Category Archives: Celebrations

Best Wedding Ever! (or My Weekend In Texas)

Posted on October 22, 2012 | 7 comments

First of all, a huge congratulations to my friends Marie and Chris on getting married! I am so unbelievably happy for you two!

Second of all, this is going to be a long recap of my weekend and there are a lot of pictures, so I’m sorry if you were hoping for a quick read in today’s post.

So I flew out on Friday to Houston. I was lucky to have a friend who happened to be going on the same flight, so we got to sit next to each other (I have a bad record of getting stuck next to creepers on flights). And when we arrived, another friend had agreed let me share in her rental car for the weekend. So Dawn, who had rented the car, was the driver and I was the navigator.

After a little adventure to get to the hotel, we were off to the rehearsal dinner at Marie’s brother and sister-in-law’s house. I didn’t get too many pictures at the dinner, because I was busy catching up with friends. But I did get a picture of the photo that we were all signing at the dinner.

And as I was leaving the dinner, I managed to snag the bride-to-be for a quick picture as well.

On Saturday, I joined some friends for a quick brunch at the hotel, then we all went to our rooms to get ready. My friend who does my hair gave me some instructions on what to do that would look good but was easy. And I used some of my DJ Tanner lip gloss.

The wedding was held at a really nice cute church. It was the church that Marie went to growing up, and the preacher that married them was the preacher who was there when she was younger.

The ceremony was the most religious one that I’ve ever been to, but it was also totally personalized to Marie and Chris.

When Chris and his groomsmen walked out, it was to a piano version of the theme from “The Muppet Show”. When they walked out, it was to music from “Star Wars”. The preacher also included the Mawwiage part of “The Princess Bride”.

I’ll admit, I had tears in my eyes during the entire wedding. I’m glad I was prepared with tissues (and had some to share with others sitting near me). But how could you not have tears of joy when two people look so happy to be getting married?

After the ceremony was over, a few of us decided to take some pictures while waiting for the bride and groom to make their appearance again. We had to document the moment because most of the times we are all gathered, it’s at some sort of costume party.

Marie and Chris walked out of the church onto a pathway filled with bubbles.

And we were all off to the reception. Once there, there was a clear sign that this was Texas and not California.

The bride and groom shared a dance, then the bride danced with her brothers, and then followed that up with a dance with her dad’s best friend.

After dinner, there were two different cakes. Both were made by friend’s of Marie.

I tried a bit of both (and they were both amazing!).

After the bouquet toss (where I was terrified that I would catch it because it seemed like Marie was aiming at me)

and some photos with friends

and then jokingly having a photobomb intervention

It was time to party! There was a lot of dancing.

(btw, that flower girl outlast everyone on the dance floor)

And the bride and groom had a jam session

And then I had to head back to the hotel to get some rest before leaving for the airport early on Sunday. Plus, some of us were getting a bit tired.

A few more photos (and thank yous) to share of my adventure:

Thanks to Dawn for driving the rental car while I tried to navigate around all the construction going on by our hotel (including when the street our hotel was on got shut down on Friday evening).

Thanks to Marie and Chris for getting married, having such a fabulous party, and inviting me to join in the festivities (Chris, the picture of us came out blurry, so I only have this one of me and Marie).

And my final stop of my trip was at the airport. I went to see what all the fuss was about, but since I don’t drink coffee, I had a bagel (but it was a pretty good bagel).

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Jet Setter (or My Weekend Away From LA)

Posted on October 19, 2012 | 2 comments

Today I head out of town to attend my friend’s wedding. I’m super excited for the happy couple.

But I’m also really nervous. I’m not the best flyer.

There aren’t too many things in life that scare me. Needles and the dentist do, but flying is a relatively new fear.

I’ve been flying for my whole life. When I was younger, my family would go on vacation in lots of other countries. I’ve been to 5 different continents. And all of those times, I was never scared of flying. I would actually sleep a lot on planes. Here’s a picture of me calm as a cucumber as I flew to Paris with my mom to celebrate me graduating college early.

Some time after graduating college, I started to get very panicky on planes, particularly during takeoff and landing. I’m pretty ok on long flights, but more often I’m taking very short flights. On the flight from LA to San Jose (where I grew up), you pretty much only have takeoff and landing. I never do that well on that flight, and I take that one a lot.

According to my reservation, my flight tomorrow should be about 3 hours long. I’m hoping that that will allow me to have some time to calm down during the flight. I’ll be sitting with a friend also going to the wedding, so at least I don’t have to worry about sitting next to a creeper or someone who thinks I’m crazy if I get a little panicky.

