Why I heart SBIFF and Damien Rice

The 25th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival is taking place this week, which means downtown is buzzing with filmmakers, movie junkies, and even a handful of celebrities. Chris and I checked out a couple of films two years ago—B.L. {before Logan}—and had a blast! The films are independent and interesting {most you won't find in the theaters}, and often the cast and crew hold a Q&A session after the movie for anyone who wants to stick around. It's a really fun and interesting experience, especially if you enjoyed the movie you just saw!

This year my boss was able to show our downtown office space to the Director of Operations for the film festival, and he decided that it would be a great place for the jurors from the film festival to use to screen and discuss films. In exchange for letting the SBIFF use the space, they are featuring the Ocean Hills logo {along with many others} before each film as a "Community Sponsor" and the staff received two free sponsor passes to share among ourselves. I found out today that sponsor pass = free priority admission to everything. Awesome.

I figured I'd look at the {extensive} film schedule and, if there was something I thought might be something particularly interesting to see, put in a request to use the passes at that time. Well, such an opportunity presented itself, but it wasn't the film that had me interested in attending. My beloved friend Rachelle forwarded me an email that gave the details about a Damien Rice performance at one of the SBIFF films. Um...yes please!!

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I majorly heart Damien Rice's music. Anyone remember "Blower's Daughter" in Closer?


Amazing song. And movie, for that matter.

Anyway. Rice wrote an original song for the documentary When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun. And at today's screening, for an audience of less than 300, he did his first public performance of his song, "What if I'm Wrong?". Him, his guitar, and his female vocalist. Zero amplification. Us, sitting in the center of the theater, maybe 4o feet from the stage. Perfection...

Would you like to see some pictures? {Please excuse the use of my iPhone camera...}

Talking with the director {in hat} and some other dude beforehand. Note the arrow...

Hoovering near his posse and obliging an adoring fan.

The performance.

2/8 Update: Here is a video of the performance. I knew I could count on someone to get this up on YouTube. :)


After the song, Rice left the stage, the movie started, and then he came down and sat in noted arrow seat from the picture above to watch the film with the rest of us. Two rows in front of me, one seat over. The film was certainly interesting, but this made for the coolest movie experience ever!

I realize that I may sound like a crazed fan, but the truth of it is that he just happens to be one of my favorite musicians, and this experience just happened to be incredibly unique and memorable. And while I'm not the type of girl who's concerned with autographs or who wants to try to start a conversation with a celebrity, I may have approached him as we were leaving, shook his hand, and said {very profoundly}, "Great performance!" I mean, he was just sitting there, two rows in front of me, after all...

And I don't think I could have thought up a better way to spend this Superbowl Sunday!

Fourteen months & fourteen weeks

It occurred to me recently that I haven't written much about either of my two babies in awhile. And it just so happens that, for one more day, I have one who's fourteen months old and one fourteen weeks along. That special little number situation seemed like a fun enough excuse to make some time and give an update on the little ones!

I'll start with the one in utero.

Profile—head to toes!

Baby Deux is treating me well. I was definitely very tired during the first trimester, but never had any morning sickness and any nausea was light at most.

Profile—upper body

Now I'm in my second trimester and my energy level is *almost* back to normal. What I'm most looking forward to this trimester is the point where I'll be able to feel Baby's movements on a daily basis. I have felt him/her move a little here and there {definitely helps to know what to expect this time around!}, but having those constant, intimate reminders of that little person is definitely one of the highlights of pregnancy for me.

Leg

These ultrasound pictures are from week twelve. My next ultrasound will be at nineteen weeks {beginning of March}, where we'll get to find out the sex of the baby!!!


On to the toddler.


Logan is such a little person at fourteen months! He loves the chance to walk anywhere and everywhere, though he has little interest in where he's going or the view along the way. Climbing, sliding, and swinging have also been added to his list of hobbies, which you can see a bit of in these pictures from yesterday.

Move over, Linden!

He has also become more independent at mealtime. I recently purchased him his very own plate and silverware set, as well as some toddler-sized cups, which he uses surprisingly well.

His vocabulary size is still relatively modest {he calls our dog Maeby, "bebe"—not to be confused with "baby" :)}, though he is doing an awesome job signing! I need to do some of my own homework so that I can teach him more signs—any must-use signing resources that you would recommend?


A big change that we made recently—which sort of happened accidentally—was breaking the binky habit. I put Logan down for his nap with his binky on my birthday, but within ten minutes it had somehow become *completely* lost. I looked around for it for a good while, and then proceeded to look for a backup, but both attempts failed. Admittedly, I was feeling a bit selfish that day and wanted a nap of my own, so I decided to let him tough it out. He eventually fell asleep. And he eventually fell asleep that night when we consciously decided not to give him a binky. By naptime the next day, his crying had been replaced with whiny protest, followed by entertaining himself for awhile until falling asleep. It has been hard on us, though, to take away something he was so attached to...we know how much comfort those little green pieces of silicone gave him!

