Happy Birthday Poppa!

It's Mr. Douangphila's Birthday today! Your an old man hun but we love you anyway :)

So cute huh?! Don't you love retro camera for android?! I do, and so does Miniboss. She loves posing with her Poppa for photos :)I asked him what he wanted for his day and he said pizza. I guess we are getting old..I spent my day at Chuck e Cheeses with the kiddos and old man just wants pizza for his lol. Please tell me we aren't the only ones?!

It's Getting Festive Around Here

Even though it's not December yet, the desk shelves are in full blown Christmas mode :) Now if only we can get some snow around here... BTW My camera is shipped out and it's in Jersey! I'm soo excited for it to get here and start messing with it. I have so many cute props to make too!

BEFORE:

NOW:

Baby Turtles

I found some baby turtles!

Hehehe I only took one picture before someones hand started reaching into the frame.

A tiny persons hand stealing and eating my tiny baby chocolate turtles as I was trying to take a picture of how cute they are lol! Oh well.

I Survived Black Friday 2011

We had a great Turkey Day! We cooked a ton of food and had one of the husbands friend over. It was a easy lazy morning and evening until it was time to go shopping!

Were there any other brave souls who decided to do some Black Friday shopping?! Well I know there was because I was in line with all them crazies!

I decided to just hit up Toys R Us for some diapers. We needed some and Walgreens isn't haven't a deal anytime soon, so it was perfect timing. I'll just make a quick run to Toys R Us and go home and wait for Kohls. Boy was I wrong! The line was outside the store all the way down the street in a "U" shape. It was crazy and by the time I got in you had to be in line to checkout and scoop things up as you were in line waiting. I made a few new friends with people in line and they helped me watch my cart while I got diapers and I watched their things while they shopped. I love team work :) So sweet and even when I was there from 8:30pm to 11:30pm it felt like it flew by because of all the people I was talking to lol. I even met a sweet lady who works at the commissary, and she helped fight the crowd for my diapers!

(My four boxes for $40! I got Miniboss some toys while I was waiting in line too.)

After finally getting out I headed over to Kohls down the street just in time for their midnight sale. I had one thing to get. The Dyson DC25. They were the best deal of all the Black Friday sales, and we had missed it online. So I waited in that crazy long line and met some more sweet chicas, and everything was so fun and up to this point I had a lot of fun Black Friday shopping!!!

I finally get into the store run to the vacuums and yes there was 2 left! I was reaching under the shelf and was pulling the big box out and a lady snatches it out of my hands and says the last two are HERS! She just grabbed them and ran. I was in sooooooooo much shock at her rudness and craziness. I called her some bad words and felt like crap because I let that lady bully me!!!!!!! Well smart thinking me, I hunted down a sales associate and asked her for another and she went in the back warehouse and got me one! The LAST ONE! OMG I honestly didn't think something like that would ever happen to me. I mean there were two left! And she took both. Really?! These are $300 vacuum cleaners!! I bet she is just going to resell hers on craigslist. She told me I waited all night for these, well lady obviously not because I got here before you did! Anyway I went to check out and was telling my horror story to people and I ended up cutting a bunch of people in line because they felt sorry for me and I only had one thing. So there are still nice people left in the world!

(I've already used it and it's amazing compared to our old Bissell. We reallyyyy needed one because Miniboss only gets older and messier. Our old vacuum couldn't hang with her messes anymore... I have to vacuum the house at least once a day or there is food everywhere! )

There are tons of sweet people out there and unfortunately I ran into a horrible horrible lady. I wasn't prepared for it, and it came out of the blue. Other people are telling me I should have fought her off but really I'm just not that kind of person. I am just too soft for this hardcore shopping world of women who are crazy at Kohls! Next year I am ordering online. I told my husband that if he misses a deal I am not going to wait in line and get beat up by some woman so he better go himself. That or I better be camping in line and being first, because I dont want to be in the back and fight people off lol.

Anyway! Here's some of my Black Friday loot :)

$15 for my drill bits for my...

