Weekend Recap

Hello!

This weekend was super low key, it was great, we didn't do much of anything, and it was perfect.

Friday I had the day off, so before going on our errand, this girl sat and watched...can you tell what she's watching?

After picking up Baby Fox from school, we headed to the doctors for his well visit. He's finally gotten out of the single digit percentile...for those that have kids, he weighs 39.8 pounds and is 42.5 inches.

This girl came along because everyone needed a flu shot...she had no idea what was coming, poor girl.

Doctor checked everything out and said he was looking great.

My dad came with to help with the kids and their shots, my dad was shielding her from the shot lady...I'm glad my dad ended up coming with because having to console two screaming kids would have been hard. Mini Fox went first, it was just enough time for Baby Fox to really freak out.

Trying to take his mind off the shots.

What happens when you get a shot? You get frozen yogurt with as many toppings as you want of course!

As another treat we went out to dinner to our favorite Mexican place.

Saturday I went grocery shopping with the girl and the boy made his pirate ship Legos. 

It's amazing, that he made 98% of it himself...reading the directions, I got to hand it to Legos they do a great job in the direction front.

We had some friends over for dinner, and I got one picture...

Sunday was another low key day, I threw a Curry Stew into the crockpot.

And after breakfast and hanging around the house we decided to go to the park for lunch. We had so much fun and it was just what we all needed.

Little too high for this Mom's liking.

We rediscovered these laser tag game controllers. So much fun at the park. They are sinking up their lasers here.

After we got back my parents invited us over for dinner, which we said yes to, so we nibbled on a few bite before leaving of the Curry Stew and it was AMAZING! We almost called and said, hey we really like the dinner we made, we're not coming, LOL. 

But the kids hadn't seen my parents in almost a week, so we went over there, and the kids played swords with my Dad, the swords being all of the wrapping paper rolls my mom saved from Christmas.

We were saying good bye and they were kissing all over Mr., it was so cute.

When we got home they pretty much went straight to bed, but not before trying to hide from me when I came up stairs. It took a while to find them, haha!

Hope you had a great weekend! Don't forget to enter my $250 giveaway!

Linking up with  Erin for Weekend Snapshot4, B Loved Boston and Champagne & Suburbs  for Weekending

Friday Favorites #52.5

Clearly I can't count...so this one is really #52, promise. For some reason the videos at the end won't let m;e post anything after it, so I"m telling ya who I'm linking up with at the top, because I've been fighting with it for too long, you win Facebook videos, you win this time!

Linking up with Erika, Andrea, 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

In case you missed it on the blog this week:

Monday: I blogged about how we store our Christmas decorations

Tuesday: Was a tutorial on how I made Baby Fox's Rainbow Checkered Cake

Wednesday: Was my Hair Challenge Week #2 results, plus a bonus video of how I did one of the styles!

Thursday: Was The Picture Perfect Project, joining up with some other fab bloggers to get out from behind the iPhone and back behind my DSLR!

And a bonus post! You could win $250 in paypal cash! Click here to find out how!

Last night I went out with some friends, we haven't gotten together in a while, it was good to see everyone and just chat.

This picture just cracks me up. She's wearing my leopard wedge heels (walking better than me in them), and just doing her princess thing.

Later that princess went to the grocery store with me and well, a loaf of bread is totally acceptable pillow right?

As you may or may not know, when it rains in California it's a big deal. We've been in a severe drought for several years now...while the rain is welcomed by most, people don't know how to deal...I found this video to be so true! Watch till the very end...it's hilarious!

When It Rains In L.A.

Sometimes we have to remember that we all need help at some point or another and that it's okay to ask your friends or family for help. This is such a great reminder that everyone needs help and sometimes it's better to get help than to try to do it on your own.

Sometimes You Need Friends To Get Over An Obstacle&nbsp

Picture Perfect Project

Some of the bloggers I follow (Whitney, Courtney, Beth and Elizabeth) are doing a photo challenge, looking forward to getting to know Stephanie and Desiree

Last year I while making our yearly calendar, I realized that the picture I put as the main picture was a little hard to pick out. Before I would intentionally take pictures for the calendar, like this:

But last year I slacked and thought, of course there will be a cute picture, but in a world of iPhones it was super hard (before this past year,  I didn't have an iPhone, so every photo I took was with a real camera. So I was more intentionally with my photos.) Since getting my iPhone I take way more pictures on it than my real camera. This challenge is perfect, will get me my month calendar photo and gets me to use my real camera.

I totally forgot about the challenge until last week...so I was short on time. So of course I took this with my iPhone, but you know what, I knew that this was potential for THE calendar, so I was more intentional about when I took it, that's all that counts right?

Next month I will try to be better and think of a good picture for Valentine's day....until then! Thanks girls for getting me to take better pictures.

p.s. In case you were wondering I've done two years of daily photos...I'm done doing that for now. One year I would like to take a photo a day of each kids face and then do a fast forward type video of them growing up over the year, that would be cool.

Don't forget to enter to win $250 Paypal Cash! I know it's not 1.4 Billion, but what would you do with the winnings?


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

$250 Paypal Cash Giveaway!

An extra post for you ladies! I know, I know who am I? But I thought you would want to know about this right now! How about winning $250 of paypal cash? I know crazy right awesome right?!

It's a New Year and just think of all of the things you could do to get your year started off right.

