Family Photos 2015.

Family pictures.

Probably one of my very favorite things. I absolutely love to look back on the years and the photos and see how much Mason has grown. Seth and I look almost exactly the same, but Mason... he's grown so much! As much as I like to call him my baby, he is very much not a baby anymore! Heck, he doesn't even have a crib anymore, he has a real big boy bed!

We had these pictures taken almost exactly three months ago now, all the way back at the end of October 2015, right after we got back from our cruise. I was terrified that my pants wouldn't fit anymore after over-over indulging for a week straight on our cruise, but to my surprise, they did :)

Words cannot express how much I love these photos. LOVE. More than LOVE.

We were originally supposed to take these pictures on Sunday night but our photographer came down with food poisoning so we postponed until the next day. Since it was a Monday and we were supposed to drive to Los Angeles originally (an hour away in good traffic - which is never), I asked if she could come meet us instead and she agreed. We went to my very favorite park, Irvine Park, right before sunset and she captured our family perfectly. I cannot thank her enough for these photos.

All images taken by Erika of Free Bird Photography.

Thank you so, so much Erika for these gorgeous photos of my family!

Foodie for a Year [a Link Up]

Along with Courtney, Jamie, Jamie, Sarah, and Whitney, I'm excited to announce our Foodie for a Year link up! 

The link up runs every other month and starts in two weeks. We'd love for you to share a recipe with us! 

On February 2nd, share a Valentine's recipe

On April 5th, share a brunch related recipe

On June 7th, share a summer favorite 

On August 2nd, share a quick and easy weeknight meal

On October 4th, share a slow cooker meal

On December 6th, share a holiday goodie

We tried to keep it themed/seasonal so as you share recipes, you can really use and implement them into your lives and your routines. For example, sharing a quick and easy weeknight meal in August is perfect since it coincides with back to school at the end of the month. As moms we are all super busy and run short on time during the beginning of the school year so quick and easy weeknight meals would make all of our lives a little bit easier! And I'm all about easy, delicious weeknight meals! Then as the weather gets colder in October, we can all share some awesome crock pot meals (my favorite way to cook these days!) for the cooler months.

Pop open those cookbooks and search through your favorite recipes. We hope to see you back on February 2nd sharing your favorite Valentine's Day recipe!

$10 at Target [January Edition]

From the very first time I saw Becky do a post on $10 at Target, I was intrigued. I mean, who only spends $10 at Target??? Then I read a little further and realized she gave herself the challenge to only spend $10 at Target on something fun for herself and I was intrigued again. I commented on her post that I loved the idea of her post and would have to try something similar (and a few other people must have too) and this blog hop was born!

I'm excited to be back again today co-hosting this blog hop with Becky and some other fabulous ladies! 

This month I had wanted to buy some new nail polish. I had seen one of my friends wearing this really pretty color and I figured Target would sell it. Wrong. It's OPI and I guess Target doesn't sell that brand, so I'll have to go somewhere else to find it. BUT I did see Aubrey mention that she uses this base coat before she paints her nails and I thought that I would try it. Recently, even though I've been using the amazing Essie gel top coat, my nails have still been chipping quickly. So when I saw Aubrey mention that she uses this before she uses the polish and the Essie gel top coat and that her nails last for 5-7 days with no chips, I figured that's what I was missing - a base coat! So this was purchase #1.

Since it was $8.99 though, I knew I needed something cheap to go along with it so I didn't go over on my $10. When I found these Lindt chocolates (my fave!!!) for $1.09, I knew they were perfect.

However, $8.99 + $1.09 gets you a little more than $10... and this was the first month I've gone over the $10 limit! I actually though I had calculated my total correctly but trying to take into account the deducting 5% for the red card and then adding tax, I didn't do a very good job. BUT since I've been so under the past couple times, I figure that evens it out, right? Right. Or at least that's the story I'm sticking to :) 

I had so much fun shopping for myself and am excited to continue this blog hop! Now, hop around and check out how the rest of my co-hosts spent their $10!

Becky at bybmg

Beth at Our Pretty Little Girls

Courtney at Sweet Turtle Soup

Elizabeth at Chasin Mason

Rachel at Garay Treasures

Stephanie at Wife Mommy Me

Tif at Bright on a Budget

Whitney at Come Home for Comfort

Whitney at Polka-Dotty Place

Next month, we'll be sharing our hauls on Monday, February 22nd. Becky is toying with the idea of making it a link up instead of a blog hop. A link up has the flexibility that if you aren't in one month, no biggie, you can participate in next month. A link up also has the capability for lots of people to join and share their $10 hauls.  What do you think? Would you like to join us in a $10 at Target monthly link up?

