Week recap

A little recap of the past week or so. I will start with last Wednesday.

I started being much better about tracking my calories eaten/burned last Wednesday. I saw the scale very slowly start moving down due to increased activity like walking around the aquarium and such, so I wanted to slightly speed up the momentum with trying more. I felt encouraged and that helps me work harder. As some reading this may realize already, this weight loss thing is such an ongoing battle for me. I am using myfitnesspal.com and an app on my phone to track things. It's going well! I have lost at least a pound in a week but possibly two. My scale is really cheap so it's not completely accurate. I follow myfitnesspal's calorie goals for losing 1.5 pounds a week. And it feel sustainable because I don't let myself be hungry. I just have to wisely use my calories. If I want a little bit of ice cream, I can as long as it's within my calorie limits. But I usually have a "free" day like Saturday where I don't track my calories well and might indulge in something I don't have the rest of the week. I have used myfitnesspal in the past too, but not as consistently as now.
---
On Saturday we went to see Cars 2. Since Kavi had been to the movies a few times before that, I thought he'd just sit through it well like he has with other movies, and like it a lot. He loves cars and the Cars cars. But, the movie felt really long. I did like the movie, but as a friend said, it seemed more for older kids than a 3-4 year old. Themes of alternate fuels vs oil and cars exploding and espionage-clever in my opinion, but it went over a 3 year old's head. So after an hour he started asking, "why it's not over already?". And then during the last 20 minutes of the movie he was asking for movie popcorn. I said no. He was unhappy.

Thankfully that kind of movie audience has lots and lots of little kids so it's never completely silent. And his little talking cannot be heard over the movie sounds and other random kid sounds in the room. (If that happened during a grown up movie, which I wouldn't take my son to anyway hehe, I would have immediately left the room with him.) So on the way home from the movie, we stopped quickly at the grocery store so that I could go grab a couple items like bread, eggs, and popcorn! The whole box of popcorn with 3 bags inside is cheaper than the small popcorn at the movie theater. At home with the popcorn popped, Kavi was a happy boy.
---
And now we are in the final countdown to leaving for Portland! Two days (Friday). WOO. Today I am going to try to find a nice fitting pair of New Balance sneakers at JCPenney. I have a $10 off coupon for there, and I really need supportive walking shoes. Tomorrow I will focus on packing and last minute trip prep. We have reserved our parking spot at the hotel we will park our car at in Tampa before going to the airport. That parking cost is 1/3 the price of parking at the airport. And you get a free shuttle to/from the airport which is only a mile or two from that hotel. And our car stays parked in a secure, indoor parking garage. I love deals! We also reserved a rental car at the airport in Portland. Our rooms at a very affordable motel have been reserved for weeks, in Vancouver, WA (right across the border from Portland, OR). We happened to look up rates as they were having a sale last month and locked in the awesome rate. So we are pretty much set, except for packing!

I may stop in again before leaving but I am not 100% sure! I am going to take lots of pictures while away and will of course share!

Fashion inspiration

1. 13.06.2011, 2. "Cocktail" dress, 3. bike baskets, 4. Blue velvet

No real "theme", just some I liked !

Sunday Music

I listen to old and new stuff and once in awhile get in a real music mood. So I might play songs from youtube(if I don't own the songs, which seems to be the case for most songs!) for an hour or so, with the nice speakers on, somewhat loud. My son likes it too. My husband likes it too as long as it's not annoying punk music from the 90's like MxPx. :D

Today I thought of Sanctus Real and some of their songs that I like. (Sanctus Real is an American Christian rock band formed in Toledo, Ohio, in 1996. -wiki)

I didn't realize how long ago the songs I was listening to were released-in 2004. That doesn't seem so long ago right? But it's been 7 years!!

So I will just embed a couple and if anyone fancies listening to any, feel free. If not and you have never heard of them, well now you know that there is a band named Sanctus Real! :)

I used to hear these songs occasionally on the radio when I would be driving in my car in the mid 2000's. Sometimes to and from work(before I stopped working). And for some reason, when you hear songs in the car they seem to be even better than when played at home. Funny!

Upbeat song "Everything about You". I love it.

Slower paced song but with good electric guitar. "Closer."


A calmer, introspection kind of song about changing. Like a prayer song. "Change me."

