A Few Fantastic Nights

If you haven't entered in for a chance to win the cruise voucher for a family of 4, make sure to go to this post and do so!

Last Friday, a couple tickets to Les Miserables were given to us. Mr. TRH and I were able to have such a special (it was totally unexpected too!) date. I LOVE going to plays, but usually, we are too busy, or some of the ticket prices are a lot more than I can bear, we hardly ever do that. Les Miserables was one of the plays that I have always wanted to see. It was so wonderful, and there were several parts that I needed a tissue. Seriously, why didn't I think to take some? There were many times I was tempted to wipe my tears (and runny nose) on Mr. TRH's shoulder... I admire and appreciate the talents that other people possess so much. It was just a fantastic night.

Talk about a fantastic night! One of the things we started doing as a family since we started living at my in-laws is... Family walks.

They live near a nice walking trail, and we decided to take advantage of that. The thing is that I usually can't go on the family walks because I can't walk too much. If I do, it will aggravate my vein problem and I will be in pain for several days. Though, we found a wheel chair that Mr.TRH's grandmother used to use in the garage.

Yeah, take it for a spin! We really enjoy the time we spend together.


The last time I took my camera with me. I was clicking happily while Mr. TRH pushed me around in the wheelchair. Look at this amazing cloud. Watching the kids having a ball, talking to Mr. TRH, and taking pictures randomly... it cannot get better than that, oh wait! It did. We had ice cream after the walk. :)

What is your happy maker lately?

Mother's day and ...

If you haven't entered in for a chance to win the cruise voucher for a family of 4, make sure to go to the the post and do so!

Hello! I have been scatter minded lately (as I talked to you a few posts ago...), but I have a lot of things that I have promised to do for blogging and non-blogging things. I have decided to make a list of them last night and clear my mind, and making a list may sound really simple, but boy it helped me so much to prioritize!

One thing I started doing today is making a flower arrangement for my friend's daughter's reception. Mainly, they are using real flowers, but they needed a flower arrangement with silk flowers as well. I haven't seen the flowers they ordered and I have no idea how they are going to arrange them. The only clue I have is the picture of the flowers and color scheme... hmmm... I hope I can make it work.

How was your mother's day? Mine was very relaxing and I enjoyed my family and extended family's company. I received a mother's day gift and cards from Mr.TRH and our kids. One of the cards I got from Rachel read:

Dear Mom,

Thank you for marrying my dad. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.

love

Rachel

That was totally unexpected, and just gave me a huge grin. Seriously, what do you say to that? "your welcome?" :)

The day was a great reminder of how lucky I am to have the family that I have. Especially, to be a mother to all my kiddos.

I will share the flower arrangement when I am done. The wedding is getting close, and I should get working on it!

Summer is Near Necklace

I have been wanting to create a necklace that looks delicate, versatile, and has a little more detailed design than just stringing beads. I drew up some designs and came up with this...

I was pretty happy with how it turned out, and had to take this for a test run. The beads and pearls I used are light beige, and as I predicted, it is pretty versatile with many different outfits. It has enough presence but it doesn't scream out "Look, I am here!"... this is exactly what I wanted. :)


I am going to make this with white or ivory beads & pearls in the near future. I think it will be a great addition to my summer wardrobe.

Norwegian Cruise Giveaway

It is that time of the year again…the kids will be out of school for the summer, and we get to have fun! We get to visit the fun places in our local area, such as museums, fun centers and pool. Plan a summer picnic with family and friends. Play outside all day and watch movies till their eyes droop. Sure, there are lots of things to do every day, but I also love going on a big family vacation too.

I don’t know about you, but it’s not like we can afford a costly family vacation every year. That is why when we have the opportunity to do so, it is such a big deal for us. To make sure that we get the maximum fun for our modest budget, I get busy researching and planning for our trip. What do I do and where to start? There are a few key points I think about when I am planning for our trip. 1. Where do we want to go? 2. What is our budget? 3. How do we get there? 4. Where do we to stay? 5. What kinds of activities are there? Are they going to satisfy everyone? What kind of restaurants are nearby? Of course your list might contain something different from mine, or the order might be different, but for our family vacation planning, those are the things that come to mind. Let me share some examples how I planned our family vacation according to my list…The last couple big vacations we took was to Lego Land and Sea World one year, and Disneyland another year.

