copycat!

I'm going to try to make this. I would buy it, but they sold out plus I think I could save $30 and pretty easily make it myself. I need a zippers and pockets challenge anyways. Pretty ingenious though, especially for quick trips out or when we go biking and I don't want to take a purse. This will be perfect until fanny packs make their big comeback. From: http://www.wintercheckfactory.com via Design Milk.

Graffiti

This is awesome. I don't mind big street art graffiti pieces but the crap that's just scribbled on buildings and fences etc makes me angry. Adding a sewing needle to the spray paint scribble turns it into art.

via World War Won

Halloween 2009

BOO! Mandy and Seth invited us over to help pass out candy to the 483 kids that came trick or treating at their house. It was a lot of fun, we all wore costumes, drank Mandy's orangey fizz surprise, and played Apples to Apples and ate ghost brownies that I made. I'm glad I brought them because we ran out of candy! Too many kids, seriously.
I went as a garden gnome again this year, this time with a better beard that I made out of felt.

Jeff came home from work about 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave for Mandy and Seth's so he went as Unibrow Man.
When we got to their house, Jeff was intimidated by Mandy and Seth's awesome costumes and so Mandy made him up as a zombie. He makes a good zombie face.
This was so great. Seth went as 70's Adam West's Batman. Mandy made the costume!!
Mandy of course went as Catwoman and of course made her costume too. Meooooowww!
Matt and Jana came as vampires and couldn't get their teeth off at the end of the night. I bet they're still wearing them actually.

Happy Halloweeners!

Butts-Up!

Mandy is terrific and sent me her photos from Jeff's birthday party. She took some pretty great ones of the Butts-Up game. My mom thought it was a drinking game when she first heard us say it (I guess it does sound like that!), but it's also known as Wall Ball in some states. The point is that you chuck a racquetball ball at a wall, someone tries to catch it on the bounce back, and if they miss or if it falls out of their hand, they have to high-tail it for the wall and try to touch it before someone else grabs the ball and chucks it at the wall. If you don't make it to the wall in time, you get a B. When you spell BUTT, you have to assume the position on the wall and the person that got you out gets to chuck the ball at your butt. It's awesome, and lots of fun. Just a little pain. Pictures!!!
Me & Ed's pizza parlor. It was live piano night and the piano player took requests! Jan was super impressed with their pizza, and he's a connoisseur when it comes to pizza so we enjoyed.
We were so lucky to find this perfectly lit, legal butts-up wall. We thought we might have to just find an elementary school and use a building wall, but that would have involved hopping fences and possible breaking and entering charges. And it was right around the corner from the pizza parlor!
I thought we might have too many people for the game but it turned out great. The game kept moving with so many people and everyone was running and playing. The game totally brings out the third-grader in you.


Jana got Jan out so she got to peg him in the butt. Look at that wind-up!
Jana and I both got out at the same time so we had to take it together.
I think he was aiming for a boy in this shot. Jerod's a gentleman, and lobbed the balls at the girls and fired them at the boys.
Yup, he was aiming for Jeff. Jeff was helping by pointing out where the ball should hit. He shouldn't have done that.
After butts-up, we went to the Puka Bar which is right down the street from where our new house will be! It's a super cute, Tiki-themed tropical bar, and we had a really good time there. The DJ was awesome. With 5 professionally trained artists at the table (Jeff, Matt, Kurtis, Seth and Jan), you know someone was going to bust out a pen and start drawing. Matt kicked it off with portraits, this one of Jan cracked everyone up.
Birthday boy!
I made a confetti cake for Jeff (his request) and made a vanilla frosting/marshmallow icing dyed booger green (also Jeff's request). It was really yummy but SO sticky. We left marshmallow fingerprints all over the Puka tables and chairs probably. Oops...

Good times! Thanks for coming out friends!

Turning 30

This month I turn the big 3-0. This year it falls exactly on Thanksgiving so I guess I have to be thankful for turning 30. Traveling up to the Bay Area for that somewhat short weekend is always stressful and sometimes dangerous considering we always drive (along with the rest of California), so this year we've decided to stay home in Long Beach. We're going up to the Bay Area on the 12th anyways for my grandfather's 90th birthday (!!) so we'll get to see our family before the holiday. I'm so excited to host Thanksgiving for our friends that will join us, we're planning a huge potluck of yumminess.

