Fact.

Yes, chocolate pairs well with wine. But it also pairs fantastically with a dark beer, or 5.

Nieces are so much fun. Especially when you can buy them sugary treats and then leave them with their momma the rest of the day 😉

I’m pretty close with one of my cousins, who is about a month younger than me, started dating her husband just days before me & Chris, got married a month before us, lives 1 mile away…and just had a sweet little baby boy!!

When I’ve been wearing my hair long for too much time, I want to chop it off. So I do.

Truffle fries from Moo Creamery are AMAZING.

Sometimes my crazy dog likes to snuggle.

ABC, 123

I stole this from Morgan, because I needed some kind of reason to blog 🙂

A. Age: 26

B. Bed size: Queen – we definitely need a larger bed, mostly because our dogs like to take up THE WHOLE THING.

C. Chore that you hate:  All…buuuut, probably cleaning the bathroom is my most hated.

D. Dogs: Yes, two. Tundra the Husky & Sadie the mini Aussie.

E. Essential start to your day: Hitting snooze. Twice.

F. Favorite color: Dark grey, mustard, purple…it kind of depends on the time of year!

G. Gold or Silver: Silver fo sho, but bronze is better than both!  I really am not a fan of gold at all.

H. Height: 5’6″

I. Instruments you play: None, but I have played the piano and drums when I was a young lady.

J. Job title: Uhm, I guess Engineer Assistant or Drafter? Basically I do everything. Oh and Cupcake Extraordinaire.

K. Kids: None, just the dogs and cat.  Which are definitely our children! For now. 😉

L. Live: The armpit of California.

M. Mother’s name: Coleen

N. Nicknames: I don’t really have one, sometimes people call me Lyss.

O. Overnight hospital stays: None! *knock on wood*

P. Pet peeves: Just one? I would say on a daily basis is rude/bad/crappy/slow drivers.

Q. Quote from a movie: I suck at remembering quotes from anything. Or remembering anything at all in general. SORRY.

R. Right or left handed: Righty.

S. Siblings: I have a sister, Kristin, who is a year and a half younger than me, but 6 inches taller!

T. (This was missing how about..) Tacos: Yes I love tacos, fish tacos are my most favorite any day of the week.

U. Underwear: Yes I wear them.

V. Vegetable you hate: GREEN BEANS. Duh, have you read my profile?  That’s the only vegetable, and probably food, I won’t eat.

W. What makes you run late: My husband? HAHA. Hmm, kind of true. Also, my procrastination skillz.

X. X-Rays you’ve had: Just teeth I believe.

Y. Yummy food that you make: Cupcakes! And basically anything I make is bound to be delicious. BAM!

Z. Zoo animal: I love them all. Especially penguins and fennec foxes!

End of week love

Man, I’ve had a really tough week. Can’t go into details…I don’t even knowwwww.  One thing I can talk about that happed this week is our turtle died 😦 He was a really small guy and he was actually our first pet Chris and I got about a month or two after we moved into our old apartment together. RIP Fred, he was a cutie. I love my animals mucho. Even if they aren’t the cuddly kind!

Anyways, some happy things!!!!…

We love the show Parenthood, but I hadn’t really watched all of the episodes in Season 1, so I bought it last week and actually finished it last night!  Lots of little details about the show make sense now. I love all the characters. (Okay maybe not Jasmine. Ugh.)

I’m not usually a cookbook person, or a book person for the matter; however, I was browsing some books on Amazon to learn more about baking, and I came across Baked it looked pretty awesome.  I got it last week, and read through the entire thing, and I LOVE it.  It is packed with tips and really amazing looking recipes, and they are from a bakery so that makes it even more awesome 🙂  Oh and it also stole my heart because there are woodland/deer motifs throughout, drooooool.

 The Head and the Heart. Still obsessed with them. So good.

 I know, I’m lame. I love Scentsy. This is my new favorite scent, Oats & Honey. It smells SO good.  I even bought the spray, and have been spraying it around my house. If you have  Scentsy warmer I definitely suggest you get it!

I need this cupcake stand so bad. Too bad it’s $148 (REALLY? So dumb). I’m on a mission to find a cheap knock-off.

 Chris and I signed up at a gym again (FINALLY) and started working out on a regular basis, and with that means eating healthier.  We are doing really good so far. I stepped on a scale the other day and just about died, I have a ways to go but that’s ok. I’ve never been obsessive about weight, I just want to FEEL good.  I’m tracking what I eat and how much I workout every day on Livestrong.com. I used to use it religiously a few years ago and it really made me want to not be so lazy.  I’m also pretty excited because Chris is actually more into being healthy than ever, it was kind of weird going to the store and having him be concerned about what was in we were buying 🙂

Ten

Easter cupcakes from this weekend 🙂 I tweaked my coconut cupcake recipe a bit (subbed coconut milk for buttermilk, so good).

I have quite a few cupcake recipes I want to share, but don’t really have the energy/patience right now to put them together and post them, so hopefully later this week!  Instead, I’m stealing this “Ten on Tuesday” thing from a bunch of bloggers.  Also, I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend! Ours was super busy (baking, gardening, family stuff) and I feel like I got no rest after a super long work week. Oh well! Here goes.

