Friday, July 31, 2015

Friday Favorites #36

I found these on Mr.'s phone from Saturday. Awww, aren't we so cute. In just 5 days, this phone is going to be mine...woo hoo!




Also found this one Mr.'s phone...geez, he needs to share with me more often. NO really I just left my phone at home and the babysitter knew that, so she sent the pictures to Mr. and I forgot to get them off his phone. But how cute are these bee jammies? I got them at the Nordstrom Anniversary sale, they're no longer available, darn!


She also sent this super cute video. Love when she sends us stuff while we're gone.



Have you seen this girls closet/work space...holy cow, talk about amazing and puts all Man Caves to shame. Granted she's a fashion designer and does all of her sewing and creating there, but how cool is this closet? Swoon.


Started watching Ballers this week. Have you seen it? Awesome show and it has my man, Dwane "The Rock" Johnson, although I think he's dropped The Rock, but that's how I'll always know him.




We're going to see one of my best friends in from Virginia, we only get to see each other once or twice a year so we're spending some time together this week with her and her two kids. I haven't met her youngest yet, so I'm excited! 


Off to go meet them! Then this weekend we have 4 parties to go to, wish us luck...and I haven't bought a gift for one of them! Oops.

 ErikaAndrea, and Narci for Friday Favorites, September Farm and The Farmer's Wife for Oh Hey, Friday! April and the girls for Five on Friday, and Jennie for Friday Favorites 

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Inside Out Tag - Mommy Edition

Hi, hi! Last week we did the Inside Out Tag with Baby Fox, this week I'm telling you my #5Emotions.



First can we talk about my disgust face...triple, quadruple chin much? That really is a disgusting face. I'm still trying to figure out where to film stuff in my house. This location is downstairs in our spare bedroom, thinking I need a better background...Anyway, here it is! What video should I do next week, thoughts?


Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a $500 Amazon gift card!

Also linking up with Amanda, for Thinking Out Loud and Vanessa and Penny for Thinking out Loud,LuliaStephanie and Sarah for The Ladies Collective, Annie and Natalie for Thoughts for Thursday and Joey and Kristin for Stuff and Things


Wednesday, July 29, 2015

What Up Wednesday #2

Today I'm linking up with Mel, Shay and Sheaffer for What's Up Wednesday. I like looking back on these, especially since it's the same questions each month, click here for the past ones (okay just one other one, but it's something)


What we're eating this week:

Like last time I wrote, Mr. and I were on the slow carb diet, while I decided it wasn't all for me we have been sort of keeping up with it. I used to eat carbs with every meal, not I try to limit it to once a day. Which is huge for me. Right now, we're doing bowls, meat, beans, guacamole, and salsa and call it a day. It's awesome to make a huge batch on Sunday and have several meals ready to go.


What I'm Reminiscing About:

How little Baby Fox was when he started preschool last year. I can't believe he's starting his last year of preschool and then we're going to be in Kindergarten. Time really does fly by. Here's part of his performance from Friday, too cute for words. His partner was shy, but stood there the whole time with him while he sang his heart out.


What I'm Loving:

Silly pictures like this one.


The fact that this Everything Bagel has stuff on both sides, genius and why doesn't everyone do this! Get on board bagel places.


That I live so close to the ocean and get to see it almost every week.



What We've Been Up To:

Celebrating love.


Celebrating new life


Celebrating births


What I'm Dreading:

Mr. is leaving for a business trip for 7 days...wish me luck! I'm going to need it!

What I'm Working On:

Mini Fox's birthday party coming up in September. I just ordered the invites. Does anyone else do snail mail invites or is it just me?



What I'm Excited About:

All the birthday parties, the baptisms and see old friends

What I'm Watching/Reading:

Summer TV is sort of dismal, so we've been hopping around Netflix and HBO go. The one show we do love that is actually a summer show is Graceland on USA. You should check it out. Starting watching True Detective on HBO but it's sort of intense so we don't watch that all the time.

I'm reading the first book in the Gentleman Bastard series. Only 40 pages in and so far so good.


What I'm Listening To:

Baby Fox is really into this Imagine Dragons song, and I really like it too, so it works out when we listen to it on repeat in the car.



What I'm Wearing:

I wore this to the wedding I went to on Saturday. I found this dress at White House Black Market and as soon as I saw it I knew that it had to be mine. The fact that it was on sale for $59 was just icing on the cake, and it's still available in all sizes. I also love how the heels are goldish and really works well with the outfit.


 I absolutely adore that this dress has pockets, selling point in my opinion.



Butt shot 


What I'm Doing This Weekend:

We are up to our ears in parties. No joke. We have 4 parties to attend, 3 of them are on Sunday!!! It's a tough job but someone has to do it :-) Plus I'm going to see a college friend and her family on Friday, I haven't seen them in almost a year...I'm so excited to spend the day with them, and then again on Wednesday.

