welcome baby jad !

Welcome to the world lil Jad !! 

Congratulations Lana, Scott and Omar on your new family member!  I can't wait to meet him!  

Omar - you are going to make such an awesome big brother!!  A million hugs and kisses.

♥, 

aunt sarah

girls' weekend

photo snagged from Indian Springs' website

I have spent the past few days trying to recover from such a fabulous weekend.  Two of my nearest and dearest friends came to visit.  H from Seattle, and Chesen from New York City.  When we are in the company of each other the last thing we want to do is sleep.  Needless to say, I still feel like I am trying to recover from the weekend.  Unfortunately,  I have zero photos to share, as my cell phone went missing (stolen) sometime on Saturday evening, and along with many many things, my phone was also my camera.

We spent Sunday in Calistoga girling out, getting mud-baths and lounging at the pool at Indian Springs, lunching, chatting, and wine tasting, all the while laughing non-stop.  The mud-baths were amazing, and the place was really nice.  There was some minor annoying service from the front desk, but based on yelp reviews we knew this was to be expected.  Other than that the rest of the staff was really helpful and sweet.

It was a perfect weekend (minus the missing cellphone) and I feel so lucky to have such amazing friends.

Things have resumed back to normal.  My house feels incredibly quiet.  Back to work.

textually inspired.

summer of ♥

congratulations chesen & matt !!!

Montauk, NY

My bff since childhood got engaged over this past weekend.  How crazy exciting is it that we get to share this time in our lives together?  I couldn't be happier for her, and for Matt, who I just adore.  It only takes about 5 minutes in the company of these 2 to truly understand they were made for each other.  

Chesen and I met living in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in the 5th grade.  It didn't take long before we were bffs.  Now, 17 or 18 years later, we are still as close as ever.  We haven't shared the same city since the 9th grade, but that has not in any way hindered the friendship, it actually made it stronger. We are those friends, still to this day, that call each other multiple times a day.  We've seen each other through it all, and I suspect we will see each other through so much more.  And even though she is in Manhattan and I'm out here in CA, we still do a pretty amazing job of seeing each other as much as possible.

In fact, Chesen arrives on Friday evening (in 2 days!!) for a major celebratory weekend.  She originally booked the ticket to come celebrate my good news, and now even better - we get to celebrate her wonderful news as well.

At the very top is a picture Chesen sent me post proposal.  Below are a couple of my favorites of these two.

Chesen, Matt...

I love love love you. 

My heart is overflowing with joy. 

Congratulations!

rad reno weekend

 We packed so much into 1 tiny lil weekend...

• Wine at the West Street Wine Bar
• Dancing at the 5star
• Yoga at the Yogic Lounge
• Long walk around Z's neighborhood
• Antiquing 
• Picnic style lunch at the river
• Swimming in the river
• Bad reality tv catch up (in particular - keeping up with the kardashians!)
• Canvased around town for CultuReno
• Dinner on the River walk 
• Bruka Theatre to see Godseesdog - so good!  it's an unauthorized play about the peanuts characters in their teenage years.  And the theatre is supercool!
• Brunch at Pneumatic 

All of the above being in Z's neighborhood and accomplished on foot!  

Here's the river flowing right through downtown.  

These painted pianos were placed all over downtown

outside the gay bar - taking a break from busting up the dance floor!

Antique Store downtown with the most insane & amazing collection of old cookbooks

The yellow one on the left - was priced at 80 bones!

Bruka Theatre

There was a wine walk going on on Saturday.  So many people out and about!

Reno, 

you continue to impress me!

jump in!

triple digit weather is back!

find a body of water immediately!!

i'll be heading to reno this weekend to hang with z.  yep, i'm leaving this 100 degree weather to go bake in reno's 100 degree weather.  at least we will be river hanging all weekend!

this & that

our garden is my new favorite place to be 

we've been spending loads of time out here

things are alive and well

zoe is super excited about the new drip system

our parents wanted to celebrate the engagement with us

so we drank champagne, went out to dinner, and came home to this amazingness:

"Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the behavior of people on the way to the altar. They spend billions of dollars, behave in the most appalling way, all in an effort to be princess for a day. You don’t have cable television? Put on network TV. We’re giving away husbands on a game show. You can watch The Bachelor, where thirty desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life. That’s what we’ve done to marriage in America, where young women are socialized from the time they’re five years old to think of being nothing but a bride. They plan every day what they’ll wear, how they’ll look, the invitations, the whole bit, they don’t spend five minutes thinking about what it means to be a wife. People stand up there before god and man even in Senator Diaz’s church, they swear to love honor and obey, they don’t mean a word of it. So if there’s anything wrong with the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right and have abused it for decades."

