We love going to Neptune Theatre and after the stellar season they’ve had, I had high hopes for the musical adaptation of one of my favourite movies.

Neptune Theatre did Elf some serious justice, but I was still a bit nervous given my love for Legally Blonde the movie, and the fact that it wasn’t a musical. WELL. I’ve learned again to never doubt Neptune Theatre. Within seconds I was thrown into a place of extreme delight. Seriously. I was like a kid at Christmas hanging onto every last note. I smiled and laughed so much I’m pretty sure my face still hurts.

Lindsey Frazier starred as Elle Woods and was so full of spunk and life it was ridiculous. She was over the top in the best possible way and should Reese Witherspoon not be busy arguing with Atlanta Police and had the delight of seeing this play, I think she would agree that Lindsey was Elle Woods to a tee.

The Greek Chorus – which was essentially the imaginary travel version of Delta Nu, was nothing short of hysterical. The girls who made up the Greek Chorus had fantastic songs, hilarious lines and great comedic timing.

And for the songs. Well, they were nothing short of amazing…and awfully memorable to the point that I can’t stop singing them….

Oh my god, oh my god you guys*, did I mention there were dogs in the play? Real life dogs? In outfits?

Overall the audience seemed to have a total blast and even in moments that were so insanely ridiculous, people were lapping it up. A lady next to me who I learned at intermission had never even seen the movie was losing her mind laughing with her daughters. Even The Husband was laughing up a storm.

So once again – another amazing production at Neptune Theatre. You just can’t miss this one. Legally Blonde The Musical will be playing at Neptune Theatre until May 26th!

* Oh my god, oh my god you guys. This song is fabulous. Now this isn’t from Neptune Theatre but it is way too fun not to share.

I love food. LOVE food. But a couple of years ago after years of struggling with stomach issues, it was discovered that I had a dairy allergy. Those who know me will know that if I was given the option of eating only two foods for the rest of my life (without the risk of getting scurvy) I would pick pizza and bubblegum ice cream. To say I was a dairy fan would be an understatement.

Needless to say, the first few months of completely cutting dairy out of my life were extremely challenging. Because this is an allergy, and not lactose intollerance, I couldn’t just load up on Lactaid and be on my merry way. Trust me. I tried. Also at the time, goat cheese alternatives weren’t widely available and I was stuck eating mostly soy based products that tasted like plastic.

In the last 2 plus years things have changed a lot and people are becoming more in tune with what they are eating and as a result restaurants have also followed suit to ensure that people can visit their favourite eatery.

For the most part, my visits to restaurants are riddled with me asking a million questions to ensure I’m not going to leave there a bloated, uncomfortable disgusting mess, or I just avoid most restaurants all together and stick to a select few that I know I can enjoy something, worry-free.

In the past three weeks or so I’ve had TWO situations where I was told I was eating something either a) goat cheese based or b) dairy free all together.

In both situations it turns out they weren’t and as a result spent more time than I’d like feeling awful and keeping close to the facilities. (TMI I KNOW but I’m trying to illustrate a point here.)

In my case (to my knowledge) my encounter with dairy will not land me in the hospital, however, there are a lot of people out there with serious allergies that could result in a trip to the hospital, or even worse.

If as a restaurant your menu states something like “please advise server of any allergies” my hope is that you would stand true to that and advise patrons if their meal option won’t jive with the allergy they’ve told you they have. TRUST ME. Us allergy ridden kids would much rather NOT eat something instead of eating something that is going to wreak havoc on our bodies. On top of that we’re more likely to come back to your restaurant because we can trust we can eat there.

What restaurants may not realize is that sometimes it’s not the obvious foods that have dairy in them. For example, battered french fries usually have dairy in them, some types of buns have dairy in them, most pestos have dairy in them… And when I say dairy I don’t just mean STRAIGHT UP MILK.

Basically any kind of cheese that comes from a cow, modified milk ingredients, butter, buttermilk, milk powder etc… falls into that category.