New drill and other awesome woodworking stuff! Yea saws-all baby! A girls best friend right?! Maybe not every girl but they're my first power tools :) I do have my Wagner Spray Painter from last year, but I don't know if that really counts?! lol

I also got a ton of batteries at Lowes. $4 for 30 AA batteries. Great deal! Plus we were out and were waiting for a good deal :)

Last but notttt least. I got this!!

(source)

I didn't have to wait in line or anything! I bought it online :) A Canon Rebel DSLR T3i! I am soooo excited for a real camera. Moving on from a dinky point and shoot digicam! It comes in two weeks, and I can't wait to start playing with it! I have to learn all the fun things of photography so that I can save some moneys by not going to the photography studio for Miniboss's pictures! Last year Miniboss's aunt took her to the studio for her 1 yr pictures and we paid sooo much just to get amateur quality photos for almost half the price of this camera!! I was not impressed to say the least but now I can control what pics I get for her second birthday and I'm soo excited to dress her up and take her to diff places for photos :)

Anyway no more shopping! I'm all shopped out and not to mention broke! lol. Just gonna relax and be lazy now! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We're just cooking and shopping today :) I went to Walgreens last night for their deals and it was crazyyyy! I never knew there were that many couponers here in town, and selfish too! They all had hoarded their carts full of the free register rewards and totally clearing shelves. One lady even said she had over 30 transactions to do. I get that they are free but really, it's Thanksgiving! Give other couponers a chance to do deals too. Some people will be selfish and stay selfish though. I on the other hand only did 2 transactions for things I needed and left because I knew those crazy ladies would fight it out while I went home to brine my turkey and sleep :)

Anyway this year I am Thankful for manyyyy things.

One being that I learned how to coupon the right way!

I am thankful for the many material things I am blessed to own. We sacrifice a lot throughout the year and at the end of the year during sales I am able to buy some big ticket items, such as the car, my desktop, and if all goes well I will be at kohls to get a dyson! The Miniboss only gets bigger and more messy!

I am thankful for a great husband, and healthy daughter. I complain about them up and down, but they are my everything :) SHHHH..don't tell em that though!

I am thankful to have Parker apart of our clan this year. He's the best little dog I could have ever asked for. He keeps me stress free and happy.

Last but not least I am thankful that even though I am not able to spend today with my family, I am able to share it with them through webcam :)


PS..Who is ready for some Black Friday shopping?! I guess I am for the first time this year!! :)

RGB Crimson Nail Polish

My new favoritestestestest red polish ever. I used to work in nail salons and have seen all sorts of red polishes, and have tried plenty myself. Even after two weeks of wearing it and picking at it and having all sorts of chippiness, I still get complimented on the color! I constantly look at it and think wow, this goes so well with my skin tone! I don't know if it's because I have a more olive skin tone, and red's can look orangy or too cool and just never look quite right, but this one is just perfect! It's looks okay in the picture, but in person its mind blowing beautiful, I just couldn't capture it's awesomeness on my poopy camera lol :)

You can find some here. I don't know if they sell the same color but I know they carry the brand.

Outdoor Discoveries

Homemade Boba Drinks

I loveee my boba! Too bad we live so far away, I'm addicted to boba drinks like some people are addicted to Starbucks. But then again maybe it's a good thing, they can get pricey if your drinking it everyday.

Well I found a solution to both my problems! Homemade boba :) We all know I love my smoothies but during the colder months I always stock us up on instant powdered drinks like coffee, hot chocolate, green tea, soymilk and thai tea. Well this past weekend when we went to Dallas I bought this huge bag of boba from Saigon Mall in Garland. I thought they had smaller bags but we could only find this huge one.

(It was upside down and I just flipped it using photoshop hehe)

It was $12.99 and I'm pretty sure this bag will last me a whole year! It's huge. The bag says ready in 5 mins, but I cooked mine for 20 minutes. I took it off the heat and let it sit covered for another 10 mins. I drained it, and let the boba swim in simple syrup (water + dissolved brown sugar). While it cooks its a light brown color and very puffy but as it cools it will shrink and turn into the dark brown almost black color we're all used to.

