Oscars!

So, of course, all my Oscar nominated movie watching ended in an Oscar party!  My friend Megan took on hosting duties and she did an excellent job!  There were just four of us there, but I prefer to watch with a smaller crowd as I tend to hang on every  word of the winners' acceptance speeches and don't like when I can't hear them!  We had quite the spread for such a small group and Megan had made some really cute foods to represent different nominated movies. It was fun!

I used my Oscar shaped cutter to make Rice Krispy Treats

Facebook cookies for Social Network, Black & White

cookies for Black Swan, and a bottle of Gatorade for 127 Hours

  Red wine for The Kids Are All Right

Megan's cute collage of all the

nominated actresses/actors

Paparazzi!

As I exited the subway and crossed over the street towards Madison Square Garden on President's Day, I found it fitting that there was a small group of Paparazzi standing on the corner.  I was going to MSG to see Lady Gaga perform and, of course, she'd be singing her hit song, Paparazzi, at some point during the evening!

Just as I was passing by, a black SUV pulled up.  Naturally, I hung around to see who was in it!  It was David E. Kelly and Michelle Pfeiffer.  I would not have recognized David and Michelle had ALL her hair in her face so I wasn't positive it was her.  When a girl standing next to me asked "Who is that?" I did say, "Well, it kind of looked like Michelle Pfeiffer, but I'm really not sure".  A quick google search later and I was able to determine that it was indeed her and that the man was indeed her long-time husband.

Kelly & Pfeiffer were entering the back door, so I made my way to the commoner's entrance and grabbed Stacy along the route, who was disappointed she narrowly missed the celeb spotting.  Once we were in our seats in the company suite, we noticed someone on the front row getting a LOT of attention and we began to speculate who the man might be.  Stacy had all kinds of guesses, but at one point said, "Maybe it's Paul McCartney.  It kind of looks like his hair".  All it took was another google search to determine that it was, in fact, Sir McCartney himself.  Pretty cool!  Even though we were WAY far away from him and could barely see him.  Tons of people were taking his picture and trying to get close to where he was and occasionally he would turn around and wave at all the people gawking at him. 

And Lady Gaga?  Well, I was impressed.  That lady can put on quite a show.  Plus, this was the show that was being taped for her HBO special, so I'm sure we really saw their A-Game!  There was lots of action, lots of costumes, and lots of dancing.  But, what surprised me the most?  The singing!!  Lady Gaga has got quite the voice!  I really thought she was more of an entertainer, but she's also quite talented musically.  She even did one song a cappella with about 3 of her backup singers and it was amazing!  I haven't changed my mind about her personality though - she is one odd bird!  She talked a lot about getting beyond your insecurities and Stacy turned to me at one point and said "I feel like we're at church"!  It was a fun night at MSG, as always and I've got some pictures for you (or maybe they're just for Jessica's dad).  You can spot Lady Gaga in all these pictures from her super bright yellow hair!

Service!

Lots of different extra serving related opportunities have happened in 2011. I participated in Don't Walk By for the first time. This is an event that happens every Saturday in January in NYC. The goal is to make sure that every homeless person is found and spoken to during the month. I participated on the Saturday that it was in my neighborhood. We split into small groups of about 6 and were assigned blocks to walk in search of any homeless. My group was assigned the area between 59th and 66th from Central Park to Amsterdam. This is a very nice area that includes Lincoln Center and many highrise doorman buildings. It's not super populated with homeless, so we only encountered 3 during our walk. The point is to get these people a hot meal and place to stay for the evening and to direct them to resources for further ongoing help of all kinds. The first two people we spoke to were kind and engaged with us in conversation, but they were not interested in help of any kind and had an attitude of "I've got this. I'm going to be okay on my own". The final man spoke broken english but said he really needed help and told us that he is schizophrenic. He seemed to be waiting for someone and could not leave where he was to go back for the free meal that night. But, he graciously accepted the information we had for safe places he could go to for in depth help. I hope that he was able to make those calls and get to the right people/places.

I'm beginning to help get a children's ministry started for my church's evening service. I had our children's ministry leader, Angela, and another volunteer, Ilyse, over to my apartment one night to discuss the vision for how and when this will get started. Angela brought us a yummy dinner from Whole Foods and we had fun chatting and thinking about and praying for our kiddos. I am currently one of the lead teachers for the morning service but will be transitioning out of that role and into a similar role in the evening. I'm excited to be involved in that capacity at the service I prefer to attend and with the congregation I consider mine. We have 2 families that intend to switch to the evening service and between the 2 families they have 7 kids and one en-route :) So, that will be who we have when we launch in March and we won't require many teachers at first. Both these families are very missional minded and live near our evening service location and the hope is that they will be able to reach families in their neighborhood who will be interested in visiting church. My morning class is booming this year...we've grown from 6 kids to about 15 since the beginning of January!! Even crazier when you think that just 2 years ago I had only 1 or 2 kids in that class each week - wow. Let's hope we see similar growth at our evening service.

