Say what? 

Since I got my DSLR a few years ago, I’ve gotten better at taking photographs…of everyone else.  I’ve noticed that when I pass the camera to my hubby, my child, etc. to take a picture of me, the results are usually the same:  fuzzy, out of focus, off-centered, bad exposure.  Ever since I had kids, I’ve noticed I’m always absent from pictures.  I take them of the hubby and the kids.  Just the kids.  But me with anyone?  Rarely.  And the problem is exacerbated now that I tote around a DSLR with me.  In the beginning, I used to shy away from photos.  Being a new mom, you get self-concious of the weight, fatigue, dark circles, and sudden onset loss of fashion sense.  However, I’ve learned to realize this is absolutely STUPID to think this way.

Why?  Because when you are gone from this world, the children you love and want the best for, will be cherishing any photo and momento of you.  This is why I have the blog.  This is why I am going to do a “12 Months of Me” project.  Yes, I’m going to take a picture of myself every month. So at the end of the year, at least for 2012, my kids will have a portfolio of their mother at age 37.

Oh..and if you are wondering.  I had to take this pictures myself.  HEAHAE!!!

So how did I start my year off?  In my usual manner, with my husband and kids.  I have to preface everything with the explanation that my hubby’s family has the tradition of making it mandatory that every member of the family is present in the house at exactly midnight.  Cool huh?  Yes, if you are 5.  But the tradition was maintained well into my hubby’s adulthood.  So let’s just say my hubby and I are not used to celebrating New Year’s Eve MTV-style with lots of peers, loud music, drinks, and slurred speech.  Bummer?  Not so much.  Our own family tradition is to now have a slumber party with our kids on NYE.  We pick a room in the house (in the past it has been the family room, play room, and this year…the guest room.  Knowing my family, one day we’ll all decide on the kitchen…brrr!).  But first, we always celebrate with our families, of course, through food.

New Year’s Eve we had fancy lunch with my family.  A few hours later we had fancy dinner with my husband’s family.  By 7:30PM, our eagerness to go home and fall asleep was disrupted by a pleasant surprise from our kids.  They told us to change our clothes into anything green.  When we left our bedroom, we found this sign:

Before entering the guest bedroom (which is where the sign was directed to), we found this other sign:

My oldest had prerecorded a video on the iPad getting me and the hubby “hyped up” for New Year’s Eve (a commercial if you will).  We entered the room and found the guest room decorated for a NYE party:

No, this isn’t the costume set for Gnomeo and Juliet.  The girls had stacks of party hats with stickers to decorate with.  Here is my decorated hat:

Our lovely buffet of grapes and strawberries.  Yes, those are Little Mermaid birthday plates.  The wine glasses were apparently for the Moet and Martinelli’s sparkling cider we had.  We like to keep things classy around here.

The kids planned tons of activities.  Including a guessing game which involved post-its and squeezing kid-size headbands on my head.  The word I had to guess was “lamp” (pardon me, the pic was taken in a dark room w/my cell phone).

My favorite activity though was creating envelopes of our summaries of 2011 and wishes for 2012.  We decorated an envelope as a family with “2011″ and wrote all of our favorite memories, accomplishments, etc. of the year and dropped them in the envelope with a picture of the family.  We decorated a second envelope with “2012″ and each of us wrote our wishes for each other for the new year.  We voted to seal it up and not read them until next NYE.

To top the evening off, we are fortunate to have tons of neighbors that disobey the fireworks laws and produce their own fireworks spectacular in their backyards:

2012 is off to a terrific start!

Lesson Learned:  If you can’t quiet yourself enough to enjoy simple moments with your loved ones, you aren’t experiencing life to the fullest.

Champorado is a classic filipino chocolate rice porridge.  Normally eaten with a side of fried fish, I have only had it as a breakfast (think of a chocolate substitute for oatmeal) or dessert dish.  My mother used to make this all the time and when she did, I saw unicorns and rainbows!  The recipe below is how she used to make it-sweet, with lots of coconut milk, bittersweet chocolate, and evaporated milk…nom, nom!  Other recipes I’ve seen only use plain water to cook the sweet rice, which I can see could compliment fish pretty decently.  However, the version I have below is practically a dessert.