I’m trying to focus on my excitement about the wedding. I’ve been looking forward to this since my friend got engaged! I’ve got a super cute new dress to wear, I’m going to get to hang out with a bunch of friends, and I’m going to a city I’ve never been to before (my only time in Texas previously was when I was driving from LA to Oklahoma).

As long as I focus on the good and exciting parts of the weekend, I’m not going to let my fear of flying get in the way!

I’ll have a recap with hopefully a bunch of photos to share when I get back!

Also, if you want to come to the screening of the documentary that I produced, you only  have about a day left to get your tickets for free! Otherwise, you have to pay $5. You can get tickets here.

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#140Characters (or How To See The Documentary That I Produced)

Posted on October 10, 2012 | 4 comments

I love twitter. Honestly love it. Right now, the push notifications for my twitter app on my iPhone isn’t working and I’m getting crazy frustrated about that.

Over a year ago, a few friends and I got together and discussed how much we loved twitter and how it’s done some amazing things for people. And we decided to make a documentary about the positive power of twitter.

We worked really hard on it. We got some amazing people to share their story and we filmed a little bit of all of their lives.

And now, we are ready to share this amazing project with the world!

I’m super excited to share with all of you the first screening of “#140Characters: A Documentary About Twitter”.

(Our fabulous movie poster)

You are all welcome to attend the screening. It will be on October 30th and free tickets are available here.

If you’d like to check out our trailer, you can see that here.

Please feel free to share this information with anyone. We want to share this movie with the world.

I’m so proud of this project. I’m normally not behind the camera, but I feel so strongly about this subject that I had to be part of it.

Check out the trailer, get your free tickets (only free until Oct. 20th), and I hope that I’ll see a bunch of you there on the 30th!

 

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It’s a Stripper Penguin! (or The Best Bachelorette Party Ever!)

Posted on October 1, 2012 | 5 comments

First of all, I managed to survive Carmageddon with all the driving I had to do around town. The only time that I was caught in awful traffic was trying to get from Culver City to the Valley on Saturday evening. It took me over 2 hours to get there. But it was worth it, because I was on my way to my friend Marie’s bachelorette party!

I’ve been to a few bachelorette parties in the past, but they have all been pretty tame. Sometimes just dinner and dessert with the girls. But I knew that this party was going to be a bit more outrageous than that, and I was right!

(sorry that this post has so many pictures and is so long)

The evening started out with some drinks and appetizers at the apartment of one of the girls hosting the night. It was a very chill part of the night, but we were all just so happy to be celebrating the upcoming wedding of Marie (19 more days to go)!

Then, the entertainment arrived. If you don’t know Marie, you just need to know that she LOVES penguins. When she first got engaged, I wanted to get her a penguin cake topper, but I couldn’t decide on which one to get her (I got her a wedding planning guide instead). And the starter entertainment for the night was a stripper penguin!

I guess technically he wasn’t a stripper, he wore a sweat suit over the penguin costume and took that off, but then he danced the rest of the time in the penguin outfit. This was seriously the funniest thing I’ve ever seen! I was laughing so hard I was crying! Everyone loved the penguin.

After that craziness, we were off to dinner. Marie arranged for a Cadillac limo to drive us all around. That was so nice. If we didn’t have that, we would have taken 4 cars to get everywhere. And the limo had 3, yes 3, bars inside.

Also, the mood lighting inside was pretty fun too.

Our dinner stop was at Lala’s Grill. I had never been there before, but it was so delicious! The steaks were wonderful and I wanted to drink the chimichurri sauce! I was enjoying my meal so much that I didn’t get any pictures of that part of the evening.

After dinner, we had the driver drive us around the valley a bit so we could enjoy some drinks in the limo (all of the locations we were going to were very close together). And then we ended up at Oil Can Harry’s. I had never been there before either, but it was great! Saturday nights are disco nights. Downstairs there is dancing and upstairs there is karaoke.

We did some dancing.

And the bride to be did some karaoke (sorry for the blurry pic, all I had was my phone).

And eventually, it was the end of the night and we headed back into the limo to go back to the apartment to enjoy some dessert.

After then, it was getting close to 3am and I had to be up early the next day (and still drive all the way back home). I said goodbye to everyone, and laughed about the stripper penguin for the entire drive back.

I had the most fabulous night. I want to thank Jacole and Kelly for planning such an awesome event and inviting me. And thank you Marie for getting married so this party could be thrown for you! I’m so happy that Marie is getting married and I’m getting excited for my adventure in Texas for the wedding soon!

Oh, and an extra special thank you to our limo driver, Mike, who put up with all of our craziness all night.

And, he let us call him Magic Mike.

