Here we go!

Today, I had my very first show as a business! Teddy came with me and took photos while I presented. This was exceptionally helpful, as my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/home.php) and my website (www.maryshistoricalprograms.com) were seriously lacking in the photograph department. Fortunately, I have rectified this as of about ten minutes ago. Unfortunately, I was not

terribly photogenic. I will use the age-old “blame the weather”…rain was definitely recruiting serious frizz, but to be honest, I make ridiculous faces when talking. Well, as a public speaker, I’ve learned to laugh at myself. Later this week, I will post some of the less flattering photos, mid-talk, with the captions I shared with Teddy online earlier. For the “real” photos, please do check out Facebook and/or the website. I don’t think I have doubles on the pages…but it is late and I am tired, so I may have one or two that are on both.

Also, I’d love some feedback on the dress. It’s new (yay!) I just bought it in February. Having recently become company cook for my unit, I needed to get a work dress. For those of you not in the reenacting/history buff community, that means a dress that doesn’t have that classic huge skirt of the era. As you can probably imagine, cooking over an open fire with a long skirt poses a safety risk. Coupling that risk with the hoop skirt is asking for trouble since the hoops basically act as a chimney. Not my ideal way to go, so I used a gift card I got for my college graduation and bought a new corset (the one being shown in the photos) and my first store bought dress. Everything else I own, as far as clothing is concerned, has been made my mother. I’m hoping to master a sewing machine in the near future and start working on my own accessories. I thought I might start with a second set of undergarments. Thoughts?

Back to the program, obviously, it was at a senior center, a rather nice one at that. The audience varied in age and condition, which made the program a little rough but not too bad. There were a few audience members who were quite interested in the program and actively participated. Whenever I present, I like to make it more a discussion then a speech. I also enjoy incorporating stories from my personal experiences. This is something I realized I preferred as a student and have had great success when incorporating it in my programs. What do you when you attend a presentation, meeting, speech?

Oh, after my program, I met up with Sister 1, who is also a blogger on…Blogger (that’s not confusing) and she shared some pointers. You can now follow via email and receive email updates. That jibberish at the bottom of this post is a code that lets people find me on a blog search engine whose name evades me now. I think that puts me one up on the modern technology today.

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