So my ask is this. If you’re a server at a restaurant or a restaurant who can make modifications to your food for people with allergies, please do take the time to ensure that you look beyond the obvious. There is nothing worse than paying money to eat a meal only to worry the entire time that you’re not being taken seriously and will ultimately feel like garbage.

And as for you sufferers out there – below is a list of a few places in Halifax that are incredibly accommodating for people like us – aside from the obviously places like The Heartwood etc…

Morris East – You can have your pizza and eat it too! They are WONDERFUL here for taking the time to get to know their patrons and they even have a coconut milk creme brule.

A Mano – Again, have that hankering for pizza? A Mano is another great go-to and they have delicious creamy goat cheese that can go on top of that pizza pie. And for dessert? Sorbeto which is also dairy free! AND they even do sorbetto to go so while you’re friends are all stuffing their faces will dairy filled ice cream while walking the Halifax Waterfront, fear not. You can enjoy a treat too.

Salty’s – Having spent many years working at Salty’s in my younger years, this kitchen is staffed with an amazing team who makes a lot from scratch and so they know the in’s and out’s of what they’re working with.

The Sweet Hereafter – They have vegan cheesecake THAT TASTES LIKE CHEESECAKE. The lovely duo at The Sweet Hereafter have made a point to offer vegan flavours for quite some time now. They do their research and they’ve instilled the utmost confidence in me that I can eat pretty much an entire cake to myself and only feel bloated because, well that’s a heck of a lot of cheesecake.

Q – Despite Pulled Pork always leaving me feeling like I need a nap, the team at Q has always gone above and beyond to make sure I’m eating safe foods. Even if it means going bun-less.

The Foggy Goggle – If the Internet’s Joel Kelly can make this his second home, the rest of us can eat here with peace of mind. Again, with a great kitchen, they know what they’re putting in our mouths, and they can make sure they keep the bad stuff out.

Ok – that list makes me look like a glutton, but I warned you. I love food. And when I eat out I want to feel comfortable, safe and enjoy every last bite!

Let me know if you have any other go-to restaurants where you know you can have a great meal or treat!

I was watching the Season 2 premiere of Mr. D. and I kept shouting out the various other people that the actors looked like when it dawned on me. Is it a prerequisite to have a fellow famous person as your doppleganger to be a male cast member on Mr. D? This is my theory, let’s see if it holds up.

Gerry Dee (Mr. Duncan) & Jon Dyer

While Jon Dyer may not be a TV star, he is a dead ringer for Gerry Dee. In the summer I was driving down Spring Garden Rd. when I thought I spotted my old friend Jon Dyer walking down the street. I wave, and I see that he is waving back… only when I get closer it turns out it’s Gerry Dee. Facepalm. To make things stranger, I turn the corner and who do I see? THE REAL JON DYER.

It’s important to note that Jon Dyer and Mr. D’s share the same favourite epic dance song, Walk Like an Egyptian. I don’t think I need to go on to confirm that Mr. Duncan & Jon Dyer are not only physical dopplegangers, but emotional ones too. A DNA test may need to be done.

Darrin Rose (Bill) & Jason Sudeikis

This one has been bothering me for quite some time. Luckily, since Jason Sudeikis has been all over Perez Hilton this holiday season, I was able to put my finger on this on Monday.

You cannot tell me that Darrin Rose & Jason Sudeikis are not IDENTICAL TWINS. And since there is no information on Darrin Rose’s birthday on the Internet I’m willing to bet that they share the same birthday, if they are in fact not actually the same person. Now the real question – WHICH ONE OF THEM IS IN THAT COFFEE COMMERCIAL?

Booth Savage (Principal Callaghan) & Patrick Duffy

If you’ve ever watched TGIF you know that Patrick Duffy played the Dad in Step By Step. It needs to be noted that my research partner initially felt that Erika Estrada was the obvious doppleganger. I will let you draw your own conclusions on that one.

Jonathan Torrens (Robert Cheeley) & Ellen Degeneres

At first Jonathan Torrens thought that only his daughter confused him for Ellen Degeneres, but as it turns out – so does everyone else. With heads of flowing blonde hair and Twitter accounts that never fail to provide laughs, it’s easy to confuse these two.

