Pinning Freak (or I’m Going To Turn Myself Into Someone Crafty)

I’m totally addicted to Pinterest. I know a lot of people who are as well.

I’m always pinning awesome recipes, beauty ideas, organizational tips, book suggestions, and even ideas for the future like wedding or baby things. I’m hooked.

I love seeing all the cute baby things that my friends with babies are pinning. And my future sister-in-law is now on Pinterest pinning ideas for their wedding.

A lot of the time, I’ll email my dad some of the things that I’m looking at since he is very crafty. And we have done some projects that we found on Pinterest. One of the big ones is cutting the bottom off of wine bottles so you can put candles underneath. Cutting off the bottom of the wine bottle is pretty tough. I believe my dad has been able to successfully do it 2 or 3 times. I don’t have a great photo of what the wine bottle candle holder looks like, but you can see it behind my birthday bouquet in this photo.

I wish I was crafty enough to do most of the things I see. Just today, I saw a pin on how to make your own glitter tights (perfect for New Years Eve!). If I made them, the tights would probably get glued together and somehow I’d get glitter glued to various surfaces in my house (even if I did the project outside).

So I’m going to start small with my crafty projects from Pinterest. There are a bunch of recipes that I’m going to try soon (and I just got a CrockPot so that’s pretty awesome!). And I found directions on how to make your own dry shampoo for dark hair. I could probably do that without too much craziness.

I know that I’ll probably never been as crafty as the ideas I see, but I’m going to take some baby steps and maybe one day I’ll get close to that. In the meantime, I’m excited to pin silly things like travel ideas, quotes that I like, blogs that I like, and ideas for a dream home in the future.

Oh, and if you want to follow me on Pinterest, you can do so here.

Best Wedding Ever! (or My Weekend In Texas)

First of all, a huge congratulations to my friends Marie and Chris on getting married! I am so unbelievably happy for you two!

Second of all, this is going to be a long recap of my weekend and there are a lot of pictures, so I’m sorry if you were hoping for a quick read in today’s post.

So I flew out on Friday to Houston. I was lucky to have a friend who happened to be going on the same flight, so we got to sit next to each other (I have a bad record of getting stuck next to creepers on flights). And when we arrived, another friend had agreed let me share in her rental car for the weekend. So Dawn, who had rented the car, was the driver and I was the navigator.

After a little adventure to get to the hotel, we were off to the rehearsal dinner at Marie’s brother and sister-in-law’s house. I didn’t get too many pictures at the dinner, because I was busy catching up with friends. But I did get a picture of the photo that we were all signing at the dinner.

And as I was leaving the dinner, I managed to snag the bride-to-be for a quick picture as well.

On Saturday, I joined some friends for a quick brunch at the hotel, then we all went to our rooms to get ready. My friend who does my hair gave me some instructions on what to do that would look good but was easy. And I used some of my DJ Tanner lip gloss.

The wedding was held at a really nice cute church. It was the church that Marie went to growing up, and the preacher that married them was the preacher who was there when she was younger.

The ceremony was the most religious one that I’ve ever been to, but it was also totally personalized to Marie and Chris.

When Chris and his groomsmen walked out, it was to a piano version of the theme from “The Muppet Show”. When they walked out, it was to music from “Star Wars”. The preacher also included the Mawwiage part of “The Princess Bride”.

I’ll admit, I had tears in my eyes during the entire wedding. I’m glad I was prepared with tissues (and had some to share with others sitting near me). But how could you not have tears of joy when two people look so happy to be getting married?

After the ceremony was over, a few of us decided to take some pictures while waiting for the bride and groom to make their appearance again. We had to document the moment because most of the times we are all gathered, it’s at some sort of costume party.

Marie and Chris walked out of the church onto a pathway filled with bubbles.

And we were all off to the reception. Once there, there was a clear sign that this was Texas and not California.

The bride and groom shared a dance, then the bride danced with her brothers, and then followed that up with a dance with her dad’s best friend.

After dinner, there were two different cakes. Both were made by friend’s of Marie.

I tried a bit of both (and they were both amazing!).

After the bouquet toss (where I was terrified that I would catch it because it seemed like Marie was aiming at me)

and some photos with friends

and then jokingly having a photobomb intervention

It was time to party! There was a lot of dancing.

(btw, that flower girl outlast everyone on the dance floor)

And the bride and groom had a jam session

And then I had to head back to the hotel to get some rest before leaving for the airport early on Sunday. Plus, some of us were getting a bit tired.

