Christmas Card 2012

Dec 18, 2012

Hopefully by now almost everyone has received our Christmas card. We had so many possibilities for this year’s card photo.

This guy was a contender, taken at Liv’s school Winter Solstice, it would have been perfect if it weren’t for Liv’s sad face. 99% of kids aren’t happy sitting next to Santa so I understand.

Then there’s this one, taken at Grand Park with the amazing Christmas tree in the background. There’s two issues I have with this one. The weird underbite smile Liv is giving and my pudgy round makeup-less face. I am not happy with how jolly I’m looking here. Whoa, it’s time to start swimming again. Full disclaimer: I find it pointless to work out or diet during holiday season. Due to this stupid logic of mine, my Wii Fit trainer has informed me I’ve gained 8 pounds since September, YIKES!!

Finally, we were going to get dressed up, find a cool location, like a graffiti infested wall in downtown LA and have a photo shoot there but we procrastinated and last Thursday was our last opportunity to get the photo shoot done until Antz came up with this clever alternative.

I have always been a fan of this photo we took over the summer so Antz drew it and added a Christmas tree for this year’s rad Holiday card.

He changed his shirt to white but kept my ample hips, thanks!

Haha, I love it! I would do a brick background every year. Brick walls are rad. Have you sent out your cards yet? I feel so late this year being that Christmas is one freaking week away. Whoops!

Maybe this will be next year’s photo?

Bedlam!

Sep 22, 2012

Thank Goodness our bed is all built because I was running out of bed-puns. It ‘twurn’t easy I’ll say that. Antz started building the bed at 9, I fell asleep pretty late since I was laying on the couch. Next thing I know he is telling me he is missing a piece and it’s almost 3am! Yikes! Those 4 drawers took forever to build *note to Ikea, some pre-assembly would be great* So this morning I had to go to Ikea to pick up the missing piece and voila!

Me and my lovely testing it out!!! Freaking SWEET!

We have to run and take a flying leap to get up there

Our bed was ready to go. Antz even moved the furniture around so we can access all four drawers. No more window side for us!!

I need to buy a bed skirt now, our old bed frame hid our box spring

Isn’t it awesome how lumpy our featherbed is? Wheeeee!

Sexy drawer action

We plan on relocating the printer soon.

It feels so different to have a bed that doesn’t squeak, OR stab us in the freaking shins OR has wood that we have to tape down. Tonight will be our first test drive if you know what I mean…wait, ew! Don’t be gross!

Beddy Bye

Sep 21, 2012

Antz and I have terrible luck with our beds. We have been sharing a bed for over 15 years now and have purchased 4 beds together in that time period. We *well I* do all the research and test them out in the store. They always seem comfy and solid, at first, then next thing you know I start tossing and turning and waking up with a sore back. I don’t know if it’s our mattress or my old lady back but we have been pretty miserable this last year. I blame our tiny bedroom. Antz and I are both, to put it mildly, GIANTS! So our giant bodies, along with a little lovely 30 lb. girl who sneaks into our bed in the middle of the night *most of the time I am surprised to see her in our bed in the morning, she’s that quiet* and this huge cat lady

My large Lola

Our queen is maxxed out in such a tiny space.

Looks roomy until you add 2 1/2 people!

Antz and I practically have to play rock, paper, scissors to see who has to squeeze against the window side. Our mattress is on year 6 so it’s definitely time to purchase a new one. Here’s my dilemma, I don’t want to spend a fortune on a fancy one in a queen size when I hope to be getting a king size one in 3 years *when we move, God willing* plus theres no way a king would fit in that tiny room, so it’s another bargain priced Ikea mattress for us. Our bed frame is a total mess. We thought we scored a deal when we bought our Malm frame.