I served dinner at Ronald McDonald for the first time in a while. Lasagna was the menu and it was stress.full! After being in the oven for over an hour the lasagna was still completely frozen - something is wrong with their ovens! It all worked out in the end, but I hate that kind of stress. Katie and I were in charge of cooking up mashed potatoes.  I was disappointed it was instant mashed potatoes, but they turned out pretty good.  It was neat to see some of the kids who are still there from the last time I was over there - particularly one girl who had no hair last time I was there and it had grown in quite a bit over the last several months. I really like cooking and serving for these people and need to get back to doing it more regularly.

Random Mysterious Package

I was, yet again, annoyed with package delivery in Manhattan last week.  I've gotten to where I have most packages sent to my office because it is so much easier.  USPS, FedEx, and UPS usually won't leave packages at my apartment unless I am there.  And when am I ever there during package delivery times?!  Well, never ever, unless I am home sick.  They're during work hours and I think that is so stupid.  I have this idea in mind of a new delivery company that delivers in the evenings or on weekends.  It's not too bad with USPS because it's close to my apartment and only a slight hassle to pick something up.  UPS is way off the beaten path and I have had to go there multiple times to pick things up - big pain!  This week was my first time to experience a Fed Ex delivery.  There was a note left on the door that they were trying to deliver something on Valentine's Day.  I wasn't expecting anything and I thought maybe my dad was reviving his old tradition of giving me something on Valentine's Day (Can we take just a minute to discuss the issue of being a younger sibling?  The oldest sibling seems to come out best on the gift receiving end of things.  When Santa stopped bringing her gifts, he stopped bringing me gifts, too.  She got 3 more years of Santa than I did!  And when she got married, apparently my dad stopped being either of our Valentine's.  Hmmm, maybe I need to point this out to him).  Anyway, the note from FedEx said my package was in the Bronx and would be there for pick-up.  The Bronx?!?  Are they serious?  I never, ever go to the Bronx and it would take a good chunk of my Saturday afternoon to get there and back.  I was annoyed.  I called and they were still telling me it was in the Bronx.  I asked who it was from and when they said some company in Michigan that I had never heard of before.  I decided I might just let them return it to the sender, but I eventually got them to agree to a plan where they would at least deliver it to a FedEx store in Manhattan. 

I picked the package up on Friday after work.  What was inside?  Well, apparently I entered a Lean Cuisine contest at some point and I won a custom designed plate....created by none other than Teri Hatcher.  Random!  It is soooo ugly.  It's definitely going in the trash.  I would have thought Teri would have been better at a project like this.  The colors are atrocious!  I have no idea why it says "Yes" all over it, but it must have something to do with the contest or with Lean Cuisine's marketing campaign.

And look how she signed the back.  What the heck does

"The 8-Ball Series" mean?

So, thank goodness I didn't travel to the Bronx for this beauty.  I wonder if I could sell it on ebay for good money to some Teri Hatcher stalker?



Fun Stuff!

Since I spent January catching up on most of my December blogging, I missed a lot of what went down in January in NYC.  Here are some things that have kept me busy since returning from my extended holiday vacay that I never blogged about....

Katie and I finally finished reading our Beth Moore book.  It took us a while to get through it and although we both learned some things from it, I don't think either of us found it life-changing.  We did have some fun final dinners while discussing the last chapters.  We met one night in West Village.  We planned to get Brazilian food at Casa, but it was randomly closed, so we ended up down the street at Commerce, a nice Italian restaurant that's been on my list.  Afterwards, we had to go by Milk & Cookies for dessert since we were so close....yum!  Our final get-together was at my house eating Risotto!  I made risotto as part of my New Year's Goals and the recipe made way more than I expected so thank goodness Katie was up for helping me eat some of it.  Katie and I have decided to continue reading together and we're just starting Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  I am super excited about this one and hope that my affection for my Savior grows deeper through this book study and leads me further into a life that glorifies Him more.