Wes Williams (Paul Dwyer) & Milt Stegall

While my knowledge of celebrities may appear limitless, sports celebrities are a particular area of weakness for me. Enter research assistant who instantly identified Xavier’s favourite teacher Mr. Dwyer as the doppleganger of Milt Steegal. Former CFL Line Receiver, and current TV football analyst. And while I am not familiar with Stegall’s work, I can confirm that he and Mr. Dwyer are in fact face twins.

Mark Little (Simon) & Kevin McHale

Mark & Kevin have more in common than just their looks. They also spend much of their time on camera in high schools. And given that Mark is a member of the comedy troop Picnicface, I can only assume that he would challenge McHale (Artie from Glee) in a dance off any day of the week.

Mark Forward (Mr. Leung) & Dion Phaneuf 

This was a tricky one, which Mark should use to his advantage. He’s a bit of a chameleon. We searched through images of various celebrities that we felt could be his doppleganger. My research assistant strongly believes that Mark’s #1 doppleganger is Brett Favre circa 1990, however, you try searching for images of Brett Favre on Google without throwing up in your mouth a little. As a result we went for the obvious second choice, Dion Phaneuf.

Suresh John (Malik) & Maharishi Mahesh

This was another easy one for my research assistant to identify. Being an avid Beatles fan, he quickly figured out that Suresh John looks just like the Beatles famous Yogi Maharishi Mahesh who was the inspiration behind the epic album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Certainly not a bad guy to be mistaken for.

Brian Bannan (Jeff Lemire) & Chris Carmack

Although it appears as though Brian Bannan hails from Canada, he might as well be an Orange County import. If he were to have punched Ryan in the face in the first season of The OC we would have been none the wiser.

Given the remarkable resembles of these lads, I’m going to go ahead and say that my theory is correct. All male cast members of Mr. D. do in fact have fellow actor dopplegangers.

**Photos borrowed from CBC.com, Google Images, and Jon Dyer Himself.

But while we are spreading Christmas cheer we often tend to be eating lots of treats that are often filled with copious amounts of dairy.

For kids like myself who can no longer enjoy the fruits of cows’s milk this can be a really frustrating time of year. You can remember the delicious taste of eggnog, the melt in your mouth deliciousness of your Mother-In-Law’s shortbread cookie recipe, and yet you can partake in none of it!

Thankfully there are more options than ever to get snacking this holiday season, and a lot of them taste AS GOOD as the real thing.

I just wanted to share some of my favourite alternatives for holidays treats that us dairy-free folks can enjoy:

- Starbucks Soy Peppermint Mocha: I had no idea but there is no dairy in the chocolate syrup used to make a Soy Peppermint Mocha. So go ahead – enjoy one of these holiday favourites without fear!

- Cheese Platters: I love cheese. Always have, always will. Delicious goat cheese options make a great a good alternative to traditional cheese plats. Goats cheese cranberry logs, goats brie, goats mozza can all be put together on a plate for a delicious appy for holiday guests.

- Shortbread Cookies: This is my ultimate holiday weakness. Take your favourite shortbread recipe and replace the regular butter with goats milk butter or lactose free margarine. Last year I tried the lactose free margarine version and they didn’t quite cut it. This year I made the goats milk version and certain members of my household couldn’t even tell the difference from mine to their Mom’s own!

- Hot Chocolate: Thankfully marshmallows are dairy free. But what good is a marshmallow without a hot cup of cocoa to accompany it? Delicious and not so bad for you version. 1 cup of coconut milk mixed with 1 tsp of cocoa. The coconut milk is sweet enough that you don’t even need to add any sugar. Whisk together, throw in a marshmallow and enjoy!

And last but not least. Egg Nog. There are some dairy free alternatives that you can enjoy if you have a hankering for egg nog. The two I’ve found locally are Noel Nog (Almond Milk Based) and Soy Nog. Both of which taste pretty darn good although not QUITE authentic. Add a pinch of cinnamon or nutmeg to the top and you will find your treat tasting a bit closer to the original.

