I was asked by my friend and past client Denise Stevens, to be a guest speaker at the Santa Barbara Newcomer’s Club, Girls Night Out Event.  The evening was hosted at a gorgeous house in Hope Ranch overlooking the ocean and open fields for the horses.

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DeAnn and I had a Village Properties/EcoBroker® Booth at the Santa Barbara Courthouse’s Sunken Garden on Sunday, April 20th. The weather was just perfect and we heard that between 14,000-16,000 people attended the celebration.

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With all the bad news printed today it’s hard to find the positive things that are happening in the world let alone in our community. Here is some good news! I attended an annual celebration for our education system in connection with Computers for Families. As our State budget shifts the focus from educating our youngsters our local community develops new programs that sustain themselves for the future.

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I was invited to be a panelist at a lecture at the downtown Livingreen store in Santa Barbara. Ellen Strickland, the owner and Lindsay Horstman of Smith Barney put together a panel to discuss and answer questions about how to green your life one shade at a time. Ellen has expanded her store from the ‘Funk Zone” location to Coast Village Road in Montecito and a store in Los Angeles. She was very generous to open up her store to the crowd of about 70 people that packed in to be sheltered from the rainy evening.

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The Granada Theater invited the general public to visit its newly restored, nearly 50 million dollar theatre last week on First Thursday. You must go to see it. The building’s restoration is unlike anything we have in Santa Barbara; made possible by so many wonderfully talented artists, architects, engineers, craftsmen, tradespersons, donors and passionate Santa Barbarans.

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While sitting on the tarmac at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport in a snowstorm this past week, it once again dawned on me how fortunate and grateful I am to be living in Santa Barbara; paradise of the West…and if I needed any reinforcement to solidify this notion, all I needed to do was to look out the window to see the blizzard in progress and the de-icing trucks working tirelessly on our plane.

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We may all have different reasons why we love Santa Barbara and one of mine is the excellent theatre that this town provides.  The moving performance this evening, at the Ensemble Theatre Company, was extraordinary.

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Several years back, “This Old House” came to Santa Barbara and selected my good friend, Jan Winford, as their project. Her Arts & Crafts bungalow at 1616 Grand Avenue has received the Santa Barbara Beautiful Award and has been featured in several architectural books.

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Ever wonder about Montecito’s beginnings? The name means “little mountain,” and a popular story about the city’s birth dates back to 1850.

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I was very excited to see the article in the Wall Street Journal titled, ‘How Green is My Realtor’. So were a lot of other people I know, seeing that 4 people e-mailed it to me and 3 copies were placed on my desk at Village Properties. I am so proud that the EcoBroker program is getting press and more and more agents are signing up for it across the country.

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