[Valentine's for Kids] Starburst Puzzles

With Valentine's Day right around the corner (less than a month away!), I thought I would share the fun valentine that I made for a blogger valentine's exchange last year.

Last year, we sent our friends a Starburst puzzle that I saw advertised in Parents Magazine. Seriously one of the easiest and cutest valentine's I've ever seen. I downloaded the template from parents.com, printed them on sticky paper, cut them out, and stuck them on Starbursts. 

Easy peasy, super cute, and fun! 

Materials Needed :

- puzzle printables

- "sticker" paper/label sheet

- scissors

- Starburst

- snack size plastic bags

- a marker

- some construction paper

- a stapler

Instructions

1. Print off (or save) puzzle printables.

These are the printables that I used. This first one is for the puzzle itself.

And I used this printable below for the "wrapping" portion of the valentine.

2. Print the puzzles onto "sticker paper" or labels of some sort. I went to the store looking for a whole sheet sticker label but I couldn't find one. I knew that I couldn't use regular labels since the puzzles would be all cut up and on different stickers so I looked around to see what they had. I ended up settling on a sticker label sheet that had four big labels (like shipping label size). A couple of the puzzles printed on the "crack" so I couldn't use them but I just printed two sets and it was perfect.

3. I cut apart the puzzles and stuck the pieces on different color Starbursts. I prefer the "reds" collection since they are my favorite, but you could easily use the regular ones or any flavor that's your favorite.

4. Once you have all the puzzle pieces finished, mix up the pieces and put them in a snack size plastic bag with a backer (it shows what the puzzle should look like when it is put together correctly so it gives the kids a guideline).

5. Cut a couple strips of construction paper to make the portion that you will write the kids names on. I just cut small strips, folded them in half and wrote a simple "Happy Valentine's Day" and a "to" and "from".

And voila! The perfect valentine for your kid's friends or classmates at school!

The Picture Perfect Project [January]

Hello and welome to our first Picture Perfect Project link up! I must admit, I'm SO excited about this link up for this year.

As I mentioned in my goals for 2016 post on Monday, one of my goals for this year is to take more pictures. As a blogger, you'd think that would already be a given, but as a working mom, I feel like most of my pictures are taken on the weekends when the "bigger events" happen. There's plenty of stuff that happens during the week as well but it just gets... missed. Enter The Picture Perfect Project. I've been making a real effort everyday to make sure I take at least one picture. The problem is, when I get home from work, it's dark. So that doesn't leave me any time to take pictures outside, so I have to get creative.

My goal for myself for The Picture Perfect Project is to take at least one picture a day. And as of today, January 14th, I'm happy to say that I have taken at least one picture a day from January 1st to January 13th.

I'm still trying to decide how I want to share all my photos, because come next link up, I'm going to have 30 photos to share. So bare with me on this first link up. Today, I decided to share my collect app. This is by far my favorite way to look at the month. I do always try to take a picture a day, but sometimes I completely forget (usually on a weekday) and have (in the past) used prior days photos. BUT starting this month and for this project, I am determined to take at least one picture a day. No matter how small, it is an accurate representation of my days. So, here it is!



Notice a couple days last week? It rained. And while that may not be anything special to most of you, it doesn't rain in California. We are in a MAJOR drought, so this was a big deal. So, those were my photo a day. Also, I feel like we never get real weather and clouds (I swear it's always sunny and blue skies and while that's beautiful and wonderful, it is a bit boring), so when the sky looked so beautiful, I had to snap a picture. Other days I was able to snap a picture of Mason and sometimes I just think the scenery or my food was good. Regardless, I captured the day and fulfilled my goal.

Since I normally post just what you see above on Instagram after the month is over, I thought I'd share what the full app normally looks like for those of you who may be interested in using it as well.

It's super, SUPER easy to use! The home screen looks like this and defaults to the current month. You don't have to import the current day's picture on the current day. In fact, I uploaded from the 4th to the 13th just last night (#justbeinghonest). The app just leaves the space blank until you upload something. In order to upload a picture, you click on the date you want, you choose photo library (or you can take a photo but I always just choose from my library), and the app tells you what photos you took on that day. You can choose any of those photos to use or any from any day but I like using the actual photos from the day. Click the photo you want, crop it (I always choose square since the days are square but there are other options), and then save it to the day. I believe you can save multiple pictures to one day, but it will only show one picture on the calendar so I always just upload one picture. Easy peasy! If you don't have/use the Collect app yet, I highly recommend it. And best part? It's free!

