September

Oh September.. how you have been a busy and expensive month.

first my glasses break and my insurance doesn't cover new ones. The lenses alone cost $275, don't even get me started on the frames.

I desperately need all 4 of my wisdom teeth pulled. I can't even bare to type the price of this expensive bill...

and my daughter's 1st bday party plus our family portraits.

All I can say is.. THANK GOD I HAVE A JOB. Otherwise we'd probably be hurtin'.

because of all of these expenses we decided not to go out to a big fancy dinner for our 3rd wedding anniversary as planned. This was a real bummer because year 1 Matt was in Korea, and year 2 I was so pregnant I was about to pop and too emotional to function. We swore this year we'd do something really special but my darn eyes and teeth had to get in the way.

Even though we decided not to get anything for each other this year, I did get this suprise knocking at my door..


Super cute and thoughtful because I love love love Sanrio characters, and the pineapples are shaped like Hello Kitty. Madison ate half of my gift because .. well she eats most of my food before I get it to my mouth, but I only shared half the strawberries with her :)

Family portraits could have gone better. I thought the girl who helped us was really unprofessional. She did really well on the family portraits, but when it came time for Madison to get her pictures done (which was the main reason we were there) She never adjusted the lighting, and the backdrop actually collapsed on Madison at one point. Everything fell on top of her, and burried under all the fabric and metal bar the only thing not covered was Madison's little feet. It was like the house that fell ontop of the witch in the "Wizard of Oz". The photographer just stood there in shock with her hand covering her mouth, while Matt and I frantically pulled out daughter out from the clutter. After that Madison wasn't really cooperating with the photoshoot.. so we didn't get any really awesome shots like I expected. I wish the new babies r' us out here had Kiddie Kandids like back home.. I like them a lot and they're reasonably priced. They wouldn't have left me at a computer desk the day after my session to sit there and edit my own pictures until "I liked what I saw". I was irritated that I paid $200 bucks to edit my own pictures that only came out satisfactory to begin with. I guess you win some, you lose some.
This was the picture taken right before the backdrop fell on her... She was completely fine afterward, only startled.

here's a sample of one of the family portraits I liked a lot

Madison's birthday was everything I wanted it to be. The only complaint I had was that I stupidly decided to work the night before, so I didn't come home until 7:00am. The party started at 2:30, and I decided to prep some of the food before I decided to go to bed at 9:00am. Matt was supposed to wake me up at 12:00pm (before heading out to pick my cousin up from the airport and also buy balloons). Apparently he woke me up, and I sat up and told him I was going to get up.. but I must have been sleep talking because I do not remember that at all, and didn't wake up til the first guest got there. Thank goodness it was my friend Brittney and her family, and they were accidently 30 mins early. I quickly got ready after I answered the door.. but had no time to cook the lumpia before the rest of the guests got there. It was all good though, we had plenty of other food (good thing I decided to prep some before falling asleep).

Everyone showed up that was supposed to, all the kids played nice, and everyone had a wonderful time. Madison never really got fussy and she had lots of fun playing with all the kids. The Bday cake that I spent 3 to 4 hours preparing the night before came out perfect and tasted absolutely magnificent. I had no left overs.

I'm so excited for future birthdays to come. Party planning is SO much fun and watching my daughter having an abosolute blast was worth every second. The look on my daughter's face when we brought her downstairs to see all the balloons and decorations was priceless, you could tell she was amazed by all the colors and how different the house looked.

Roses are ... Purple.

I decided to have a couple glasses of red wine (I'm a bit of a light weight) and next thing you know I'm in the kitchen baking a cake. I wanted to do something different this time, something with the frosting, but I didn't know what. So Iyou tubed some videos on how to make roses out of frosting. I found a few, skimmed through them and ta-da! I had the general idea, peace of cake (ha!). However, I couldn't find any videos on how to make leaves (didn't look too hard though, I was sort of wingin' it) so I took my best crack at it, and played with the frosting tips a bit. I ran out of icing bags, so I made my own out of parchment paper, It's amazing how creative and resourceful I get when I have a slight buzz.

Anywhoo, ladies and gentlemen, I now introduce you to CAKE #4!!!

Spooky.

Working graveyard at my work can be super creepy sometimes. Most of my shift I spend just sitting in the office auditing and doing paperwork in absolute dead silence. I have heard many stories about the place and I swear I hear things sometimes, or get this feeling that I am not alone. I especially get this eerie feeling about the kitchen late at night. I haven't witnessed first hand anything too out of the ordinary besides the ice machine going off on it's own and the door censor ding when no one is there...plus it gets unbearably cold at times... but that is definitely enough to get me on edge and freaked out.