When I was deciding to cut my bangs, I came across this shop on Etsy and really liked this gal's hair. Her hair looks straighter and longer than mine, but I love her look. It helped inspire me to do it! And the shop also happens to be based in Portland. So I had to go with it!! ;) Me thinking of bangs+the shop being from a location I will be visiting=inspiration for me.

A shop that sells screen printed t-shirts as well as adorable dresses. SHESHEpdx.

Vintage Thursday : dresses

I haven't done a vintage only post in a couple weeks or more, I think!

Just some cute dresses from the same shop BruklynBelle, based in Oregon.

Over the weekend...

We had a fun visit with my family over the weekend. They arrived Friday before dinner so Kavi had a nice few hours to play with them before bed. We ordered pizza for dinner. NY Style pizza, which my family can't seem to find something like it in AL so far. Even at the places that claim to be. This is one of our favorite pizza places, local owned, 1/2 mile from my house.
We played outside after the temperature went down a little(so hot these days!) and Kavi and his neighbor friend drew with chalk all over our porch floor and driveway. There was also help from my sister and others.

(above was only the start, lots more was drawn!)

We met up with some friends for lunch at Panera on Saturday, stopped at Target, then stayed around the house the rest of the day just hanging out. One sad thing was that our good friend Rachel got sick and went to her mom's house(who lives here) and couldn't hang out all day Saturday and Sunday due to feeling yucky.

Sunday for Father's Day, we all met up with my grandmother, cousin, cousin's husband and kids for lunch. Then they all came over after that for dessert at the house. My cousin made and brought up a delicious chocolate mousse pie, with coconut flavored whipped cream on top! Mmmm. We had some family friends stop over during the day too. Coffee was also consumed.

About that coffee...sometimes our Dunkin Donuts-es around here make weak coffee. It's such a bummer. What happened to consistency?! My mom and sister bought a "Box O' Joe" from D&D. Have you seen those? It's an awesome to-go box of hot coffee, for a group.
We were so happy they brought it home...but then I started pouring some and it was light brown. You know what that means. WEAK. So sad. So I brewed a pot of stronger Starbucks coffee that my mom bought me (I'm too cheap to buy nice coffee to brew at home, I buy cheaper stuff hehe) so that we could mix the two.

But we have a theory about Dunkin Donuts around here. Theory: The old people must complain that it's too strong, so D&D makes it weaker for them. Our area has a lot, a lot, a lot of retirees. And if they are going out for coffee, they usually will pick Dunkin Donuts and not Starbucks. Or as one older man called it accidentally "Starburst". So they must buy a lot of coffee at Dunkin Donuts. And maybe they influence D&D's coffee strength. (See, it's a conspiracy!) And the D&D by my house is a hang out spot for a lot of retired men from NY. (We love NY around here in this part of FL, so many people from NY live here. I was born in NY myself.). They sit around talking for hours. We like seeing them sit there though. But is it really their fault? Or the elderly ladies' fault instead? Or is it just random, bad coffee making employees? Because there has to be something going on with it. It's just not good half the time. And the other half of the time it's decent. I need to get to the bottom of this problem. (haha, yeah right.)

That was my coffee rant. :)

Here's a picture of me and my sister.
I realize I don't have any with our dad, for Father's Day. Heh...oops. But here is a good oldie picture of my family!
And back to my family now. They left yesterday to go back home, which is always sad! We had a nice visit.

Now it's countdown time to our Portland trip. I still can't really believe we are going. 10 days is it now? I think so.

Inspiration : Blues

Source: lookbook.nu via Christina on Pinterest

Source: style-files.com via Catalina on Pinterest

Source: glamour.com via Christina on Pinterest

Source: weheartit.com via laura on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Misha on Pinterest

Curtains Finished!

I managed to finish the curtain project within a quick time frame! Compared to my usual procrastinating ways. I think it's because my family is visiting this weekend (driving down right now!) and I wanted the curtains up before they came so they could see them.

I finished them all and then had to redo a hem or two because of one being shorter than another. Argh! But I fixed the problem and now they all look about the same length.


And...it's only two weeks until we leave for Portland, OR!! I have had this written on this chalkboard for a couple weeks now, since we first booked the tickets.

Curtain Project

We had painted my son's room last winter, and during the process took green curtains(also made by me) off of his windows because they just looked drab with the light blue paint color. I posted a few pictures back on this post. We didn't put up new curtains because I liked the way the white simple blinds looked against the paint color. His windows are narrow and high up.

