i've finally put together the beginnings of my wedding and special occasion portfolio and blog site. take a look and pass on the link if you know of anyone with an upcoming wedding, graduation, anniversary, baby arrival, need for personalized or initialed pendants or charms, or need for matching sets for family or best friends. check it out here!

Labels: jewelry, wedding

I haven't downloaded the other pictures from our Atlanta vacation, but clearly the most important part of our journey was enjoying the marriage of Katie and Brad. You couldn't have asked for a better day w/regards to weather. It was a perfect day to hang out by the lake. Both Katie and Brad looked great and were full of smiles, which is always a pleasure to see. I wasn't feeling very much the photographer, but took some shots. If you want good pictures, it is probably worth talking to Katie or Michael Pisarri (the photog) as he got some wonderful images of the day.

Jocelyn actually likes to iron clothes, who am I to argue?	View from the wedding party house, where we were lucky enough to snag a bed.	Retreivers at the lake. Happy retrievers.
Hugs for the bride ("Careful with the hair!")	then off to the dock to stay out of the way	Pisarri did the photography
Beautiful girls, beautiful setting, beautiful weather...	Kissing the Bride	Great setting
Steve and Vanessa	Sweetest wedding cake- very non-traditional (and delicious)	Jocelyn being beautiful
The dock was an idyllic place to sip wine and watch the sunset	First Dance	What fun!
Brad played some music	Coming home	Carrying Katie across the threshold

Labels: atlanta, photo, weather, wedding

We attended a lovely wedding this weekend, in Georgia about an hour east of Atlanta on Lake Oconee. The weather simply could not have been better- right down to the high cloud that moved in to block just enough sun so that we weren't roasting during the ceremony (but that moved back out for us to enjoy the evening sunlight on the water).

Congratulations Brad and Katie Thomas! Thanks for inviting us!

Labels: atlanta, travel, wedding

Oooh. The blank page. It's so much easier to design jewelry than to write, if you ask me.

So you get invited to a wedding in DC, and what do you do but make plans to spend at least a week there, which, by the way, is not enough. That is, unless you are a super-tourist and you pop out of your hotel, freshly rested, showered and fed by 7 a.m. and can walk and stand for six or so hours at a time.

Now, if you're me and Steve, you are much more concerned with late-night socializing than with early-morning touring. 'Sides, it's freezing at 7 a.m. in DC. Not that I would actually know, but the windows felt cold from the inside where I was wearing my thoughtfully-provided robe and slippers and rummaging around the room looking for the Alka Seltzer.

Why, praytell, the Alka Seltzer? Well, when you check into your hotel, slightly inebriated (we were still behaving quite well, thank you) at 2:30 a.m. or so, they call the manager.

Thankfully, and much to our delight, they call the manager to explain to you in pleading and very submissive tones that the inn is full for the night (since it's already morning, we presume), but since you're here (probably not much to their delight) they have arranged for a room at a very nice neighboring hotel and they'll send you and your luggage right over in a cab.

Prudently sleeping until 10 a.m. (note once again, that this is not the recommended start time for you uber-tourists), we heeded the night-desk manager's recommendation to check out the view of the White House from the Hay Adam's rooftop patio. We got a lovely, piping hot, to-go cup of coffee from the formal dining room and waited a short minute for security to come walk us up to the roof.

They weren't kidding when they said, "View"! As you can see from the pics, we were looking down directly at the front of the White House. A pretty fantastic introduction to DC. The Potomac was in the background and I have to say, I felt a surge of history sweep over me. After taking a dozen or so pictures and talking to the security guard, we gathered our bags up and walked the short block back to the Sofitel. The day was blustery, but the clouds were clearing and it was staring to look like a picture-perfect day for sightseeing.

Our new room checked-into and thouroughly checked-out and compared to the Hay Adams: robes not as good, view much better; we put in calls to Keith and David and got ourselves out the door to have lunch right on the corner at Lou's Deli. A seasoned order-taker with less than a full head of teeth took our tourist-daft (and slightly late-night, sleep-deprived, maybe-had-to-much-to-drink) orders and we sat ourselves down on a sidewalk cafe table in the sun to eat and wait for David to catch up with us.

The sandwiches were delish and David got to us just in time to split mine with me -- David's a bean pole and seemed fine with the half-lunch, while Keith probably could have eaten two more sandwiches and still look like he did in college.