I made the drink out of this. I think it was $2.99, or $3.99 for 12 packets. We've tried tons of different powdered drinks but this brand is our favorite! It tastes the best and you don't need to add anything but hot water.

I take a glass put some boba at the bottom, and pour my drink into it. Easy and sooo yummy. Perfect for cold weather! Not to mention I get the same thing as the boba places but for a fraction of the cost! Can't beat that :)

A Little Pink Tree

This year we decided not to put up the big Christmas tree. With Miniboss around and her being naughty, there's no way that thing would survive until Christmas. Not to mention we just don't have room cuz we took up a whole wall for our office space! I know, we've completely outgrown this apartment and we're ready to move, but we figure we can hold out for a little while longer since we have about a year left in Wichita Falls. Oh well, a little sacrifice will pay off in the long run. :) Anyway, I still wanted Miniboss to have a small tree up so out came the tabletop pink tree I made her Aunt Jenn buy her after Christmas last year! Yea I planned ahead!! That's how I roll :)

I set up the tree on the dinning table and laid out small ornaments while she stuck them on.

Not bad..but of course the tree is decorated on one side only, and most of the ornaments are at the bottom...it's okay, it's her tree, she can do whatever. Now when we wrap the gifts, they all go on the tabletop so she won't rip them up before she's supposed to :)

EDIT: Here it is at night!

I helped add a few more ornaments but it's still naked from outside the window looking in..She saw me putting more on and climbed the bench onto the table to "help" so I just put everything away. There is glitter everywhereee. Note to self don't buy glittery ornaments for the next few years!

Our Five Year Anniversary

I met my husband 5 years ago today! I can't believe it's been that long already. We've been through so much together. A deployment, marriage, our first pcs, and the birth of our beautiful daughter. November 16, is one of the most important days to us. It marks the beginning of our journey in life together :) It's actually even more important to us than our actual wedding date!

For our one month anniversary he got me a diamond tennis bracelet and a pair of diamond earrings, for our five year anniversary he gets me my mommy car, the Kia Optima! This guy spoils me ;)

Thanks for all you do as a husband, and dad to our stinky kiddo :) We've had our share of ups and downs and I'm glad we always manage to talk everything through. I hope we share another 3897403802304 years together driving each other crazy hun heheh!

HAPPY 5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY HUN!!!!!!!! LOVE YOU!!!!

DIY: How to Make A Bow Tie Headband

So wanna know how to make your kiddo a bow tie headband? It took me 5 minutes and all you need is scrap fabric, lace/headband, and a needle and thread.



1. My small scrap of fabric. Cut edges so it's a rectangle. Doesn't need to be perfect.
2. Fold inside out and sew the edge.
3. Flip it back right side out.
4. Move the seam into the center.
5. Tuck in the Top edge.
6. Tuck in the bottom edge.
7. Pinch/fold it in half long ways.
8. Pinch/fold the two edges back.
9. Get a second scrap of fabric and needle and thread. Fold so there are no raw edges showing.
10. Wrap around bow tie, and hand sew it, so the seams are on the back.



Don't snip the thread just yet, now all you do is get your headband/piece of lace and sew the bow tie to it. Done.

That's it. Fool proof step by step instructions :)

Linking up to:
Tuesday Tutorials @ The Kurtz Corner
Open House Party @ No Minimalist Here
Weekend Wrap It Up Party @ Tatertots & Jello

Pearly Whites

What a longggg weekend for us! I'm so glad to finally be home :)

We spent the whole day at the hospital on Thursday for Miniboss's out-patient surgery. She came out of it like a champ and her teeth are all fixed up now. They aren't straight, but they are done and I'm just glad she's not in pain anymore. They just capped over her teeth and her teeth weren't straight in the first place, so the caps make it more dominate.

You can see her teeth were chipped and the spots were cavities from not having enamel on her teeth. I would have after pics of her new pearly whites, except she won't let anyone close yet..she's still scared and remembers the hospital and won't let anyone look in her mouth lol. I'll get a good shot of them later on when she's back to eating solid hard foods. Her mouths still tender when she eats things like crackers.

Here she is right after surgery and extremely grumpy.