Anyway. :) Those are all of our updates for now! Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Birthday girl(s)

On Tuesday I celebrated my 26th birthday—and ended up receiving a much bigger surprise than I anticipated!

Sarah and Wyatt were all set to babysit for us that evening so that Chris and I could go to The Palace Grill for a birthday dinner {the babysitting & restaurant gift certificate were a generous gift from them at Christmas}. However, that morning I received a cryptic text from Wyatt that I finally deciphered as this: my 37-week-pregnant friend was in the early stages of labor, and that we would need to find a new babysitter!

Thankfully, we were able to find another friend available that evening and we still went out to dinner. But I couldn't help but spend a good portion of my evening thinking and wondering about what was going on with our friends!


At 5:15-ish the next morning, Chris received a text from Wyatt asking if he would be able to drive the doula back to their place, which he was happy to do since we live only a mile away, and I received a call from the mama herself at 6:38am. It turned out that baby Elizabeth and I missed having the same birthday by four hours. I was shocked, though, to learn that Sarah delivered an 8lb 11oz baby at 37 weeks, 2 days. Seems like it was a good thing that she didn't stay in any longer! But it was also so wonderful to hear that her little girl was big and healthy, and that Sarah was able to have a natural birth experience as well.


I felt grateful to be able to talk to her while the experience was so fresh in her mind. And there is certainly something special about being able to relate with a friend who has had an experience so similar to your own. I'm not sure who had the better deal, though... her delivering an 8lb 11oz baby after 11 hours of active labor at 37 weeks, or me delivering a 7lb 15oz baby after just under 5 hours of active labor at 40.5 weeks! :) The correct answer, of course, is that we were both blessed with beautiful, healthy babies. I'm going to have to wait until Baby Deux pops out before I can really compare labors!


Anyway! The news and preliminary details are already up on Sarah's blog, and I'm sure the birth story and pictures are coming soon!

Congrats, again, to Sarah and Wyatt!!!

Where did my baby go???

Chris took Logan to the Mission yesterday while I was at a baby shower planning pow-wow {yes, another shower!}. I hate to admit it, but we really haven't taken many photos of our little guy so far this month. So I was so happy to see these pics pop up as I was downloading their little adventure last night.

But, oh my goodness, what on earth happened to my baby?!? We were both a little shocked to see a little boy in these pictures—because he's still definitely a baby to us!











Here's a little challenge for ya—if you're willing to expose a bit of inner-nerd!:

Who knows why I'm a big nerd for getting Logan the shirt he's wearing in these pictures?

It has to do with the *content* of the graphic, though I do like the look of it, too. :)

Sarah's Baby Shower

Eeeek—it's been almost a whole week since I've posted! Life has been very busy and very "full" this week, and I do hope to share a lot of what's been going on soon.

I can start at least by sharing about last Saturday—which of course was Sarah's baby shower!

Saturday afternoon I had a total of twelve ladies gather together to celebrate Sarah and the little baby girl she's expecting on February 15th. This was the first shower {baby, or otherwise} that I'd ever thrown, and I certainly learned a lot!

First, for your viewing pleasure, some pictures:

Guests on teams of three during the "Baby Collage" game.

The expectant mama deciding on a winner.

Gift time! Sarah's wearing a friend's "Mother to Be" crown. :)

Balloons, belly, basket, and bags.

The baby club: Audrey {24 weeks}, Sarah {36 weeks}, Jess {12 weeks}!

*Most* of the ladies from our original Ocean Hills "Young Marrieds" small group.

Sarah and her coworkers.

Sarah and lifelong mother-daughter friends.

Here are some of the things that I thought turned out well:

• Martha Stewart Tissue Paper Pom-Poms. I first saw these made by the very talented and creative Pamela. This was a decorating highlight for me—they were actually very fun to make. {There were a total of five, though I don't think any of the pics show the three in the dining room.} I'd love to make some for Logan + baby's room!
• Drinks in glass baby bottles. I served pink lemonade & miniature ice cubes in bottles {sans-nipple} with a charm & yellow bow tied around the bottle neck and a matching yellow straw. You can *kind of* see them in the second pic, but if you can't, you can take my word for it—they were cute!
  
