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What I’ve been up to lately

February 13, 2015~ Etc.

Random things I’ve been up to the past week:

We recently bought a cow and had some people over for dinner for some t-bone steak! Jay is super serious about his steak and uses the thermometer every time to get to the perfect medium medium we both like.

Modeled for some Agnes and Dora apparel, I will share the professional images soon!

This is how my girls entertain themselves at church. Pretty impressive, right? And those plethora of little tiny toys you see in the front are called Shopkins. They’re these ridiculously over-priced plastic foods with faces on them. I don’t get it. I’ve been refusing to buy more for the girls even though they beg me everyday.

Went to a Oakwood Homes blogger event where we got to design our own dream home and talk to the designers about any questions we had about home design and what they thought about certain trends(white kitchen and white walls are in right now but it’s getting replaced with more vintage wood), and then the chefs from Whole Foods came and demonstrated how to make the parmesan cheese bowls and cooked delicious food for us!

I am not a fan of cookie cutter homes these many home building companies make but surprisingly, Oakwood Homes is different and each house is different in design according to your budget and preference. Like look at this beautiful house above, I would have never guessed it was from a custom manufacture home company. I would move into that house in a heartbeat! I liked how they believe in luxurious designs and quality no matter what your budget is and even a home at $250,000 looks luxurious and fancy. Some day, I will own a brand new house after Jay is done with flipping homes. 😉

And last but not least, I was featured on the front cover of Altered Couture Spring 2015 issue and also a 8-page spread! I knew two of my DIY projects were going to be featured but like last time, they didn’t tell me my picture would be on the front cover of the magazine also! It was the best surprise in the mail.

I also had a mommy breakdown the other day, I will post about it soon. Oh you just can hardly wait, can you? 😉

Sunday Best

February 12, 2015~ Etc.

Dress: available in navy | pumps: seychelles

Okay, do I look creepy in those sunglasses or what!!!??? Or maybe it’s just my face! Haha. Anyway, last week I went to Wal Mart fresh market to go grocery shopping and right next to the store, they have Down East Outfitters and all the basic tops were $4 and the dresses were $13 in the sales section!!! So I purchased this dress for $13 and 4 basic tops, for the total of $29(+ tax). But don’t tell my husband I was shopping for clothes 1/2 of the time while I was gone when I was just suppose to go grocery shopping. I guess not reading his own wife’s blog has its perks. 😉

Game Day dinner

February 10, 2015~ Etc.

We have people over for dinners weekly and I have an awesome recipe to share with you for times when you’re in a hurry but need something delicious! This posthas been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #GameTimeGrub #CollectiveBias

my personal favorite out of the three? the onion rings! They were crispy and delicious!

I purchased the Alexia products at Wal Mart.

Having 3 kids is crazy. I try to go out to just one outing a day besides dropping/picking them up from school because I get so overwhelmed! It takes about 40 mins. to get everyone ready and the diaper bag packed and to be in the car. So on Sunday we had people over for dinner and the theme was the Big Game day. It’s hard to go to a tailgating party(I guess anywhere in public, ha!) with all the kids and we are big believers in throwing parties in our home, that way we don’t have to leave the party or a gathering early, we put the kids to bed and then come out and the party is still going on right in our home! We recently bought a cow so we were excited to try out the steak and my husband makes awesome steak and guacamole. I wanted to make something simple and fast so I whipped up a sriracha dipping sauce to go with the three Alexia appetizers: onion rings, fries and the sweet potato fries and it was delicious. Good food is what makes a great party and every party I throw, I have to make sure the guests are fed good food and lots of it! I remember at our wedding I kept emphasizing to Jay that one thing I cared about the most at the wedding was that the guests are served a full dinner course with an appetizer, main dish and a dessert. I also have a motto in our home that whoever enters our house doesn’t leave the house without a satisfied stomach.

The party decorations were simple and easy, which is just my style. I made the backdrop using the orange paper plates I found from the dollar store and with a black permanent marker drew the basketball designs in. Using tape, I taped the plates onto the wall(20 plates total) and viola! A simple and fun backdrop. I used purple and yellow colors for the tablecloth and the plates and cups. A fun and silly thing I do with the kids when I am putting away the party decorations is we see who can jump and grab the highest decorations that’s taped to the wall, and my girls were asking me when we’d get to “clean up” even before the party was over!

And here’s the recipe for the sriracha dipping sauce, it is creamy and light with a kick of little bit of spice. You can add less or more of the sriracha sauce to make it to your preferred level of spice.

Sriracha Dipping Sauce

1 cup Greek yogurt(or 1 cup sour cream)
1 small garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
2 teaspoons sriracha chili-garlic sauce (to taste)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

sprinkle parsley flakes

Directions:

1. Combine all the ingredients together.

2. Put it in a bowl.

3. Sprinkle parsley flakes on top.

More big game ideas

FInd Alexia on Facebook and Pinterest

Do you have any favorite recipes for dips? Please do share!

My top 5 Valentine printables

February 9, 2015~ Etc.

It’s midnight and I’m looking on Pinterest for Valentine printables for my girls’ classmates. I just realized today that Valentines is this week, when did it come around so fast? Anyway, here are my top 5 picks I found online, I am grateful for these women who are more creative and better at graphic design than me(I got no skills in graphic design or photo shop, it’s just not one of my strengths!).

1. I’m WILD about you card

2. Edible Scrabble Valentines

3. S’mores Mason Jar Valentines

4. XOXO Valentine Cards

5. Valentine Bookmarks

I think I will either go with # 4 or #5 because:

1. Wild about you card: while I LOVE the idea of no candy and these are just so adorable, the instructions are a little long and detailed for me so it makes me a little intimidated? And it looks like it’ll take a long time to poke two holes and actually tie each animal onto the card. I need to make like 60 of them, I ain’t got time for that! NEXT.