Diane Savino, NY State Senator

2nd saturday - stefan burnett

1 year ago from this coming 2nd Saturday, I participated in the if you do me, I'll do you portrait show at Bows and Arrows.  I was lucky enough to have Stefan Burnett choose my name, which meant that he was to create a portrait of me using his medium of choice.  Remember?

Stefan is an incredibly talented painter, whose work I was first introduced to at Olipom quite a few years ago.  He is also an incredibly rad dude, who I always enjoy running into around town!  Here is a photograph of the his piece from that show last year:

 Bows and Arrows invited him back to show more of his work this month.    If you live in the area, come check it out!  The reception is tomorrow - 2nd Saturday.  There will also be a special performance by MOM - who happens to be the very definition of performance art.  Come check it out if you can!

                                                  

the voracious vegan's giveaway !

 I've mentioned Natasha on here a couple times before.  She happens to be an old schoolmate of mine from my days living in Dhahran, KSA. She has a fabulous blog titled The Voracious Vegan, where she shares amazing vegan recipes, beautiful photographs, and some bits and pieces of her life and loves.  If Natasha and I shared a city, I'd like to think we would be great friends.  Perhaps the kind of friends that have each other over for dinner - I guess what I am really trying to say is, I would love to be invited to dinner at Natasha's!

Natasha's blog has been recently recognized as one of the top 10 Vegan blogs by VegNews magazine.  Whoa!  Congratulations lady!  That is huge!!  VegNews has teamed up with this voracious little vegan to offer up a 1 year subscription to the magazine.  Pretty cool!  All you have to do is leave a comment on this blog post.   And well, blog about it.  Like I'm doing right now.  So, fingers crossed that maybe I will be the winner of this giveaway!

Here's the comment I left.  It includes a little anecdote about my decision to become a vegetarian 15 years ago.  Whoa, 15 years ago!!?

sarah b

July 6th, 2010 at 10:17 pm · Reply

congratulations lady! i would love to win this awesome give-away. i was 13 years old when i decided i could no longer eat meat. my mother was so worried about this decision- fearing i would suffer from low protein intake. she took me to an american doctor (we were living in Dhahran, KSA at the time). i still remember the dr. (his daughter, lacy, was in my grade). mom told the doc of my decision to be vegetarian, and was waiting for him to give me a lecture on the benefits of eating meat and what i would be missing out on. instead, dr. carruthers (sp?) gave me a high-five, told me he was a vegetarian, and commended me for making such an awesome and aware decision at such a young age. my mom and i still laugh at that story!

Here's Natasha to tell you about the giveaway herself:

a big sur hangover

Hello friends!  I still feel like I am in a bit of a haze from last week's trip.  I feel seriously over-relaxed and as though I have returned to the daily grind with some sort of stress repellent. Nothing is stressing me out, nothing is getting in my way!  Everything seems wonderful.  I hope I can maintain this easygoing, not going to let anything bother me attitude throughout the rest of the Summer!  Maybe Big Sur is a drug, in which I case, I will be your pusher...

I have uploaded my pictures from our incredible Big Sur adventure here!  The pictures include one night in San Francisco followed by 3 nights in Big Sur.  Below are some highlights from the trip...

TreeBones

Our yurt from a distance

Eli on our personal deck

View inside the yurt

Julia Pfeiffer Beach

McWay Falls

Andrew Molera Beach

Post proposal dinner at Nepenthe

P.S. we got hit by a hit and run driver on highway 80 during our first hour of this trip!  One of the scariest things I have ever experienced.  I am still in awe trying to understand how a human can hit someone on the highway going 70 MPH and NOT STOP?!?!?!?!  UGH.  Thank goodness no one was hurt - but what a pain.  At least we did not let it get in the way of our awesome Big Sur vacation!

We had to duct tape the passenger side mirror back on post accident.  Here's a visual:

a bit of good news

On this past Tuesday (5 years to the day from our very first date) hanging out on the beach in Big Sur, sipping champagne, Eli gave me a ring and asked me to be his life partner.  I said 'hell yes!'  I was totally surprised and obviously so excited!  Yay for love. 
 

The trip was amazing!  I will post more pictures and details as soon as I get the chance.