The wind gusting, the leaves blowing everywhere and the sun shining in a gorgeous blue-blue sky, we headed off towards the Mall: first stop, the White House. Or, actually, the ATM at the imposing BofA right before the White House. We spent the rest of the day gushing about the fabo weather, taking pictures, trying to absorb the true meaning of the monuments we were visiting, and generally having a tremendously perfect day. David had to leave us around 3:30 p.m. to get ready for the rehearsal dinner (he was one of the groomsmen) so Keith, Steve and I took in the Korean War Memorial and the Air and Space Museum. Keith grew up in the area, and was a wealth of information about everything we saw.

Keith left us around 5:00 p.m. to go buy a shirt and coat for a formal dinner with a family friend, but would drop in to our hotel room a couple of hours later to iron his new duds and get dressed. In the meantime, I took a nap and Steve indulged in a little nature TV. The two of us, feeling tired but hungry, took ourselves out to a low-key, but delicious Thai meal about 10 blocks from our hotel.

We capped off the night with a cocktail (thoughtfully brought to our room by a returning Keith) and the view from the 7th floor of the Sofitel. Then, deciding we were being old-fogies, walked down the block to a local pub and ordered ourselves some oysters on the half-shell (did I mention, muck like myself, Keith is always hungry?), some fried calamari and another round of drinks. We called it a night around 1:00 a.m., Keith slept on our floor until 2:30 a.m. when he had to go catch a redeye to Phoenix, and Steve and I proceeded to continue with our 2nd day of uber-lazy mode of touring, starting promptly at somewhere around 10:00 a.m.

In case you missed the subtle picture link above, you can see some pictures and some more text by clicking here.

*Editor's Note: the pictures aren't as good as we normally strive to present, but due to some cross-platform/cross-software glitches, things got complicated. Thus, in the interest of getting this done in a timely manner, we posted it as-is. Sorry about that.

Labels: jewelry, photo, travel, vacation, wedding

What a great trip!
We spent most of a week in DC on account of attending our friend and former-roomate Greg's, wedding there. In very brief:

Flew in Thursday night and met up with "everyone" for dinner and drinks. We were fortunate enough to have Greg and his very-soon-to-be-wife Amy meet us at the airport and drive us into town and show us around a very little bit. We were unfortunate enough to have United route one bag to Chicago, but that was no real loss as it only had Steve's heavy coat and some other junk that turned out to not be needed as we were fortunate enough to have great weather. We were yet more fortunate to have one of our favorite people, Keith (best man at our wedding) join us for dinner/drinks as well. He lives in NC, but gets up to DC for business pretty regularly.
After eating and drinking.... plenty.... we made it back to our hotel, the Hotel Sofitel Lafayette Square, only to be informed that they had overbooked. Ugh. You can imagine our faces at nearly 3am after a full day of travel, when we heard that there was no room at the inn. "But," we were assured by a very apologetic manager who was probably really hoping we were a no-show, "we have arranged accomodations nearby at a very nice hotel."
That very nice hotel turned out to be a *very* nice hotel, the Hay Adams. Not only were we now staying in a much nicer hotel, but the Sofitel also informed us that the night would be complimentary. Have to hand it to the folks at Sofitel- even though they screwed up on the reservation, they sure did it will aplomb. We slept very well and woke up refreshed and ready to take on all that Washington DC had to offer. Ok, that may be an exaggeration. AFTER we had a cup of coffee, then AFTER we moved back to the Sofitel to discover that we had another upgrade at no extra charge to "make up for the inconvenience" of staying at the luxurious 5 star Hay Adams, and AFTER we ate a delicious big greasy deli sandwich (corner of 15th and I, wonderful deli)... THEN we were ready to tackle DC.
And just as soon as the pics are presentable, this narrative will continue!

Labels: travel, vacation, wedding

We've been pretty busy this week, attending a wedding in Arenal, working, participating in an ugly bicycle accident that left Steve slightly bruised and just a little bloody... all in all, a lot going on.
So far, the only thing of which we have a photo prepared for the web is the repainted front grill on the truck (with the always-lovely Lake Arenal in the background). Not much of a photo compared to the rest of the stuff, but not having internet at home makes posting images a hassle, and the LAST thing that we want to do at the end of a long day of work is stay at the office for a little while extra. But hold tight, more photos en route! [edit: here's one more picture of the volcano!]

Labels: Costa Rica, day trip, landcruiser, photo, vacation, wedding

Since we live in paradise, and a vacation town at that, we often have the opportunity, mid-week, to go for an afternoon catamaran ride. Boy, it's tough, but like they say, "Somebody's got to do it."

That's fine, we volunteer.

Brian's sister Heather had a birthday on Wednesday, so we all got on board a local 40' cat for an afternoon of snorkeling, food, music, drink and good friends. We find ourselves in this situation about once a month, give or take.

Like I said, it's rough.

