[A Year of Color] Green + [Wall Crawl] Orange County Edition

Alternatively titled "If I wait long enough to post this, then it will still be applicable."
Yeah, I am a little behind.

These pictures were actually taken at least a month ago, if not more. I had planned to share a couple weeks ago when it was actually relevant and then again the week after and then... life got the best of me. I didn't want to just forget about the pictures though. So, thankfully I waited long enough, and can share one wall because today is the [A Year of Color: Green] link up and the rest of the walls because today is [St. Patrick's Day] and all my walls together make a bit of a rainbow! Perfect timing if I do say so myself. Maybe I actually planned it this way. (Spoiler alert: I didn't.)

For those of you who follow me on Instagram, some of these may look familiar (because #chatbooks), but there are plenty more where those came from so without further ado...

First, I'll start with this awesome green "wall" water feature. It's essentially all these oil drums painted green and put together into a waterfall/water feature. It was super serene and pretty awesome to see.

Moving on to our green inspired St. Patrick's Day gallery wall.

Annnnnd I guess that's where my green inspiration ends.

... now back to the rest of our wall crawl! 

Because St. Patrick's Day and rainbows go together... here are the other fun walls that we came across.

Technically a sign. In the parking lot. But it works.

Rainbow inspired painted building/garage in the parking lot.

Orange wall.

Hopscotch between the orange and purple walls.

Purple wall.

Ivy wall.

Cool greenery-ed archway.

And no trip would be complete without... finding a mail box. 

LOL! 

I swear, Mason doesn't find mail boxes and post offices, they find him!

All wall photos as well as the mail box photo were taken at "The Lab" in Costa Mesa, CA.

Everyone behaved so well (mainly Seth (being patient with all my picture requests) and Mason (posing and taking pictures) ... ha!) that I thought we all deserved some yummy donuts. Of course, donuts was the original plan and I added the extra stop, but what can I say, I'm generous?



We had so much fun finding these fun colored walls to take pictures with. I'm always so jealous of all the fun, colorful walls that Desiree finds, but there is definitely more of an abundance of them in LA than there are in Orange County.

Be on the look out for a possible LA wall crawl coming soon and also a Disneyland inspired wall crawl as well!

Long [Birthday] Weekending.

Last week Friday (the 10th) was Seth's birthday. A very special one. But I won't tell you which one. Let's just say Mason thinks he's two (and he's way off, but I don't have the heart to break that to him). To celebrate, we went to the place that any 35 year old (oops, spilled the beans) would want to go to... DISNEYLAND! What, that's not your ideal birthday celebration spot? Ha. Somehow I doubt it was Seth's either, but he didn't complain... too much. I made sure he got lots of beers to keep him happy :)

Anyway, we had more than just fun on Friday this weekend, so I thought I'd do a little birthday weekend recap in pictures.

Wednesday and Thursday were for...

- working
- birthday prepping
- trips to See's candy
- early birthday presents

Friday was for...

- Disneyland!
- hanging out with Desiree, Marcus, and Julia
- being introduced to my new favorite drink -- the cinnamon almond milk macchiato!
- wall crawl Disneyland style
- picking up my new ring (a band with rubies for Mason's birth month)
- Wood Ranch birthday dinner

Saturday was for...

- ABA therapy
- errand running
- laundry
- grocery shopping
- Costco
- play dates with the bestie
- late night donut runs for Sunday morning

Sunday was for...

- eating said donuts from the Saturday night donut run
- more laundry
- lounging
- family birthday dinner

Monday was for... 

- a birthday weekend hangover -- whomp whomp
- a trip to the post office
- a trip to the glasses store to fix someone's broken glasses
- and a trip to Target because nothing cures a weekend hangover like a trip to Target!

And here we are! Thankfully halfway through the week and a short week for me! Mason's school is closed on Friday for a teacher prep day, so I'm taking the day off work and hanging out with some special people. Stay tuned for that!

Happy Wednesday!

[Mailman Mason Monday] #postofficeadventuresofmasonb #part8

When we stopped doing the Picture Perfect Project last year, I stopped sharing Mason's post office pictures on the blog. I had deemed it my "photo project of the year" through the PPP and when it ended, I didn't stop taking pictures of him at the post office, but I forgot to share them here too. I was thinking about it the other day and I want to continue to share them here even though I don't technically "have a reason" to each month. So instead of sharing per month, I'm going to share per event cycle (for my work - essentially why we go to the post office so often). We have seven events per year and as the events approach, we go to the post office more often and as they pass, we go less often.

Still playing a little catch up... when I last left you, we had gotten through November 1, 2016.

Here are the pictures that I've shared on Instagram as well as the captions (minus the emojis) that I've shared from November 7, 2016 to December 2, 2016.

11.7.16 // Ready. Set. GO!

11.8.16 // The only election related post you will ever see from me -- mail man Mason mailing Seth and my ballots a couple weeks ago!

11.14.16 // Lots of mail for this happy little mail man this morning!

11.16.16 // It's a shame he hates helping me so much.

11.17.16 // This morning, on the way to the post office, I asked Mason where we were going. "The market (grocery store)!" "No, not right now, but good guess! Where are we going right now?" "Umm. The market?" "No. It starts with a P." "Pizza place!" Guess someone was hungry!? Better luck tomorrow!