Disclaimer:  I’m a cook and not a chef.  My mother passed away when I was 18 and I basically go by my memory of how she cooked it.  The measurements probably aren’t exact.  So don’t blame me if it isn’t as fab as mine!

Ingredients:

1 c. sweet rice (NOT regular rice…you should be able to find this in a filipino/asian market)

1 can coconut milk

evaporated milk

sugar

bittersweet baker’s chocolate (1 large bar or more according to how chocolatey you want it!)

Directions:  Boil the rice in water (usually the amount is double, but I just eyeball it…sorry!).  When most of the water has cooked into the rice (and the rice is cooked!), pour in the can of coconut milk.  Break the bittersweet chocolate into pieces into the mixture.  Stir to melt into a soup and take off of heat.  Ladel into a bowl, sprinkle sugar on top to taste, and drizzle evaporated milk on top.  Eat and enjoy!

The real trick here is to use bittersweet chocolate. The darker the better!

When I eat this dish, I totally think of my childhood.  I’ve had champorado outside the home and it has never tasted like my mom’s recipe.  Hope someone out there finds this just as delicious as me!

Sing in the style of Jodeci:  “Forever my lazy…it’s like a dream!  I’m holding you close, you’re keeping me warm…”

Yes…it is very warm!

I procastinated and asked my sister to take our family photo for our card just a week before Christmas.  Here are some of the attempted shots that didn’t make the cut:

Our dog wasn’t cooperating.

We thought this resembled a VC Andrews novel too much…plus the shadows were awful!

I love this one, we almost used it =)

Here’s the winning photo…

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for 2012!

So my daughter always gets to bring her birthday treat right around the time when her class is doing their holiday party.  We’ve done cupcakes, Christmas goodie bags, etc.  This year, due to the evaporating money in our bank account this holiday, we decided to do candy cane reindeer:

I was so happy to find a simple and inexpensive treat to give.  Obviously the candy canes can be easily found for 99 cents for a box of 12.  I got one pack of multicolored pipe cleaners from the dollar store as well.  The red pom pom noses came from AC Moore for a little over $2.  I tied the pipe cleaner onto the candy cane and wrapped each “antler” around a pencil multiple times to get the corkscrew effect.  The pom pom was glued on with craft glue. 

I would have glued on eyeballs (also found from the craft store), but the ones I had at home were way too big.  …and I didn’t feel like buying new ones…heahea (lazy)!  Maybe next year.

This past weekend I went to the hubby’s work holiday party.  So much fun!  I have to preface this post with explaining that I work (and have always worked) for the public school system.  Decadent holiday parties are a foreign language to us (actually…anything decadent is an alien concept to schools).  Holiday parties consist of the staff cooking breakfast for each other in the school cafeteria.  I have to show up by 6AM in order to be able to eat before work starts. Door prizes are non-existant. Entertainment, if we’re lucky, includes some generous volunteer strings students willing to wake up a few hours early to play during the breakfast.  And to set the tone of ambiance:  We turn the lights out in the cafeteria and eat by candlelight.  It’s actually a warm and nice celebration.  But it is a total polar opposite to the parties of my husband’s workplace.  So for those that work for large companies and are used to decadent holiday parties: Don’t be judgy.  Let me relish in my childlike wonder please =)

The centerpiece at my particular table was a tower of goodies from Harry and David.  Unfortunately, everyone at my table left to go dance on the dancefloor at one point.  When we returned we found someone had snagged it!  Boo!

Festive decor…

Couldn’t stay away from the dessert table.  Included was a cheesecake bar!

As I am writing this post, I realize I didn’t take many other pictures.  A good thing.  I must have been enjoying all the treats too much:  Tons of door prizes including iPads, iPod Touches, flat screen TVs (my hubby won a $50 gift card!), open bar, Starbucks coffee bar, photo booth, delicious buffet including the best shrimp and grits, karaoke room, and an awesome live band. 