What I'm Looking Forward To Next Month:

I'm getting Mr.'s 5S iPhone , he's getting upgraded at work, so I get his old, but new to me phone. I can't believe it was only 18 months ago that I was getting my very first smart phone. I'm so excited, for two reason, 1) I'm getting an iPhone upgrade in about a week, and 2) in 18 short months I'll be getting Mr.s' 6+ iPhone. So awesome

What Else Is New:

Not much, you pretty much know everything :) Anything new with you?

Bonus Question: What I'll Miss Most About Summer:

I'm going to miss the long days and swimming after work. Okay, watching everyone else swim and me sitting in the shade.


Also linking up with Tucker UpBecause Shanna Said So,  On Trend Tuesday, Cappuccino and FashionSydney Fashion HunterPampers and PearlsHappiness at Mid LifeThe Pleated Poppy, Shopping My ClosetGet Your Pretty OnLet It ShineMore Pieces of Me,  Pumps and Push-Ups

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

How to Make A Cityscape Backdrop on the Cheap

I did our Spiderman party recap last month, but never told you how I made the citiscape. Only a month later but better later then never right?




I knew I could make one for way cheaper than the one I found on Oriental Trading Company. I came up with the idea and I think it came out even better than I even imagined!

What You'll Need:

Plastic Table Cloth from Party City (I started with the 99 cent store one and they are too thin)
Butcher Paper
Yellow Scrapbook Paper
Pencil
Ruler
Scissors
Painters Tape
Spray Adhesive
Rectangle cutting device (I used a Cricut)
Glue Stick
Various Accessories to decorate it with

Directions:

Step 1: 

I laid out the butcher paper to the length of the tablecloth, plus added a few more inches to the end just in case. Then I drew the cityscape onto the butcher paper with a pencil using a ruler. I used this cityscape as my sort of template for my cityscape. But really it could look like anything.


Step 2:

Cut out the cityscape, try not to lean too much on the paper. The butcher paper is fairly thin.


In the end it should end up looking like this:


Step 3:

Lay out the tableloth. I ended up putting on the tile and taping it down so it would stay in place. I use the same technique when I quilt.




Step 4:

Lay the cityscape background onto the tablecloth. At first I started off just double side taping it down, but remembered that I had some spray adhesive and thought I would give that a whirl. It worked like a charm, so I would definitely use that. So much faster, spray a bit and you're done, it took me less than 5 minutes.


Step 5:

I made a bunch of rectangle squares on my Cricut, that thing is awesome. I highly recommend getting one if you don't have one. I've also heard that the Silhouette is good too.



Step 6:

Lay the rectangles randomly on the buildings. I used a glue stick and was super random about it, I didn't follow a pattern, so I tried not to look at where the other rectangles were, just the one I was placing. Knowing me I probably would have tried to follow a pattern. I thought the random ones would look better.


I ended up using a folded towel halfway through, man my knees were killing without it!


Step 7:

Hang on wall and decorate.

I almost always use painters tape when trying to hang stuff. I usually use the Green Frog  one...but since green was not going to match my cityscape I had to use the blue. Which isn't as strong, so I ended up having to do several layers/rows of it to get it to stick. Then I used this pack of decorations to decorate along with making some "Pow", "Ka Pow", "Boom" signs and hung those up. Those were also done using my Cricut, but could easily been done by hand.


Bonus Step:

I of course made the spiderwebs and the spiders using the Circut. For the wider spider webs and the spiderweb that Spidy is throwing out, I did it in phases and ended up taping it all together. It was long and tedious but worth it in the end I think. The spiderman came from the pack above, it just worked out that it looks like he's shooting a web. That was not planned, just sheer luck. I was just going to do a silhouette of Spiderman had that not worked out.


and that's how I made the cityscape. I do have to admit it's so hard to take it down and now a month later it's still hanging in my living room. I don't think it's going to come down easy. Usually I'm able to sell all of my party stuff that I made, but this is one thing that I don't think will work after it comes down. So it stays up, probably until Mini Fox's birthday in September. haha.

If you have any questions just shoot me an email, I love talking party!



Linking up with Tuesday Talk  and Wake Up WednesdayThe Lady Collective and Mommy Moments and Hit Me With Your Best Shot

This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on a link and purchase an item - I may receive a small commission.  THANK YOU!

Monday, July 27, 2015

Weddings, Baby Showers and Jumping Fail

Hello Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend. We had a pretty good weekend, really busy, as usual. 
 
Thursday I went to get my allergy shots, by myself, it was awesome. My dad was dropping off Mini Fox from having her for the day, and I asked if he could just stay and watch both the kids so I could run over to get my shots. Mr. and I had this conversation (I am in the blue):
 
In case you were wondering, TJ = Trader Joe's best store for picking up quick dinners and snacks. Anyway, he comes home with pizza fixings, and he's decided to go all out and do cheese and pepperoni... He's like you need to take a picture of this for the blog. He added so much cheese I thought it was going to encroach on my side of the pan and ruin my pizza with cheese, so I created a foil barrier.
 

