Must Make

I made these strawberry cheesecake bites for our BBQ this weekend and they were fan-freaking-tastic! Perfect light sweet treat for summer and they're not that bad for you if you sub in light cream cheese and cut back on the powdered sugar. You will love these, trust.

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Aloha!

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We booked a trip to Hawaii!!! Aww yeah! Let the shopping being! That’s what vacations are for, right? Shopping with reckless abandon in preparation for the trip?

We’ve been going back and forth on when and where to take a vacay for a month or so now. The Hubs was holding out for Costa Rica (insert eye roll here) and even though I love it there when we went for our honeymoon, I doesn’t exactly strike me as a kosher place to take an 8 month old.

We batted around a few more locales (Cabo, Carribean, etc) before we decided Oahu is the place to go. We are living it up in total tourist fashion and staying in Waikiki. Aww yeah! I’m a city girl through and through and when we went to Kauai a few years back I was bored.out.of.my.mind. So Oahu is right up my alley with the perfect mix of city + beach.

I can’t wait to hit up Costco and stock up on 5lb boxes of dried cuttle fish and Spam flavored macadamia nuts (trust, it’s better than it sounds). I just may or may not take advantage of the lower tax + prices of some handbags I’ve had my eye one.

The only thing we have on the agenda is sleep/beach/eat – Repeat.

CANNOT WAIT!!!!

Thankful Thursday: The OC

As I mentioned before, the Hubs and I are house hunting and I cannot imagine living anywhere else. Sure, the traffic blows and the COL is annoyingly high, but I love living behind the Orange Curtain.

I love that we are a short 15 minute drive from the beach, I love the awesome weather, I love being Disneyland Annual Pass holders. Even though I curse myself every time I drive down Bolsa Ave, I love being so close to Little Saigon and some of the BEST Vietnamese food on Earth. I love (despite homogeneous shoes like RHOC, Laguna Beach, and The OC) our county IS diverse. We are a short drive away from fabulous authentic Mexican/Indian/Korean/Thai/Japanese/Vietnamese/Thai/whatever else you can think think of food. I love being close L.A. and getting to do stuff like attend the MTV Movie Awards (which I did a few years ago and sat RIGHT BEHIND Steve Carrel) and go see a screening and round table of Justified (which we’re doing in a couple of weeks). I love shopping at the most awesome mall ever, for reals yo, where else can you shop for washers and drivers at Sears and then cruise on over to Chanel for a new handbag? SO AWESOME!

So yeah, food + shopping, that’s why I’m thankful we live where we live ;)

{this movie was not as funny as it could have been}

Wordy Wednesday: What the Pho?!

I NEED to get this for the Hubs.

Partee!!

Munchie's party planning is in full swing! I've bookmarked a million cute ideas for her party and then came across the PERFECT image for exactly what I want to re-create. LOVE!!

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What's for dinner?

Anytime I'm in a rut and can't think of what to make for dinner, I turn to my Nom Nom - Pinterest board (which far outstrips any of my other boards in pins, natch). Tonight, I'm whipping up this:

Nom, nom indeed.

Sun Diego

Today we are heading down to San Diego for a much needed getaway. We need it, bad. We’re both feeling burnt out it will be fab to get away for a weekend and just relax. I wish the weather was warmer so we could hit up the pool, but I’ll take it.

Just a few weeks a go I remember thinking, “Dude, this working mom thing is a piece of cake! Easy peasy!” and then BOOM! All of a sudden I felt stressed and anxious – out of no where! Strange.

ANYHOW…..

I can’t wait to stuff our faces with giant waffles and watch my sister “run” in her first 5K. I use the term “run” very loosely as this chick hasn’t run a mile since freshman year of high school. It will be pure comedy!

I can’t wait! Hope you have a fabulous weekend!