A few more photos (and thank yous) to share of my adventure:

Thanks to Dawn for driving the rental car while I tried to navigate around all the construction going on by our hotel (including when the street our hotel was on got shut down on Friday evening).

Thanks to Marie and Chris for getting married, having such a fabulous party, and inviting me to join in the festivities (Chris, the picture of us came out blurry, so I only have this one of me and Marie).

And my final stop of my trip was at the airport. I went to see what all the fuss was about, but since I don’t drink coffee, I had a bagel (but it was a pretty good bagel).

Jet Setter (or My Weekend Away From LA)

Today I head out of town to attend my friend’s wedding. I’m super excited for the happy couple.

But I’m also really nervous. I’m not the best flyer.

There aren’t too many things in life that scare me. Needles and the dentist do, but flying is a relatively new fear.

I’ve been flying for my whole life. When I was younger, my family would go on vacation in lots of other countries. I’ve been to 5 different continents. And all of those times, I was never scared of flying. I would actually sleep a lot on planes. Here’s a picture of me calm as a cucumber as I flew to Paris with my mom to celebrate me graduating college early.

Some time after graduating college, I started to get very panicky on planes, particularly during takeoff and landing. I’m pretty ok on long flights, but more often I’m taking very short flights. On the flight from LA to San Jose (where I grew up), you pretty much only have takeoff and landing. I never do that well on that flight, and I take that one a lot.

According to my reservation, my flight tomorrow should be about 3 hours long. I’m hoping that that will allow me to have some time to calm down during the flight. I’ll be sitting with a friend also going to the wedding, so at least I don’t have to worry about sitting next to a creeper or someone who thinks I’m crazy if I get a little panicky.

I’m trying to focus on my excitement about the wedding. I’ve been looking forward to this since my friend got engaged! I’ve got a super cute new dress to wear, I’m going to get to hang out with a bunch of friends, and I’m going to a city I’ve never been to before (my only time in Texas previously was when I was driving from LA to Oklahoma).

As long as I focus on the good and exciting parts of the weekend, I’m not going to let my fear of flying get in the way!

I’ll have a recap with hopefully a bunch of photos to share when I get back!

Also, if you want to come to the screening of the documentary that I produced, you only  have about a day left to get your tickets for free! Otherwise, you have to pay $5. You can get tickets here.

DJ Tanner and Lip Gloss (or Just Another Saturday in LA)

This past Saturday, I happened to have the day off from my main day job. I was going to do some random work for friends, but I pretty much had the day off.

I was checking twitter (you all know how much I love twitter) and I saw that Candace Cameron Bure was tweeting about how she was selling lip gloss for charity at her kid’s hockey game. I guess a bunch of people tweeted back at her saying that they wanted to buy lip gloss, so she tweeted out again that she was only selling them out of the back of her car and you had to be in LA to get some.

Well, I’m in LA and I really needed lip gloss for my friend’s wedding coming up, so I tweeted at her and asked if I could buy some. And I was so excited to get a tweet back saying yes!

So I headed down to where she was, and the whole time I was thinking how the younger me would be totally freaking out that I was about to meet DJ Tanner from “Full House”! I loved that show as a kid, and even now, when there is a rerun on tv, I’ll still watch.

I got down to the practice, tweeted at Candace that I was there, and she met me at the front to sell me the lip gloss! And I have to say that she is the sweetest person I’ve met. We had a really nice conversation, and then she suggested that we take a picture so I could tweet it out (I love that I didn’t have to ask to take a picture).

 

Not only is it a great picture, but I absolutely love the kid posing in the background!

I didn’t want to take up too much of Candace’s time, so we said goodbye and I headed to my personal organizer job that I had that afternoon.

And the lip gloss that I bought, it’s pretty great and I got some nice colors!

Enjoying The Now (or Not Trying To Skip Ahead To The Good Parts)

As much as I want to think ahead to what might be in the future, I’m trying to focus on right now in my life.

The future is so uncertain in so many ways. As much as I want to think about how much weight I’ll have lost by my brother’s wedding, I have no idea what will happen so I need to focus on enjoying the weight I’ve lost so far.

I’m focusing on what’s coming up in the immediate future. My brother’s birthday and my friend’s wedding are both next week.

I love that Halloween is coming up this month. It’s really one of my favorite holidays. I used to work at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios (I’ll write about that some other time and include some pictures) and that just made my love for the holiday stronger. I only wish that stores would have Halloween stuff up.

