American Music Awards Recap!

Wow...I have a lot to catch up so let's get right to it!! If you can manage to read this entire post...you deserve a prize!

Saturday morning's breakfast was two slices of light wheat toast with peanut butter and a side of strawberries.



I couldn't decide whether I wanted to go to spin class or take a nap. I almost went with the nap but then realized that I wouldn't be working out again until Wednesday so I went to spin class. I'm glad I did....I burned over 500 calories!!

I came home and got ready to hit the road to Los Angeles. We were going to go to a bbq at a friend's house along the way in Newport Beach. I had an apple before we left.



We stopped immediately in Encinitas for lunch at Garcia's Mexican Restaurant. I had a few chips and salsa:



A few chips with guacamole:



I ordered the same salad I had here last time: Chicken and Avocado salad. This time I ordered it without the tortilla shell and without the cheese.



I used their super spicy salsa as the dressing. Then we hit the road for Newport Beach. We went to a friend's house who was nice enough to invite a bunch of us over for a bbq. Her home was gorgeous and the view of the ocean was magnificent. Then the appetizers came out....everything was Armenian so I don't know the names of everything (even though I'm a quarter Armenian!). What I do know is that everything was DELICIOUS!!!

Some kind of dip that was made with pomegranates and nuts served with pita:



I could have spent the entire evening eating this dip!!! Cheese plate:


I only had one cracker with cheese because the other things were just too good!!

Dolmas - grape leaves stuffed with a rice mixture (aka little bundles of heaven:


Of course there was wine (and a lot of it!!):



I'm not the best photographer but I thought I did a nice job capturing the sunset behind the wine bottle:


After relaxing outside for awhile...dinner was served (rice pilaf, lamb & chicken kabob, grilled veggies, more dolma and more pomegranate dip and some spinach thing in a puff): Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.


Me, some red wine and my friend Stacey (also with red wine!):


Dessert was like baklava except that there was a custard filling inside. There other two things were Armenian cookies:



After all that, hubby and I hopped back in the car for the American Music Awards pre-party at Club Nokia at the LA Live Center near the Nokia Theater. There was not a single celebrity there....just industry people.....and us.
I had some veggies and dip and a mini cupcake. I felt weird taking pictures of my food at this party so I didn't. The only picture I did take was of these little Johnny Rockets milkshakes being passed out. They were served in a shaker and there was a red blinking light at the bottom of the cup. I couldn't get the light to show up in the pictures....but they were so cute!


We hung out for a little bit and then called it quits for the night....what a long day!!! We checked into our hotel, The Mondrian, on Sunset Blvd. and crashed for the night.

I stayed in bed until past 9AM on Saturday and it felt fabulous!!!!! I snacked on a Fiber One bar for "breakfast" and just laid in bed watching TV until it was time to get up for lunch. We walked down the street to Saddle Ranch. It's a western looking restaurant (complete with mechanical bull- which I rode back in my college days) that is trying to be "hip" and serves ginormous amounts of food. I had a couple of bites of the biscuits that arrived at our table. I put a little of the cinnamon butter on it. It was just ok.


They had a special: all you can drink mimosas for $9.99.....there were tons of different juice options to put in it. Boy was I excited..........



It looks pretty right? Well, that's all I can say for it. My first mimosa had cranberry juice. I told them "just a splash of juice." Hmmm......I'd say that's more than a splash. I ordered another the same way. When it arrived it was very pink but not red. The waitress said "looks like they went lighter on the cranberry juice this time." Well....not really because it was grapefruit juice...and a lot of it. I'm just not a juice person so on the third round, I asked for straight champagne. That was a no go (not included in the special) so I asked for another cranberry one. I got another grapefruit one. I gave up and didn't finish the third one. It was too exhausting to argue about it.

Back to the food.....hubby and I split the sliders and fries:



They were ok. I'd been really hungry for a hamburger lately so this did the trick at least. I then had a house salad with ranch dressing on the side. The ranch dressing wasn't that good. When the ranch dressing sucks at a restaurant.....I know there's problems. :)



Verdict: I would not go back there. Interesting atmosphere but the food isn't up to par.

We came back to the hotel to get ready for the American Music Awards!!!!!


The limo picked us up at 2:30.



I brought some wine for the ride:



We walked the red carpet:





We had 6th row seats....but in the corner. Still provided an awesome view of the show and we were right next to where the celebs kept coming in and out. Lady Gaga went in and out a zillion times. She had on the craziest stuff!

Daughtry:



Jay Z and Alicia Keys singing "Empire State of Mind":







Jermaine Jackson accepting one of the awards Michael Jackson won:



Rihanna's performance (she came out on this rotating device). This was probably my least favorite performance of the night.

Green Day singing "21 Guns":



Most of my other photos came out blurry....you weren't supposed to be taking any photos so I had to turn off my flash and be sneaky about it. I would take a fast pic and hide my camera...so they didn't turn out very well. I watched some of the show back on TV and it was MUCH better live!!! Adam Lambert's performance was WAY more scandalous live. They didn't even show him sticking one of the male dancers face in his crotch on TV. Crazy....but he got everyone's attention...that's for sure.
We were invited to the after party at the Conga Room next door to the theater.....sounds exciting right? Not really...I think the celebrities were invited to a different party than we were. Fortunately we got there fast so I grabbed some veggies and dip (exact same presentation from the night before), cheese and crackers and glass of chardonnay before everyone else showed up and got into the Ginormous line that had formed behind me for food. You see.....we all had been at Nokia Theater for 4 plus hours and everyone was starving. They only had this one tiny table of food for a HUGE crowd. There was a few passed appetizers coming around but nothing special. I had another glass of wine and we called it quits.

We went back to Sunset Blvd to grab some dinner. It was late and there weren't a lot of places open so we opted for Chin Chin's. I ordered the noodles with shrimp, bbq pork and curry sauce:



Sounds good...but it was a little boring and bland actually. The noodles were a little dry and nothing special. I ate a little over a quarter of it and that was that.....time for bed!!!! I hope we can going to the awards again next year......what an amazing experience!! I think Janet Jackson's performance might have been my favorite....I liked watching Whitney Houston sing too (you could tell she was singing from her heart), Shakira's performance was good and it was funny watching J. Lo fall on her butt during her performance. Colby Caillet needs to wear spanx. Enough of that......
Again, another fabulous morning of sleeping in!!! Hubby got up before me and brought me back a wonderful vanilla latte from Starbucks.

I finally got up, got dressed and packed up and we met a friend at Cheesecake Factory for lunch. I ordered the Factory Chopped Salad (appetizer salad but it was the perfect size!).


Then we headed back home. I did some baking when we got back, took the turkey out of the freezer to defrost and unpacked. We took the kids to Pei Wei for dinner (they go absolutely nuts over this place!) and I had the kids Honey Seared Shrimp (light on the sauce), with brown rice, add veggies.



And that is all she wrote folks. If you made it through this post, Congratulations!!!!!

Comments

  1. Wow what a fun weekend! I've never been to an awards show and they seem fun...but of course you always wonder what it's really like to be in the audience. I'd probably spend the whole time in the bathroom hoping to overhear celeb conversations or something.

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