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Carmageddon 2 (or I’ll Be The Idiot Driving All Over Town This Weekend)

Posted on September 28, 2012 | 2 comments

For those of you not in LA, this weekend is the second, and hopefully last, Carmageddon. Carmaggedon is when the 405 freeway is shut down from the 10 to the 101. If you want to know more, you can read about it here.

Last Carmageddon, I was good and stayed in my neighborhood all weekend. I only drove a bit locally because I had some errands to run. This Carmageddon, I’m going to be all over town.

I have work on Saturday. I have to take the 10 freeway to get there, but I go right over the 405 on ramps, so that might be a total mess. I’m staying at my work to see a show that afternoon, just so put off driving home a little bit.

Then on Saturday night, it’s my friend Marie’s bachelorette party. Her party is in the valley, which will be a tough drive from where I live on the westside. I’m making sure my iPhone is loaded up with podcasts to listen to just in case the drive takes a really really long time. But I’d never miss Marie’s bachelorette party. Marie and I met in an acting class in 2002 and she was the one who introduced me to my acting coach, Kip King, who I studied with until he passed away. She was one of my first friends I met in LA outside of LMU, and I couldn’t be happier that she’s getting married!

 

And then on Sunday, I’ve got two events. First is a blogger meet up organized by Lynn from The Actor’s Diet. That’s going to be near the Farmer’s Market, so at least I won’t be needing a freeway to get there. Then it’s the LMU Alumni BBQ. I volunteered to help out before I realized that it would be a driving disaster weekend. My hope is that this Carmageddon will be done early like the one last year so maybe the freeways will be open by the time I’m leaving the BBQ.

If not, it’s a good thing that I love my car. I’ll be spending a lot of time in it for the next few days.

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It’s a Small World (or No, This Isn’t Another Post About Disneyland)

Posted on September 24, 2012 | Comments Off on It’s a Small World (or No, This Isn’t Another Post About Disneyland)

This past Friday was a pretty awesome day. If you are a nerd like me, then you probably know what I’m talking about. And if you aren’t a nerd, I’m talking about the space shuttle Endeavour being flown the on the back of a 747 all over California.

What I found so amazing about this was that all the members of my immediate family got to see the shuttle in different spots.

First, my brother saw it in San Francisco. I’m not exactly sure where he took this picture, but it’s pretty nice:

My dad saw it next in Fremont Older. He rode his mountain bike up there and got this picture from the lookout point:

 

My mom also saw it around the same time as my dad in San Jose, but she couldn’t get her iPhone out of her purse to get a picture of it.

And I got to see it from the roof of the building I work at in Santa Monica. What was amazing was that it was coming in from the ocean towards us, so we got to see it for a long time. I know it’s not a great photo since it was a little hazy, but this is what I saw:

 

And I know that thousands of people were seeing it at the same time too. When we were waiting on the roof to see it we saw so many people on all the rooftops around us. I also was watching the live feed a bit inside of work as well as following the twitter hashtag #SpotTheShuttle (that’s how we knew it was close to Santa Monica).

Moments like this remind us how small this world can be. And how even if we think we are alone, there are lots of people going through the same moment possibly at the same time as you are.

Before starting this blog, I honestly felt so alone with my eating disorder and having credit card debit. Even if I met someone who had an eating disorder and was open about it, I never could find anyone with the same problem as me. And I can only think of one person who admitted that they credit card debit to me before I wrote this post.

I have gotten tweets, emails, and comments that have made me feel like there is a community of people who understand me out there. And even if someone doesn’t quite understand me, they support me. I didn’t know that I needed this community and support before I put myself out there, but now, I’m not sure what I’d do without it.

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It’s a Blognic! (or My First Blogger Event)

Posted on September 17, 2012 | 6 comments

Yesterday, I was invited to a Blognic (or blogger picnic). The invite came from the fabulous Lynn of The Actor’s Diet, who I finally got to meet in real life.

The girls who organized the event  (Kelly, Amanda, and Sarah) were super crafty and the picnic area was super cute.

 

 

It was a potluck so I brought my mom’s super rich gluten-free brownies (I’ll share the recipe in tomorrow’s post). I made both double chocolate and peanut butter chocolate brownies. But, since I’m still waiting to have my permanent crown put on, I didn’t get to eat anything. But all the girls loved the brownies, so I’m happy.

We enjoyed the shade at Griffith Park and chatting about life and blogging.

 

And there was a girl there who was also named Jennie (which if you didn’t know, that’s my full legal first name), so she and I talked about how frustrating it is for people to think our names are Jennifer or Jenny. And how much trouble we have with government things that want our full legal names and don’t believe that it’s Jennie (even when it’s on our drivers license).

All in all, it was an awesome event and I feel so grateful to have been invited. I was definitely the newbie blogger there, and it was great to hear the advice that the other ladies had for me.

