2015

Stop Motion Fun.

 So!  What a whilrlwind week this was!  I have a bunch of legitimate posts to finish up but it's Friday.  And it's finally warm enough to get back outside. And I may have promised a trip to the park to some kids who want to see how far a stomp rocket can fly....

Enjoying the sunshine despite the wind! #stevensonpartyoffive #thisiscle #cleveland #cle #clevelandgram
we love the park

So how about a quickie post of things that are making me happy right now.

1.)  This video of stop motion silly faces:



Ok a couple of weeks ago Matt downloaded a stop motion app.  And we spent a very lazy Sat. morning with the kids playing with it.  I have a bunch of videos of family nonsense but this one is by far my favorite.  SO MUCH ADORABLE.  And SILLY FACES.  And I know this is a video that 10 or 20 years from now will make me cry instantly because LOOK HOW LITTLE AND CUTE THEY WERE!!

2.)  This yarn:

The "Q"
 I can't even handle how perfectly it is knitting up.  It's just a plain old sock knit on size 1.5 needles over 60 stitches.  I cast on in the pickup line the other day, ribbed until I was bored, and then am doing a stockinette body.  BOOM:

My game day knitting. #destinationyarn #riseupcle #operationsockdrawer #indiedyer #yarn #knit #knitting #handdyedyarn
The colorway is "the Q" because all of my colorways are places... but I kindof think that I should rename it #allinCLE.  I think this might be our year! 

Happy Weekend, everyone!

April 22, 2015

Fox 8 Cleveland and Sassy Chicken Salad.

So.  I was on Fox 8 Cleveland this morning!  I made Sassy Chicken Salad and tried not to make  a fool out of myself.  Here's the clip:



The whole experience was super fun.  And pretty surreal.  Everyone there was very, very nice:

Cooking on Fox 8 News!
Me and Kristi Capel from her instagram page.  I love that our outfits coordinated.  Yay set design!
From the producer to the hosts to the nice lady who set up my mic they made me feel right at home an totally at ease.  Which was good because I was NERVOUS.


Cooking on Fox 8 News!
Backstage where I set up my cooking segment and also TRIED NOT TO FREAK OUT.
The set is really cool.  Both bigger and smaller than I imagined.  The cooking area was wheeled in to that empty space on the left:

Cooking on Fox 8 News!

And this is the news desk:

Cooking on Fox 8 News!

The response via facebook so far from family and friends who have watched has been pretty positive.  But when after preschool pickup I asked the Dude - my 4 year old middle child - how I did he said this.  And I quote:

"You looked weird.  I missed you.  ..... How do turtles go to the potty?"

THANKS, BUDDY.  Then he wanted to know why I didn't cook something he likes.  I asked him what I should have made and he said without hesitation "Apple Raspberry Sauce and Peanut Butter Jelly"  So there you have it.  Forget Sassy Chicken Salad.  I should have just shown off my mad pbj skilz.

But!  They seemed to be happy with my performance.  And I don't think that I looked... weird.  Honestly once I got rolling with it it wasn't so much nerve-wrecking as just full on FUN.  I would do it again in a heartbeat. 

Had SO much fun this morning on @fox8news with @kristi_capel !  Thanks for having me!  #cleveland #cle #clevelandgram #lifeincleveland #stevensonpartyoffive

And since someone asked here's a better picture of the shawl I wore in the segment:

Ravellenic Shawl
Fragile Hearts knit out of Destination Yarn Silk Road in "Daiquiri"  Many, many more details about it here.

If you are new to this blog and want to play along you can like Life in Cleveland on Facebook and follow @LifeinCle on twitter and instagram.

If you're a knitter or into the whole yarn thing there's lots more pretty at Destination Yarn and @DestinationYarn on instagram.

Yay for new experiences!

April 21, 2015

Channelling Chef Lorenzo

So.  You guys.  I'M GOING TO BE ON TV.  Yes.  For real.  I was contacted to see if I wanted to be on the recipe segment of Fox 8 Cleveland's morning show. UM HOW ABOUT YES.  So I will be cooking a delicious and Sassy Chicken Salad and chatting with them about ... well... Life in Cleveland.

conversation topics
Conversation topics I'm sure I will cover - my kids, Cleveland, and Destination Yarn.  Because there's only so long I can go without talking about yarn and the segment's 5 minutes so....
And!  As exciting as this is let me just take it up a notch with some backstory.  This is Chef Lorenzo, my great-grandfather:

20150421_135747

He was a celebrity chef in the 50's.  Before celebrity chefs were a thing.  He hosted a cooking show that had quite a following in the greater Cleveland area.

Flipping through my celebrity chef great grandfather's recipe book to get ready for my TV appearance tomorrow. I hope I do him proud! #cheflorenzo
His recipes have tv show air dates on them.  AWESOME.
 A poster from one of his events hangs in my kitchen:

20150421_133237
I hope I do him proud tomorrow! 

(and also that i don't make a fool out of myself because SERIOUSLY)

The live (gulp) segment will be on Fox 8 tomorrow morning at around 8:30.  Set your dvr's!  And if you're not local I will post the clip after it airs.

April 20, 2015

A Frozen Birthday Party.

So.  Of course my daughter had a Frozen themed birthday party.  Of course she did:

Frozen Birthday Party
Let me rewind.  It's birthday season at the Life in Cleveland household - 4 out of the 5 of us celebrated birthdays in the last couple of weeks.  CRAZYTOWN!  And both of the big kids are old enough to have actual friends that they want to invite to actual parties.  But with that much birthday in that short of a time I was uninterested in going overboard.  A frozen theme?  Sure.  But let's keep it simple, shall we?