And there you have it. I'm actually accomplishing one of my goals for the month!

Don't forget, our next link up is Thursday, February 11th. So gather some photos between now and then and then link up with us on the 11th and show us what you've been up to!

An InLinkz Link-up

[Cooking with Kids] Baking Cookies for Santa!

Yep, I'm back tracking a couple weeks. But this was too special for me not to blog about, so... you get to relive a little bit of Christmas Eve in January.

On Christmas Eve, I had off of work. It's probably the first year since... I graduated college and got a job (I think!) that I've had off work. That's a good 9 years of Christmases! But, working retail will do that to you.

Anyway, I digress.

I've tried to bake with Mason before. It didn't end well. So I was a little hesitant to try again, but I was so excited about making cookies for Santa (and really, just trying this white chocolate chip brownie cookie recipe!) that I kept bringing it up to him throughout the week. "Mason, do you want to make cookies with mommy tomorrow?" "YEAH!" He seemed excited so I thought I'd go with it. And I'm so happy I did!

I started getting out all of the ingredients that we needed, knowing that it would be easier to have everything out and ready for him when he started helping. I moved the mixer to an area that was easier for him to get to (it's normally in the back corner on the counter). I called to him and asked if he was ready to help me make cookies. He must have seen that I was in the kitchen getting ready because he yelled "YEAH!!!" and RAN over to the table and pushed the chair all the way over to the kitchen counter all by himself. He climbed up on it and was ready. Only problem was, I wasn't yet! I didn't quite expect the enthusiasm and thought I had a few more minutes to get all the ingredients out. So, I explained to him that I had to get a few more things out, told him to go play for a couple minutes, and I would call him back over when I was done.

I got out the butter and melted it. I got out the cream cheese and cut the amount that we needed. I got out the brownie mix and cut the top so he could pour it easily. And I got out the white chocolate chips and cut the top of it. I cracked the egg and got everything all set up and called him back over.

He ran over and hopped up on the chair. We poured the butter in the bowl, we squeezed the cream cheese out of the package, and I turned on the mixer to mix it up. You know, on low. Then all of a sudden, super speed! The kid pulled the lever all the way back to be on HIGH speed. I turned it back down to low and helped him pour some brownie mix into the mixture and let it mix... on low. I took my hand off the lever for a second and it was back up to high. Poof! No, no, no, Mason!

I turned it back down and we finish adding the brownie mix into the mixture. I filled the measuring cups with white chocolate chips and asked him to pour them in. He was shy. He just wanted to watch the mixer mixing. So I showed him how to do the first one and he got all excited. I filled the measuring cup again and this time he wanted to pour it in, but he almost put the whole measuring cup in! I quickly pulled it out and filled it one more time for him to pour the last of the white chocolate chips in.

I turned off the mixer and took the bowl off so we could put the cookies on to the cookie sheet. I gave Mason the cookie scoop so he could do it and the first thing he did was put it in the bowl upside down. I corrected him and cleaned off the scoop and as I did... he wiped all the cookie batter that was on his hand on to his pjs. I helped clean off his hands, took off his shirt, and realized that it would probably be easier for me to scoop the cookies by myself. I scooped all the cookies and put them in the oven and told Mason that they were cooking. He tried to open the oven to see and I immediately stopped him (#safetyfirst) and turned on the light to show him. He sat there for a good few minutes (which is like an eternity for a toddler) and looked at the cookies baking in the oven.

When they were done, I put them on the cooling racks to cool. And when they were finally cool enough to eat, I called Mason over again so he could taste his work.

It definitely wasn't the cleanest (though it could have been worse!) activity to do together, but it was the MOST fun! He was so, SO excited to help and loved every single second of it and I just had the biggest smile on my face the whole entire time. He even helped me put out the cookies for Santa, the milk for Santa, and the carrots for the reindeer later that night. He must have thought that Santa was REALLY going to like the cookies we made because he gave him FIVE cookies on his plate. Lucky Santa!

I can't wait to bake with Mason again!

[January, February, March] Quarterly Goals for 2016.

I'm not one for resolutions. I never have been. All of the ones I've made in the past, you know, the "trendy ones" of losing weight and whatnot, I've broken in the first week or month of the year. So this year, I don't plan to make any.

In 2014, I had a word that I tried to live by : balance. And in 2015, I admitted that I didn't achieve that for 2014 and even though I didn't officially choose a word for 2015, I opted to try for balance again.

