....but in my FAVORITE music venue to date! have you ever been to bowery ballroom ?  being in the back at bowery ballroom feels the same as "getting there early" to a show at terminal 5 .  terminal 5 is big enough to get those crazy fans who get there insanely early just to snag the front row, so when you go thinking you're there "reasonably early", you're already 20 heads back. 



with that said, if we never went to the naked and famous concert at terminal 5, we never would have discovered the colourist ! their songs are catchier than i'd like to admit, and after seeing them open for the naked and famous, we couldn't get enough of them.  when hung told me they were playing at bowery ballroom, i couldn't say no.

opening for the colourist was first a local nyc band called mainland .  these guys... they're going to make it big soon, i can feel it.  their stage presence feel like they've been at it for years, and the lead singer has such a strong energy you can't help but dance.




chatting with the lead singer after the show? sure!

when the colourist came on though, the crowd went nuts.  it's so fun going to these kinds of concerts.  you tell you're friends you're going to see "the colourist" and they have no idea who you're talking about, but when you go to the concert, everyone knows all the lyrics, and just. goes. nuts.  i mean, you would too if you saw the GIRL drummer at the front of the stage playing her heart out AND singing lead much of the time. 








(can you tell our obsession with the drummer?)


The Colourist - Bowery Ballroom, Manhattan NYC from jenn @ beyond the stoop on Vimeo .

this concert was one of those "fuck it i'm already out late, lets get tacos too" nights.  who cares that it was a week night and i had work the next day. (ok i DID care the next morning when no amount of coffee could cure my sleepiness). but when you're just a few blocks from the corner deli , you gotta take advantage of it!


(when i spotted elote on the menu, it totally trumped tacos that night)

sometimes you gotta live it up and be adventurous.  that's what new york city is for, right?

cheers.
jenn

it's been a LONG time since i've been to a "sit-down" concert.  you know, the kind with "assigned seats" and everything.  the kind where don't have to "stand your ground" if you want to keep a good view and not get pushed to the back.  the kind where, although still loud, the ringing in my ears doesn't keep me awake the rest of the night.  AND (drumroll please...) it was on a SATURDAY.  not a weeknight, not a "oops, is is 2am already? i still have to work in the morning!"



besides her music, i also give a high five to sara bareilles for the glorious reasons mentioned above. (and now i officially feel OLD too). hung and i booked the tickets early, and decided it was going to be our july date night.  the thoughts were that it was going to be INSIDE, because last year july was unbearably hot and humid, and it was the same price of going to dinner, maybe even cheaper (well, except for the $5.25 bottles of water!!)





maybe we were in the second to last row, but hey, it was still a great show! the theater at madison square garden is still pretty small, and every seat is a good seat. 


Sara Bareilles - Madison Square Garden from jenn @ beyond the stoop on Vimeo .

this might have been the first date night that we didn't take a single photo of each other! or even one together.  nothing! just a few shots from the show.  maybe that was a good thing? too busy enjoying each other's company to take pictures?  too cheesy? (ok, we just forgot, alright?)

it was such a great show, refreshing, with great openers hannah georgas and emily king.  

new york wins our hearts again, checking off "see something at madison square garden" from the bucket list.  well, a half check, since it wasn't the big arena.

we're almost through a year of monthly date nights, and i'm so glad we decided to do it! almost every month we have to turn down friends who want to hang out on our date night.  if we never scheduled them, we wouldn't ever spend a night out just the two of us!!

as always, looking forward to the next date night :)

cheers.
jenn

p.s. i lied. i forgot about this photo.  i wanted to forget about it. i've sort of got the derp face going on.

we've been asked many times, and have told it many times, but now's the time to tell the story on this space!  here's our proposal story, as told my hung himself:

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instagramming our excitement for the opera, pre-proposal

hung and i have a slight obsession with ingrid michaelson .  even though we are longtime fans (her songs have filled my playlists long before i even met hung) we went to our first ingrid concert last holiday season. we fell even more in love with her, not just as a musician, but as a person and, really, a comedian!

her music is captivating and refreshing in the world of pop music.  also, presale for her new album , lights out, is now available on iTunes, AND she just released a new video!  check out girls chase boys in the video below :)

Do you cook at home just because you have to? ...or just because you want to save money? ...or just because you want to eat healthier ...or just because of some other reason other that you just love to cook?

Do you listen to music while you're "slaving away" in the kitchen?  No? Maybe you should try it!  It makes it so relaxing and fun to just turn off the TV and have "background noise" that you actually enjoy instead of the boring old evening news or reality television that you really don't need to watch anyways. 

Mr. P and I most of the time cook with the television off and the music loud.  We usually turn on Pandora so we can find new artists we've never known and can't find on the radio. If we listen to a station that we've had for a while (and given oodles of "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" to the songs we like and dislike), it's a comforting feeling to hear music we know we enjoy.  Either way, it just makes the idea of "slaving away" go away...  Cooking is something we can do together.  And when the television is off, we are tempted to watch it and pay attention to it like a pendulum swinging in front of our eyes, disregarding one another.  We get to have real conversations with each other, and we get to teach each other things about cooking (i.e. Mr. P gives me a cooking lesson every night unless I'm heating up leftovers from the night before).  Plus it gives us a chance to try out our new dance moves from this ad for Skype.

This article from thekitchn.com made me think of my own experiences in the kitchen:

 http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/inspiration/why-you-wont-find-an-mp3-player-in-my-kitchen-151141

....mostly because it really is more fun to do anything in the kitchen when we "blow my speakers up" while jamming to a little Ke$ha (and by Ke$ha I mean her song "Blow") 

What is your favorite music to cook to?

Toodles.
J&H