Sunday Fun-day: Byxbee Park, Half Moon Bay, Capitola, San Jose

A compilation of past Sundays where Sean and I ventured out to beautiful parks, sunny beaches, rose gardens and an Egyptian museum.

Oscars Dinner Party survives in the California suburbs

This year's Oscars award show was pretty unmemorable with the exception of Lady Gaga's surprisingly tame but talented Sound of Music tribute. The BEST part of the Oscars was the dinner my friends Amara and Arlen helped put together to keep the #oscardinnerparty tradition alive for the third consecutive year. With only three days notice, they managed to pull together a coma-inducing spread inspired by this year's Best Picture nominees.

I've received a lot of comments on Instagram asking to be invited to my Oscars parties, and as always, I believe the more, the merrier! I encourage everyone to turn the snooze-fest awards show into something fun by coming up with creative and delicious dishes. It's easier to do than you think (easier if you actually watch the films) and proof of this is I thought of Adult Lunchables for Boyhood the day of the Oscars and spent less than $15 to execute. The magic is in the story behind the dish--for Adult Lunchables, I had 12 crackers, salami and cheese on the plate to represent the 12 years it took to make Boyhood and Arlen made lobster-stuffed steak for American Sniper because that is what the Army served soldiers in Afghanistan every other week.

Whiplash was the only movie that wasn't represented since no one saw it before the Oscars; however, now that I've seen the movie, I think I'd take a container of cool whip, make a cylindrical ring around the container to look like a drum and drizzle red food coloring all over the top like blood and make churros to be drumsticks. See? It's easy.

Here's a recap of all the dishes:

 Until next year!

Tomales Bay Oyster Company and Point Reyes Seashore [PHOTOS]

Exactly a year ago, I was wearing tights under my jeans, a heavy down jacket and making sure I didn't eat it on the scary black ice that covered my path to a warehouse show in Brooklyn. This year, I've got sunscreen on my face and am shucking fresh oysters at Tomales Bay in 75° sunny Northern California. I'm not trying to create weather FOMO - because I still miss NY very much - but am trying to illustrate how drastically different life is on the west coast.

Sean and I spent President's day weekend with two of my close friends from Hawaii and their boyfriends, exploring Point Reyes - disconnecting ourselves from commercial office parks, suburban apartment complexes and the internet. I realized that when you have sunshine, the outdoors and a car, you can have a different and broader type of "fun" - it's no longer restricted by restaurants, bars, museums, movie times, wait times or crowds - I now have full autonomy on how I want to spend my time. And how did we spend our time? We BBQ-ed for 6+ hours at an oyster farm, put together a puzzle that was missing pieces without looking at the final picture and "painted". It was a fun, two-day getaway that nearly beats USA's shootout win over Russia at the Olympics last year. Nearly.