I went to Bed Bath & Beyond recently to get my new scale, and this is the display that was at the front

 

Stores: stop skipping ahead holidays! I want to see what you have for Halloween and Thanksgiving before Hanukkah (although I appreciate that they did include it and not just have Christmas).

So even though the retail world (and probably some people) are focused 2 months ahead, I’m making a serious effort to focus on the now. I’m making a real effort to celebrate all the moments coming up. I’m making sure I take time to make some nice Halloween decorations and enjoy what October has for me.

And as far as the weight loss goes, it’s really tough for me to focus on what I’ve done now because my head likes to go crazy with what could be in the future. But I’m trying to look at the little things. Like how my clothes fit and stuff like that. Because it’s not a hard and fast thing like the numbers on the scale, I feel like it helps me not think 100 pounds ahead.

It’s a Stripper Penguin! (or The Best Bachelorette Party Ever!)

First of all, I managed to survive Carmageddon with all the driving I had to do around town. The only time that I was caught in awful traffic was trying to get from Culver City to the Valley on Saturday evening. It took me over 2 hours to get there. But it was worth it, because I was on my way to my friend Marie’s bachelorette party!

I’ve been to a few bachelorette parties in the past, but they have all been pretty tame. Sometimes just dinner and dessert with the girls. But I knew that this party was going to be a bit more outrageous than that, and I was right!

(sorry that this post has so many pictures and is so long)

The evening started out with some drinks and appetizers at the apartment of one of the girls hosting the night. It was a very chill part of the night, but we were all just so happy to be celebrating the upcoming wedding of Marie (19 more days to go)!

Then, the entertainment arrived. If you don’t know Marie, you just need to know that she LOVES penguins. When she first got engaged, I wanted to get her a penguin cake topper, but I couldn’t decide on which one to get her (I got her a wedding planning guide instead). And the starter entertainment for the night was a stripper penguin!

I guess technically he wasn’t a stripper, he wore a sweat suit over the penguin costume and took that off, but then he danced the rest of the time in the penguin outfit. This was seriously the funniest thing I’ve ever seen! I was laughing so hard I was crying! Everyone loved the penguin.

After that craziness, we were off to dinner. Marie arranged for a Cadillac limo to drive us all around. That was so nice. If we didn’t have that, we would have taken 4 cars to get everywhere. And the limo had 3, yes 3, bars inside.

Also, the mood lighting inside was pretty fun too.

Our dinner stop was at Lala’s Grill. I had never been there before, but it was so delicious! The steaks were wonderful and I wanted to drink the chimichurri sauce! I was enjoying my meal so much that I didn’t get any pictures of that part of the evening.

After dinner, we had the driver drive us around the valley a bit so we could enjoy some drinks in the limo (all of the locations we were going to were very close together). And then we ended up at Oil Can Harry’s. I had never been there before either, but it was great! Saturday nights are disco nights. Downstairs there is dancing and upstairs there is karaoke.

We did some dancing.

And the bride to be did some karaoke (sorry for the blurry pic, all I had was my phone).

And eventually, it was the end of the night and we headed back into the limo to go back to the apartment to enjoy some dessert.

After then, it was getting close to 3am and I had to be up early the next day (and still drive all the way back home). I said goodbye to everyone, and laughed about the stripper penguin for the entire drive back.

I had the most fabulous night. I want to thank Jacole and Kelly for planning such an awesome event and inviting me. And thank you Marie for getting married so this party could be thrown for you! I’m so happy that Marie is getting married and I’m getting excited for my adventure in Texas for the wedding soon!

Oh, and an extra special thank you to our limo driver, Mike, who put up with all of our craziness all night.

And, he let us call him Magic Mike.

52 Weeks (or What Can I Do in a Year?)

One year from tomorrow will be my brother’s wedding in Kauai.

I’m excited for their wedding. I really like my brother’s fiancé, Krystle. She’s very nice, and she invited me to come up to San Francisco in April for her dress fitting. I’m excited to have her as my sister next year.

Since the wedding is in Kauai, clearly there will be some activities in the water at some point. Water activities involve swimsuits. The last time I wore a swimsuit was in 2006 and I looked like this:

I was about 100 pounds smaller than I am now. I wish I could go back to this time. I thought I was still so heavy, but looking back now, I know better.

