The Great State of Hawaii-Part One

March 28, 2016March 27, 20166 Comments

Did everyone have a wonderful spring break, if you had one in your area? Mine was good, but I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked. But I did have time to relax and spend time with my girls (see zoo post here).

I know a lot of folks went to the beach or somewhere else nice for vacation. We stayed home, but we did go to Hawaii last month! This was our first time going. A lot of people couldn’t believe we had never gone before since we live in Ca. But now we can say we have! I realized I hadn’t shared any pictures with you, so I thought this would be a good time. I will have to do several posts, since I took llloootttss of pictures! We stacked a lot of activities into 6 days! I thought I would just share pictures of the beach where we spent our time and some of the wonderful things we saw there.

I have had traveling to Hawaii on my ‘bucket list’ for a very long time. What finally prompted us to go was Haley. She is part of the theater group at her junior college. She found out in the fall that they would be traveling to a theater festival that takes place each year. This year would be Hawaii. How could I not go?! I told here there was no way she would get to go to Hawaii and I hadn’t gone yet! So as soon as we found out where the festival would be held, we made our reservations.We made them through Travelosity and it included our flight and hotel. Such an easy way to travel. We also purchased a GoOahu Card through SmartDestinations.com. Best purchase ever! They have this card for many different cities, so be sure to check it out if you are traveling. By the way, I am not affiliated with these agencies, I just thought they were really good deals.

Okay. So on to the pictures! This is the beach were we spent most of our time. It was across the street from our hotel. The little piece of water you see to the left if a man-made lagoon. It belonged to one of the hotels and was a great place for kids. Straight ahead is a cove, so the water was great to go swimming in.

We had to get our feet in as soon as possible! Our beaches in Ca. are not this clear or warm.

We could see Diamond Head from were the beach was. We did hike up this later in the week.

Look who came for a visit! We were thrilled to see this turtle so close! He was enjoying riding the waves close to shore.

Yes, even the dogs go surfing in Hawaii!

The infamous Hawaii rainbow…

And the beautiful sunsets. Breathtaking.

Do you need to take a break? Go get something to drink or a snack? Or maybe make your own reservations? I will wait for you.

Okay, here is a few more pictures from around Waikiki. Tiki torches all around the city are lit each night.

These lanterns looks so cool!

Surfboards anyone! They actually have lockers for surfboards so you don’t have to carry them all over.

We ate dinner from this taco truck one night. One of the best meals we had!!

We ordered the garlic shrimp and the taco plate. Mmmm!

A little bit of flora and fauna.

The famous Hawaiian surfer, Duke Kahanamoku.

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of Oahu. Watch for Part 2 in the next weeks!

A Mini Vacation to Lodi

September 17, 2015September 16, 20154 Comments

So, I am a very busy person. I go to school 2 days a week and work the other 5. URGH! I have no time to myself!

But, before life took over, I was able to take a mini vacation to see a friend of mine.

This summer, my friend Sara had invited me to Lodi to take a mini vacation. So, we picked a weekend that I would drive to Lodi and visit her and her family. So on September 11th, after work and school, I drove 2 1/2 hours to Sara’s house. When I arrived, all we did was relaxed the night away. I was tired, so it was awesome for me.

But the next day was full of activity. We woke up early and drove from Lodi to Sacramento to go shopping! We visited Arden Fair mall and spent about 2 hours there. And yes, I did buy some things: Tsum Tsums for my nieces, Disney bows for myself, and two pairs of shorts from Torrid that were on sale. Hooray!

The next thing that we did was go to lunch at a place called The Squeeze. It was a lot of food, but it definitely was delicious.

Next, Sara and I went to the Stockton Fairgrounds where her mom and dad were serving beer at the horse races. Now, we were more interested in watching the races and wondering if the pretty one was going to win, but we still had a lot of fun out there. Also, beer is disgusting…

Finally, we went to a local winery and went wine tasting. The place was very nice and the people there were very sweet. And, the wine was good. Maybe a bit too bitter for me, but I will admit that I am a bit of a lightweight when it comes to alcohol.

The next day we went to the local zoo. To be honest, the zoo wasn’t that great. A lot of birds and lemurs and monkeys, and a snow leopard. A snow leopard without snow…

And the last thing that we did was do some more shopping in Stockton. We didn’t buy anything, but it was still fun.

And this was the end of the vacation. It was sad to leave, but at the same time I was ready to go home. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and relax, but I didn’t want to get back to the normality of life.

So thanks to Sara and her family for letting me stay with them. Thanks for giving me a great weekend off from life. But now, back to the hustle and bustle of school and work. Yeah….

