Gish Picks: Week of November 21, 2007


HAPPY THANKSGIVING! If you are traveling with your family for the holiday, stay safe! Welcome to this week's "Gish Picks", where I highlight family-oriented cultural events, products or services. Please note that I "highlight" these events, but I don't know if they are appropriate for your particular children, so choose wisely based on age, maturity and interests. I know many of you go to events based on GISH PICKS recommendations; PLEASE remember to tell the organization that you are there because of us. Word-of-mouth like yours helps our business to grow. In the same spirit, please also feel free to share GISH PICKS with friends and families. Do you have something you would like to advertise on Gish Picks? Advertisers can promote family-friendly events, products or services to Houstonians all over the city and the surrounding area who are active parents, involved citizens and great shoppers. We love doing this community service and want to keep it free for our readers but in order to justify the hours spent researching, writing and designing this newsletter, we need advertising support. If you'd like to learn more, please click below. Now, GO FIND FUN!

"The Nutcracker 2007" at the Woodlands Ballet Theatre

THE WOODLANDS BALLET THEATRE WILL PRESENT THEIR VERSION OF "THE NUTCRACKER" THIS WEEKEND.

This classic ballet will be onstage at the Woodlands College Park High School with evening performances on Friday, November 23 and Saturday, November 24 at 7:30pm and a 2pm matinee on Saturday, November 24. The performance will feature Milwaukee Ballet’s Douglas McCubbin as the Sugar Prince, who will bring this story to life with the 50 members of the Woodlands Ballet Theatre.

An Australian native, Mr. McCubbin trained and danced with the Australian Ballet and went on to join the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 1994. Mr. McCubbin has danced works by international choreographers such as Mark Morris, George Balanchine, Jiri Kylian, Russell Kerr, Graeme Murphy, Robert North, Michael Pink, Javier de Frutos, Douglas Wright and Michael Parmenter. He even has a Houston connection, having danced the role of Pinkerton in current Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch's staging of "Madame Butterfly" with the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2004.

Tickets are $15/person and there is a group rate for parties of 25 or more.

For information or tickets, call 281.367.7185 or log onto www.woodlandsballettheatre.org.

A. D. PLAYERS PRESENT "CHRISTMAS TREE-O", A NEW PIECE BY JEANNETTE CLIFT GEORGE.

"Christmas Tree-O" is a series of three vignettes that is running through December 31 at the A. D. Players Grace Theater stage, located at 2710 W. Alabama.

"Christmas Tree-O" starts with "The Littleboro Valley Story", in which the good folks of Littleboro Valley realize they are eating entirely too much during their festive holiday celebrations. After much consideration, they decide to cut out Christmas.

"A Christmas of Many Parts" begins with four members of a theater company who are at a loss when they discover half their cast for the Christmas play is stranded in Atlanta. With the help of an eager usher, a cast of multiple personalities pull off the most misshapen Christmas show ever seen.

"Christmas Tree-O" ends with "En Dash", in which it's Christmastime at Klatchen's Department Store, and Millicent Waggoner is very unsure of her new position as a temporary receptionist. As uncertainty and boredom mount, Millicent's confusing and potentially lonely Christmas season is interrupted by a surprise visit from an understudy Santa Claus, and a celebration of chaos begins.

For more information, call 713.526.2721 or log onto www.adplayers.org.

"Christmas Tree-O" at the A.D. Players Theater

"Celtic Christmas" weekend at the Texas Renaissance Festival

CATCH THE TEXAS RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL BEFORE IT STROLLS OUT OF TOWN.

"Celtic Christmas" is the theme of this last weekend at the Texas Renaissance Festival in Plantersville, Texas. The festival has been open since October and is the nation's largest and most acclaimed Renaissance theme park. This 53-acre recreation of a 16th century British village comes to life with over 100 costumed performers and over 200 performances daily.

Visitors meander along shaded cobblestone walkways filled with over 340 shoppes with arts and crafts and stands overflowing with food and drink of the period. All ages will be amused by the games of skill and human-powered rides and the lush landscaped grounds covered with beautiful gardens and vines. Each day ends with a burst of Royal Fireworks at dusk above the festival's lake.

In celebration of Thanksgiving, the festival will open an extra day, this Friday, November 23, before it ends this weekend. Tickets purchased online for this Friday only are $5/children and $14/adults; all other tickets are $10/children and $21/adults.

For more information, call 800.458.3435 or log onto www.texrenfest.com.

SHOW YOUR THANKS BY HELPING THE CITY WIDE CLUB WITH THEIR ANNUAL "FEAST OF SHARING" TOMORROW.

The City Wide Club of Houston needs your help with their Thanksgiving Day feast, especially because they expect more attendees with the number of hurricane survivors now living here. This "Feast" is put together by communities around the city who pool their resources, time, and talent and will include hot meals, clothing, shoes, medical help, gift baskets, a "Children's Zone" and much more. For the past 28 years, the City Wide Club has been helping millions of people from across the state with services ranging from information and referral, food vouchers, shelter, household items and more.

To volunteer, call 713.752.2582 or log onto www.citywideclub.com.

"GISH PICKS" IS ALSO IN PRINT.

If you're looking for even more PICKS than you get here, be sure to catch my "GISH PICKS" column that appears each week in your local edition of the Houston Community Newspapers/Examiner Newspapers (www.hcnonline.com). There has been some confusion about those PICKS and I wanted to clarify that both this newsletter and the print column each have three unique PICKS so there are no repeats between media each week. Tune into these outlets and you'll actually get six PICKS per week, so there's no excuse for boredom!

My print column appears in the Greater Houston Weekly section of the Houston Community Newspapers in thirty-five Houston area markets -- for this week's column, click here: www.hcnonline.com. I hope you enjoy all these PICKS!

For more about my marketing company, Gish Creative, and the services we offer, please click here. You are on this list because I thought this e-newsletter would be helpful to you or because you signed up for it. However, if you want off this list, click here and you're a goner. Please feel free to tell your friends to subscribe by clicking here.

My goal is to serve as an information resource for Houston parents through my various endeavors, including:

GISH PICKS, which is online (www.thesummerbook.com/gishpicks_archive.html) and in print through the Houston Community Newspaper group (www.hcnonline.com);

THE SUMMER BOOK®: A GUIDE TO HOUSTON DAY CAMPS AND CLASSES FOR KIDS AND TEENS (www.thesummerbook.com) which comes out annually on March 1 and is sold at bookstores all over Houston, including Barnes and Noble and Borders; and

Speaking engagements, interactive workshops, private consultations, and art programs that cover topics such as parenting (www.freewebs.com/glowfished), marketing, historic preservation, activism, and passion-finding. All of these services can be tailored for any audience and budget.

The purpose of GISH PICKS is to help parents become aware of all the fun things they can do with their children in Houston and the surrounding area, so HAPPY TRAVELS! Please do give me feedback and ideas, as you are out there in the trenches also looking for interesting things for your family and I want to hear what you find. If you are having trouble getting to a website listed here, try hitting the “Ctrl” button and left-clicking on the web address, which should make it “live”.


Sarah Gish Gish Creative 1940-A Fountainview, PMB 116 Houston, Texas 77057 phone/fax: 713.532.1173 email: sarah@gishcreative.com web: www.gishcreative.com and: www.thesummerbook.com and: www.saveourlandmarks.org © 2007 Sarah Gish Designed by West of the World