My favorite spot is on one of the front trampolines where I can sit and enjoy my drink and the view, and lounge about with my friends. I could go into great detail about what we do on the boat, but really, I just did. It's a pretty mellow and enjoyable way to spend four or five hours of your day.

We do end up in the water at some middle point of the afternoon, goofing around, looking at pretty fish, taking silly pictures underwater with the cool housing Steve's got, posing prettily for the camera -- Brian you win this trip's award for best model!

Wave to the camera, Bb!	A blurry sea urchin.	Coral and algae	Blue-shorted Steve-fish. Fairly rare.
Matt's sister, also Heather.	Birthday girl with her parents	The sunset	Bb and Carrie on the Trampoline

We also had the added surprise of a sunset wedding on board! Two days before the boat trip, a couple who had spent the last seven years together decided to tie the knot. How romantic. Her two sons were there to watch and the entire crowd on the boat got teary-eyed. What a great place to get married!

Last trip we embarrassed the heck out of Donnie and Christi's pre-teen and teenage kids and their friends by DANCING -- in PUBLIC no less -- to silly old 70s songs and really getting our groove on. I think perhaps it was even more fun than our usual dancing sprees, knowing that we were the old geezers making fools of ourselves.

Labels: photo, sailing, wedding

I have to backtrack a little here, as I forgot to include some great photos of the camping trip the night before the wedding. Soop, Steve and I took a short walk down the river in the early morning and much to our surprise Soopy found a little water snake tucked up against the rock in a small pool of water. He’s hard to see, but Steve got a great shot. It was cool out, with grey cloud cover which Soop said was unusual for this time of year. The low water and the wide, smooth rocks sitting out in the little sun there was that morning, reminded me of being a kid and sunning myself on those same kinds of rocks with my sister in the summers. That was one of my favorite parts of being up in the mountains: the cold water and those hot, hot rocks to warm back up on.

Okay, back to the wedding. So we partied on down the night of Robyn and Steve’s wedding. This of course included a couple of shots of tequila (or if you’re reporting to gramma Sunny) those were glasses of, um, water.

The cousins managed to stay up fairly well into the wee hours – and we even persuaded The Bride to stay up with us!

Travis danced just about every woman in the room – thanks Travis! -- and I even got to dance with the bride, though there’re no pictures to prove it.

The next morning was easier on the mid-generation than I expected it to be. We gathered out front of Dave and Liz’s cabin for this year’s group photo. We had all of the cousins with us, and all of their children. When we got back to Bonnie and Bill’s, Bonnie dug out some old pictures of the family in the same parking lot. This one’s from 1982!

Although we were all standing for the 9:00 a.m. photo shoot, we were nonetheless feeling the effects of the night before, so we walked across the parking lot to the lodge for breakfast. We took over the patio (there were probably 15 or so of us) and had ourselves some burritos, eggs, bagels, juice and coffee. The sun was out and it was warm enough for Jocelyn to take of her sweaters and sit there in jeans and a tank top. Bliss.

We took off around noon to head out to my Dad’s house, leaving Ryan and Cory and the other cousins with a little seed planted in their heads about a cousin get away in the next year. As of a couple of days ago, Ryan and Cory reported back with good news about San Jose del Cabo – looks like we might actually make this happen!

The drive from Bear Valley to Tuolumne is just gorgeous and not very long, even if you do miss the exit that didn’t used to be there! The hills are golden and the oak trees drape their limbs over the cows and horses. The wind is hot and the sun is thin and light and low. There is nothing more beautiful to me than Northern California late summer sunshine (I think we’ve been over this before). We drove about 10 minutes too far before we both realized we were not going to Dad’s anymore. We doubled back and figured it out, arriving with plenty of time to enjoy the late afternoon views out over the foothills.

We only visited with Dad and Greta for a couple of days, but on Monday we decided we needed to get out into the country and spend some time enjoying the sun and great weather, so we took a fancy picnic out to the river. We spent the better part of the afternoon there, sunning ourselves, eating, and playing games.

Tuesday morning, our eighth anniversary, we drove on back down to Steve’s parent’s place in Carmel. After much debate, we decided on dinner at one of our favorite spots in Monterrey, Passionfish. We had a lovely meal with Bonnie and Bill full of treats like lamb, fried kalamata olive salad and good good wine.

The next morning, Bonnie and Bill took off for the Bay Area, and theoretically, Steve and I weren't far behind. We just had a few things to do before we could leave. Those few things turned into repacking all of our stuff, going through nine months of mail, answering emails and doing some business. We left Carmel around 3:00 p.m. Just in time to get up to Menlo Park, drop our things off and get back in the car to hit some good 'ol rush hour traffic on our way to dinner with Keith. We dined at Kuleto's Trattoria off of the 101. I only discovered this place because I used to meet my friend Dyna there when she was living in the city and I was living in Redwood City. Aside from being a great meeting spot between those two places, it's a fantastic restaurant.