Our brand new bed frame and Serta mattress 6 years ago

I loved the platform style and Antz liked the dark wood finish. Little did we know that “wood finish” is merely a sticker which began to peel months after we bought it. What happened next was I found the most adorable desk at West Elm

Sheesh this is the only recent photo I have of that side of the room. That printer stand takes up too much space and clashes with the room design 🙁

*I thought it was perfect for bill paying yet I rarely use it* so now we have very little space between it and the foot of our bed, which means Olivia and I are constantly hitting our shins on the sharp corner of the bed. Antz is smarter than us so he hasn’t bruised his leg but even the bumper we put on the corner didn’t work. I have been searching for a bed that is in our price range, in the color we want and doesn’t ruin my shins. I almost bought this guy but it was only in white before it sold out.

Roebling frame from West Elm

It’s so lovely but I wasn’t keen on spending $699 on the queen frame along with $599 for the mattress from Ikea. So I waited and waited for it to go on sale and it finally did, and then immediately sold out of all sizes except king. Bummer! So again, we are going with an Ikea frame. It’s too tempting to pass up. It’s a queen size frame with storage drawers underneath which we need for all our extra bedding that barely fits in our linen closet.

OPPDAL Bed frame with storage IKEA The four drawers in the bed frame provide a lot of storage space.

Oppdal queen bed frame with storage drawers

I think it’s perfection for $249. Antz is tearing apart our dilapidated old bed frame and building our new sleek, fancy-pants bed tonight. Of course I’m on the hunt for some new bedding to accompany such a cool frame. These are my top choices so far, we’ll see what’s on sale on Black Friday.

Striped sheet set from West Elm. Yellow or grey?

Orla Kiely bedding for Bed, Bath & Beyond *sold out in stores, may be hard to find a complete set*

Still waiting on bedding from Anthropologie to go on sale. Another sucky thing is we go through featherbeds every year. We got a rad one last Christmas and it’s already flat as a pancake *a very thin pancake* so now I gotta buy a new one too. Antz has been plugging away on the new bed for an hour now. I’ll post pictures when he’s done. Here’s to a good night’s sleep!

Here’s the old beddy.

Anniversary Dinner Plans

Aug 19, 2012

*I wrote this post last Friday 8/10*

Could it really be a week from my 10 year wedding anniversary?

So what will it be? Aulani Resort Hawaii…?

Sadly, not this year.

W San Francisco…?

Nope!

As wonderful as it sounds, we have school starting in a month. $$$! Holy Cow, she’s really starting school already?

I thought long and hard about how to spend our special day and, with an out-of-town trip out of the picture, I considered what would be meaningful locally. We used to have a tradition of eating at Duke’s Malibu, the restaurant we had our wedding reception, but the food has gone downhill since our last visit. I thought of Morton’s or even the rooftop at the Standard in Downtown but we’ve done that before, it didn’t seem all that special. Then it hit me. Our beach where we were married is the perfect place to have a pop up dinner party with close friends! I have to credit Jordan at Oh Happy Day! for the lovely inspiration. Antz made these incredible invitations for me.

I love my husband was kind when drawing my cankles!!

You can’t tell but the insert pops up

The dinner will be an intimate group of 10

I went shopping with Aimee today and found some great things at World Market. I fell in love with this cabana but sadly it’s not for sale. Maybe one day I can find one for future parties. We are going to use our chuppah from our wedding day.

I have butterflies in my stomach for how excited I am for this party. Tonight we are going to Ikea to pick up the dishes and look at fabric for the tablecloth. I was going to use my new tablecloth from BHLDN *I had to have it the second it went on sale!*

Isn’t it adorable? The bad news is, this guy measures 70″L, 50″W. Well, with 10 people sitting at our 8 foot table, I did the math and it will fall short. I may still use it as a runner because it’s soo pretty! This week will be crazy busy. We have Liv’s pre-school parent orientation on Wednesday and Thursday we are going wine tasting with Aimee. YAY!

May the Force be with you!