Bound for Disney

August 13, 20154 Comments

Attention! What I am about to present to you may change the way that you visit Disneyland forever! Be prepared (yes, that is a Lion King reference).

Before my family took our trip to Disneyland, my mom introduced me to a concept called Disneybound. Trust me, if you look up Disneybound on Pinterest, you will find hundreds of ideas. But before you go and look at Pinterest, finish reading this blog post so you know what you are getting yourself into.

Disneybound is the basically where Disney and fashion collide. It is where you can dress in your own clothes to look like a Disney character. You can dress as whoever you would like and dress how you would like.

So…let me give you an idea of what we did on our trip to Disneyland!

So, this is what we wore when we went to California Adventures. Haley was Hades from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mom and Dad were Sally and Lightning McQueen from Cars, and I was Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove. So I will use my outfit as an example and show you what Disneybound is about.

Here is Emperor Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove. Notice that he is wearing a red “dress”, black sandals, blue earrings, and a gold crown. Now go back to my picture and look at what I am wearing. A red jacket, black sandals, blue earrings, and a gold headband. I also threw in a gold llama necklace since Kuzco turns into a llama in the movie. I also put my hair in a fan bun so that it looked more like his crown in the movie.

See? Simple as that!

Now here are our Disneyland pictures.

So in Disneyland, mom was Lady from Lady and the Tramp, dad was Chewbacca from Star Wars, Haley was Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I was Snow White. So, we still had a lot of fun when we were dressed up! A cast member even “recognized” me as Snow White.

So how easy it is to Disneybound? Anyone can do it! All you need is a character who you like and you think would be fun to be. We picked characters who we like from the movies and who we thought would be easy.

Here are some other characters that I dressed up as for the sake of the blog.

Jessie from Toy Story 2

And Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. PS, I wore heels just for the picture. I don’t recommend going to Disneyland in heels.

This is my take on Ursula, from Little Mermaid.

We had a lot of fun trying out different outfits. If we had pieces we needed, we went shopping at thrift stores for them. Have you heard of Disneybound or have you tried it? I would love to hear about your experience!

My Luggage is Ready for Vacation

July 6, 2015July 6, 201519 Comments

Well, here we are. Already into July! Where has time gone? I don’t feel like I have accomplished much yet! We have been camping and are planning another few days away in a couple of weeks. But my luggage wasn’t ready. Actually, the only luggage I had were some pieces my husband had recieved from work and they all had the company name on them. So cute and fashionable(sarcasm)!! Then I remembered I had a suitcase I used to keep scrapbooking stuff in before I moved it into the big desk in Lauren’s room. I bought it years ago at a yard sale and it’s red, which is not my favorite color, but I figured I might as well do something with it. Maybe I could make it a little cuter! I looked around on Pinterest, but the only suitcases were vintage ones. Yeah, this is vintage…1990’s vintage! 🙂

Plain Jane

Since the suitcase is red, I decided to go nautical. I tried to think what design would work and settled on an anchor. I found a design I liked on the computer and printed it out, but it was too big. I shrunk it down and printed again. This is where the mistakes began. I taped the pieces of my anchor together and then proceeded to cut out the wrong one! I cut out the bigger one instead! You see, in order to save paper, I printed out the smaller anchor on the back of the larger one. Maybe not such a good idea. 😦 Well, I pieced it together as best I could and figured I would just add in the missing parts. First I tried rubbing chalk on the back of the anchor and then tracing over the design on the front. Failure! Tried again, this time tracing the front with a pencil instead of chalk. Double failure! My only other choice was to cut out my mutilated anchor as best as I could and then trace around it onto the suitcase. I stuffed the suitcase with a couple of boxes and put a large scrapbook into the front pocket before starting the tracing to give me a hard surface..I used a black paint pen to trace. It actually came out pretty good! Surprise! I am no artist or painter, so this is pretty good for me! Now I started coloring it in. I started with a navy blue paint pen. It worked okay, but didn’t really cover very well. I used white paint and a stiff bristled brush for the white rope. After it had dried, I knew I needed something different for the blue. I used the same fabric paint I used when I painted my Skechers, Tulip Fabric Paint, Marine Blue. This turned out much better! I let it dry overnight and then added another coat of each color in the morning. After that dried, I added the black outline again and the details to the rope. I am actually pretty impressed at how well this turned out! I did find a small anchor stamp at Michaels and tried stamping some small anchors in blue and white on the top pockets. They didn’t turn out very well, so I only did about 8. I outlined them with sharpie and called it good. I think my luggage and I are ready to go now! My husband can use his own! 😉