Thankful Thursday: Boomerang Kids

Three years ago the super cute house we were renting was going into a short sale and we needed to look for new digs. My parents offered for us to move back in rent free so we could pay off our debt and save moola. To sweeten the deal, they also offered to match dollar for dollar everything we saved towards a down payment. Free rent AND free money, hellz yeah!

Fast forward THREE years later and I cannot believe we are still here....with a baby. When we moved back home, we figured it would be a year tops. Unforch, we did not foresee the Great Recession nor the implosion of the housing market.

I complain about living at home A LOT, but we are really lucky. Sure, my parents can get on my nerves (and I'm sure vice versa) but for the most part, they're laid back and easy going. Our area of the house, or the Boomerang Suite, as I like to call it, is big and spacious. We have constant (FREE) child care.

It's FAR from a perfect situation, but because of my parents' generosity, we'll (hopefully) move into our own home this year. Despite making a sizable dent into our savings last year due to my reduced hours (bc of AWFUL morning sickness) and maternity leave, we've rallied hard this year and have our down payment back up to where we need it to be.

There's no way in hell we could have done it without being boomerang kids.

It's funny because I complain about living at home all.the.time, but when I sit back and really think about it, it hasn't been THAT awful. These Thankful Thursdays have me focusing on the positive which I love because I can be totes negatory a lot of the time.

Wordy Wednesday: L.O.V.E.

Amen.

oui ou non?

These wedges have been on my wish list for a couple of months and now that they're on sale (and I've lost another lb, yay!), I'm tempted to pull the trigger. HOWEVER, now that I'm a mom, I have to say that I am more careful with my wardrobe purchases. Would I look totally ridiculous in 6 inch wedges pushing around a stroller or should I just take a page from Gwen's awesome momma style and be a Gwenabe ? Who am I kidding, I am not as cool as Gwen Stefani ;)

Boo

All the photos in my scheduled posts have disappeared. Boo. Man, Blogger taking a crap last week is still! putting a cramp in my blogging. Sheesh!

FFAB!

Despite the paltry archives to this bloggity blog, I’ve actually been blogging for four years. My last blog home, Vox.com (those bastards) shut down back in October. I met a fabulous group of bloggers there , the FFABs, and we have banded together as Vox refugees with our own collaborative fashion/style/beauty/whatever blog. Huzzah! Check it out!

Wordy Wednesday

Since joining Pinterest, I’ve come across the most awesome artwork/posters. I LOVE this one! I am not the most optimistic person. For some reason or another I tend to feel like the bottom is going to fall out any second. I need to find this print to put up in Munchie’s room. It’s so much better to hope for the best than expect the worse, innit?

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Mother's Day

Originally, the Hubs planned a fancy brunch at French 75 for Mother’s Day, but he ran it by me first because he wanted to see I if I was ok leaving Munchie at home for the brunch. The idea of a date alone with the Hubs sounded super tempting, but celebrating Mother’s Day without my little Munchkin felt a bit weird. So, instead we went to Disneyland! We haven’t been since our passes expired in December. I was so excited that I woke up at 5 and stayed up. Even though I’m 30, I STILL get as excited about Disneyland as when I did when I was a kid.

Munchie promptly feel asleep the moment we set her in the stroller when we got off the parking lot tram. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that she can sleep on her back in the Cameleon, the only bummer is that I have to carry her diaper bag when the stroller is in the 180 position. Small price to pay for the Munchie to be able to nap comfortably on the go.

Upgrade. The Hub’s figure out that if we both wanted to add parking to the Deluxe Annual Pass, we might as well get the Premium Pass. No blocked days and parking is included. WHOO!

The park gave out carnations to all the moms, super cute!

First stop, the Little Red Cart for the best corn dog evah.

Next Dumbo! For some reason, I wasn’t sure if she would be able to go on Dumbo. But duh, there’s always a ton of babies on the ride. Unforch, the pics from this got blown out. Whoops. The Hubs still shots in Auto or Av and I had it on manual. He was too caught up in getting the picture to notice the setting.

