Hey look, it's bunnies and glitter!

Last week was a rough one, with all the middle-school insanity and heapings of grief from the internet and I thought there was no way I was going to be able put on my smile pants to talk about bunnies and glitter. But I decided to take a cue from my friend and colleague Tracey and write about something happy here, just to change it up a bit. Take that, haters!

Rigel and I went to a wedding this weekend of one of my oldest and best friends, Melinda. I've known Melinda since one of my very first jobs at a design studio, and even though we float in and out of each others lives I don't feel we're ever far apart. I loved that fact that even on the day of her wedding we were exchanging Facebook messages about the hair-pulling experience that is parenting teens, and also how she perfectly conveyed the excitement!!! and the nervousness!!! of the wedding day!!! with all her exclamation points. In fact, she's got me thinking the key to positive thinking is all in the punctuation.

At the very last minute our babysitting plans fell through and we ended up bringing Kira and Kiyomi with us, and I'm glad we did because it was such a beautiful and touching ceremony and I was happy my girls were there to see it. With all the negativity they're exposed to in this world, I was grateful to have them there to witness something as powerful as the marriage of two people truly in love, and all the support they received from all of their friends and family in the room. (In fact, Kira gave it her best endorsement ever; we dropped her off at her friend's party afterward and when she got home she said, "I had a way better time at the wedding.")

It was a lovely ending to kind of a crappy week, and I felt lifted to be there with the man I love, our amazing kids and good friends. In other words, smile pants - prepare to be worn.

Oh, and another great ending to my week - Kiyomi tried to scare me with this last night:



But ha - the joke's on her! I knew it wasn't real because it didn't even move when I started screaming and trying to smash it with the hair dryer.

Have a great week everyone!!!!!!!!! Bunnies and glitter for everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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If you've got a camera, a pen and an email address this is your lucky day

DEADLINE EXTENDED! You now have until 11:59pm on Wednesday, October 28 to submit your entries!



First the good news: I'm giving away 4 VIP Passes to Disneyland's Holiday Celebration. This includes a party and all sorts of VIP goodness.

Now the bad news: You'll have to hang out with me all day.

But more good news: It's easy to enter - just take a photo, write a paragraph and email it to me. But hurry - I need your entries by Monday, October 26.

Read all the details and enter here.

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I interviewed Jennifer Love Hewitt in my pajamas

I interviewed Jennifer Love Hewitt for the new issue of Genlux magazine. We were supposed to meet for lunch one day last month, but after going back and forth with her publicist for a few days and trying to fit it into Jennifer's crowded schedule, it was decided that it would be easier to do the interview over the phone. I actually like it better this way, since it doesn't require me to brush my hair, or put on clothes or any of those other time-wasting, totally unnecessary tasks. Also, there's no chance of me pulling my iPhone out of my purse during an interview and finding a granola bar stuck to it, or getting the urge to wrap up all of Mischa Barton's shrimp dumplings and take them home with me because she hadn't touched any of them.

So while it would have been nice to hang out with J-Love in a fancy restaurant and sip some wine while we chatted over a nice bread basket and a plate of expensive cheese, I got to interview her from the comfort of my own home. While wearing my pajamas. With unbrushed hair. If that image doesn't just scream 'professional journalist' I don't know what does.

I interviewed her while she was on the set of the Ghost Whisperer and she was as nice as you would imagine her to be; she started of by apologizing for not being able to meet in person and thanked me for working around her schedule. In turn I think I said something crazy like, "It's better this way because then I won't try and wrap up your dumplings." In a related story, I don't understand why I'm not getting more paying jobs.

My favorite part of the interview was when, after rattling off some of her favorite designers (Marc Jacobs, Narisco Rodriguez, Christian Louboutin) she admitted that lately she's being doing most of her shopping at...Forever 21. At that moment I thought, 'Now here's a girl I can hang out with!' I wonder if she ever goes anywhere without brushing her hair. Probably not.

You can read the entire article here. Try not to spoil it by imagining me in my pajamas.
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tags: jennifer love hewitt | genlux magazine | the ghost whisperer

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Hey Look - a Giveaway! Disney Interactive Party: I Came, I Saw, I Brought Home Gift Bags

I'm giving away a Disney Interactive Studios swag bag filled with some cool stuff. Head on over to my reviews blog, Views From The Pants, and leave a comment. You can also enter by leaving a comment on the Sweatpantsmom Facebook fan page. Alternately, you can come to my house and bring me some cookies, and that will count as an entry as well. JUST KIDDING ABOUT THAT LAST ONE. I'll only do that for brownies.

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She's With The Band, Part I: Beg and Ye Shall Receive

On Sunday Rigel took Kira to a concert, something that's become part of a regular routine. It always starts off the same way - She sits down at her computer, lets out a piercing scream because one of her favorite bands has posted their tour dates, immediately IMs and texts two hundred of her closest friends and then spends the next few weeks begging and pleading for one of us to take her to the concert. Most of the time it's Rigel she grovels to the most since she knows he usually can't resist getting out to see live music anyway, the same way she knows she can get me to take her to Target if she tells me they're having a two-for-one sale on beef jerky.

(Although I did take her to this a couple of weekends ago, an event that proved to be so traumatic for me that I haven't been able to write about it yet, the event that resulted in Kira proclaiming that day "The best freakin' day of my entire life" while at the same time made me wonder if I was fit to be a parent. Trust me - you'd feel the same way if you just let your 13-year-old loose in a room with a bunch of drunk twenty-somethings squirting paint on each other's nipples.)

There was no way in hell my parents would ever have taken me to a concert when I was a teenager. Of course, I was the youngest of five kids, so by the time I came along I'm surprised they even had the energy to feed me, let alone schlep me to a concert. I do remember winning a pair of KISS tickets on the radio when I was 14 and my dad, who was usually so protective, dropped me and friend off at Anaheim stadium to fend for ourselves, paying no attention to the legions of potentially dangerous adult men walking around wearing full face makeup and thigh-high boots.

The concert this weekend was a pretty tame event, an indie rocker named Ladyhawke that Kira likes. She was playing a free gig in front of the Urban Outfitters store across from Amoeba Records on Sunset Boulevard. It really was the ultimate afternoon for Kira - a concert with one of her favorite artists, coupled with the prospect of shopping at two of her favorite stores. Live music, vintage vinyl and spandex leggings all in the same day - the only way it could have gotten any better is if there was a mosh pit made up entirely of the cast from Gossip Girl.

As is typical with Kira she got to meet Ladyhawke herself, having positioned herself at just the right spot in front of a stage door. She has a knack for that, and I'm starting to think that her ability to push herself to the front of any stage, or talk a photographer into letting her slip into a restricted area of a club may be a skill that will get her far in life, or at least maybe get her mom a spot at the front of the crowd at the next Barneys sale.

But really, we're grateful she's found something she's so passionate about and we're happy to support it. She's a good kid, a straight-A student and she doesn't ask for much else. And besides, we tell ourselves there are worse things she could be dragging us to, like an ultimate cage fighting event or heaven forbid - a KISS concert.

Oh, but don't just take my word for it - go read Kira's version of her day at her blog, Metronome (Didn't you just figure that my kid would have her own blog?)

Up Next: She's With The Band, Part II: What's a nice girl like Kira doing at a club called The Smell?

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tags: ladyhawke | teens + music | my indie girl

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