So with the wedding one year away, that’s 52 weeks. And people say that a sensible weight loss is about 2 pounds a week. Therefore, it should be possible for me to lose 100 pounds by the wedding.

I’m not saying that this will definitely happen. I’ve tried to do this a million and a half times. I’ve failed most of those times. And the few times I’ve done it, it hasn’t been a sustainable way.

So I’m not trying to focus on losing 100 pounds. That’s too scary and too big. I’m going to try very hard to focus on losing 2 pounds a week.

That’s a very frustrating thing to do. I partially blame that on the crazy diets I’ve done in the past where having a 10 or 15 pound loss in the first week or two isn’t unreasonable. And most weeks I would lose at least 5 pounds a week. I also blame it on shows like “Biggest Loser” where when contestants lose less than 10 pounds a week, they feel like failures.

2 pounds a week doesn’t seem like enough in my head, even though when you add it up over 52 weeks it will be amazing. But I’ve always had trouble focusing on the small victories instead of the big picture.

The one thing I do have going for me right now to jump-start this is the fact that I’m on a soft food diet due to my temporary crown. So I’m living on a lot of yogurt, cooked veggies, and bananas right now. I know that this weight loss won’t be the norm, but at least it might get me motivated.

I don’t want to make this blog a focus on me losing 100 pounds before the wedding, so I probably won’t do a ton of updates of where my progress is. But I just wanted to share this with all of you. Even if I don’t lose 100 pounds, I’d love to have the confidence in a year to wear a swimsuit. Otherwise, I don’t think I’ll be having a lot of fun at the beach.

Planning Way Too Far Ahead (or I Want It Now)

I have a bad habit of thinking a million steps ahead. If I have a big audition, I’m already thinking how amazing the paycheck will be and how long I could survive on it. When I’m trying to lose weight, I don’t focus one pound at a time (as I should), I get overwhelmed by the number of pounds I want to lose.

I also plan very far ahead when it comes to events. I was good and waited until this month to buy a dress for my friend’s wedding in October. But I also bought stuff on that trip to wear at Thanksgiving and a holiday party I know I’ll be attending.

My brother is getting married in a little over a year. I was texting with his fiancée last night and she said that they are planning on getting married in Kauai. I’m pretty excited about that because I haven’t been to Hawaii since I was 11 or 12.

So of course, last night I was already looking at what dresses would work for a Hawaiian wedding (definitely not the dress I got for my friend’s wedding). But styles could change in the next year.

I could change in the next year.

I’ve never really had a stable weight. I’m always going up or down. I never know what size I’ll be in the future. So planning ahead is tough.

I’d love to lose a majority of my excess weight by their wedding (I know that it’s totally possible). But whenever I have set a weight loss goal for a major event, I’ve failed. And that failure makes me feel horrible about myself.

So right now, I’m enjoying “window shopping” online for dresses. And I’m trying to focus on the small goals with my weight. I’m trying to look at the non-scale victories, because those seem easier to control.

Hopefully, those little victories that have nothing to do with the scale will increase my confidence and decrease the number on the scale, even if I’m not looking or focusing on it.

This Weekend’s Shopping Adventure (or Still Trying to Find Some More Cute Dresses)

I’ve previously posted about how tough it can be to shop when you don’t fit into a “standard” size. I’ve got a few more events coming up in the future where I need some nice clothes, and I don’t have anything that would be weather/event appropriate. The event I’m most excited about is in October when my friends Marie and Chris are getting married! I’m traveling to Houston for that, and I want a fun dress to wear to their fun wedding.

On Saturday, Kiyonna is having their Sweet 16 Shopping Event. Everything is 20% off if you go shop at their boutique above their distribution center in Anaheim. Of course, I RSVPed for that event and I’ll be doing a bunch of shopping tomorrow. I’ve bought clothes full price at the store before and I’m excited to save some money this time!

I’m grateful that I’ve found a few stores where I can feel relatively confident that even if I won’t find what I’m looking for, I’ll find clothes that I can try on and that fit. That’s pretty important.

I hate the feeling of going in a dressing room with my arms full of clothes that I can’t wait to try on only to find out that not a single thing fits. Normally after that happens, I don’t even want to continue shopping, I just leave the store feeling defeated.

But I know on Saturday that I’ll be able to find clothes that fit. And I’ve been looking online and have found several dresses and tops that I’m super excited to try on. I’ll have to report back on Monday to let you know what I got (and what the damage is to my credit card).