Aug 11, 2012

Today we are going to a Star Wars birthday party. We watched The Empire Strikes Back with Liv to get her familiar with the characters. She liked R2-D2 & C3PO the most. She called them robots, I couldn’t get her to say androids. She could take or leave the rest of the crew but she was digging Chewy *who doesn’t love Chewy*. I’m really excited about how rad the birthday girl, Aiyana’s present turned out.

The card plays the Star Wars theme, Liv picked the Yoda marshmallow

Of course my genius hubby made the C3PO bag

You have no idea how hard it was to keep that marshmallow Yoda from Liv. I’ll upload photos from the party tonight. We are actually going to another party later this evening that is Hawaiian themed so I’ll have to dust off my coconut bikini. I also would like to make it to the NELA art walk tonight. I hope the new comic book store Thank You will be open. Can’t wait for Scoops to open too!

So next Saturday is our big 10 year anniversary *I know, I won’t shut up about it* well, now I am really going to shut up about it. Antz and I made plans but I’m keeping quiet about them until the day. Let me say I am ridiculously excited! I wish I could share more but for now this is my only teaser.

Not much has been going on, Liv has been super awesome at school. She really has matured and listens to her teacher so well now. We are glad we enrolled her in this class so she can seamlessly transition into pre-school next month. So far she’s only had one accident at school *she doesn’t wear pull-ups to school* I feel pretty confident that she’ll be fine going completely diaper-less in September. YAY!

Crawling through hoops

Liv certainly takes after her Dad in the artsy department. She LOVES to paint!

She discovered this baby strawberry in the organic garden. We visit it everyday but sadly last Wednesday someone picked it.

Shouldn’t every school have a teepee? I want one! You know what I love? The school has artificial grass. GENIUS! I have a weird phobia about laying in real grass, bugs and itchy. The fake grass is perfect with no messy grass stains.

Painting a magnet for the fridge

Oh! I know this is random but check out what I scored at Target yesterday.

Orla Kiely for Method

I was positive they would be sold out but I got 2 hand soaps and a cleaning spray. Aren’t they cute?? Speaking of cute…

Have any fun weekend plans?

Renegade Craft Fair 2012

Jul 29, 2012

SO…FREAKING…AWESOME!!

Magnolia Photo Booth

We took the Metro train to the fair which is fun and convenient. It was lovely weather but still pretty hot. My brilliant hubby made these mini signs to hand out as our etsy cards since last year everyone asked us for business cards.

Aren’t these the sweetest?! We put a label on the back with our esty shop info and a mini pouch to hold the chalk.

Waiting patiently on her dice for the train

I wanted to buy EVERYTHING!

This was super genius, all these guys are gourds!

Hope I won’t regret not buying the bacon studs!

Best packaging ever

This Deer Ol’ Chunk antique plate unfortunately did not come home with me. This precious little dish was $52!! I do love it so much and one day I hope to own it. Sorry this is blurry, I notice that I shake when I get excited.

Holy Balls this butter crunch was so delish!!

We bought a bag of the wicked awesome brittle in Almond Rosemary flavor. So good!!

Liv enjoying her strawberry lemonade popsicle, she totally wouldn’t share with us

This Foxy guy looks like Liv’s Foxy dress!

Somehow I showed restraint and I only got a pair of these adorable earrings and we found the perfect birthday present for an upcoming party.

These girls were too cute

Liv wore her wings and got tons of compliments. One of the best parts of the Craft fair are the people. We meet the nicest folks and everyone is super friendly and smiley. I even got an inquiry if we shipped to London. Here’s the lame part, I officially suck in the camera department. I brought my Nikon J1. As you can see things were going well, I was getting decent shots, the lighting was okay and I didn’t have to carry a 20 lb camera with tons of parts. All was good until my battery died. Not really a big deal cause I had my backup battery, so I popped that guy in…and found out that battery was dead too. WTF? How in the hecks did I forget to charge my backup battery. Two dead batteries and no room on my iphone for photos left me camera-less for the remainder of the fair. BOO! Yet another lesson learned, the night before charge everything, TWICE! When we go somewhere awesome, I always end up with camera drama, really not fair. Here’s a few photos I got using Instagram.

