A few things: 1. I'm pretty bad at this. ( By which I mean both crochet and video tutorials.) 2. I have a particularly dumb sense of humor. 3. Why did the quality come out so poor? 4. This probably won't even be helpful at all.
back in october i was asked to be part of clinique's story changer project. my friends at case in soho were tagged with producing the films, so not only did i get to spend two very fun days bumming around some of my favorite spots in town with some very cool people, i also got a neat glimpse into what a film career is like. like, how many takes you might need to catch one very specific shot, and what it's like having a hair + make up team that is dead set on getting your hair as flat + tidy as possible (uphill battle, my friends). i had terribly angsty skin in high school that i really struggled with, and the idea that we can change our stories + play an active role in our own endings is something i feel really passionately about, so all in all it was just such an honor to participate. and here it is! taduh! i really love how it turned out.
p.s. you can see the rest of the story changers project at clinique right HERE, under the STORY CHANGERS tab.
we are so excited to be featured on the small fry blog today! we made this little video in midtown back in april when the girls were in town for the bugaboo launch, with jenner brown of lumineux films. we love it so much! we are so lucky to have such a beautiful memento of this exact moment in our lives with our beautiful little boy. jenner was the greatest, he is so talented and so much fun to talk to over the course of the shoot. and obviously the whole weekend with the girls was just about the most fun ever. thank you, small fry!
and now, for huck.
isn't this ridiculous? huck was asked to be part of real simple magazine's round up of cutest kids' halloween costumes earlier this summer. doesn't he make for a very roguishly handsome bookworm? the shoot took place in tribeca over the summer and it was so much fun. (so much work, being a stage mom!) huck is a natural, the goof. i think i fall more in love with that turkey by the minute.
you can see more adorable kids in costumes at real simple HERE, and read more from our day with the small fry girls HERE.
i've been going through the year's photos this week. compiling blurb books for the grandparents and making instagram books for our bookshelf and ordering the christmas cards from pinhole press (verrrry last minute). it's a lot of work! this is easily my least and most favorite part of christmas, i swear to you, i have dropped more f-bombs trying to get all this stuff to come together than you could probably ever imagine coming out of my sweet little mouth, but they're artful f-bombs. i have a real talent for it.
i thought i'd share this little film i made of all of henry's most ridiculous moments ever caught on video this year. i'm quite proud of it. it's, uh, it's a little long. it's also freaking amaaaaazing. also, it was weird for me when i went back through all of the videos i took and realized how many of them were just of henry holbrook eating. no dialogue, no commentary. just huck. eating. and how fascinating he is when he eats. i mean it, i'm not even biased. maybe. moms are weird.
we wanted to immortalize huck's last night at our house as a baby before the clock struck midnight and huck became our big bad two-year-old. so we called for a reunion of the holbrook family band. one night only! with little-to-no rehearsal whatsoever, we recorded henny's lullaby. we've sung it to him each night before bed since the day he was born.
the other afternoon i was leaning in close for a kiss, as all obnoxious mothers do, my lips puckered and my eyes shut expectantly. huck regarded me for a moment, then extended his grubby little forefinger to my face and beeped me softly on the nose. 'beep!" he said.
a few days later we were settled in on the couch together watching one of his favorites movies, snoopy come home. i normally put a movie on to get something cleaned up around the house or to answer some email, but for once i was sitting still, watching most of the movie for the first time. one scene in particular got me all teary-eyed.
"schroeder," lucy was saying while leaning over the toy piano. "schroeder, how about a beep on the nose?"
"a what?" schroeder asks.