So there you have it. My ideas for a dairy free holiday season!! If you have any other ideas let’s hear them!

Naturally a visit to Neptune Theatre over the holidays was high on the priority list to keep my cheer up. For as long as I can remember, anytime that I’ve been in Nova Scotia for Christmas I’ve made it to Neptune Theatres holiday production. Beauty & The Beast remained high on my list of favourite holiday productions, but I had concerns about Elf. How were they going to take such a hilarious Christmas movie and do it any justice on the stage? I shouldn’t have doubted the amazing cast and crew at Neptune, but can you blame me for being concerned? Will Ferrell was Buddy the Elf in the movie. His humour knows no boundaries and Buddy was such a perfect role for him.

Regardless of my minor worries, we arrived at Neptune and I brought my Christmas cheer along with me. From THE MOMENT, and I really do mean the moment the play started I was in love.

The adaptation from the movie to a live musical production was seamless. Everything you loved from the movie made it into the play and it was wrapped around a catchy little song that you almost didn’t realize wasn’t in the movie. There were sets for everything imaginable and they were adorable and hilarious.

Don’t get me wrong. The entire cast of Elf – The Musical was amazing. They had great voices and were completely charming but Mark Uhre was not only the lead role in Elf, but he was truly the star. He was able to take the role of Buddy The Elf and keep it crazy and over the top without it ever feeling forced. Mark Uhre never made me feel like he was trying to be Will Ferrel, he was just being Buddy The Elf and it was perfection.

There is one scene where he plays the bells and I swear I almost fell apart with laughter.

After the play ended I was chatting with a lady who sat behind me who thought the play was amazing, and I asked if she’d ever seen the movie. She hadn’t, which solidified to me that Neptune Theatre’s Elf is really just for those of us with some Holiday Cheer that we want to sing loudly for all to hear.

Elf – The Musical is easily the best thing I’ve seen at Neptune Theatre in recent memory. Take your boyfriend, or girlfriend, husband or wife, borrow a kid, but seriously just get your butt to see Elf. If you don’t you will become a cotton headed ninny muggins. That’s just science.

I’m not going to lie I laughed more than I probably should of given the demo of this TV show but it’s cute and they are Bananas in outfits with cute little Australian accents.. so what’s not to like.

Anyway about 3/4 of the way through I stopped the video to continue watching X Factor but I was compelled to finish. Please watch the video and tell me what you think is missing?

OK if you didn’t figure it out. THERE IS NO MORAL TO THIS STORY!!! You can’t very well go around breaking people’s stuff, posing as faux Garden Gnomes, then go have snacks with your friends and never explain why on Earth you were dressed up AS A GARDEN GNOME! What’s next B1 and B2? Do you play hide and go seek AND THEN NEVER FIND YOUR FRIENDS?!

To think that the youth of today were raised on such craziness. Next I’m going to learn they weren’t even real bananas.

So as I approach my 10 year High School Reunion, Bingo! brought me back to a time when High School Reunions really could be a time to well, reunite.

Bingo! Chronicles the night of a 30 year high school reunion of a group of friends from Cape Breton. Many bevy’s are had and stories told, love is found, love is lost, and most importantly the audience gets to laugh their faces off.

Marty Burt who played high school stud “Dookie” was the kind of guy you loved to hate. In fact we aren’t entirely sure we like him at all after watching that convincing performance. Marty Burt was fantastic in Mrs. Parliament’s Night Out and didn’t disappoint in Bingo!.

Ryan Rogerson, Emmy Alcorn and John Beale were all charasmatic and entertaining but Heather Rankin absolutely steals the show as Bitsy. Aside from being jealous about how jacked her arms looked the whole time, she was able to tug on your heartstrings and make you laugh hysterically as Bitsy tries to figure herself out all this time after high school.

This hilarious and heartwarming journey of a few friends reuniting was certainly not tainted by modern technologies like Facebook, which I’m sure Dookie is pretty, pretty thankful for.

Check out Bingo! at Neptune Theatre from October 16th – November 4th, 2012!