• Baby collage game. The guests got into teams of three, and each team received scissors, paper, glue, and a couple baby magazines. They then spent about twenty minutes, and the team created a collage of what they think Mommy & Daddy's little one will look like. There's definitely room for creativity here, and each team had pretty different interpretations in how they represented the baby. Mama gets to pick a winning team!
• Frozen hors d'oeuvres from Trader Joe's. I knew I couldn't make everything from scratch by myself, so I picked up a variety of snacks that I could just pop in the oven. I love TJ's frozen section. These were uber-yummy: caramelized onion & feta pastry puffs, mini chicken tacos served with homemade guacamole, mini crab cakes, and mini cheese soufflé puff things.
• Homemade dessert. I made rice crispy treats for possibly the first time in my life, as well as a favorite poppy seed cake {recipe posted below}. My friend Kerry made me some red velvet cupcakes, too, even though she wasn't able to attend—which was so sweet!
  

But like I said before, there were certainly a few things that I learned...

• You can't do it all! This is a lesson I keep learning in all facets of life. I essentially took on all of the cleaning, decorating, baking, hosting, and photographing, and in the end, some things just suffered. The most difficult one to swallow was certainly the photography! I'm *really* bummed that I didn't take the pretty detail pictures and wasn't able to capture more, but I was definitely still scrambling by the time the first guest arrived...and I'm not sure that that ever changed by the time the last person left!
• Ask for help. Since you can't do it all, find someone to help you try! I should have had my mom in town for the weekend to be my behind-the-scenes gal. :) I did get some help from friends once they arrived, so that was good. But lesson learned!
• Don't forget that people have to look at you! This happened to me at Logan's birthday, too. I spend so much time trying to make everything else look perfect, that I completely neglect myself. Though I did take a shower that morning, I didn't blow dry my hair, and frankly, my hair isn't interesting enough to let its "natural beauty" shine through. Not that the day's about me, of course. I just feel bad that Sarah has to look back at her pictures and see me looking like a hobo. :)

I think that about wraps it up. Hopefully it was a nice afternoon for everyone in attendance, and I was certainly happy to be able to shower our good friend! Can't wait to meet that little redheaded girl...!

--------------------------

And if you were interested...
Almond Poppy Seed Cake

1 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. poppy seeds
1 tsp. almond extract
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 c. butter
4 eggs, separated
2 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 c. sugar (additional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.

Combine almond extract, poppy seeds and buttermilk; set aside. Cream butter and sugar; mix in egg yolks. Sift flour, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk mixture. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold in. Mix the additional sugar and cinnamon together. Pour half of the batter into prepared pan and sprinkle with half of the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Top with remaining batter and sprinkle other 1/2 of sugar cinnamon mixture. Cut through with knife to make marble design.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until tests done.

Top with homemade buttercream frosting {follow recipe on powdered sugar package!}

In the spirit of the day

Today is Sarah's baby shower! I've been working hard to get things ready and I *think* I might actually pull it off. Should be good times!

I'll be back next week with pics and to let you know if I did indeed survive, but in the meantime, I invite you to watch this video and think of us... ;)


I first saw this on Mrs. Howard's blog {good find, girl!}. It was ironic because I had just been exposed to Kate Micucci earlier that week while catching up on Scrubs, and all of sudden, here she was again in this cute, very funny video!

Have a great weekend!

Quick vent

I just arrived home from the grocery store. While there, two things happened that are "challenging" my mood right now.

There were about three checkout lanes open while I was checking out: two "normal" lanes and one quick lane. The self-checkout area was also open, where there was somewhere between two and four checkouts running.

I, of course, am in the "I have lots of stuff in my cart" lane—besides the fact that I don't go to the {non-TJ's} grocery store often, I also had plenty to buy for the baby shower tomorrow. Although it still was maybe only half a cart-full. Anyway. It's just about my turn, and a woman comes up behind me with a few greeting cards, a pack of mints, and perhaps one other thing, shows me her items, and asks, "Can I go in front of you?". I let her go ahead, since it's my general policy to be polite to strangers, but I can't help but feel irritated that she put me in that position...

With express and self-checkout lane available, why would she think that it made sense to pick my lane then ask to cut? I certainly understand such reasoning if there were one checkout and we were in the same situation, and in that case I would offer for her to go ahead. But as is, I had a squirmy toddler and other reasons of my own to get the heck out of there, and wish she would have at least considered that before making me feel like her time was more valuable and important.

Sorry. Petty, I know, and I probably sound like a crazy person. Just feels good to get it off my chest, I guess.

Second thing {quickly}, while checking out, Chris called to tell me that he received a call from our credit card company about fraudulent charges on our card. We only have two credit cards and this happened with our other one less than three months ago! And our cards have never even been stolen! Now we're two for two, and it feels super-lame... Are we being totally careless with the use of our cards?? We shop at the normal grocery, gas, eateries, stores, etc. and then do a fair amount of shopping on Amazon or other online retailers. How do we prevent this from happening again?!?

So annoyed.