After another 3 hours of recovery and doing out processing, she was still groggy so we drove down to Dallas for the weekend.

Then we spent all day Friday at the Southwest Kia car dealership while the hubby tried to get us a deal on a new car. They were going back and forth on the price, they quoted us completely different numbers on the phone then when we were there in person and so we left. We actually drove all the way to Garland to Saigon Mall for some food since we were at the dealership all morning. After we leave they call us back saying ok we'll give you the price you want, so we turn back to the dealership and got caught in horrible Dallas traffic. They were rushing us saying the manager was leaving and we needed to get their asap, and I got car sick from the stop and go traffic. It was just horrible. By the time we got back to the dealership and started paperwork, they tell us actually we cant do the deal and that the price is going to be 5 bucks more a month then what they quoted us. So we're like umm no were not paying that price, but then they changed it so that we could get our original price they told us on the phone when we were coming back to the dealership. Honestly if they would have just given us this price from the beginning we wouldn't have spent the entire day there with a cranky kid. I get that they're trying to make money but we aren't suckers and there's no way we were gonna get bullied into paying something completely out of our price range.

Actually our sales guy, Clinton, wasn't bad at all, he was super friendly throughout the process and helped us through the whole thing, but when we did our paperwork we dealt with the fiance manager for like a max of 15 mins and he was such a jerk to us. The payment numbers weren't correct and so we had him fix it and when he left the office on the way out I could hear him saying to Clint that he was tired of dealing with us. & the whole time he was just rude and rushing us to finish the paper work. Horrible customer service and if you look here at their other testimonials you will see other people had trouble with their finance office as well. I bet it was the same guy we dealt with!! He was the guy trying to get us to pay way over what we were quoted, and why we walked out.

I'm just glad this only happens once in a blue moon, the process was completely tedious for us! But we did finally drive out of there with our new 2012 Kia Optima SX.

Miniboss wasn't the only one who walked out with pearly whites this weekend!

I'm extremely happy with our Kia! I've only had Acuras before, and really didn't know what to expect, but it's pretty amazing. Maybe because it's fresh off the lot and it's our first big purchase as a family, and our first brand new car? Or maybe because I'm glad we got rid of the hubby's standard TL. Plus it doesn't hurt that now we don't have to buy premium gas! Either way I loveee our Kia!

Hey I may never get to have a moment like this again. The moment you buy your very first brand new car! My parents didn't get that luxury until they were in their mid 40's. It's my moment and I'm not gonna let anyone take it away lol :)

Wish Her Luck!

Gonna be a very busy weekend for us. Ours starts tomorrow! Miniboss is going under for her dental procedure tomorrow. We'll be up bright and early at the hospital so wish her luck! We hope everyone has a wonderful Veterans day weekend, we will be spending ours in Dallas.

PS. Tutorial on how to make her bow tie headband later after all the craziness this weekend :)

Easy DIY Ornament Wreath

I've decided not to put up our big 6 ft Christmas tree this year so I have a ton of ornaments from last years after Christmas sale laying around. I wanted to put them to good use so I made an ornament wreath!

Too simple?? I thought it needed more, so I added clear glittery snowflakes!

Too much now? I kinda like it...Just because we don't have much up yet.

I've always loved the look of ornament wreaths but some of the tutorials called for using a glue gun to stick them together and glue does NOT stick too well here in the summer so if it sits in storage during the year it will fall apart and be a hot mess, so I waited until I found an easier tutorial which worked for ME. Work smarter not harder I always say lol...really I'm just a lazy crafter :)

Anyway While surfing Pinterest, low and behold, a very easy tutorial, which you could simply take apart after your done and reuse all your ornaments for something else. The wreath DOES take A LOT of ornaments! More than I expected actually, so it's always good to get back those ornaments, which you can't if your going to glue ornaments to a wreath.

It was so easy too, "how to" here. (I didn't glue the ornament tops though, and they are staying up fine. I also didn't have ribbon so I used a beaded string to hold it up on the frame.)