• Buy some new clothes
• Pay off all of those credit cards from Christmas
• Buy me something amazing! (j/k...sort of)
• Buy a new blog design
• Buy some sponsor ads
• Spend it on the most AWESOME Valentine's date ever

Bottom line...there is so much you can do to get your year started off in the right direction!

What are you waiting for? First step is entering! Good luck friends!

1 | check out all the WONDERFUL women below who brought you this great giveaway! you'll find some new great reads // pinterest boards // instagram accounts // etsy shops...lots of goodies.

2 | get yourself entered below via rafflecopter.

3 | cross your fingers and toes!

jessica | katie
sarah | krista | vicki | hannah | liz
samantha | karli | michelle | danielle | libby
alexis | penny | tawnya | shelly | mae
lauren | jenn | beth | lindsay | jess

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hair Challenge 2016 Link Up #2

Week 2 of the Hair Challenge! Lots to go over, so let's get to it! 

Last week started off fairly strong, can't say as much for this week, but I'll get back at it...I hope, I just need to figure out one hair style I want to do this week...I can do this! It's only week 3 and I'm already struggling, yikes! Get to it!

Last Tuesday, I curled my hair the night before so I got these pretty curls. I just threw back my hair and called it a day.

Wednesday I had the same curls and tried to do a crisscross half up do, I think it worked out pretty well with this outfit.

I was wearing a cute bow belt, I should have gotten a close up of it.

Last Thursday I did these travel braids, they worked out so well, they will definitely be on repeat and I hope that it just gets easier and quicker to do as I get better at this whole doing my hair thing.

I took the scarf off so you could see the braid better.

Friday was a bit of a fail, but at least I got my hair a little up...haha. I just really liked my outfit that day.

Saturday I was able to sit down and put together a video for you! I did the pull through braid, She did more sections, which I think would look better, next time I'll do more sections, but I was short on time and couldn't really go back and do it over. Oh well next time! I was even able to do an outfit post too! I absolutely LOVE this poncho...so comfy and stylish. There are some front pockets on it, which you can't really see very well in the photos.

I think having an up hairdo really works with shirts that come up high on your neck. 

Oh and in case you were wondering yep, Mr. took his usual picture as I was going through them.

Too bad the poncho is covering the part that Mr. really likes, haha.

I hope you're looking at this and thinking, yep, I'm going to link up and do my hair next week! Come join me on this journey!

An InLinkz Link-up

Also linking up with Let's Be Friends Blog Hop, Tucker Up, On Trend Tuesday, Cappuccino and Fashion, Sydney Fashion Hunter, Pampers and Pearls, Happiness at Mid Life, The Pleated Poppy, Shopping My Closet,  Let It Shine, More Pieces of Me,  Pumps and Push-Ups,  A Lovely Little Wardrobe, Grace,  Leanne and Lisa 

How To Make A Rainbow Checkered Cake

As promised here is my tutorial on how I made Baby Fox's Birthday Rainbow Cake. As you know I followed this tutorial, but really it's not as hard as it may seem, really. I'm going to show you how easy it is.

First, I bought the supplies:

You will need these* pans

These* circular cutters

And I bought two sets of colors, this one*and this one*for the specific colors I was looking for (more on this later)

Directions:

I made a cake...from scratch. Last year I made a box cake and it was just too soft and moist (I know such a problem right?) but it was too soft and it just cracked immediately when I tried to cut it. I learned from my mistakes and made one from scratch. I made the white cake from my America's Test Kitchen* cookbook.

I then divided the cake into 6 parts (using my kids plastic bowls*). Of course the cake pan set only came in a set of 5, so I colored 5 of them right away and then waited to color the last one until I was ready to bake it.

For coloring the cake mix, learn from my mistake...I tried to use Wilton coloring* one year for a rainbow cake and the colors were not nearly as vibrant. I was so happy that I bought the AmeriColor*, the colors were vibrant and so much easier to mix than the Wilton color.

This is what 5 of them looked like going into the oven, I made the red one after these came out of the oven and cooled.

After they were all cooled I cut the top and bottoms off (to get rid of the little bits of brown), and then stacked them and trimmed off all of the sides, so that there were no brown parts, I just want all of the vibrant colors to come through when cut.

Once that was all done, I laid them out and used the cookie cutters to cut the circles, obviously I did this with all of the colors.

I made some frosting, I used the Wilton recipe for frosting (My Cupcake Addiction also has a recipe, but her's uses milk and I don't have room in the fridge to store a cake).

I used a little bit of frosting in between each circle and mixed and matched all of the circles. How cool does that look?

I then stacked them with a bit of frosting in between each layer, and then crumb coated it and put it in the freezer for about an hour (mostly because I got busy and was doing something else).

I was then able to put the last layer of frosting on and add a batman symbol that I made. For that I printed out a batman symbol, then bought some store bought black frosting in a tube and melted some Black Wilton Chocolate* and filled it in.

I did try My Cupcake Addictions method to get the smooth sides but it didn't work. I think maybe if you were using her icing it might have worked, mine was a little too soft. The best part was when we cut into the cake and Baby Fox was so excited and surprised to see what was inside.

For minimal effort, you get a big bang for your buck, go ahead and try it for your next cake.

Linking up with That DIY Party, Tweek it Tuesday, Mad Skills Party,  Fabulous Party, Weekend Retreat , Tuesday Talk,  Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party, Let's Be Friends Blog Hop, Wildly Original,