And now? Now it's 2016. And I hate to admit... I'm gonna try again. I'm not going to say that balance is my word of the year, but instead I'm going to try to set some goals for myself each month to try to achieve it instead.

After seeing Whitney's post the other day, I decided that I would do quarterly goals for myself instead of monthly mainly because I feel like that is more attainable goal for me. I have a bunch of things I want to get done and to say I'll get them done by February 1st is just not going to happen.


FAMILY
- Try a new recipe once a month.
- Have one family date a month.
- Have one Seth and I date a month.


All pretty self explanatory.


HOME
- Hire someone to come clean once a month. I've tried and tried and thought I could do it all, but I can't. I definitely have priorities and deep cleaning is not one of them. I try to tidy up at least once every other day (keeping it real) and sweep at least once a week (again, keeping it real), but actual vacuuming and deep cleaning the bathrooms and such... hasn't happened in a while. I think we have someone lined up to do this and I'm excited to know that at least once a month, the house will really get a good cleaning.
- Organize. Clean. Get rid of clutter. I say this all the time, but it's getting bad. The piles of things I need to file away and the mail that needs to be sorted through is piling up. We have a mini fridge that died (a LONG time ago) and needs to be properly disposed of and then I want to move our small filing cabinet downstairs. With it more accessible (than it is now in our closet upstairs), I'm hoping that that will give me the motivation to put things where they belong.
- Spring clean. I know it's not technically the spring yet, but I need to do some spring cleaning. I ordered a bag from thredUP FOREVER ago and need to fill it and send it in. I need to go through my closest and Mason's closet and get rid of some things that don't fit or that he/I don't wear anymore. It's beyond time.
- Find a better storage system for all of Mason's toys. Our place is small. Like we barely have that many closets let alone places to store all of Mason's stuff. We have an Expedit bookshelf from IKEA that houses most of this toys but I think we either need more buckets/things to store toys in or we need another Expedit. I want to explore the options to better organize and get more of his big toys off the floor.


ME
- Walk at least one day a week. I want to start small and then increase as time goes on.
- Take more pictures. You'd think as a blogger, I wouldn't need a goal like this, but as a working mom, I feel like I only take pictures on the weekends. And while that might be when all the "big events" happen, there's tons of little things that happen during the week that I want to remember as well! The Picture Perfect Project should help me with this!
- Drink more water. I bring a blender bottle size water bottle to work everyday and some days I don't even finish that. I REALLY want to make sure I start drinking more water.
- Try to make healthier food choices. You guys. I've been SO bad about eating sweets lately! SO BAD. It's not good. I made these amazing cookies with Mason for Santa back before Christmas and then again for New Year's Eve. Then we bought some ice cream. Then my boss bought candy. And the list goes on. I pretty much crave something sweet each day now and am not proud to say, I always give in. I need to stop! #cantstopwontstop #needtostop


BLOG
- Pre-schedule at least one, hopefully more, posts for the week on Sunday. I did this last week and it made life infinitely better. Sometimes it's hard though because the things I like to share happen in real time and can't really be pre-scheduled, which is why I'm going to shoot for at least one.
- If I host a link up, make sure I click on every link and visit their post. I feel like it's the least I can do. I'm thankful that people link up with me when I host/co-host a link up and I'd like to show my appreciation by reading and commenting on their post.
- Schedule certain posts for the month that I know I want to do (in my planner). This may sound funny, but currently posts are some of my favorite posts to do and to read. I always tentatively plan to do one a month, but then other things come up and I push them back and back. In order to make sure I do goal check-ins, I just scheduled these updates in my planner right now. If things are scheduled, I'm 1) so much more likely to follow through and 2) SO much more likely to not forget!
- Determine the right amount of posts per week to maintain the mom/wife/employee/blogger balance. Cut back if necessary. Schedule certain days if necessary.
- Finish recapping our Disney cruise (which is WAY overdue).



And there you have it. That's what I hope to get accomplished in the next few months. Is it a lot? Maybe. Probably. But a few of them have been a long time coming. I feel like if I can tackle some of these in the early months, it will make the whole year go a lot more smoothly.

How do I plan to accomplish my goals? I plan to print them out so I have easy access to them. Hitting publish on a post can be easy, but remembering to come back and check on my goals can be hard. If I print them and keep them with me in my planner, I am much more likely to check on them than I am to refer back to my post. I feel like that has been part of the problem in the past. I hit publish and never come back again.

Here's to successful goal accomplishing next few months!