"beep!" lucy answers, poking his nose. "a beep on the nose is a sign of great affection."
that's when i thought to myself, i really like how this kid is turning out.
so we're a little rusty. i don't really know the chords (i have the tabs open on the computer, hence my zen-like focus), our puns are real bad, and plus it gets a little slow in the middle. but we're so proud of our big boy, so this one goes out to him.
here is something you may not know about our dashing brandon holbrook: he is a mediocre listener, and his very favorite movie of all time is joe vs. the volcano. (the fact that both of our favorite movies feature the tom hanks/meg ryan duo is just about the cutesiest thing ever, isn't it? barrrrrf.)
over christmas, when we visited all of our things in storage, i issued strict orders to brandon to bring my guitar back home with him on the flight as a carry on. he was flying to new york before me and since i'd have my hands covered in huck i couldn't manage it. only somehow when i said "don't forget the guitar" on the phone the night before he flew home, what he heard was "don't bother remembering the guitar!" typical husband. typical.
i've been missing my guitar lately. i miss playing music around the house. i love to sing, i miss singing, and i really want huck to grow up with instruments around to play with. so what did that old husband of mine do, he up and bought me a ukulele to make up it.
he requested that the first song i learn to play be "that cowboy song from joe vs. the volcano. you know the one?"
oh boy do i.
here you go, husband.
next up, i'm hoping to learn these sweet little numbers:
this is mindy. mindy's my new pal. mindy flew all the way from utah to give a concert in my living room, and, okay, in a club downtown as well. mindy didn't know it at the time, but she also flew to new york to be my new best friend. thanks, mindy!
this is mindy's set list. did i steal this after the show and give it a permanent home on my fridge? yep, that i did.
this is me doing my best "heeeeeeeere's mindy!"
this is spencer harrison. spencer opened for mindy and has just about the prettiest voice i've ever heard. he sang an original song that i'd love to post here but i'm supposed to email him first? so... i guess i'll get on that. spencer also is super tall. props for that, dude.
spencer's and mindy's voices go together like chocolate and marshmallows.
we had a lovely crowd, 75% of whom cried when mindy sang hourglass because that is just what you do when mindy sings hourglass. (especially when we give our best to peter pan. or is that just me?)
want to hear hourglass live?
then of course there was the matter of the duet to be taken care of. don't worry, i didn't go for the high note. (but why didn't i go for the high note? where's my sense of adventure?) (let's pretend i did and i nailed it.)
(thanks jaime for catching this. i ran it through the 8mm app to lighten it up, it helped some.)
this was the snack table. shh, it's huck's dresser. for future reference, i had way too many snacks on hand. apparently concerts aren't big snack time events, i don't know. (big ups to the blog reader who brought those AMAZING chocolate cookies though! oh man they were amazing.)
i am in love with the fact that my apartment turns out to be a rad place to have a party. who knew?
my best girls made it out for the night, thanks again for letting me borrow your crock pot, janelle!
i love how it looks like lynda has horns in this one.
by the end of the night huck was wasted. too many beers, mom!
i'd told mindy how anchor is in our nightly bedtime song rotation (she should be so honored). later that night it was o terribly sweet to catch this little moment between mindy and my budding musician on camera:
he's cute, right? i felt a little bad letting mindy sing to him. now he's gonna have this big old head and look at me all weird when i try and sing it, like, "look mom. now that i've heard the real thing..."
in all seriousness: this is going down in my permanent record as the coolest thing i've ever done. after birthing a human of course (that one trumps a whole lot). i feel so lucky to have gotten the chance to meet and host mindy. i'm a very silly, very lucky girl, and the ridiculousness of all of these amazing things i get to do is not lost on me, believe me.
so lovely having you, mindy.
kiss that baby for me.
thanks to everyone who tweeted and instagrammed their photos of the night
In my family we all sing. Sort of. Alex is majoring in Vocal Performance at BYU-Idaho and Amanda majored in Vocal Performance at OSU but Natalie majored in Communications. Alex sings high and loud and Amanda sings high and loud but Natalie sings low and soft. Alex sings Opera and Amanda sings Opera and Natalie sang jazz at a restaurant in Downtown Portland one summer between semesters. Alex can wail and Amanda can wail and Natalie can . . . harmonize really well?
It's not terribly fair.
My dad just turned fifty, so when he asked us to sing in church on Sunday we all had to say yes. Birthday blackmail.
For posterity.
And for because I don't think I have this in me ever again.
I am relinquishing my title as "Sister That Sings."
You two can have it.
(But we sounded pretty good.)