There is a lot to be excited over in my 3rd decade. Jeff and I are settling contentedly into happy married life (no longer newlyweds!), we'll have bought our first home, we're both doing well in our careers, we're going to finally get a dog, and God willing we'll make a baby. This is the major life-changing decade I think. I have to be prepared for it so I've been thinking of habit-changes and goals and projects to help me live what I see as a fulfilled life for me. Sort of 30th birthday resolutions I suppose. Here's a list I've started that is far from complete:

I'd like to do more sweet and unexpected things for the people I care about. I love what Shauna and Stephen make for each other. I made this for you...

Watch more TED talks. Sooo interesting and I'm addicted now. I'm especially interested in the Charter for Compassion series of six talks. "Together, these six speakers bear witness to the fact that compassion and the Golden Rule lie at the heart of all religion and all morality." In these bad times, we've definitely seen an increase in violence and pointless vandalism in our city and it makes me so angry and upset. Maybe practicing more compassion for everyone, even those committing these terrible crimes, will help bring me some peace.

I'm going to cook fancy more. Herb and gruyere scones... mmmmm.... Recipe here.


Hold that cold at bay Soup


Leek, Baby Broccoli, Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese Tart

Butternut Squash and Orange Cauliflower Soup

I'm going to eat more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because shoot if they don't make me happy! I love them. And with whole wheat bread, natural peanut butter, and the good jam, I think they're pretty good for you. Fast to make too which is important since I squeeze in sleep until the very last minute I have to wake up and start getting ready for work.

I'm going to squirrel away and save more money in my 30's than in my 20's, ideally in this awesome gold cast piggy bank by Harry Allen. I better buy this piggy bank while I'm still 29 come to think of it, otherwise I wouldn't be doing a very good job of saving in my 30's. He's soooo cute though!

I'm definitely going to be getting my hands thorn-pricked and dirty more in my 30's as I've caught the flower arranging bug. Mandy and I "booked" another wedding! Our friends Kelsey and Jake just got engaged and they're getting married in May! Kelsey wants a gray and yellow theme like we did for our wedding, and I'm super excited because I'll get to do all the arrangements I thought of AFTER our wedding that I wanted to do! The internet is so packed with inspirational arrangments too. Like this flowers in a waffle cone idea conceived by Jiseon Park and Eunho Kim, via SDesignUnit. So cute!
Learn to sew clothes!! My closet needs an injection of new. I've definitely noticed my taste moving towards comfy, and away from form-fitting and high heels. I don't want that to turn into sweatpants and ballet flats though so I need to find a fashion-forward middle ground. I'm thinking more kitten heels (and better designed heels too, a little built-in padding and arch support goes SUCH a long way), looser dresses and pants. I really want to make these Built by Wendy patterns that I bought on super discount, I think they're perfect.


There. I think that's a good start. Self-indulgent yes, but that's not always bad.

Pretty pictures

Matt and Jana's wedding photographer, Marianne Wilson, just sent me some beautiful close-ups of the flowers Mandy and I arranged for their wedding. The colors are so vibrant, I love them. Check out more of Marianne's work on her website www.mariannewilsonphotography.com and her blog, www.mariannewilsonblog.com.

Birthday party!

By the way... for anyone in the SoCal area, we're celebrating Jeff's birthday tonight at Me & Ed's pizza parlor in Lakewood around 7pm, located at 4115 Paramount Blvd, Lakewood. Afterwards we're headed to Joe's Jost at 2803 Anaheim in Long Beach and probably Orizaba park around the corner for some 4-square and Butts-Up action. Wear your tennies.

Happy Birthday Jeffy!!

Happy 32nd birthday my sweets. I hope all of your wildest Be@rbrick dreams come true...

Katie and Erik's wedding

Pictures! Karen let me know this week that the photographer for Katie and Erik's wedding, Troy Grover, just posted pictures so I grabbed a few of the flower close-ups. Mark, Karen, and I worked long hours on these bad boys but I think they turned out beautifully and were well worth the effort.
This is what I walked into that Friday morning. A garage full of gorgeous flowers, and Mark looking stressed out.
The majority of the flowers were roses that needed to be stripped before we could work with them. 4 hours later, all roses were thorn free! And I was bleeding. Look at the tulips though!
I love these purple cabbages, they remind me of cabbage patch kids.

We did 8 of these shepards hooks to line the aisle. We arranged them around 10:00pm on Friday in the dark with just the light of the garage in the distance. I think we were all surpised in the morning by how good they looked!

We also did 75 centerpieces, three for each table. Holy moly!
Mark did Katie's bouquet, I think it turned out so colorful and awesome.
The happy couple, Katie and Erik! They were so sweet and easy-going about the whole thing. In front of me at least. Maybe they beat Mark when I wasn't around, which would explain his demands for perfection.