We went on a couple more rides and ended the day with refreshing Mint Juleps from New Orleans Square.

Oh! The night before was the big World Premiere of The Pirates of The Carribean: On Stranger Tides. How fun would it have been to watch the premier at Disneyland. The walkway was PACKED because of all the set up from the premier.

Surprisingly, I’m super excited to see the latest rendition of Pirates of the Caribbean even though after watching the last one, I was thoroughly confused and had no idea what it was about. Apparently, neither did Johnny Depp.

tired

IMG_8875, a photo by mrsrachee on Flickr.

test

momma

Sometimes, I give my mom a hard time about being a bit flakey and absentminded. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve saved a pot of (what used to be) boiling water from burning to a crisp. But maybe that’s because my mom has already done so much in her lifetime.

I’m so blessed to have the Munchie grow up with such an amazing woman. I can’t wait for her to share stories about how at 25 she left the only country she ever knew with her brother and nephew, not knowing if she would ever see the rest of family again. About how she survived traveling on a small fishing boat with 25 other people and about how they ran out of food on the 3^rd day and only had lemons to nourish them for the remainder of their 10 days. About how after she found her sister in Toronto, Canada, she left to California without knowing a soul to marry the man she fell in love with in a refugee camp. About how she raised three kids and ran her own small business and drove a crappy Mitsubishi van for 10 years so she could buy her kids brand new cars outright when they graduated high school so they wouldn’t have to worry about payments. About how the day after I told her I was pregnant, she ran out and bought no joke, about 30 different outfits, boy and girl because she was so excited about becoming a grandma. About how she was at the hospital all day to wait for Munchie to arrive and stayed until 2:00 in the morning so she could meet her first grandbaby and how she promptly came back at 6:00 a.m. because she couldn’t stay away J

Munchie is so lucky to have a grandmother that loves her just as much as her momma loves her.

We love you!

Happy Friday!

Whew, this week has been long and super busy! Last night we took the Munchkin to El Torito Grill to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. The Hubs and I both decided that the gratis tortillas, butter and salsa are the only good eats there. I think mainly because they’ve reduced the size of the sweet corn cake serving to a mere two bites. Didn’t it used to be a huge ice cream sized scoop?

I have my usual lunch and shopping date with the Munchie today and I need to find some shorts. Apparently they only come in two lengths, hoochie and Bermuda. There needs to be something in the middle right?

#1 on the list of to-dos this weekend is to take her 6 month picture. Er, yea, her 7^th month birthday is just around the corner. What can I say? She has a busy schedule!

Here’s an outtake from the last “shoot.”

Where did my post go?

Apparently, Google Reader ate one of my posts. Check out what was SUPPOSED to be Wednesday's post here. UGH.

Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful for Gmail! Ever since the Munchie was born, I’ve been writing her letters – it’s my way of keeping track of all her milestones. Yesterday, I saw this video and started crying. Like ugly face crying. And then I watched the video like 89 times. Also, I thought I was the only person clever enough to write emails to her. hehe. I also showed it to Munchie and while I was crying, she was laughing hysterically. Not sure what was so funny ;)

This marketing video for Google Chromeo is genius! I wonder how many people started new Gmail accounts to their kids yesterday.

the met

The Met Gala is always one of my favorite events of the year because everyone goes all out fashion wise.

Bee Shaffer looked gorg, natch.
There were a lot of neutrals this year:





Ashley Green look GORG in this Donna Karan and I love following @DKNY PR Girl's tweets about Celebrity X and then seeing who the celebrity turns out to be later.



LOVED this sheer nude number on Salma Hayek. I'm always a sucker for sheer dresses.

Gwyneth looked amaze.So did Gisele. Her and Gwynnie tied for my fave.


What's a the Met without Andre Tally?



All photos from Bella Sugar, WWD, and HuffPo Style.