Frozen Birthday Party
Pictured:  Simple.
Because it's super easy to fall down the pintrest rabbit hole and think that somehow you are a terrible parent if you haven't taken out the glue gun or found the perfect printable.  BAH.  But!  Even without the obsessive crafting I think we nailed the whole Frozen spirit.

The cake was probably the coolest part of the party.  My mom has one of those barbie cake molds from the '80's.  You know the one with the creepy half doll on a spike?  She used that - and my daughter's barbie dolls - to make this happen:

Frozen Birthday Party
Because when you can't decide between Elsa and Anna why not go for both!  Plus the cake basically looks like the picture of the sisters back to back that's on ALL OF THE THINGS:
Elsa and Anna Cake
She wrapped the dolls in saran wrap before putting them in the cake to keep frosting out of their joints.   Afterwards I just used dishsoap to wash them off.  No problem.  Although as the frosting warmed up and melted Anna started to have a.... wardrobe malfunction.

Frozen Birthday Party
Anna's going to end up on TMZ if she's not careful.
The food was easy.  We used a tiered serving platter thing that we already had which made the whole affair SUPER FANCY.  Then we rubberbanded our daughter's other Elsa doll to the top.

frozen party food
LET IT GOOOOOO LET IT GOOOOO WHY DO WE HAVE TWO OF THESE DOLLS?
We had baby carrots (Olaf noses), blue jello jigglers (ice cubes), and pretzels dipped in blue chocolate leftover from the treat bags.  EASY.

Oh yeah the treats were Frozen Hearts.  We had the heart mold from Valentine's Day and used blue and white chocolate.  They turned out really cute!

Frozen favors
They were also the only thing in the bags.
I poured some blue Gatorade into my trifle bowl and voila.  Fancy Frozen Drink:

Frozen Birthday Party
Also twisty straws b/c FANCY.
The rest was basically just crepe paper and balloons.  Oh and some gingham napkins I still had from the Target Napkins Tote Bags.

Frozen Birthday Party

And snowflakes that were still up from Christmas.  The girl and I cut them all out over the holidays and I told her we could leave them up until her birthday:

Cold day off from school meant my girl and I could finish our paper snowflake curtain.   #snowflake #crafty
During the party we played Pin the Nose on Olaf - Matt sketched Olaf onto poster board and the Girl cut out noses.  And "Snowball Toss" a game Matt devised using mixing bowls some bean bag snowballs that the boys got for Christmas.  We also did a Frozen Freeze dance and let the girls go nuts until the music stopped.  That was a huge hit.  Because who doesn't want to listen to "Let it Go" over and over and over again?

So yeah.  It might not have been insane with the branding or the printables or the pintrest.  But I think we pulled off a pretty spectacular Frozen birthday!  I know our girl was happy:


Frozen Birthday Party
And as a bonus here's a picture of my FAVORITE BIRTHDAY EVER.  I grew up in a double and for whatever reason the other half was empty one year around my birthday.  So my mom had the party there in the empty house.  It was AWESOME.  Pizza picnic on the floor and room to run around and chase balloons?  Perfect.

20150327_115526
Yes.  My brother is wearing a bunny suit.  I don't know either.

Next party to blog about?  The Dude's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle 4th.  COWABUNGA.

April 17, 2015

Cheers! I'm 35!

So!  Today is my 35th birthday.  RIGHT?

20150319_182052
Although I think I used up all of my I AM SO OLD angst last year with 34 because this year really isn't getting to me at all.  I'm feeling like... I'm 35.  What up.  Sure I'm another box on forms and such but I'm also really happy with my life.  We've had a lot of very hard, very sleep deprived years to get to this point.  And finally we are on the cusp of a whole bunch of awesome.  Both for this year and the foreseeable future.  So yeah.  35?  BRING IT ON.

And what better way to celebrate a birthday than with a shawl named Cheers!
Cheers!  By Laura Nelkin

I'm knitting with this very happy yarn:
Color Run
"Color Run" by Destination Yarn
 The yarn  is one of  my new, speckled dyed colorways.  They are SO FUN to dye and possibly even funner to knit. (Available now from Destination Yarn!)
Cheers in Color Run (btw @DestinationYarn is now on instagram and I tend to post dying behind the scenes stuff there if you are interested). 

Cheers in Color Run
I'm using a dark grey for the border (Storm Clouds semi-solid also by Destination Yarn) and I had some woe about the beads.  The only size 8 beads I could find at craft stores were lame.  I tried to make them work but my swatch said NOPE:

Cheers in Color Run
Can you even see the beads?
Cheers in Color Run
Not really.  Blah.
So I ordered some online and am so glad I did.  They came yesterday and BOOM:

Cheers in Color Run
It's going to be awesome.  It took so very much will power to fold the laundry last night instead of stringing these beads on immediately.  But!  What a nice birthday treat.

So yeah. With that I"m going to spend my birthday knitting in the sunshine.  At least until a kid needs me (so for like 5 minutes).
Happy Easter!!! #stevensonpartyoffive
Pic from Easter.  B/c this wouldn't be a real post without a picture of my kids.  Also Tiny is wearing an Owls Sweater I knit for the Dude way back in the day.
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