A Pillow for Parker

Starting off with fun projects using my fabric bundle, I made Parker a pillow bed this weekend. Parker has a habit of sitting on top of his kennel and looking out the window. He not only sits there, he lays there, sleeps there, and practically lives on top of his kennel! I guess it makes him feel safe...whatever makes him happy I guess.

I picked out two pieces of fabric I thought looked good together and went with these two.

I knew I wanted some personal touches for him, since it's for the top of his kennel. Right now there's a towel on top so it doesn't hurt his paws and body when he's chilling out on top. I went with a cute "P" made from scrap fabric from my mousepad makeover here. I simply used the same steps and heat and bonded it to the blue fabric.

Then I put the two fabric pieces right side together and sewed 3 sides. I left one side open to stuff it with some cotton and finished the edge with some hand embroidery with ombre embroidery floss.

All done! And here's Parker enjoying his new pillow bed.

Where does his head end and his butt begin?! heehe. I made it small because I knew I wanted to keep the towel still on the top to keep the pillow from slipping when he fluffs it, and well he likes to sleep in a tiny ball and it fits him perfectly. Much more comfortable now :)

BTW Some background knowledge on our dog...Yes his kennel is small; it's the smallest size kennel you can buy at Petsmart for dogs up to 15 pounds (Parker is 4lbs). When we first adopted him several months ago, I only put a tiny thin mat in there for him so he's have maximum space to hang out but he would freak out when we kenneled him up when we left the house. I'm a stay at home mom so usually he's out all day, we only kennel him when we all leave to go to the grocery store for his own safety. (We have been through both a wild fire and earthquake while living here in Wichita Falls) Well he would freak out so bad and cry and use his teeth to gnaw at the bars of his kennel and his gums would bleed. We had a pet bed for him on the floor we bought at petsmart but he never sat in it. I took it and shoved it into his kennel and then placed him inside, there was enough room for him to turn around and move still and he hasn't freaked out since. He fluffs the pet bed like crazy and sinks into the stuffing and sleeps there at night. I guess the small kennel was TOO BIG, and by adding a big pet bed inside it, it made him feel more safe. Anyway, he loves sleeping in there at night now, we usually get up around 8, but he stays in the bedroom and sleeps till noon. When he gets up I bring his kennel out to the living room and he lays out on top and sun bathes in the window. No more freak outs and we're pretty much in a routine now with him. Adopting an older dog is like having kids..you gotta do whatever makes them happy or you'll never get any sleep lol :) We love both our kiddos though! :)

Linking up to:
Tuesday Tutorials @ The Kurtz Corner

Tuesday Morning

Did I ever mention how much I love stores like TJ Maxx, Ross, and Tuesday Morning? I always find the best deals.

We had a checkup for Miniboss to get the all clear from her doctor for her dental procedure at the hospital. Every things all set and we go in November 10th for her teefies. I've been dealing with all sorts of run around from the doctors and dentist and paperwork from humana, but it's finally all done! I was going crazy for a while calling everyone to make sure everything was set.

Anyway, Tuesday morning was on the way home and I wanted to see if they had some dog treats for Parker. They usually carry awesome organic dog treats that he loves and we're out of them. Well Tuesday morning was out of them as well, but as I was wandering the store I stopped by the furniture aisle. We all know I have a problem and buy all sorts of furniture because I'm sick like that lol. I found this guy for $20!

It was a display piece and the ones still boxed were $80. I asked the sales lady what was wrong with it and how come it was marked for $20. She says there's a screw missing so one leg is kinda loose.

I tried to walk past it and I ran into some cool scrapbooking flowers, and even a fabric bundle that were perfect for a little project I want to do..but my mind couldn't get off that $20 shelf. (Well I obviously bought it lol..) My husband takes it apart because it didn't fit in our car. Well when he put it back together we found the missing screw inside of one of the legs lol!! It was a perfect shelf after all, nothing wrong, nada! Sweet, all sales final and I got an awesome deal :)


Speaking of the fabric bundle...

It's actually from Westminster, Little House by Annette Tatum, Free Spirit collection. The colors are perfect for kids and I plan to use it for all sorts of cute projects for Miniboss & Parker! Stay tuned for as many cute projects I can crank out with the fabric as possible lol