I was only able to stay for about 2 hours since it was my day off of work and I had lots of laundry and cleaning to do. I’m getting my house ready for this weekend when my dad flies down to stay with me so we can go to a concert at my work together.

I’ve got a busy busy week coming up, but I’m so excited about everything! Even going back to the dentist tomorrow to finally finish up my dental work!

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52 Weeks (or What Can I Do in a Year?)

Posted on September 7, 2012 | 6 comments

One year from tomorrow will be my brother’s wedding in Kauai.

I’m excited for their wedding. I really like my brother’s fiancé, Krystle. She’s very nice, and she invited me to come up to San Francisco in April for her dress fitting. I’m excited to have her as my sister next year.

Since the wedding is in Kauai, clearly there will be some activities in the water at some point. Water activities involve swimsuits. The last time I wore a swimsuit was in 2006 and I looked like this:

I was about 100 pounds smaller than I am now. I wish I could go back to this time. I thought I was still so heavy, but looking back now, I know better.

So with the wedding one year away, that’s 52 weeks. And people say that a sensible weight loss is about 2 pounds a week. Therefore, it should be possible for me to lose 100 pounds by the wedding.

I’m not saying that this will definitely happen. I’ve tried to do this a million and a half times. I’ve failed most of those times. And the few times I’ve done it, it hasn’t been a sustainable way.

So I’m not trying to focus on losing 100 pounds. That’s too scary and too big. I’m going to try very hard to focus on losing 2 pounds a week.

That’s a very frustrating thing to do. I partially blame that on the crazy diets I’ve done in the past where having a 10 or 15 pound loss in the first week or two isn’t unreasonable. And most weeks I would lose at least 5 pounds a week. I also blame it on shows like “Biggest Loser” where when contestants lose less than 10 pounds a week, they feel like failures.

2 pounds a week doesn’t seem like enough in my head, even though when you add it up over 52 weeks it will be amazing. But I’ve always had trouble focusing on the small victories instead of the big picture.

The one thing I do have going for me right now to jump-start this is the fact that I’m on a soft food diet due to my temporary crown. So I’m living on a lot of yogurt, cooked veggies, and bananas right now. I know that this weight loss won’t be the norm, but at least it might get me motivated.

I don’t want to make this blog a focus on me losing 100 pounds before the wedding, so I probably won’t do a ton of updates of where my progress is. But I just wanted to share this with all of you. Even if I don’t lose 100 pounds, I’d love to have the confidence in a year to wear a swimsuit. Otherwise, I don’t think I’ll be having a lot of fun at the beach.

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Continuing the Birthday Celebration (or Eating at Benihana for Free!)

Posted on August 16, 2012 | Comments Off on Continuing the Birthday Celebration (or Eating at Benihana for Free!)

Last night, I enjoyed another birthday perk. If you sign up for the email list at Benihana, you get a $30 gift certificate to use for yourself in your birthday month! I don’t frequent Benihana, but this is a deal that is tough to pass up.

The $30 can only be used on your food, so I got the filet mignon and a strawberry lemonade. I ended up going only like $1 over my $30. And then my friend who joined me got to splurge and get scallops because she and I just split the bill.

It was a fun festival dinner, and you can never go wrong with having a free meal. The only obnoxious thing was it seemed like everyone was celebrating a birthday in the entire restaurant. And at Benihana, they don’t just sing “Happy Birthday”, they shout it in very shrill voices.

After hearing the singing over a half-dozen times, I made sure to ask the waitress if they could skip singing to me. She looked at me a little confused, but when I explained that I had a headache, she completely understood. That made the meal a little better.

Oh, and an added bonus about going to Benihana? On MyFitnessPal there is already a category for the calories in all the sides that come with a hibachi meal (soup, salad, shrimp, vegetables, tea)!

I managed to have a free meal and stay under my calories yesterday! Double win!

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Birthday Hangover (or I Feel So Loved)

Posted on August 10, 2012 | 1 comment

I had a fabulous birthday yesterday! Even though I had to work an 8 hour shift, I still had time to enjoy it.

Thank you to everyone who posted on my Facebook wall, who tweeted at me, and who texted me!

Thank you to my family for getting me such awesome cards. Thank you to my parents for my awesome flowers. And thank you to my brother and future sister-in-law for my AppleTV.

Also, thank you to my boss who got a yummy ice cream cake for everyone at my work to enjoy (birthday calories don’t count, right?).

;

I still have a few more birthday adventures coming up such as going to the Hollywood Bowl to see Liza Minnelli, dinner at Benihana (you get $30 there for your birthday), and eventually another trip to Medieval Times.

But for now, I’m getting back on track with food and finances!

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