I have to mention, I consider the live band awesome because they performed a mash up of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Cisco’s “Thong Song”.  Yes, it can happen.  And it was good.

The only regret I have for the evening…forgetting to wear my Spanx!

Lesson Learned:  When you are trapped in the poor-economy-no-raise-for-6-years-but-more-work bubble, it is hard to think that employers may still want to treat their employees well.  Surprise, surprise!

A few weeks ago we took a trip to the new American Girl store in Tyson’s Corner Center near Washington, D.C.  Yes, we took a trip just to visit this store.  If you don’t know what American Girl is, it is a line of 18″ dolls, clothes, and accessories.  They have signature dolls from past decades from the 1900s, 1930s, 1970s, and so forth.  Books accompanying each doll.  There are even American Girl dolls that you can buy that look just like you.  Commercialism got to me.  If it weren’t for the people who lived in my house before us, my kids would probably have never heard of American Girl dolls.  Once we moved in 8 years ago, we were still receiving the American Girl catalogs for the little girl that lived here prior.

For the past 8 years we’ve gone through pregnancy, grad school, preschool, a new car…and so forth.  Buying $100 dolls was not on our priority list or even our plane of reality.

However Santa was able to get my girls American Girl dolls last Christmas.

It brought tears to my 9 year old’s eyes.  For the first time, my girls had dolls that looked like them.  Which I really appreciate.  When I was a kid, all of my baby dolls had blond hair.  There is something contributed to identity when you can have a doll that looks like you.

So when my mother-in-law graciously gave my girls a generous sum of money to spend at the American Girl store, we decided to make a trip out of it.  I had heard the new store in Tysons was no where near the grandness of the one in NYC or some other cities, but it was still definitely worth the experience.

If any of you are thinking of getting an American Girl doll for your child, here are my thoughts:

1. Yes, they are crazy expensive.  The dolls never go on sale.  However, I can’t put a price on my kids being proud of dolls that look like them.  You don’t find asian dolls in your local Walmart or Target.

2. Accessories and clothes often go on sale online.  At the store you can find tons of boxes of clothing/accessory sets for ~$25.  I kept telling myself that these are collector’s items that can be passed down to my kids’ own children…I’ve got to teach them how to keep these safe!

3. The store itself is pretty neat.  There are doll holders in the bathrooms and the in-store cafe/bistro.  There are multilple floors of dolls, clothes, and accessories everywhere you look.  Some people have described this as scary, but it feels a bit like Disneyland.

4. You probably will get caught in the doll salon experience.  Tons of girls and their parents are ligned up at the salon to get their doll’s “hair done”.  What does this mean?  You pick a hairstyle (mainly braiding) and someone will spray the hair down with water and do it up.  Oh yes, and this will cost you $15-20.  And yes, I got it done for my kids…sigh…along with $10 ear piercing (covers head in shame).

5. There is also a T-shirt service where you can design a shirt for your doll and yourself.  The designs are pre-made.  I thought you could design it with your child’s name and the name she gave to the doll, but you just picked designs.  That set me back ~$30…yes, I did that too.

If it weren’t for my mother-in-law and recently being blessed with extra contract work the past year, none of this would have happened.  But I’m happy it did. 

Lesson Learned:  Sometimes you just want to spoil the ones you love.  You’ll find you’ll spend insane amounts of money for insane things.  Don’t do it unless you can, you want to, and you will have no regrets.  I have no regrets.

A few weeks ago, I was so fortunate to have been able to travel to Atlanta for the O You! conference for O Magazine.  A…MA…ZING!!!  I have been wrestling with how to blog about it because there was just so much that happened.  It really did feel like I was in an Oprah episode…all day long!  Aside from the conference, this was my first trip as a mother that wasn’t work related.  I think once you have kids, you immediately consider your own individual fun as a last priority.  So if you are like me, when work suggests you attend a conference anywhere outside your city, you freak out at the chance to break the plane for at least a weekend.  So this was my weekend to break the plane, and I didn’t have to think about work for one second…divine!!