Then I took this picture to show you exactly how high with cheese and toppings he filled his pizza.


Our pizza's cooked and ready to eat, so delicous! He was itching for me to finish taking a picture so he could eat it, haha.


Then this happened, he ate the entire thing. When he was done he said, you should take a picture to show everyone I finished it, haha. I had a few pieces left from mine.

 
 Anyway, enough about random pizzas.
 
Some silly family time before bed.
 
 Friday was Baby Fox's last day of preschool. I felt like I wanted to be there to drop him off and pick him up on his last day of the first year of school, weird? Please tell me I'm not alone.
 
The picture from his first day of preschool.
 
 
and his last day 
 
 
Walking him to school.
 


His teacher puts on a performance at the end of the year, so I helped to set that up.


I cannot tell you how cute and special it was to watch Baby Fox and his classmates. They worked so incredibly hard on their performances. Of course I filmed the whole thing, I won't bore you with that, just the grandparents.


Yes there were several costume changes.


Baby Fox was the bull...it was so cute.



My cute little bull.


 The girls were so cute in the flamingo costumes/dance


All the kids


One more costume change, they did the play Pocahontas. I was bummed I couldn't hear Baby Fox's line, someone was talking right next to us when he was talking...I wanted to shush them...but didn't. Oh well!

 
Baby Fox did do a performance, that I didn't take a picture of, just video, he sang Let it Go with one of the other little girls and while she just stood there with him and didn't sing, it was super cute. Their foreheads were touching the whole time, it was so cute. And I was blown away, I mean blown away that he knew all the words to the song! I had asked him last week if he wanted to go over the song and he said, mom I got this! And that he sang it in front of 40 people. Such a huge difference when he started preschool this shy little guy. Such confidence.

Saturday I went on my morning hike, it was just 4 of us. The person who got the picture at the top never posted it to FB, so I couldn't grab it, but I did take this picture, just in case I didn't get a picture at the top, which I didn't...so good thing I took this one. Some proof that I was up at 6am on a Saturday to hike.

 
Then afterwards I got the most delicous bagel. I had showed you the bagel shop a couple of weeks ago, but didn't tell you that this everything bagel has the stuff on both sides, instead of just the top. Why doesn't every bagel shop do that?!
 
 
 After breakfast I promised the kids swimming....we never morning swim so it was a big treat and the loved it! Of course the one picture we got, my eyes were closed, oh well!


Mr's dream has finally come true, he and Baby Fox played catch for a good 10 minutes.
\

 After pool time, Mr. and I got ready to go to a wedding down in San Diego...and yep the traffic was bad, what should have taken a hour 45 minutes turned into almost 3 hours, fun times.


But at least the view was pretty. This was the bridge passing over to Coronado Island.


The wedding was beautiful, I didn't take too many pictures because I was mostly taking video, I noticed they didn't have a videographer, so I took video instead of pictures. Waiting for the ceremony to start...we snagged a spot in the shade.

Lipstick courtesy of Becky from BYBMG. She had gotten some lipstick from Ipsy that didn't work for her, but it worked for me! So she sent it to me, so generous right? And the color was perfect for a summer wedding.
 The happy couple!


Me and the Mother of the Bride


The view was gorgeous!

 
Sun setting during cocktail hour.


The happy bride, boy did I feel short!


And of course following tradition we got In and Out on our way home, nothing like eating In and Out coming home from a party/wedding.

Sunday we were all tired, it was a lazy morning, followed by some swim lessons (only 4 more left). Then came back for some lunch, Mr. got crazy with his presentation.
 
 
 Then I headed to a baby sprinkle. Funny enough it was at the top of where I usually hike. So instead of having to hike to Top of the World, I got to drive and enjoy the view from the hostesess backyard.
 
 
We thought, this would be a perfect place to do a jump shot, you can tell from the pictures who's the pro... clearly two of us need to work on it, lol.
 
 This would have been a cool shot, had my hair not gotten in the way, oops. Next time will be more away of the hair situation. Live and learn.

In case you were wondering how we got the shot, set your camera to do rapid picture taking, so we said one, two three, and the photogapher just held the shutter button down, so we got 15 or so pictures and I just picked the picture when we were the highest.
 Now a picture with the Mama, this will be her third and it's a girl!

 
I didn't get home until 6pm, so we did dinner, and got ready for the the start of the week. No pictures.

Hope you all had a great weekend, and congrats if you made it to the end of this really long post!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a $500 GC to Amazon.

And next week, August 3rd, join me, Deena and Leslie for our July in Numbers Link Up.

Erin for Weekend Snapshot4B Loved Boston and Champagne & Suburbs  for Weekending,  Ashley at A Cute Angle for Monday Madnes, and Carylee and Jenna for Hello Monday