The Boys and Girls Club of Santa Barbara (BGC) found a new and beautiful country venue, the Heartstone Ranch, in Carpinteria for its annual gala. This time the attire was – what else? Country chic! All the “cowgirls” and “cowboys” gathered on the terraced lawn amid dozens of rose bushes to toast 80 years of […]
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The Santa Barbara Historical Museum welcomed the upcoming 95th Old Spanish Days Fiesta with the opening celebration of a new edition of Project Fiesta on June 7, in the museum courtyard. On hand to greet attendees were representatives from the museum and Old Spanish Days including Museum trustee Bill Reynolds and interim executive director Michael […]
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This Thursday, Casa Dorinda will mark the opening of its new entrance bridge at the intersection of Olive Mill and Hot Springs Road. The bridge, which arches over Montecito Creek and serves as both the entry and exit to the 48-acre community, marks the completion of the first major milestone in the facility’s most recent […]
Lea másIn the wake of the Montecito Mudslide, most property owners first turned to their insurance companies for funds, and most of the insurers have responded well. A few have not, and some others are still trying to figure out how to handle the claims. In some cases, insurance adjusters from other states have landed in […]
Lea másLast week, the SB County Board of Supervisors (BOS) voted unanimously to adopt the FEMA Interim Flood Map in an effort to expedite and control the rebuilding process in Montecito. As chair of the BOS, supervisor Das Williams noted, “I can’t say I’m comfortable with the option of the Interim Flood Recovery map, but the […]
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Santa Barbara Polo Club patron Tom Barrack hosted the 7th annual Santa Ynez Valley polo classic at his sprawling Piocho Ranch, raising around $60,000 for the 26-year-old local charity People Helping People, which has a two million dollar annual budget and serves nearly 4,000 clients. The bountiful bash, which attracted 1,000 guests to the ranch, […]
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The Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort (formerly The Fess Parker) was the venue for the 2018 Spirit of Entrepreneurship (SOE) Awards. An exciting event for the 33 finalists, all women, being judged in 11 categories with three finalists in each. The SOE Foundation is to support entrepreneurship at all levels in our area and to […]
Lea másNearly everyone has a relationship they’d like to, ahem, adjust, perhaps wrangling with a romantic partner, sorting out sibling situations, still feeling frustration over family foibles, or maybe handling conflict with a co-worker. But transforming relationships starts with making changes in ourselves, says Crystal Stokes, who has offered transpersonal/spiritual psychology and coaching in Santa Barbara […]
Lea másOne of the things I’m glad to have learned in high school physics was the explanation of why movies “move.” The fact is that those projected pictures don’t really move at all. But, if your eye sees a number of still pictures in rapid sequence, and each one is only slightly different from the preceding […]
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For more than 50 years, Montecito Trails Foundation (MTF) has overseen the maintenance of Montecito, Summerland, and Carpinteria trails, making them a safe, reliable place for community members to explore both the foothills and “low land” trails. Following the Thomas Fire and subsequent mudflow, the group of volunteers realized the scope of their work had […]
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The Community Action Commission (CAC) of Santa Barbara County just held their 13th annual CAC Champions dinner in Solvang at the Corque Hotel. Until recently, I was not aware of this nonprofit and all they do. But during the mudslide, they were my lifeline when I called 211. I always got a real person on […]
Lea másSudama Mark Kennedy doesn’t talk a whole lot about his past, but his background includes the fact that his father, a career diplomat who had posts in Yemen, Beirut, Lebanon, and elsewhere, was one of the hostages who became famous in the Iran-Contra Crisis back in 1979. By then, Sudama was already traveling and following […]
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Among the heroes braving the Montecito mudslides in January were 18 teams from the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF), the group’s largest single deployment since Hurricane Katrina. Based in Santa Paula, SDF had two veteran Canine Disaster Search Teams ready and waiting in the area prior to the slide, allowing them to get straight to work. […]
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It doesn’t matter how big or how small a wedding actually is: as soon as the bride and groom are permitted to kiss, they still walk away married with one marriage license for two people. However, this does not propose the ostracization of romanticism; when it comes to getting married, nothing is too amorous for […]
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Fiesta Ranchera celebrated its 11th anniversary with a sold-out bash for 900 guests at the 146-year-old Rancho La Patera and Stow House in Goleta, raising around $50,000 split equally between Old Spanish Days and the 51-year-old Goleta Valley Historical Society. The colorful gala, co-chaired by Alex Castellanos, director of the 94-year-old Old Spanish Days, and […]
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Come Saturday and Monday, opera will be busting out all over the place at Miraflores. Rather than staging OperaFest – nee Opera Scenes – in its entirety in the cozy confines of Hahn Hall, where the Music Academy of the West (MAW) vocal Fellows are normally accompanied only by a single pianist, vignettes will be […]
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It was some enchanted evening in the upper village when Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum launched his new well-researched, 386-page book Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution with a bibliophile bash at Tecolote, the lively literary lair. Purdum, who worked for The New York Times for more than 20 years as White House correspondent […]
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Santa Barbara Polo Club player Judith Baker has been flying high! To celebrate her 75th birthday the bubbly Brit, who I have known for more than a decade, took a 3,000-feet, 30-minute paragliding flight above the exquisitely manicured oceanside Carpinteria club after participating in a tournament playing for the World Gym team. “The idea originally […]
Lea másI moved to Montecito because of a house. I was living in Malibu and looking for a new start. On a visit to Montecito, I saw this charming little gardener’s cottage that had been part of a large estate. A friend owned the cottage and wanted to sell it, and I fell in love with […]
Lea másThe Montecito Heat Index identifies demand for Montecito single-family homes in five price sectors. By measuring buyer demand, (signed contracts) rather than sales (closed escrows), we create a forward-looking indicator of both market strength and direction rather than sold data that are typically a month or more old. And since real estate activity fluctuates seasonally, […]
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