The Lumineers to Start Your Long Holiday Weekend

Pin It now! Hi last day of August.  I'm starting to slowly ease into the end of summer. Very slowly. I'm trying to hold on as long as I can, but you can tell the weather is getting a little chilly at night and in the mornings.  It's definitely get darker out earlier too.  Suck every ounce of summer out of this last unofficial weekend of the summer!

The Lumineers are one of my new favorite bands and I've listened to Ho Hey about a million times
already.  If you haven't already heard of them, they're a Denver-based folk rock band (although Wikipedia says they're originally from Ramsey, NJ - yay, tri-state! - and you know Wikipedia is always right).  They sort of remind me of Rusted Root - does anyone remember this band from the 90's?  I used to love them in my hippie, folky, grungy 90's days.  Anyway, I'm loving their sound and Ho Hey is one of those songs you can put in a soundtrack if your life were made into a movie or video montage (and you know how I really love that).

HAVE A WONDERFUL LABOR DAY!

~ see you on the other side of summer ~

Switchfoot to Start Your Weekend

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Every Friday, by my office, there's free Bbq from Famous Dave's and a free concert (this week with Switchfoot).  It stopped raining for a second so it's fantastic to start the weekend with good food and music.  I forgot how much I love this band.

HAVE A HAPPY WEEKEND!

The Rest of the (Long) Weekend

Pin It now! I started the long weekend on Thursday night with a free INXS concert at the Beacon Theatre.  Free!  I won them from a radio contest.  Earlier in the week, WPLJ was giving away free tickets to INXS if you were caller 95.  Michael thinks I was the only caller that morning to they had to give the tickets to anyone who called.  Whatever - I love INXS.  My favorite song is Beautiful Girl and I remember buying all their albums decades ago when I first heard the song on the radio.  M and I actually went to their concert in 2006 at Radio City Music Hall right after the reality show ended and the band found a new lead vocalist.  That concert was amazing - we didn't have any expectations and it was so much better than we thought it was going to be.  the new lead vocal JD Fortune was spot on and it was a little spooky how he sounded like Michael Hutchence.  Tonight's concert was for their Original Sin album which are remakes of their old songs. I was really disappointed because I didn't like the new version of Beautiful Girl, which was the one song I was looking forward to.  I'll see them again (if I win free tickets).

On Monday, we threw a birthday BBQ for the hubs (Happy birthday my darling!). I made a second batch of jello shots and a Macedonia berry salad (recipe is from Debi Mazar's show Extra Virgin on the Cooking Channel - recipe is here).  Meatball Shop was my inspiration of the orange creamsicle jello shot - when we went a few weeks ago, the orange creamsicle was delicious.  I couldn't resist to make it on a large scale for the party.  The party was fun and we had a lot more people than expected.  Ed Westwick made an appearance too... yeah, because we roll like that. 

(posted with L's permission)

Just a note... to my husband and very best friend.  It's been 2 & 6 years together.  I'm thankful for every day and it's definitely an amazing ride.  I get weepy because I always daydreamed how I would be all grown up, and this life right now with you is better than I could have ever imagined.

Mark at St. Patricks

Pin It now! hubby's friend mark is an acclaimed church organ player. it's one the cooler professions we've come across. he's been recruited and asked to play at different church organs around the world - some organs are hundreds of years old. we were lucky enough to catch him playing at st. patrick's cathedral tonight. the video doesn't do his performance or the church organ justice, but here's a little of what we heard.