Because we wanted to take our children to those places for a long time, the answer to the question No.1 was easy. The No. 2 question on the list… budget… Mr. TRH and I already had a budget, but we decided to add a bit extra just in case (which turned out to be a good thing… on one of our trips, our van broke down after we got to our hotel, we needed repairs and that cost us over $300!). No.3 on the list “how to get there?” took me a very long time, here is why. Because we drove instead of flying, I looked at the actual map and got on Google maps. I not only looked at the route from our home to the destination, after I decided on questions No.4 and 5, I went back and marked all the places we wanted to go. Then, printed out all the directions on how to get from point A to B, B to C, then C to A and such; then I put everything in a binder. You might think that this is unnecessary, but I am glad I did. Our navigator system wasn’t working, and we weren’t familiar with that area at all! That planning totally helped us and we never had problems finding places.

The next thing on the list was where we are going to stay. I started looking for all the nearby hotels. Comparing their prices, location, and all the amenities are very important. Also, some hotels have special offers such as combining hotel stay and Lego land/Disney Land park tickets. I spent a long time looking for great deals and it was totally worth it! No. 6 on the list is amenities, activities and restaurants. Since our vacations have been pretty economical ones, our family is pretty easy to please. Here are the few things I look for… a pool at the hotel is a “must”, being able to watch movies in our room, having a small refrigerator, and a microwave would be nice. I also look for other activities to do, and finding interesting restaurants is one of the exciting parts for our family. Phew… I feel like planning for the family vacation is a lot of effort and time. Don’t you agree? That is why one of my dream family vacations is to go on a cruise!

 

Have you checked out Norwegian Cruise Line lately? I have been doing some reading on their site and found out many awesome things about them! They offer Freestyle Cruising, there are so many activities and entertainment for people of all age groups, and the youth program seems very interesting. I have children ages 7 to 12 years old, and a 5 year difference at this age is pretty big. If we were taking our family on a cruise, I would want to make sure that we will all have fun. On their kids and youth program, there are many things that caught my eye. I know my kids will surely enjoy something like CIRQUE DU JOUR (a circus program) and many of their sporting activities. There are of course overall family-friendly ship features to enjoy too. After all, we go on a family vacation to enjoy each other and make lots of fun memories.  Head over to Norwegian’s site and find out more about their family vacation options.

 

Now, Norwegian and BlogHer are doing a sweepstakes for one grand prize - a cruise voucher for a family of 4!! This is one prize for all the blogs in the program---not a family cruise for each blog. “What is your dream vacation for your family?”  Answer in the comments section below for a chance to win!

 

Sweepstakes Rules: No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: "#SweepstakesEntry"; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry. The Official Rules are available here.

Entries from all participating blogs will be pooled for winner selection; only two entries per household. This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. This sweepstakes will run from 5/7/2013 to 6/2/2013. Be sure to visit Norwegian Cruise Line's brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts! 

 

Good luck everyone!

Scatter Brained, Delayed Projects

I am leaving to pick up the kids in the middle of a project...At the end of last week, our house building process finally started to show some progress. After I picked the kids up from school, I drove by the site to see if there were any changes on our lot and there were... They started digging!! As I was watching them digging the ground I had a huge grin on my face; I was so excited and simply couldn't help it. I just sat there and watched them dig for a while. I know they were working hard, but I felt like the process wasn't moving quickly enough. Oh, how I wished I could just jump in there with shovel to help them dig!

Ever since our family moved to our temporary place, my driving each day has increased. Now my kids' school is 5 cities away instead of 2 cities. I am saying this to myself every day, "This is only temporary, and less in than a month they will be out of school".

I have been busy with other things too, and that leaves very little time for my projects.

Though my friends, I am still here. I can't wait to share my new ideas and projects with you in the near future.

One of the other things is that contributing to my "Scattered Brain Syndrome" is that I have been thinking a lot about how I am going to decorate my new house. I go through the entire house in my mind and try to picture how I am going to decorate each room. I can't wait to share the interior decorating process once we move in. It will probably be a slow process because I really want to create lots of things myself, instead of buying everything from the furniture store.

Ambitious (or insane)? Maybe I just love the process of creating our living space from a "house" to a "home".