The photos turned out amazing, check them out here if you like looking at wedding photos! http://troygrover.smugmug.com/Weddings/Katie-and-Erik-Weddin/10032246_sXCQL#687126596_AJTXe

Ssscat!

One of the things I like so much about the house we are in right now is that the upstairs can be completely closed off from the downstairs. This is a huge benefit considering Lily Mae tends to "act out" all over our couch. In Irvine we had a few accidents (cleaned up thanks to heavy duty dry cleaning action) and then covered the couch in puppy pads and foil. We don't really want to live with our couch under plastic in the new house so I'm investigating "training devices". I came across the SSSCAT which has a motion detector that the cat trips when it gets close to the forbidden area, releasing a brisk spray of aerosol, scaring the crap out of the cat (not literally I hope, that's what we're trying to avoid) and keeping it away from the sofa! It's pain free and sort of humane so I think we'll give it a try.

Putting all our eggs in the Golden basket

We got a house!! Yesterday was an exciting day because we actually got two houses! Both our offers for the Pine house (the Frank Lloyd Wright-esque house) and the one on Golden were accepted! We did the obligatory pros/cons list for each and talked a lot about it. Luckily Jeff and I were on the same page and felt the same about the drawbacks to the Pine house (alley adjacent, needs new windows and a lot of kitchen updates) and all of the pros with the Golden house. So we let go of the Pine offer and are moving forward with Golden. Because it's a short sale though, the bank still has to approve our offer (which Noelle doesn't think will be an issue based on the comps and the seller having agreed to the price and sale already) and they can take anywhere from 2-4 weeks to approve it. We're SO crossing our fingers for two weeks because the 30 day escrow after that will close right before the tax credit expires on November 30th. If they take four weeks, we'll be out of luck. $8,000 in April would be pretty sweet so we're praying the bank expedites things.

Pictures!!

Our plan right now is to convert the garage into a studio for Jeff. We want to take out the garage door and frame in a couple of windows (there's a door on the backyard side), insulate and get an electrician to wire everything properly for an office, drywall and paint! Easy, right?
This is the view right when you walk in to the living room. The windows on both sides make it nice and bright, and of course we're thrilled with the nice hardwood floors.
This is the dining room right off the living room and the little nook off the kitchen. We don't know what we'll put there yet but we'll figure it out!
Plenty of room for our dining table... perfect!
All new double-paned windows in the house too, a HUGE cost savings. Mandy told me what their quotes on those suckers are and it scared me. Pine would have needed all new ones so that would have gotten pricey.
The kitchen is pretty sweet and was a major advantage over the Pine house kitchen. This one has new appliances (gas stove! dishwasher!!), corian countertops, brand new cabinetry (that we'll probably paint, way too much wood going on in this space for our tastes), recessed lighting, and the wood floors extend into the kitchen.
The 2 bedrooms in the house are on the small side so we're going to have to get creative about furniture placement and closet space. I have a few ideas and 4 years of back issues of Domino to help.
The "master" bedroom. So little! Or cozy? Let's go with cozy.
The bathroom is great, and the only thing I want to change is the flooring. No more linoleum. I'm going to bribe Seth and his tile-laying skills to come and help remedy the situation. The shower stall which you can't see in this picture is pink tile with a black tile border!! So cool!!
The lot is really big, about 6500 square feet (big for Southern California at least!) and the backyard has a nicely built and sturdy storage shed behind the garage. I want to put my raised planter beds for my vegetable garden on the side wall over the gravel and Jeff wants a fire pit in the middle of the lawn. As long as it's far away from a structure, I'm okay with that. :)

I hope hope hope everything goes smoothly with this house, but until a clean home inspection bill of health and the keys are in our hands, we're not holding our breath. Closing on the house by Thanksgiving (and my 30th birthday!) would be amazing though.

Frank Lloyd Wright-esque

That was in the description for this last home Jeff and I put an offer in on this weekend. It also said it was a home for people with ESQUISITE taste (yes, in caps) and that's pretty much the McMillans in a nutshell so we had to take a look. Joking aside, it's a pretty rad house. It's really large thanks to an addition put on the house (a big bonus room with a second fireplace, a bar, and a 3/4 bathroom) and it has a lot of neat original details. And it's a regular sale! This one is also in Wrigley so extra points for being close to Mandy and Seth.

The cute house on Oregon (with the red door) got swooped up by an all-cash offer, even though it was significantly less than our offer. Apparently the seller just wants to be done with it and all cash closes a lot quicker than loans. *$%*!!