It’s weird my sign ended up backwards, it says Violently Happy in case you can’t read backwards. We had a fun time but the first time we went was definitely radder. How nutso is little Liv a year ago? She’s like a teenager now. Nighty Nights!

PS Yikes, the men’s gymnastics teams are falling all over the place, watching them is giving me a heart attack. I always feel horrible when they fall but then I’m like, “DON’T MESS UP!!“

Easter Baby

Apr 8, 2012

Liv had her easter egg hunt this morning in the backyard. She looks adorable in her dress from her Grammy but she insisted on wearing that hat.

Happy Easter!!


Her post photo shoot outfit!

Our egg coloring…not as easy as it looks. I was trying to make these ombre eggs but I ran into trouble *I knew I should have order the McCormick neon dye* but Martha to the rescue, I used some glitter and thread and voila!!

I’ll upload more photos when we return to Liv’s Godparents Easter egg hunt…taa-tah!

Happy April Fools Day

Apr 2, 2012

Don’t worry I’m not going to trick anyone with a false pregnancy or claim to have won the jackpot *stupid Mega Millions* Instead I have great news, my lovely hubby cleaned out the garage today. He made it so wonderful in there I no longer get the heebee geebees in there. He also got rid of our old broken umbrella and hammock.

Yippee, reason #1,474,829 Antz rules! Thank you my love. Thanks again to Liv’s Padrinos for the awesome Foxy dress!!

Owl Tell ya something

Jan 17, 2012

I am super, majorly happy happy at the moment. I just went from zero to sixty with this bedroom makeover. I found a lovely rug online, ordered it, purchased the Areaware iPhone dock *using my Amazon credit so it only cost me $13.99*, made up my indecisive mind and bought the table lamp. What took me 2 months to plan, we finished in 2 days!!

Say bonne nuit to Monsieur Owl!!

He’s dreamy, much sturdier than I thought

I heart this guy so bad!

AND we just put this guy up!!!

Blik Invisible Circus decal

It was tedious and pretty nerve racking putting him up perfectly

TAA-DAH!!

His name is Elephant Gerald *see what we did there?*, the monkey is still nameless

The lighting in here is tres sex-ay now

**UPDATE** Finally got the rug and the alarm clock dock.

I’m so bummed that my Anthro quilt was at the cleaners *Liv has an accident* the day I got the rug. What a difference the vibrant colors of the Anthro quilt makes!

I will take close ups of the alarm dock soon

Did I mention we chose green over black?

I really need to come up with a new location for the printer/stand, it takes up too much space and doesn’t look cohesive with the room. Maybe we’ll squeeze it in Antz and Liv’s already crammed closet. However, how will I get a plug in there?

I still cannot believe our night stand went from this

to this fine looking piece of furniture

The best from trash to treasure ever!!

We went to lunch with Les & Stephen today but it was cray cray cold and we foolishly ate outside.

Antz didn’t like his pop. At first he said it tastes like Christmas tree but then he said it taste like old houseplant

The cookies were yummers

It was a weird day, Antz and I witnessed a car accident *nothing serious* and then while we were eating we saw a woman get hit by a car *she was absolutely fine* I was pretty sure bad luck was running rampart so by the time we got to West Elm I was certain the lamp would be sold out. Which is was…*sads* they only had black but I sweet talked the manager into selling us the display model which saved us a drive to Santa Monica. Suh-weet!

**All I need is the rug and the alarm dock to be delivered and the room will be finished. Hooray for us!

Bedroom Remodel Progress

Jan 15, 2012

Well, this is an overdue post. I had great ambition to give our tiny bedroom a dose of Botox, a new padded bra and some ghastly lip injections.

