"You are awesome!"

You are awesome. Three little words that no one could ever get tired of hearing I'm sure, but by the same token are not used enough.

My story begins with a back story (as my stories usually do) since we are close to closing our first home, I needed some stuff printed out from our bank account and I had to actually go down to the bank. The reason I had to physically make the trek is because my wonderful husband refuses to do online banking, he doesn't trust it and will not hear anything to the contrary. So away to the bank I went with both of my crazy boys.

At the bank, I waited a while and my little guy was asleep but promptly woke up thirty seconds before I was called to be attended to (seriously his timing is impeccable!). So needless to say my boys were running around the WHOLE time we were there, playing pirates, avengers and just shooting in general. We had been playing 20 questions as she "updated my profile" and about halfway through my time there the lady helping me said "you are awesome." I was kind of taken aback I just kind of sheepishly smiled to the side, I have never been one that is good at getting compliments to begin with but in that moment I have to say that I felt a little creeped out. She looked at me again and said "I'm serious you are awesome, you know that right?" And she looked at me with a sort of surprised expression as if she was genuinely expecting me to say thanks and toot my own horn. I said "thank you" and I realized how amazing it felt to have someone genuinely think that about me after meeting me for a half an hour and with my kids running a muck in the bank pretty much that entire time.

So thank you bank lady, you really made my day and made me realize that I am amazing and it is ok to think that and it doesn't make me a cocky jerk. I think every now and then we all need a little bit of reminding of how amazing we are....

I googled contentment and this was the first image that I loved, found here.

Return of the Blogger

So I have been extremely MIA lately from blogging which makes me sad. I love reading blogs and was very excited about having my own as a way to document things in my life and as a therapeutic release of sorts. There is something so soothing about sitting down and getting out some of the thoughts that are otherwise banging around inside my head.

Well I have decided that for my sanity and by default the sanity of my family that I should get back to doing things that I love. This year in particular my New Year's resolution was to make this year a selfish year. I know that sounds awful but as a wife and mother to a 6 year old and an almost three year old, I never put myself first, so this year I decided that would change. Now it has not been a drastic change or anything but I have enjoyed taking time to do little things for myself here and there so I figure in keeping with that I should get back to blogging which I also love to do. I do not have a whole bunch of time in general to do things for myself, especially since I work a lot as well, but I am determined to fit it in somehow, only time will tell I guess.

A lot has happened in the past year since my last post, my boogs is now 6 and my no nos is terrible two's to the max! This August will mark 7 years that I have been married to the love of my life. But the most exciting thing that has happened thus far is that my hubby and I have just bought our first home! And while it is not our dream home yet, it has every bit of potential to be, it is a fixer-upper in the sense that it was built in the 80's and still has most of that 80's "charm" in terms of tile and what not. We are looking forward to making it our own through the years but I am absolutely in love with it, hopefully in the next week we will be moving in and I can blog from my new digs! :)

So hopefully you will hear from me soon...

This is a great shot of my three boys at the beach in the middle of December of last year, this is one reason why I love Southern California, Winter Beach Days :)

Happy Birthday Time Again

It is that time again... my oldest son's (the boogs') birthday. He is 5 now and I affectionately joke with him that he is a whole hand old. This is going to be a quick post and I hope to make a post later that will include a year of pictures of him.


He truly never ceases to amaze me. He is ending his first year at school (pre school) and it has been so exciting for me to see him blossom. He can count up to 100 all by himself and is even starting to learn how to do addition and subtraction problems. His favorite thing is to play a "subtraction game" in the car where we do crazy subtraction problems like ten million minus 4 million. He is really getting the hang of it :). He also knows all the colors and shapes, even the so-called "kindergarten" shapes. He also knows all the letters, uppercase and lower case and is starting to sound out words.


His thirst for life is something to marvel at and his inquizitiveness is unmatched (much to the husband's dismay at times, lol). All in all when I look at him I wonder how I got lucky enough to hit the baby jackpot. I must have done something really good in my life to deserve this kid.


So even though I am a couple days late on this post... Happy Birthday Boogs, you are amazing. Keep doing what you are doing because it is working and I hope you don't ever change. I love you more than words could ever say. Enjoy being 5 <3




Here is said birthday boy showing off his age with his baby brother at his side :)

Sephora Time :)

So recently I made an online purchase with sephora and was very thrilled a couple of days ago when the package arrived. First of all I have recently become obsessed with finding the perfect mascara. Although I've just been browsing because I have a tube of DiorShow that I am finishing first. I have to say that I am no longer a fan of DiorShow, it is a very different formulation from the one I remember and loved. It is wetter and I feel like it can take forever to dry and this also leads to terrible raccoon eyes (which I hate because I have terrible bags under my eyes on a regular basis). So this lead me to figure out what to buy once I was done with it (which I almost am). Instead of buying mascara and having to return it if I didn't like it, I decided to get a lash stash. The one I got was the Sephora's favorites (because it was cheapest haha). It is pictured below and contains ten mini mascara tubes.

From left to right they are: Hourglass - Superficial lash, Urban Decay - Skyscraper multi benefit mascara, Korres - Abyssinia Oil mascara, Benefit - Bad Gal Lash, Smashbox - Lash DNA, Laura Mercier - thickening and building mascara, Fresh - Supernova, Sephora - Lash Stretcher, Tarte mascara and Cargo - Lash Activator.

I think my plan of attack is to try each one for a while and then do a mini review series as I go along. But I am really looking forward to trying them all and hopefully finding something I would re-purchase.