1. How many blogs do you read every day and what are they? (I’m talking the ones you NEVER miss)
I have all my blogs categorized in my Google Reader and I have a “friends” category that I try and read first out of everything else.  I usually have about 4-5 of those that post every day. I also try to read my handful of wedding and food blogs as well. Obviously, cupcake are most important 😉

2. How many “best friends” do you have? Do you have different “besties” for different areas of your life?
I would  say that I have quite a few friends that I consider “best friends”!  They aren’t people that I can spend all my extra time with (most live hours away), but they are people I have been friends with from the days of Jr. High to high school, to meeting just a few years ago. I feel like I can easily connect with them through chat/email/texts, and we try to get together often!

3. What’s your daily make up routine?
It’s kind of changed in the past few months. Here goes. Moisturizer, primer, a bit of good foundation, some BE mineral veil, blush, a dark brown eyeliner (on top only) and mascara. Oh and usually just chapstick, I’m not a lipstick kind of gal. It’s kind of rare these days that I wear eyeshadow, but I do sometimes.

4. What is your ideal girl’s night?
I’m kind of a fan of staying in and being lazy, so watching movies, playing games and drinking beer/wine.  Throw in some snacks and cupcakes, and that pretty much sounds perfect.

5. Do you keep up with your nails/toenails or are they au natural?
My toes are always painted (by ME), because it always lasts so long!  I like to have my nails painted but it’s so much of a pain to keep up; it seems like my nails just start chipping to fast/easily. So I would say maybe half they time they are painted.

6. What’s your best roommate story (assuming you had a roommate at some point in your life)?
Is it weird that I’ve never had a roommate? I lived at home during the time I was going to college, and I moved out at 20 into an apartment with Chris! I guess he was my only roommate, since we didn’t get married until FOUR YEARS later. (4 years, can you believe that! :p )   So I wish I had a good story, but sadly I don’t.

7. What’s your “go to” outfit that you wear more than anything else?
I’ve been in a crappy body image mood lately and kind of don’t like a lot of my clothes. I have a favorite pair of jeans and a couple shirts that sort of make me happy, along with some flats (of course). Nothing exciting!

8. Do you have a beauty secret?
If you knew me you wouldn’t be asking me beauty questions, hah!

9. Did you read Seventeen magazine growing up?
I probably bought a few, but I wasn’t really into that whole girly magazine thing. It’s just not me.

10. How did you learn to put on makeup?
I have no idea. My mom never wore a ton of makeup really, and so I guess just from friends and watching other people?

The Blahs

I’ve been struggling in recent months trying to find a balance. There are days and weeks when I am swamped at work, or so mentally tired from work that all I want to do is go home and do absolutely nothing. It’s so draining! Most of the time I feel like I have zero energy, and it shows by my dirty, unorganized house, unkept yard, piles of dirty laundry everywhere, dogs in need of exersize, etc. Oh and also, things that I normally enjoy doing in my free time, like going for walks, taking the dogs out, crafting, my Etsy shop, blogging, reading blogs.

I feel so lame even complaining because I cannot imagine doing all of that plus having kids! Maybe it’s the wedding planning that is added to that mess. Or the fact that I loathe summer and the heat makes me a grump.

So I am kind of looking for tips I guess. I feel like I am stuck in a rut. I am super happy and excited with wedding planning things, but everything else is such a mess it’s sometimes hard to even BE excited about that. Just more things I have to add to my do-list. Do you guys ever feel like that? How do you have energy after a long day of draining work do get things done?

End rant! Thanks for reading my mess 🙂 Hah!

randoms

Some random thoughts and what not…

Putting wedding invites in the mail tomorrow!
Been working too much 😦
…don’t want to work!
My house is a mess…
…but I’ve been too busy to want to clean!
..I’m gross, apparently.
I miss my friends.
I wish I had time to craft, and work on my Etsy shop.
I’m ready to move.
I’ve been visiting Modcloth.dom daily.
I need to learn more about my camera.

So yeah, super exciting. That’s all I’ve got now! Pizza time!

Captured

I took this last Friday off for an extra long weekend, because we had a few friends staying with us. Here are some snippets of my weekend – cell phone picture version 🙂 

A drive from Bakersfield to LA.

I was determined to find a good eatery in LA that had been feaured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. I made a list of all the places in LA, and we ended up at Oinkster. We also happend to see a famous person! Zach del la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine was eating solo and having a heated conversation on his cell phone, hah. (Ok, so I definitely wouldn’t have known who it was if it wasn’t for someone else who pointed him out, shh).

I had the Oinkster Pastrami and it was FAB. Note to self, order plaintains instead of fries next time (I tried a friend’s an they were AMAZING).

We ended Friday evening walking around Hollywood & Highland Ave.

We stayed the night in LA, then had a gigantic breakfast Saturday morning, followed by a pitstop at Ikea on the way back home.

 

The rest of the weekend was spent doing random things and thrifting 🙂

 

This caught my eye in a local antique store because Jimaie had just purchased something similar. I may or may not have picked it up for her to match 🙂

I didn’t buy this bitty-squirrel-on-a-nut but I thought it was hilar!

We also went to see peacocks at a local park, and I finally got a good picture of an albino peacock! We lured her in with french fries 🙂

My friend Mallory and I.

I hope you had a lovely weekend!! I promise to post more soon, including our guest room makeover 😀 yay!