fresh and easy markets are collecting used christmas cards and donating proceeds to the american forests which is a non profit which will plant new trees. so don't throw cards away. recycle them by january 15th!
http://www.freshandeasy.com/WhatsNew.aspx
as you are getting ready for the holidays, you may noticed it getting a little bit chillier than usual. why not get a head start on spring cleaning and go into your closet to see if you have any outdated or old coats you no longer want?
one warm coat is an organization will helps distributes a free coat to homeless which will keep them warm during this winter. you can easily find drop off locations across the nation.
Dear Kylie,
In two days, you'll be 6 whole months old. I am still in shock over this!
In retrospect, I am so glad I wrote you letters after your first and second month. My apologies for having missed your 3, 4, and 5th month. Thing is, your mom battled a bit of ppd and it was gawd awful those first 8 weeks, but month 3, 4, and 5? We couldn't be bothered to update on those months because we were too busy catching up and having ourselves the time of our lives. If that's not a good excuse, I don't know what is!
So... let's backtrack a little. During that third month, your personality started to form. You are outgoing, flirtatious, and easy to laugh. You are also highly demanding, impatient, and spoiled rotten.
We celebrated your 100 days of life with a little family dinner and soon after, you started to fill out.
you, 100 days old:
your great-aunt lovingly made you all of these traditional sweet breads by hand!
"put them in my mouth!"
The night after your dinner, we shaved your head. Sometimes I wonder if this was a bad move, as your hair has come back in curly!
At your 4 month check up, we found out that you were filling out maybe a little too much. 99% in weight? wow. I vowed never to be that crazy Asian parent but immediately, my first thought was, "Why are you missing 1%?? Where did I go wrong? Why didn't you do the extra credit question!?"
but one look at your chunky thighs and I know that you are 100%. probably 101% and totally G.A.T.E. material, at that.
You and I were baptized the same day, and you were adorable in a dress one of your aunties gifted you.
For your first Halloween, you were 1- a hotdog, 2- Flava Flav, and 3- a lion. The hot dog costume lasted all of 3 minutes, Flava Flav was for a church outing, and the lion because your grandma insisted.
During this month, you learned how to hold your own bottle, sit up, and outgrew the majority of your 3-6 month sized clothes. You attended your first birthday party and your first garage-red-cup-beer-pong-party. Your almost daily explosive poopy diapers have become 1x/2 week occurances and I thank you for that. You slept 8-11 hours a night, solid, and your dad and I got used to this.
We recently moved out of our rental condo and into our very first home and things have been hectic with the house remodel. You seem to know that your surroundings aren't the same as before and wake up 2-4 times a night to whine and cry. It's killin us, smalls, so please stop doing that soon.
You insist on standing instead of sitting, any chance you get. You *adore* your over-the-door jumper and laugh to yourself with every jump. You just started to get peek-a-boo and you love skyping with your Lao-Yeh in Korea because he will peek-a-boo you and coo at you and you will coo right back. and by coo, I mean shriek at the top of your lungs. It is the best sound in the entire world.
This is the end of your 5th month, baby girl, and it makes me so sad to remember back on those first few weeks and how much I missed of your new babyness because I was too involved with dealing with my own feelings. I hope that these last 4, though, have made up for some of that. When you laugh, it makes me and your daddy laugh. When you smile, we smile. As cheesey as it sounds, you are the sunshine in our lives. I can not remember what I was living for before you were a part of my world, and I can not imagine a world with me but without you.
all my love, forever and ever,
your momma
reef infection highly recommended these packing cubes from ebags.com for packing your clothes for a trip. i have to agree with her: they rock!
they typically retail for $29.99 however you can get them from $25-$30, depending sale and/or promo code. you get three different size cubes in a set.
you may think they wouldn't be impactful like i did. they made a big difference in terms of packing and organizing. i did not to have to go through a pile of clothes to find what i was looking for. since i knew what belonged in each cube, i simply picked up the bag i wanted something from, unzipped, zipped, and threw it back into my suitcase. when i opened up my suitcase, i never groaned at a mess because there wasn't a mess. these bags were awesome to travel with as they were able to carry 5 days of clothes.
- largest bag can hold: jeans, sweaters
- medium bag can hold: shirts
- smallest bag can hold: socks and underwear
i wasn't able to fit all six pairs of jeans in the largest bag but i could fit about 4 pairs. not bad!
Having spent the last 12 hours unpacking boxes, juggling the baby, moving furniture, cleaning, wiping, bleaching, building, and remodeling our new home with my husband, our baby, my brother-in-law, and my in-laws... I can honestly say that this has been the most blessed year of my life.
Fantastic family, awesome friends, steady jobs, food in our pantry, roof over our heads... I have so, so much to be thankful for!
Did a couple of paintings for Eco Gallery in LA. The owner, Peter Schulberg, makes painting surfaces for artists out of discarded billboard material and exhibits them in his gallery on Pico near La Brea. I'm glad he asked me if I wanted to do some paintings, as it had been a while since my last involvement with the gallery. Here are the paintings that resulted:
Dawn, 24" x 24", acrylic on billboard material
Dusk, 24" x 24", acrylic on billboard material
Peter initially was going to give me just the orange surface, but then I saw the blue one next to it and immediately had this brain storm thinking of a night/day kind of theme. Since he'd already asked if I'd like to paint some birds, I had to do some research on which morning and night bird I wanted to paint. There are a ton of morning birds to choose from, but not so much with the night birds. It's pretty much just the owl. But there are so many different kinds of owls! I definitely wanted to paint one with discernible eyes--the ones with small dark eyes kind of freak me out. But anyway, I was really happy with the way they turned out. It had been a while since I'd painted realistic objects and I wondered if I'd be really out of practice, but it turns out it's just like riding a bike.
The opening reception was last Saturday night, Nov 14th, and quite
a few people I knew showed up, which is always nice. In addition to
finished paintings there were a couple of artists doing live paintings
on enormous panels as well as a sculptor working on his cool
bended-wood sculpture things. He makes lamps and things with these and
they look really cool. There was also a big reveal on a billboard
behind the gallery. At around 8pm we all went outside and did a
countdown, at the end of which they dropped the curtain on the
billboard to reveal three paintings by different artists. That was fun,
like a New Year's Eve party. Here's a link to some pics from the opening.
Arrrrgh, why did I have to see this??!!!
I went a little overboard and bought 4 pairs of Nine West shoes from 6pm.com when they were on sale last week. Hard to resist cute shoes at $19.95/pair. The sale was suppose to start Friday morning. But when I went to check Thursday night,it had already started! So I swooped in and got all the cute size 5/5.5 shoes. They just arrived today! Super fast shipping (flat rate of about $7).
Yes, I also got these in blue. I like the details on these and a girl can't have too many cute flats. I also got these in size 5 and hello, also a little big. What's up?!
So with tax and shipping, I spent under $100 for 4 pairs of shoes. Most of these are available on other sites (Macy's, Zappos) for regular price ($79+). Score!
one hint...
i'm making it with foamboard and so far, this is what i've got. i hope it doesn't turn out lame!
A week ago, we stopped by a pumpkin patch with Kylie and THK got us three mini pumpkins. His was the largest, about the height of a coke can. Ky's pumpkin is teenytiny. I spent all last night carving these... next year, we're getting regular full sized ones!
what goodwill will do with rejected clothes including your dirty underwear...
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/g-word-second-time-around.html