11.18.16 // When we walk over to the PO Box, I always hand him the keys and pick him up so he can open it to check for mail. Looks like I might not need to pick him up for very much longer...

11.18.16 // A mail man's work is never done! One last stop and it's now the weekend!

11.21.16 // I tried again this morning and asked Mason where we were going. "Where are we going?" "Uhhhh...?" "The market?" "No." "The mall?" "No." "Papa's house?" "No." "Disneyland?" "YEAH!!!!". While he was obviously wrong, I definitely like his way of thinking better!

11.23.16 // He got to go to two different post offices today AND buy stamps at the one this morning. I'd say his Thanksgiving break is off to a pretty good start!

11.28.16 // It's definitely been a Monday today. I mean, I only meant to post this picture almost 10 hours ago when it actually happened. Oh Monday, can't say I'm sad to see you leave. Side note -- those tippy toes though! They get me every time!

11.30.16 // Waiting for the 80 stamps that I bought to finish printing! This can only mean one thing... Christmas cards are coming!

12.2.16 // When your mailbox doesn't have any mail, you go searching through the big boxes to look for packages!

You can find more of our post office adventures on Instagram here.

Little Letters || March

I'm excited to link up again this month with Kristin from Taz and Belly for her Little Letters series and bring you a few little letters...

First and foremost...

Dear Seth,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Dear Amazon,
Why do you have 675 options for plungers? Are they REALLY all that different? Maybe 20 options would be sufficient?

Dear Dentist,
Thank you for calling me to tell me that there was a cancellation on February 20th and for bumping my appointment up after I had to push it back. I'm very sorry that I came straight from work and didn't have a chance to brush my teeth... and that I ate a bunch of Girl Scout cookies about 10 minutes before you called.

Dear Freeway Sign "Stay alert. Pedestrians don't wear armor",
Random for you to be telling me about pedestrians on the freeway (I sure hope there's none!), but true none the less. Here's hoping that you're a generic sign for always and not a warning for watching for pedestrians walking on the freeway...

Dear Internet,
You are slowly killing me. Waiting for things to load is so 1999. Get with it.

Dear No Reply Commenters,
I'm sorry I'm not responding to your comments! When you don't have your email attached to your profile, your emails come through as "noreply@blogger.com" (or something like that) and I don't know how to comment back. Please make sure your email is linked to your profile! Here's a quick tutorial to fix it or to make sure you're not one of them!

Dear Amazon (again),
When you tell me that something is available for same day delivery and I order on 2/15, I assume it will arrive later that same day... on 2/15... not on 2/16. Additionally when I place an order on 2/15 and you tell me something is available for 2 day delivery, I assume it will be here 2 days later... on 2/17... not on 2/20. Someone needs to get Amazon a calendar!

Dear Disneyland,
See you soon!

If you need me today, you know where I'll be 😉

Can you relate to any of my letters?

[A Year Recap in Pictures] The Collect App

So... I've been wanting to share these pictures for a good 2+ months, you know, since the beginning of January. I know it's WAY late to be sharing anything from 2016, but I've always wanted to share about the fun Collect app that I use, so I figured, hey, it's my blog, I can do what I want, right? Right.

So, here I am on March 9th, sharing essentially a year in review from 2016. #sorrynotsorry

The Collect app is an app that you can download on your phone that stores photos in a calendar format. I believe you can actually save more than one photo per day, but it shows in the monthly view so I just choose my favorite from that day and save it to the calendar. It's super easy to use and is an awesome way to look back on the highlights from the month or year. It literally pulls from your camera roll and the beauty of it is that you don't have to upload on the day. For us busy moms, we don't always have time to log in to the app on the day, heck, even sometimes I'll back load in 2 weeks worth of photos (just being honest - in fact, right now I still have half of February and all of March so far empty).You click on the date you want to upload the photo on, the app accesses your camera roll and shows you which photos were taken on that date. Didn't take any photos on that date? No worries! You can always upload a photo from a different date in to it's place (I like to think of the app as a highlight of the whole month so it doesn't matter if the dates aren't exact).

Anyway, enough chit chat about the app (you can always ask me questions in the comments below), here are my monthly recaps from all of 2016.

As you can see, it's not just all my Instagram photos in a different place. Yes, a lot of them are that, but I also used some photos of pretty flowers I got or the weather or whatever really. It's just a snapshot of our year in review and the things I wanted to remember.

I used to scrapbook, but haven't much anymore for lack of time and since I started blogging. I wish I had some sort of Shutterfly photo album to look back on for the years as well, but I just haven't had time to sit down and make one. I really should have started fresh this year and then worked backwards eventually. I remember my parents always having actual photo albums to look through and I have SO many pictures and rarely print any of them, so this is what has worked for me in this season of my life.

If you're interested in downloading the app for yourself, just search "collect" in the Apple App Store. I have an iPhone so I know that's how to find it for other iPhone-ers, but maybe they have it for Androids too? This is what it looks like when you find it in the App Store.

How do you save memories? Do you have any apps you use?
What do you use to store all your photos on your computers?