Iain from @boostventilator was paired up with us! After tossing some ideas around we finally decided that this year we’d like to do something for the kids. The Holidays will soon be upon us and there are so many kids that go without, so we thought we’d try our hand at finding them some awesome gifts from some awesome downtown stores!

Luckily, Iain has a daughter of his own, so she tagged along to vet our purchases. Yes, shopping for toys with a kid is SUPER fun.

We started off at Carbonstok where we were delighted to find a ton of cool toys, a lot of which were made in Lunenburg!

We were all fascinated by “Queen Beatrix” who was a bouncy, suction cup toy!

Our other Carbonstok purchase was this sweet race car made from recycled saw dust!

We then wandered down to The Discovery Centre to see what we could get our hands on! As expected the Discovery Centre is packed full of awesome, educational toys. We found some awesome toys that we enjoyed as kids like a “Grow Your Own Seahorse” kit! We also found some cool books, Lego, Dinosaur dig kits and a whole lot more! A lot of the Discovery Centre Dinosaur toys were 50% off so we got great bang for our buck there.

Luckily, our $200 was not done there, so we finished up at Des Serres where we got an awesome easel / chalkboard and a bedazzle your own headband kit! Our goal was to get toys that didn’t require batteries, or other supplies so that they could be enjoyed for a long time to come!

We were able to get TONS of stuff with our $200 and on November 17th we are going to donate all of our toys to the Empire Theatres Toy Drive! A big thank you to Rowan for her help, and to Downtown Halifax Business Commission for including This Needs to Stop & @boostventilator in Big Day Downtown 2012!

So obviously I knew nothing about Sweeney Todd, which is disgraceful considering I love the theatre, but alas it’s the truth. So I was thrilled to have the chance to see Sweeney Todd at Neptune Theatre last week.

I was hooked from the moment it started. The vocal talent was incredible – I kid you not, their singing instilled my fear of Sweeney from the get go.

Without giving too much away, Sweeney Todd is “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” who kills many poor souls who visit his barber shop as he tries to seek revenge on the lawyer who raped his wife and forced his daughter to live with him – all while he was serving time in jail on false charges.

The story of Sweeney Todd is incredibly dark, yet the way it’s portrayed has you laughing all the way through. Mrs. Lovett, who becomes Sweeney’s partner in crime stole the show for me. She was the perfect balance of sweetness, optimism and naivety for Sweeney’s dark, disturbed nature.

To date, Neptune has never let me down with their sets. Sweeney Todd was no different. The dreary mood was set from the moment you walked in and you left thinking you just spent hours in 1846.

My favourite piece of the set was the barbers chair, so please do keep your eyes  on the victims who are thrown into the basement from Sweeney’s chair. I lost it every single time someone took the plunge. Like I mentioned, you laugh even at the darkest moments.

I absolutely loved Neptune Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd. A must see this season!

After getting sucked into a marathon of questionable movies on the weekend ( Just IMDB Sunday’s at Tiffany’s… I dare you… and yes I watched the whole thing..) I stumbled upon “What a Girl Wants”. This is certainly not Amanda’s finest piece of work, but it was cute and good for the kiddies. After spending two hours in 2003, I realized how sad it was that this hilarious young girl turned out to be such a train wreck. WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?!

Looking through her work, she actually seemed to have such a different path lined up for herself. Her sketch comedy “The Amanda Show” was actually pretty decent considering she was only 13 years old.

Another guilty pleasure of mine was “What I Like About You” where her and Jennie Garth played the sister equivalent of The Gilmore Girls.

So how did this hilarious, and seemingly normal child star start making headlines recently for repeatedly drinking and driving, and getting involved in hit and runs? I have no sweet clue. Maybe Amanda and LiLo have some sick contest running on how many times they can get away with doing ridiculously dangerous and stupid crap? Or maybe her acting dry spell was enough to get her on the sauce in a huge way.

Regardless of how she got there, I still can’t help but be sad for one of my favourite teeny boppers going awry.

So let’s remember the old Amanda and a still super hot and fabulous Channing Tatum. Le Sigh.