But then my son didn't like these little gaps that were in between the set of blinds - so we have old receiving blankets up, in the middle of each window, to block out the "scary" darkness he'd see in between the blinds at night. We thought about getting white curtains but of the curtains I looked at, the sizes weren't right.

So on Sunday, we visited the aquarium again(yay!) and then after that went to Ikea. They are only a couple miles apart(or less). We didn't realize the store closed at 6 p.m. on Sundays so at 5:42pm we were in the kids' toy section and I decided to walk over to the kids' bedding and textile section. I found some fabric pieces on sale for $5.99! They measure 47"x118", precut and prepackaged. I grabbed one with vehicles on it, so cute, and I thought it'd be perfect for Kavi's room.
We walked really fast towards the checkout because by the time I looked at the fabric and showed my husband, they said the store was closing in 5 minutes! And we were still on the top floor. If you've been through an Ikea, you will know what I mean when I say we still had to walk through the bottom level and the warehouse part to get to the checkouts! Far! We used the "shortcuts" even and were speed walking and still didn't get to the checkout before they announced that the store was closed. But they of course were still going to checkout all of us stragglers making our way to the registers, *whew*. By that time we were a little out of breath from rushing! Funny, all for one $5.99 item. But I didn't want to have to go back to Tampa just for that anytime soon.

Instead of procrastinating, I started working on the new curtains yesterday. There is just enough fabric to make four short panels for his two windows. I was in the groove with the project until I ran out of white thread! I haven't bought any thread in awhile. So today I need to go get some. Here's a progress picture and an up close look at the cute fabric. :)

My son adores vehicles! And I like that the background of the fabric is white.

Pretty Hair

Pretty ways to style or pin your hair up! I started adding finds to my "Hair I Like" board on pinterest.

This is so cute, pretty, and retro inspired:

Source: joannagoddard.blogspot.com via Christina on Pinterest

'quarium

My son does and says lots of entertaining things all the time, even when he isn't trying to be funny. Kids really do say the darndest things!

A little while ago he suddenly looked sad and slumped over while walking around.
I asked him "what's wrong?" He said, "I'm sad about the 'quarium." I asked why? He said,"I miss the fishies, the sharks, the octopus, the black clouds...". What's funny is he calls this cool fog screen thing "black clouds", and the fact that he is saying he misses it is interesting since he didn't like it while we were at the aquarium! I found a picture somebody else took of this mist thing. It's in a really dark area, which is why Kavi didn't like it. And you could walk through it, but he really didn't want to. He walked around it.

(image found here)

At the far right of the picture, you can see the fog screen with the octopus projected onto it. It's blowing down from the ceiling and they project a cartoon onto it, which is cool. But you can see why he refers to it as black clouds? It seems to lead into darkness.

I told him we are going again soon, we have passes! And I even miss the aquarium now. I think we will go again very soon. :)

He is also a dance machine and I need to post one of his dancing videos soon. And he likes saying things like "cool man, really awesome, yeah-eh-eh-eh" while grooving.

Monday Inspiration

Monday is feeling a bit blah so far for me today.

So I need some inspiration and cool things to look at!

1. mirror, 2. owls

1. Weaving Dreams, 2. calivintage: velma

Yay Friday

Yay, it's Friday! Even though I don't go out to an office all week, it's still nice to know it's Friday.

And I have some excitement to share.

In a few weeks, we are going on a trip to an area we've never been to before. The West coast!!

Here's how it came about...

Because of our trips to visit my husband's family in India the past three years, with the same airline, we accumulated "onepass miles", better known as frequent flyer miles. We realized some time in the past what the reward travels options were. So in the past couple months after our trip to India, we started looking into it more.

Me and my husband had enough miles to get a round trip ticket to anywhere in the (48 continuous) US! Kavi didn't quite have enough, because the first year we all went to India together he sat on our laps, which was very cheap, so he didn't get to count those miles towards the reward program. My husband had extra miles from going alone in the past. So we transferred the needed miles to my son's account, and the cost of that was $225, much cheaper than the airline tickets I was seeing for sale.

So with a $10 fee each person + the miles transfer, we spent $255 for all three of us to fly to...
Portland, Oregon!!

Now, people are already asking, "oh wow, what's in Portland?" or "do you have family there?"
No family there. But why did we choose Portland?