I got a super special surprise visit from a very dear friend last month.  Melanie called me on a Thursday night to inform me she'd be in the city that very weekend!  Her husband had surprised her with a quick trip up for her birthday.  I was blessed to get to have brunch with them on Sunday.  I had not seen Melanie since she was in NYC in September 2006!  Wow - way too long ago.  And I had never met Brett before.  It was great to see them both.  Brett had already chosen the restaurant - One if By Land, Two if By Sea.  It is a very well regarded restaurant in the city and one I had not been to before, so I was excited to check it out.  It was very good, but very quiet!  I think it's more of a dinner spot, but brunch did not disappoint!  I also got to receive their latest news in person - they're having a baby!  Yea, fun.  I hope to visit them in Charlotte, NC sometime (probably in 2012) because I'm curious about that city and will want to meet their baby and see their adorable new house.

I mentioned that Rosella, Alejandra and I went to dinner at Victor's Cafe for restaurant week.  We followed dinner with a trip to Broadway to see Olympia Dukakis in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here.  I actually really enjoyed this play and Olympia was fantastic!!

I went looking for a book at Borders one night and I ran into Sammy Brady!  Okay, it was really Allison Sweeney and she was more there in her Biggest Loser host role, rather than her Days of Our Lives role.  She was promoting her new weight-loss book for moms.  I can't believe she is my age...seriously, 25 days younger than me!  I remember watching her on Days of Our Lives when I was much younger and I can't believe she's not older than she is.  I also can't believe my mom let me watch that show when I was just in Junior High!

Joy and I went to dinner at Peels one night.  It's owned by the same people who own the way too cool Freeman's and I was excited to check it out.  I had previously walked by Peels and thought it looked so cute.  It is cute, but the food was expensive and not terribly great.  I had heard the burger was good and it did not disappoint, but I was really expecting more from their menu.

I started Porterbrook, the study members of my church are working through this year.  It is really interesting so far.  There are 4 different sections we are working through simultaneously.  One teaches how to better study God's word (theology), another teaches how to respond to difficult questions asked about Christianity (apologetics), the third is teaching us what our lives should look like when lived according to the Gospel we are reading, and the final is about living a missional life in community with others...reaching our neighbors together as a church community.  We are broken into small groups to discuss what we're learning - mine is made up of 3 ladies who live near me, two of whom are also in my Community Group.  We meet every other week at my apartment and it has been fun to have people over so frequently.  The study was written by British people and there are some terms and spellings that are clearly British and my pastor has loved picking up some of their terms and using them (for instance, we are meeting with our groups "fortnightly", rather than "every other week").  In light of this British theme, I served tea and scones at our first meeting - fun!

Even More Movies!

I've continued to check movies off my list of Oscar Nominated movies to see.  I've done really well this year and will probably end up seeing more of the nominated movies than I have any other year.  Here's what I've checked off since my last update...

Live-Action Shorts - I love that there is a theater in NYC that shows these.  They are so fun.  We saw all 5 of the nominated films in one sitting and it only lasted about two hours.  They were all good this year.  I think "God of Love" was my personal favorite.

Salt-this is one I Netflixed.  It was really good!  I love suspense and this one was easy to follow.  It's only up for Sound Mixing and I personally hope that Social Network wins that one.

Dogtooth-this is a foreign film that I Netflixed.  I knew nothing about it going in and discovered that it was very strange and disturbing.  It seemed like a very low-budget film with very little plot.  All that said, I'm kinda embarrassed to admit that some part of me liked it a little.

Best Picture Showcase!!  I spent the entire day at AMC yesterday with 6 of my friends, plus 2 more of Rosella's friends.  We had a blast!  Of course, I had some of my favorite Oscar cookies to keep us sugared-up throughout the day.

This was 4 movies in and my hair was haphazardly thrown up

by this point.  Otherwise, great pic with Mindy, Stacy and Joy and Oscar.

Here are the movies we saw:

Toy Story III
127 Hours
The Kids Are All Right
True Grit
The Fighter

The only one I had already seen was 127 Hours...it's much more bearable to watch the 2nd time through.  Still a lot of cringing, but less.  I liked all 5 movies and think that Toy Story III and The Fighter were my favorites.  I have now seen all 10 of the Best Picture noms and am sad to say that I don't really have an absolute favorite that I love, love, love.  In 2010 I had The Blind Side and 2009 Slum Dog Millionaire...I just don't have one of those this year.  I guess the closest I can come to a favorite is probably Social Network, but I don't expect it to win or anything.  My prediction is that King's Speech is going to sweep most of the major awards.

Decor for your Computor!

I love Cath Kidston and I just found out that she has FREE downloads for Desktop Wallpaper.  I'm currently sporting this one...

I just wish she still had a store in NYC!!

Oh, and I know it's spelled computEr, but computOr ryhmed!