2. Edible Scrabble Valentine: I think these would be any teacher’s favorite Valentines card if they had to choose one, it encourages kids to read and spell! But I’ve never seen those cheese-its with letters on them, have you? Like last year when I printed out cute Valentine cards I found online and went to a store to look for the pink heart marshmallows it said to buy, I went to 3 stores and none of them had them. So I don’t want to chance printing these out and then not being able to find these alphabet cheese-its anywhere. And trust me, I’ve bought and eaten LOTS of cheese-its in my lifetime and I’ve never seen these.

3. S’mores Mason Jar Valentines: these are so pretty! But it looks a little too much for me, it’s overwhelming that I have to print out the card and the circle lid, buy strings, doily papers, the wooden clips & the mason jars. I like simple. My mind is too cluttered already.

#4 and #5 look very simple and easy to do, so I will do these and then make the chocolate covered strawberries for the teachers like last year. They sound all fancy and time-consuming but chocolate covered strawberries are so easy to make! And who doesn’t love them? It may just become our family tradition to make them for teachers every year.

*UPDATE: just looked online to buy Tic Tacs and the cheapest I’ve found is $15 for a 12 pack? What the what? I am not going to pay over a dollar for each kid, that’ll be over $60 and that’s just ridiculous. So I think I’ll do #1 now, #5 is cute but maybe boring? Kids want treats or toys! So I’ll poke and tie each dang card for my kids. The things us parents do for our kids.

Have you found any cute printables for Valentines? Please do share! Or will you go the traditional route of buying the valentine cards at the grocery store? Because there is nothing wrong with that, we’ve done that a few times in our family!

Been thinking a lot lately about blogging

February 4, 2015~ Etc.

Oh hello, midnight rambling again over here. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my life(what’s new, right?) and something’s just gotta give. I am barely managing my sanity and keeping my kids safe and healthy and it’s very overwhelming. Being a mother is my most important job and my biggest passion but my other ambitions and passions overtake that role sometimes and I’m not as attentive to my kids as I want to. Ideally in my perfect world, I would volunteer at both of my kid’s classes weekly, have all the energy to run and play with them and not fall asleep every time I put my 18 month old son down for a nap, have all the free time to sew and start my clothing line and start making samples and manufacture it, have a sewing/fashion/design blog and make epic sewing DIY tutorial videos on Youtube, there would be more than 24 hours in a day or I would only need 4 hours of sleep so I can pursue all my ambitions, go back to school and major in fashion design, take singing lessons, take acting lessons and start taking my modeling career more seriously, I wouldn’t completely forget that one time I signed up to help the class party on Thanksgiving and miss it, laundry would always be up to date, my kids will stop spilling or making messes, I wouldn’t get exhausted from chasing a 18 month old at Target and so forgo grocery shopping even when we ran out of milk, ALL OF THIS ALL AT ONCE. I want it all, right now.

BUT I know that is impossible. I can’t have it all, all at once. I believe I can have it all one by one over time, but not all at once right now. It kind of sucks that I can’t have it all but that is okay! This is how life is, we just can’t have everything we possibly want in our lifetime all at once. I’m not going to look back on my life on my death bed and wish I had blogged more, or that I earned more money, I will look back and ask myself if I’ve been a good mother. And a good wife. And a good, honest, kind, giving human being. If I was Christ-like. I will regret if I never started my own clothing line. I will regret if I didn’t spend as much time as I could with my kids. I will regret if I didn’t enjoy even the difficult times while my kids were little.

So I’ve decided that something’s gotta give and that is to blog less. To possibly make the blog more niche and blog about only certain topics such as things that only have to do with design- fashion design, sewing, interior design & party decor. Maybe I’ll narrow it to even less to just sewing eventually. I guess I’ll figure it out as I go. I am not certain what will go on and what will not go on the blog, this is so hard for me! I blog from my heart and blog about whatever I want at that moment but it probably covers way too many things and doesn’t have a theme or a focus. I will still post once in awhile things that are not perfect but beautiful nonetheless about my personal life like motherhood, marriage, life lessons I’ve learned(I personally love writing about my life lessons even though people don’t really care, but I care!), but they will be few like once or twice a month maybe. I am a little nervous about this change and honestly, I’m not sure if I can adhere to it 100% because I’m a very open and honest person and I’m not good at being calculated or strategic so it’ll be hard to hold back on posts on blog or Instagram. But on my Instagram account, I’ve slowly transitioned to mainly sewing and fashion and vacations, and hardly about my kids, all while I feel like I’m very much me, and open and real. I have to still post about the honest side of me because without it, I’d feel like the blog will be too superficial, without much depth or meaning. So I will still complain and whine about how hard being a mother is and things I find challenging, don’t you worry. 😉 The reason why I’m hesitant to make this change is because I am interested in so many things, I would love to write about my skin care tips, sewing tips, my travels, being a mother, funny moments of my life, sweet moments of my life, my modeling career, food recipes, etc. but people probably don’t care about them? I want to blog about what I want but at the same time grow a successful blog that’s filled with topics people are interested in reading.

So I also wanted to get your input and ask you what topics are your favorites to read on my blog? What are your least favorites, In other words, why do you read my blog? For my sewing? For my honest motherhood posts? What do you not care for that I write about? My bento lunch box posts? Something else? If you still read my blog anyway, I feel like blogging is dying and so is my blog. But I guess if my main reason for blogging was to gain followers and make money, I would have stopped a long time ago. I blog because I feel like I have a voice and I love sharing bits and pieces of my vulnerability to others. So I would so appreciate it if you could help me narrow down the topics I’ll discuss on the blog!