The next things I purchased were from Boscia:

I got the Restorative Day Moisture Cream SPF 15 (on the left) and I am very excited to try this once I run out of my other Boscia day moisturizer. And the clarifying detox mask (on the right, not that you really needed me to point that out). I find myself using almost exclusively Boscia face products these days. I have very sensitive skin, and Boscia is one of the few brands that doesn't irritate it no matter what the product. Most products from other lines make my face red and it stings and is very irritated but I've never had that happen with Boscia. I am very excited to try both products. And just for good measure here is a picture of all the Boscia products I currently am using:

They are from left to right: Clear Complexion Creamy Cleanser with Botanical Blast, Willow Bark Breakout Treatment, Vital Daily Moisture SPF 15, Luminizing Black Mask and Restorative Night Moisture Cream. I know, I know, obsessed is putting it mildly. I am always like this though, I use one product, I like it and then I'm buying out the whole line (last time around it was Korres). I'm just weird like that I guess, but oh well. On a side note I got the daily moisturizer for free as part of that promotion Sephora has where you buy 4 skin products and get one free :)

This picture is pointless because you can't really tell what it is but what can I say? I'm picture happy... Anyways this is the DiorSkin Nude skin perfecting hydrating concealer in 001 Ivory by Dior. I've used it a couple of times and so far I'm not impressed and contemplating taking it back. I'm going to give it some more time and I'm currently giving it the benefit of the doubt because as I said my dark circles are akin to what you could imagine my face would look like if my son colored under my eye with black crayon. So we will see what happens. But overall I'm just really excited to have new stuff to try. Hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving and a wonderful Black Friday :)

Haloween Goodness (Yes I am Well aware it is November)

So I have recently (if you would say June is recent) been very lacking in the blogging department, and this is mostly due to the fact that I got a new job over the summer. Great news for my bank account, not so beueno for the bloggging. However, I am really trying to get back into it because I find it to be a great stress reliever for me and I just really enjoy it. I have a lot of things coming up that I will be blogging about because I have vacation coming up soon, one of the first may be an update on what our kitchen looks like now that we did a bit of remodeling (even though it is not finished). So be on the look out because I'm back (but don't hold me to that haha).

But I digress...here is a really quick look at our Halloween. It was a lot of fun, mostly because it was on a weekend. My husband always says that Halloween is one of those holidays that should always be the last Saturday of the month (kind of like thanksgiving). Now that I am older, we have 2 kids and I have a job, I agree with him more than ever! But never the less, it is a holiday that I love and my kids had a blast so that's all that matters :)


This was our massive trick or treating group... I joked with some neighbors that we brought the whole neighborhood at once to make it easier on them :)

Me and my baby boy aka Yoda! And yes I am rocking a Captain EO shirt! You know you want one...

Babies have it made on Halloween, especially when they get awesome views like this one (his dad is about 6'1") and don't have to walk :)

This was a neighborhood house, my older son is usually a bit of a scaredy cat so I had to take advantage when he agreed to pose here.

Anakin Skywalker (in case you weren't able to figure that out) at his best, showing off his light saber skills

The only decent picture I got of the two of them with that baby of mine running around as fast as he could.

Cake Time Fun

I have a lot of back-blogging to do because I have had a very busy month to say the least. Now though, I have committed myself to making up for lost blogging time (as much as I can with two small kids running around).

The first stop on my quest to make up for lost time is a blog about birthday cakes. Every year for my sons birthday, I make him a special cake just for himself at his birthday parties. This year he wanted a skateboarding party so I decided to make a skateboard cake using fondant. I have never used fondant before so i decided to have a trial run (which proved to be a very good idea!).

The first thing I did was make a chocolate cake and cut it into somewhat of a skateboard form. This admittedly did not go as well as I wanted, but it was a trial after all. This is what it looked like.

My next step was to frost the cake and that looked as follows...

I know, I know, who hasn't seen a frosted cake before right? But I had the picture so I figured I might as well use it.

Now it was about 9:30 verging on 10:00 at night at this point and I was mighty surprised when a little helper emerged out of the shadows of the living room. It was the birthday boy himself, so I could not say no to a little bit of help from my favorite kitchen helper. I was getting ready to roll out the fondant and he insisted on having a piece for himself, he then began ripping it into tiny little pieces and telling me not to touch his "mini pizzas."

My next step was to color the fondant using black coloring to get a gray skateboard-ish color and roll it out. I then covered the cake with it. The coloring wasn't as I had expected but I was in fear that my hands would stay dyed for weeks so that was as good as it was going to get (on top of the fact that it was already past my bed time - not to mention my helper's bed time).

Here is that little helper of mine smoothing out the fondant and eating some of his "pizzas." Yes it didn't take him too long to figure out that fondant is a fancy way of saying sugar :).

After I convinced him to stop I snapped a quick picture of the cake.

My last step was to cut out some skateboard logos for the cake. Because my son is so obsessed with Rob Dyrdeck and his fantasy factory show, he is also obsessed with DC. So using some of the left over white fondant I cut out some DC logos and this is what I ended up with....

For the cake for his big day, i made some adjustments: I made it skinnier and I also added screws to the top and this is what the cake looked like on his big day. I had a blast and it will definitely not be my last adventure with fondant.

Here are the birthday boy and his baby brother with the cake.

A year through pictures...

With all my deadlines lately I have not been able to post. The big reason I have not been able to post is the fact that we were finishing all our construction and last Monday was my oldest son's birthday so we had a party for him last Saturday. He is truly a gift that I cherish each and every day. I can't believe he is already 4!! The time goes by so quickly, below is a snapshot of the past year of his life, enjoy :)