Austin Jazz Festival

Brando surprised me with a date this evening to the Austin Jazz Festival at one of my favorite outdoor places, Zilker Hillside Theatre. Now that the weather is finally cooler it was an absolutely perfect evening to go.

I've been to so many events at Zilker Hillside, but this was one I'd never heard of. The Austin Jazz Society hosted the event and announced that the mayor of Austin declared today, October 1st, some kind of official jazz day. I wish I could remember the official title! We didn't know what to expect, but it was absolutely perfect. A mini and more intimate version of Blues on the Green.

 The scene behind us.

 Just because

 Jazz, and blues as well, are so relaxing.

 I love watching the sunset at Zilker Hillside while watching a performance.

The bassist from this band of Paul Glasse's "discovered" George Strait, or so they told the story.

 The view to our right.

 Local favorites, Zen and Amy's ice Cream, were set up as vendors to feed the crowd. Brando went to check out Zen and came back with this yummy dish called The Schoolgirl (ha!) that had the perfect amount of spice from the chili garlic sauce and the serrano aioli.

Things I Love About My Husband

*He grinds enough coffee beans to fill up the entire ground coffee bag when he makes coffee, and cleans out the entire coffee maker, which make it super easy to make myself coffee when I do, and are two things I never do for myself.

*He shows up for school meetings unannounced, gets there before I do and saves me a spot in the front, easing my stress of arriving a few minutes late, and leaves me grinning from ear to ear at how silly proud I am that he is one of the few Dads there.

 

*He tells me I look adorable, or beautiful, or hot, or sexy, out of the blue every day.

 *He knows technology far and beyond what I do, replacing a monitor on our computer, replacing the fans in his laptop, letting the middle school counselor know people can get updates from her site emailed to them via an RSS feed on her site, and keeping our neighbors from using our internet and slowing it down.

 

*Having a techie in the house is incredibly sexy.

 

*The other things I love about my husband: my boys, him, and me! 

I didn't even realize it before I finished this post, but his thirtieth birthday is coming up, so this is the perfect post to commemorate the day. Actually, it doesn't *quite* do it justice, except for the last point. Happy birthday, honey, I love you like the flowers love the sun!

Wishing you joy, peace, laughter, & hope

Shutterfly is doing ANOTHER promotion. They emailed me a promotion code for 10 free cards which I immediately used to order more of my holiday cards. As soon as I ordered my holiday cards they offered the option to embed my project in my blog for a $25 gift certificate. Loving it.

As far as my experience with Shutterfly, I have been meaning to review it here. Turns out I couldn't order the nice and simple flat cards with the previous promotion, so I spent a good four hours designing two fold-over holiday cards - a family one and one commemorating our ten year renewal. Designing the one commemorating our renewal was SO MUCH fun. It was as if we were a young couple designing a card for just the two of us. As we've always had at least one child since we've been together we've never taken that opportunity, so designing it was a totally fun and new experience and makes me smile every time I look at it.

After spending SO much time creating our cards, I was nervous as to how they would turn out. When I received them in the mail complete with their own cute yellow box to hold the cards and envelopes, I was blown away at the quality and brilliance of the colors. One of the people I sent them to said they were "the most gorgeous Christmas cards" she's ever seen.

As far as Shutterfly itself, I won't lie. The cards were costly. The order totaled $119 before applying the promotion which brought it down to $8.25 for shipping and handling. Had I not had the promotion offer, I might not have done it. Still, having done the promotion and seeing how amazing they turned out, I'm tempted to order my cards here next year - at least with one of their more affordable options. In addition to that, the site was quirky. Uploading my photos took some patience, and I wasn't able to have two projects open at once. I learned this the hard way as my first project would disappear when I tried to start another project in another tab to see if it would look better. Those issues took up most of the four hours time. If they were to streamline their process just a tad bit better to make it almost effortless, I could definitely see myself ordering more of their gorgeous cards.