Several reasons:

It's almost the most far away we can get from Florida, with it still being in the 48 states. Seattle was another option but we chose to fly to Portland.
I have heard it's a pretty cool city. Lots of artsy stuff.
Not far to the east of Portland is Mt. Hood, a snow capped mountain! I have not been right by a snow capped mountain before. I have only flown over them en route to India.
Not far to the west is the Pacific coastline, and cool looking beaches like Cannon Beach!
The weather there will be much more pleasant than Florida summer, even if it's rainy.
It's only 2.5-3 hours from Seattle-day trip!

So we booked our tickets two weeks ago, also found a VERY affordable motel with good customer reviews across the WA state line near Portland(in Vancouver, Wa). And we will be there six nights/five full days. After the long plane rides to India, traveling 8-9 hours to get to the west coast will feel short. We will be there the beginning of July. :D

I made a pin board inspired by the trip planning on pinterest.

You can see the whole board here.

Source: andersondesigngroupstore.com via Christina on Pinterest

Vintage Thursday

I love this "instant collection" set of tin saucers!

And this vintage flashcards garland from the same shop:
It would look great in Kavi's room I think!

Love Thy Neighbor

That above ^ is hard to do sometimes!

Right now I literally have neighbors that are driving me crazy. They moved in to the house next door to rent it last Fall. At first things seemed fine. But if they were in their driveway the same time I was, they wouldn't even make eye contact so that I could wave hi. So basically, I didn't say hi to them for months. I am not a talkative kind of neighbor to begin with, but not even wanting to make eye contact ever is a bit strange to me.

One day when we were leaving the house my son noticed the neighbor's little girl playing outside(with her mom who was pushing around a baby brother in a stroller). So he said "I see a girl!" so then we waved hi because they also heard. That was the first form of contact, and it hasn't really happened much since then.

The first issue back then was that they would sit on the back porch late at night talking and arguing on a cell phone with maybe a boyfriend. It was two women who lived there, maybe sisters? And the little kids. Then after awhile a man showed up and seemed to live there too. After that I was never sure who actually lived there.

One day many months ago, I had a knock at my door and it was Child Protective Services (Dept. Children/families). I was surprised but he was there to ask me about those neighbors. He asked if I knew who lived there, if I had noticed any weird activities, and if I ever heard screaming. (!?) I answered the questions and said I didn't hear screaming ever, but sometimes I could hear the adults yelling in the back porch. He took my name. That whole thing made me nervous and concerned for the children there. Soon before that, we noticed cops had been at their house one day and seemed like they told a man to leave the house. So the man and a certain vehicle that must have been his, were not back after that.

Fast forward a couple months and there is a man there again, and I don't even know if it's the same or different. I just know the vehicle from before is not there. And now, we had noticed a jump in activities at that house. Many different cars stopping there during the day, only staying a short amount of time, then leaving. I am sure you can imagine what we think about that. So the cars coming and going during the day added to the annoyance of hearing them outside talking and playing music late at night. Now almost every night I can hear them yapping away, and not quietly, in their garage with the doors open or in the driveway. Our bedroom windows are on the side by their house so we can hear it. I get really mad feeling sometimes but unless it's really loud, I don't feel like I should call the cops. It's an annoyance, I can hear it, but it's not blasting loud.

So this brings me to yesterday when there was a knock at the door and it was a cop! He asked if me or anyone in my house called 911. I said no. He said someone did from a cell phone and it "pinged" between my house and that neighbors house but they couldn't pinpoint it so they were checking both places. I confirmed we didn't call, but I couldn't help by wonder if someone in the neighbor's house really did. The cop might have already tried there and they could have said no. It could have been an accident. But was it? The cop said it could have been someone driving by here at that time too. I hesitated before saying bye and i just said, we don't know the neighbors and I am not sure what they are up to but they seem to have a lot of activity there. Hoping it'd be a hint. But I am sure they must have on record the previous police visit to their house.

So one last thing is that last night they were talking and arguing loudly in their garage at 2 am for awhile. I so much wanted to open my front door and yell SHUT UP to them. But honestly I am afraid to do that because I don't trust those people or know what they have in their possession. I need to pray for them, and if things get too out of control will have to call the cops.

So I am really really annoyed at these neighbors, and I feel bad for the two small children there. The rest of our neighbors for the most part are very nice, quiet people. There has been much less peace around here since the newer neighbors moved in and I know we aren't the only ones who have noticed. So I am just praying that something changes. That they will be quiet, they will stop acting shady, or that they will move.