m a z a t l a n

This was the view from our hotel balcony in Mazatlan.  What an amazing trip!  6 ladies, 5 nights, nothing but relaxation, good conversations, beach bumming, playing in the waves, story telling, constant laughter... all around, the perfect time.

I did not bring my big camera, so these are from my phone.  I am patiently* waiting for T & L to post their photos!

Stone Island

Trying to figure out how to get O a bikini on Stone Island !  Huge success, btw.

Cecilia's rooftop tile

Topo Chico !

Free tequila tasting after our zip-lining adventure.

Agave fields.

daddy cool

I am so incredibly happy that it is Friday.  I've only been working for an hour and a half, and I already want to switch off my laptop, ditch work, and dance and sing like these ladies and their daddy cool all weekend long.  

n a p a

Such a fun girls weekend.  

More photos here.

counting down !!

march mama

Spent the weekend in Reno with the family (minus Minnesota :( ) celebrating Mom's birthday.  Presented Mom with this wine bottle revealing her gift from me and Zeina...  

I scrubbed the label off a bottle of wine and slapped on this homemade label.  The back of the bottle has our weekend details...

Zeina lives in an incredibly walkable Reno neighborhood.  The river is literally in her backyard and has a nice big park attached.  I am looking forward to summer trips to visit.   Apparently people jump right into the river from the central downtown area... sort of reminds me of Barton Springs in Austin.  

We stopped for midday cocktails at this cozy lil bar in Zeina's hood.  They had board games available to play - I wish more bars would offer this!  We set up the Scrabble board intending to play, then got pretty deep in conversation about food culture in this country, and before we knew it we were paying our tab - Scrabble board untouched.  

Before we headed home we skyped with mainly Omar - Lana popped in and out of screen every once in a while, and Scott made a little cameo as well. Before O was born I used to wonder how he would refer to me.  Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined it might be "Uncle Sarah," but that's what he has cleverly dubbed me, and I LOVE IT !!  He's a little comic... He melted my heart when he said "I love you.  I miss you."  Naturally, I went home and searched for tickets to Minneapolis.  I cannot be away from him too long, he's growing up much too quickly.  

And on a non-Reno-weekend related note - here's Olive being gorgeous while she was enjoying today's amazing weather: 

girl crush: peggy moffit

   somebody fetch me a pearl ring just like peggy's!   oh, pretty please?!?

what a doll!

these ladies.

Current project:  Clean up and organize all photographs on computer.   
Quite a hefty task, as I have never been good about titling or categorizing albums or photographs as I import them.  It has been great though,  going through all these memories of good times and good people.

I was so thrilled to be reminded of this lovely day last summer at the Back Door Lounge in Old Sacramento.  The Back Door Lounge is a dimly lit bar tucked away in an alley in Old Sac.  It quite possibly may be the only reason I ever really find myself in that part of town these days.  Trisha kindly accepted to join me for midday cocktails and allowed me to take hundreds of photographs of her, as I was preparing for a photo project that following week and wanted to get comfortable with certain features of my camera.

The already perfect afternoon got even better when we ran into these adorable older ladies who I snapped some pretty rad photos of as well.  If you know me well, then you know that older people tend to gravitate towards me.  They love me, and I love them equally.  Perhaps it is the lack of grandparents in my life, but I can spend hours and hours with older generations.  I love their faces, their hands, their stories, their spirit.  So much life lived.  Anyhow, I just went on and on about older generations, and these ladies are not even that old!  However, they were hanging at the Backdoor on this particular afternoon, and they snuck out for a cigarrette and some gossip, and allowed me to get in their face with my camera.  I can sometimes be too shy to snap away at strangers, but not on this day, not after those strong martinis... perhaps I should always be mildly tipsy when I have my camera in hand.

Not sure if these two are BFFs, but I would sure like to think that they might be...

She and Trish chatted about being business owners.  Apparently she used to own a shop right above the Back Door years ago.  Notice the Forever21 bag!  Love it.  

I just could not get enough of these ladies.  We found out from some other patron that the shorter of the two might own the bar.  I promised myself that I would develop some of these and drop them off at the bar for the ladies to keep.  I suppose it isn't too late.

o m a r ' s ABCs

It nearly took 1 year to complete, but I am so happy to announce that the alphabet block project I have been working on for my nephew Omar is complete.  We gave them to him yesterday during his 2nd birthday celebration. I photo documented the entire process, and I really LOVE the finished product.

Last March, Jesse and I journeyed to San Francisco, met up with Zeina, and headed to Urban Hardware to see our friend Mason at his new location.  A wheelbarrow filled with small wooden blocks sat at the storefront.  I asked Mason what these were used for, and he replied that they were decoration, however they kept children entertained as the parents looked around.  I asked him if I could purchase some, as immediately I knew what I wanted to do with them.  He kindly suggested I just take them which was totally awesome and generous!

They were small unfinished wooden blocks - with rough edges desperately needing to be sanded down.  So that became my first step:

Next step involved painting all the sides white.  I searched all over for non-toxic kid friendly paint, and found a few different options out there, but felt most comfortable with what University Art on J. Street had to offer.

Non-toxic paint:

After all sides were painted white, I then painted borders in various colors around each edge of the blocks.  Every step involving painting was pretty time intensive as you had to wait for sides to dry in order to begin opposite sides.  

And finally - adding letters!!  I tried to do each side with various styles, uppercase, lowercase, fancy, serif, san serif...  Zeina was able to help with some of these as well!

sarah barkawi

And the finished product was boxed up in a nice wooden box and opened by lil Omar yesterday at his birthday brunch!!  Super stoked about this entire project!

If you are interested in doing this yourself, you can find unfinished wooden blocks available for sale.  I am thinking about repeating this project so I did a little searching, and if you google "unfinished wooden blocks" all sorts of options appear.