I would love to hear your decorating stories and tips. Is there favorite area in your house? Where and why? I am looking forward to hearing from you!

Hat-ology

Well, "hatology" might be too big of a title for this post, but basically I just wanted to talk about hats and my love for them today.

It was about 3 weeks ago... Mr. TRH and I were packing to move. In the middle of a really, I mean critically busy time packing our belongings I ran into my hat collection. Then, I had a desire to write about my hats. I started taking pictures of them and dragged Mr. TRH to take my pictures with some of my hats (sorry, hun).

My earliest memory with hats is of a very unattractive cap we all had to wear at gym class at elementary school. They were just regular shaped caps, and were reversible. One side was red, and the other side was white. So when we are separated into teams, one team would wear the red side, and the other team would wear the white side. I didn't like how I looked in that cap and the elastic went under my chin was very tight, and I never liked it.

I didn't wear any form of hat for a long time after that until I graduated from high school.

One day I was at a store when I saw this wool bucket style hat... it is a rather plain looking hat, but for some reason I fell in love with it. Yeah, I guess I could say that this hat started my love for hats.

Over the years my hat collection grew. All of my hats are not expensive at all. Most of the times I find them at Target, TJ Maxx, and some other retailers. Also, I never go shopping thinking that "I am going to buy a hat today". It's just happens. I just happen to find one I really like.

What I found out about buying hats is that, it is not always "more expensive is better". As I mentioned, I tried on some really pricey beautiful hats before for fun but when I looked in the mirror, it didn't look good on me at all. On the other hand, one of my most worn favorite hats came from Target; I only paid $15.

Hats are like sunglasses, you don't know until you wear it if it suits you or not. I am not an expert, but I think many things affect which hat is suitable or not for the person. For example, the shape of the head, width and height of the forehead, facial type, so on and so forth. Also, keep in mind what kind of clothes you own when you are trying to decide which hat to buy. I love checking out men's hats too.

I really love Fedora Hats. I own more of this style than any other style of hat. They go well with pants, and sometimes, I wear them with maxi dresses and skirts too.

This one is kind of a mix of Fedora and Homburg in my opinion. I love the color combination.

The straw hat with BIG brim is my "must have" during the summer to protect my face from the strong sun.


This flat cap is also one of my most beloved hats. It is made out of linen, and I wear this three out of the four seasons.


These conductor/Military style hats are made out of wool and velvet (the black one). They are such a fun and casual design that’s perfect for when wearing pants.

Beret is such a cute hat, I feel like whenever I wear one I'm a bit more girly. There are so many variations out there, but those are my favorites.

As you can see, I am pretty neutral in the color choices of my hats, because I want to wear them with many different outfits. I want the hat to be part of the outfit, not to stand out by itself to distract the whole image. Although, sometimes I can't help myself, I can be drawn to a hat with a little drama (really, it still has conservative colors).

Hats can spice up a simple wardrobe. Some hats are for practical use, and some are simply to make a statement. Whichever it is, I am so glad that I tried on the first wool hat despite the memories of the awful red and white reversible hat. :)

Do you love hats? What is your favorite style?

Jewelries 2 ~ Spring ~

Since the last post, I made some more jewelry. I have been wanting to list them on my Etsy shop, but each process takes a long time and I have been putting it off. I guess I really enjoy creating something, but I am not ambition enough at marketing and the other aspects of running a business.

Are you ready to take a look at what I have been working on?

The first pieces are these earrings. I wear more silver than gold, but I love how these pair turned out. Don't you think they look a little antique-ish?

I had these parts for a while; I finally made up my mind on what to do with them. I threaded them with silver pearl and made them into a bracelet. I know this will go with many different outfits.

Then, I decided to play with some antiqued brass finished chains. I combined four different types of chains to create this bracelet. I have to say, this is one of my favorite pieces.


If you have been reading my blog for a while, you probably have a pretty good idea that I have weakness for ruffles, laces and stuff. Wouldn’t it be so lovely if I could wear a lace motif necklace?

Lace motif by itself is wonderful; but how about 3 times the lace motif? Awesome!

After making fairly simple jewelry pieces, I wanted to make something with more detail. How about some fun bracelets with spring/summer colors?

After going through my jewelry making supplies, I know what I have and what I want to make with them. I am excited as they come along, but I started missing my sewing machine too... :)