We woke the next morning at Soop's place and of course had Peete's and bagels for breakfast. So good. We must have done something on the 15th, as I know we didn't have a free minute the entire trip, but for the moment I can't remember what we did!

I do know that Friday was an up-early day (weren't they all) to meet Heather and her new baby, Emily, at Stanford for coffee and shopping. I still needed a dress for Carrie's wedding and Steve needed a suit. Soopy went with us and we sat outside Max's Opera House Cafe sipping good hot coffee (not from Peete's) and enjoying the crisp morning and sunshine. Heath arrived on time, of course, around 10:00 a.m.; Soop left us to get some work done; and we walked into Macy's and found Steve's suit.

Okay, it wasn't really that easy. We did find his suit in the first one we looked at, but it would take us the better part of 45 minutes to get back to that suit and get him into it. We finished his suit shopping around 1:00 p.m. -- do you believe it?! -- and he took off for lunch with Soop, while Heath and I opted for Nordie's cafe. Emily was a doll the entire time and Heather takes to being a mom like a fish to water. I loved meeting her daughter and getting to spend an entire morning with them. After lunch, Heath and I spent another couple of hours finding my dress. She talked me out of a floor-length teal number and into the gorgeous fucia dress you all saw in pictures of the wedding. Thanks Heath!

We were supposed to meet up with Donnora (Donn Denman and Nora Kim) who's house and dogs we sat way back in . . . 2001? Is that possible? We realized that we didn't have time to really get much of a visit in and changed our date to Tuesday breakfast which worked out perfectly. We barely had enough time to hurry over to MKIA's house (Steve's brother's family's acronym) to be late for a family dinner. Not that anyone told us what time it started, but that's beside the point, as we wouldn't have gotten there any before we did either way! Marty cooked us up some incredibly delicious apple-marinated ribs. I simplify by that description the work that went into these ribs, and how many different types of appleness helped them become some of the best ribs I've ever had. Marty is a true talent in the kitchen. Dinner was too short, but it was nice to have all the Broyles at one table. I was exausted, and crashed out early, leaving the boys to talk for a couple more hours.

The kids were up early on Saturday, and therefore, so were we. But I got to read the comics with Isabelle and bead with both Isa and Austin before my sister got there to pick me up for our weekend trip to Santa Cruz. Cristie and I haven't spent more than two hours together in over two years, and that was with other people around. So we were both looking forward to the time together.

The drive over the hill was gorgeous and SC was sunny and warm! We made a bee line for Aldo's, where you'll find the best fried calamari in California. His restaurant sits on a little pier in the SC harbor across from the Crow's Nest. He's remodelled in the years since we've been going there, but it's still a mom and pop place and he still has the best seats of anywhere in SC on his pier-deck. Cristie and I managed to put away at least half of our calamari, ceasar salad and onion rings. The rest of the day pretty much revolved around talking, eating and drinking and where we were going to go next to do some more talking, eating and drinking, with a great trip to the Boardwalk thrown into the mix! We rode the pirate ship, the Big Dipper (of course) and the sky car thing. We searched all the arcades until we found a photo booth where we made goofy faces and got our little strip of pictures. We both liked them so much we did it over again, so we'd each have a strip. We shared an ice-cream sunday on the sand and generally had a wonderufully childish time of it.

We still had plently of late afternoon left, so we decided to spend some of it on the Crow's Nest's patio. We enjoyed the sun and a glass of pinot grigio until we decided it was time to go downtown and figure out where we were going to eat dinner. We made a brief detour into Urban Outfitters, ostensibly looking for a bathroom, and got caught doing a little shopping instead. I found some great t's for both me and Steve and Cristie made it out empty handed. We finally found our bathroom in Pearl Alley Bistro, an old favorite of mine and Katie's way back when. Pearl Alley treated us well with a nice pinot noir and some oysters on the half shell. We had ourselves a couple of glasses of wine and some fresh bread and olive oil, some wonderful conversation and directions to a good Thai place to take us on into the rest of the evening.

We stopped by the Thai place, didn't like it, and found another one just down Mission where we ordered a handfull of yummy things to go. We got to our hotel, put on our swimmies and eased our way into the . . . luke tub. Luke or not, it was fun and relaxing and the freezing run back to the room full of giggles. We feasted on our Thai food, relaxed in bed with the new In Style and fell asleep happy and full and tired.

Labels: california, travel, wedding