The Mood Board that started it all

Our dark, uninspired bedroom in December 2011

Since I can’t afford a total facelift, I did some strategic Black Friday shopping and picked up this lovely Anthropologie quilt set on sale for under $100 *takes a bow*

Pavo Quilt Set

I would be 100% stoked if I could find one more Pavo Euro Sham. I’ve called every Anthro store in America and they are completely sold out. I found them on eBay but I’m finding it very difficult paying $99 for a set of two *when I only need one* and I paid $17.99 for the euro sham at the store.

I also couldn’t pass up this amazing ottoman. I grabbed it when I saw it was $99 marked down from $198!

Dutch wax ottoman, it’s perfect for putting on shoes

We searched high and low for an affordable bedside table to replace the pathetic Ikea plant stand we’ve been using for the past 5 years. I wanted something with drawers as Liv is prone to stealing our telly remotes and they go missing for days at a time. I also needed to find a small piece as the doorway is right next to our bed and it had to be under 20 inches. My top contender was found at Urban Outfitters which seemed to be the best fit however there were 2 issues. One the price, $179 wasn’t working with my small budget and from Aimee’s bad luck experience with them shipping furniture, I didn’t want to risk paying $25 for shipping only to receive a damaged piece. Then I had a sheer stroke of luck driving to my acupuncture appointment one Monday morning.

I’m normally not a trash grabber but I couldn’t resist

We had a weekend of heavy rain so I was sure they were water damaged but I still sent Antz a text and gave him the location. He rushed over and picked the best drawer of the bunch and it sat on our porch for 3 weeks. I was quite skeptical of it being refurbished but I need to stop underestimating my dear husband.

A hot tranny mess


Antz painted it with primer and already it looks awesome

Remember I went to Mia’s caramel apple party? When I came home Antz surprised me with my newly painted pink bedside table. He went to home depot and had a piece of wood cut to cover the damaged top and voila!

My new issue of Anthology magazine and a new candle *that smells incredible*

This is one of my fave painting by Antz

So I quit being a nervous Nellie and put the new Anthro bedding on. The table just fits by a hair! Antz took down the prints so I could wash the wall to prep for our new Blik decal. We’ll put it up soon but first Antz had to fill the holes from the nails and we need to paint the spots.

Our bright and cheery bedroom January 2012

Dang it, I need another euro sham!!

He painted the old bamboo frames yellow and we added new frames/photos to the wall over my desk.

The circle frame will soon house a silhouette cameo I’m making of Olivia

I love the new painted frames, they really pop against the green

So next I still am waiting to buy this iPhone alarm clock dock, a new table lamp and a rug.

I have waited 3 months for this guy to go on sale, I just may bite the bullet and order it today

Still not sure if this graphic black & white chevron rug will look good with the colorful palette of the room.

The biggest dilemma is choosing the table lamp. I love this guy

Owl Lamp from West Elm

I’m so worried Liv may knock him over. We have this lamp in the living and we have to keep her from it cause she’s always trying to take the shade off. This seems like a great lamp but not so great with a grabby toddler. So I found an alternative here

Hippity Hoppity Lamp from Anthropologie

It’s surprisingly less than Mr Owl and it’s a cute animal *although I admit, it seems juvenile* but I don’t think it will give me enough light to read at night. It seems more like a nightlight.

So, the room is just about finished once we put up the wall decal, I make up my mind on a table lamp and a rug and I buy the iPhone alarm clock. Oh! I need to make Liv’s silhouette too. I think we’ve done pretty well so far. Antz asked me why Anthropologie bedding is so expensive but after the pleasant night’s sleep we both had, he understands. The new pillows are so soft and even though we abandoned our plan to add a slipcover to the headboard, I’m happy with the bed. I’ll just have to wait until we buy our Dream House to get my King.

I also took some photos of Liv’s nursery yesterday since it’s been awhile.