Unfortunately, I won't post photos of the Christmas cards here as they have pictures of my boys, but here is how the renewal cards turned out:

Front of card

Inside top of card
Inside of card

To get your own $25 gift card embed your project on a blog or Web site you own. Email an active link (no screenshots, please) to the Web page containing your embedded project to: shareproject@shutterfly.com. They will confirm placement and reply to your email with a discount code. The offer expires January 31, 2011, and the promotional code is good until February 15, 2011.

Here is the obligatory Shutterfly embedded widget for the promotion, which for some reason didn't add the detail of the inside like I wanted, wouldn't let me center the image, nor did it have the brilliant color as the image appears slightly pixelated, thus I included the pictures above:

2010 Flourish Holiday 5x7 folded card

Shutterfly has elegant holiday invitations for your party.

View the entire collection of cards.

Home

One thing I love about being obsessive is my obsession about the ocean. Every time I see the massive stretch of blue going on forever into the distance and hear the sound of the seagulls combined with the waves crashing against the rocks, I breathe in a huge sigh of relief and could sit there watching the power of the waves forever. Of course, this means Brando and I go down there every chance we get. Sometimes I drag him there. Other times, like this time, I don't have to say a word and he drives us there without saying anything.

Checking out a new vista point neither of us had ever seen before

Revisiting our vow renewal (and proposal!) place from a different view - the sandy looking patch which is really rock in the distance before the cliff rises and turns green is where we renewed our vows this year and where Brando proposed to me ten years ago.

This is what I do when I get bored while Brando is taking photos

Gorgeous West Cliff coastline

It's hard to capture the awe of the ocean in a photo, but these pictures come close for me

And I love having these memories to look back on.

Can Anything Top That Last Post?

I think not. However, this was a darn wonderful date enjoying an all expenses paid dinner at the Driskill Grill where each bite was a culinary adventure in and of itself. Thanks again to Cory Ryan and The Cupcake Bar for the tickets to the Tribeza Wedding Day at the Driskill where I won the gift certificate to afford this "chef's choice" dinner.
On our way!
Yummy Charcuterie Plate of cheeses, meats including prosciutto and carpaccio, marinated vegetables, and bread. The rest was so yummy, and the company so enjoyable that I didn't even take the time to take photos of the food.Our cozy booth - felt like we were in an old time movie scene.
Saying hi to a friend.
Elevator scene - I love this photo. Reminds me of all the elevator scenes they do in TV shows nowadays, with Grey's Anatomy being the pioneer.
On our way to explore the top floor of the Driskill.
Too bad the roof access was locked, but we had fun at the top of the Driskill any way. Can't wait to stay there for a special occasion!
Watching Spazmatics at Cedar Street Courtyard after our Driskill adventure. Brando's first time and he LOVEd it.

Happy Halloween

Yay, Halloween! I am loving the idea of parties the weekend before. After a Halloween costume party AND a pumpkin carving party last weekend, I already feel like we've celebrated Halloween and we're not even there yet!

Greek Goddess and Brando as... himself.

I tried to convince him to write in silver sharpie on his shirt, "I am coming as myself."

Oh, yes, we danced. And danced. And danced.

Brando did borrow my friend's boyfriend's costume from last year. He only wore the ostrich rider for about twenty minutes, though, because the machine on his rear end keeping the costume full of air was a little hard to sit on.

The end of the night, and the Burger King. He was awesome.

And on to... the pumpkin carving party! We went to Sweet Berry Farm first for our pumpkins, and did a giant maze where the field is in the shape of Texas (you can see the field ready to be seeded here).

Afterwards, we went to a friend's house and everybody carved all their pumpkins! Shawners and I had the weekend to ourselves as Brando and Justinb had gone camping. So we cuddled upstairs and watched a movie on the half a theatre movie size screen until the crowd (with their crazy huge knives they used for their pumpkin carving tools!!) cleared and then we carved ours with one other girl that was still doing an intricate design on her large pumpkin.

Shawner's pumpkin!

My pumpkin that was extremely difficult. It took all of five minutes!

Texas Date

Dinner at Fl*res

Watching the sunset

With the sunset!

The gorgeous Austin, Texas sunset

Our sweet set up that rivals a parking spot on West Cliff in Santa Cruz, California

Feel free to gag now.