It was a weekend of many bucket list accomplishments:

1.  Take a trip with the girlfriends.  Not only did my good friend Nida join me for the trek, but I also got to meet some new friends @TessaTweets and @TaraTweeting!

2.  Eat at the Ritz Carlton.

3.  Visit CNN.  I used to have a fantasy wish to work there.

4. See Oprah.  (Didn’t get to meet her, but seeing her and listening to her speak rocked just the same!)

I could talk about the swag, the gift bag, the celebrity sightings and meetings, etc., but all of that seems insignificant to the sum of the weekend.  The ultimate reason I went there was to hopefully be inspired by the speakers, the messages, the attendees, and the experience.  I can honestly say I definitely hit the reset button.  Some of my favorite points of the day from the sessions:

“Belly fat squeezes the kidneys and raises blood pressure.”-Dr. Oz

Maybe not an awe-inspiring message, but it did make me think of some of the ones I love (and how I can support them on their journey in improving their health).  One of my friends just finished a mini-medical school course at the University of Virginia.  She said out of all that she has learned, preventing/managing high blood pressure was the most important lesson.  I want some of these people in my life to be around for a long time. 

“Don’t pass the message of “less” to your kids.” -Suze Orman

Now by “less”, Suze doesn’t mean less of the material things.  She always says “People first, then money, then things”.  As mothers, we often accept less from our own personal lives for the benefit of the family.  We sometimes suspend our own personal endeavors and dreams, deny ourselves personal time, deny ourselves time for our friends…the list goes on and on.  Don’t undervalue yourself, because if you do, your children will learn to do the same.  This resonated in me deeply.

“Make your life an alternation of rest and play.” -Martha Beck

I realize that an alternation of rest and play is exactly how I lived my life as a kid through until before I had my second child.  It’s not that my second child is a beast to take care of and manage, but my life was really too busy for my own good.  Unlike with my first child, I now had to work full-time.  My husband had just started graduate school.  I now owned a home, multiple cars, and was in crisis mode managing all of it.  Since then I’ve been in an alternation of feeling like I’m treading water and going comatose on my bed because my body gave out on all the day’s challenges.  So how can I make work feel like play?  I’m determined to figure that out.

“Why YOU? Because there ain’t no one better.  Why today?  Because tomorrow ain’t soon enough!”-Donna Brazile

When I saw Donna Brazile on the session list, I only knew of her through her political commentary on CNN and her past exposure as a presidential campaign manager.  She was so uplifting!  The quote speaks for itself.I loved this quote because it just raised the room of hundreds of people and elevated us like we were in church! 

“Every surface is an opportunity to tell your story.” -Nate Berkus

Ensuring that the things I use to decorate my house HAS to have some kind of personal meaning/value to it has been my interior design mantra.  However, as a result, my walls, tabletops, and shelves are pretty bare.  I really can’t get myself to buy things at the store for the sake of “it’s pretty” or “that will look great in this room”.   I don’t regret that, but I need to look into some of the personal items I have stored away that can be transformed to tell my family’s story.  

“Too much stuff strangles us of life.” -Peter Walsh

I really would like to live minimally, but it is very difficult when I have two kids and a husband who would like to live the complete opposite.  I am obsessed with the Goodwill bags I get at my door every month. I fill the bags up every time, but the stuff keeps accumulating!  I am making a dent in it.  Now i just have to organize what is left over.

There were many other speakers including an opening from Gayle King (who I got to meet!), a keynote from Lisa Ling, and sessions with Bob Greene, Andrew Glassman, and even more.  Their messages were also just as meaningful.  The conference, the chance to get away, the bonding time with girlfriends…all of it definitely helped me readjust my attitude.  I have changed my paradigm at moving forward day to day and it has made a world of difference. 

Something tells me I’m going to see Oprah again next year.  And the year after that.  And the year after that…

I’ve also always wanted to attend a Food & Wine Festival.  Last year my hubby and I started plans on taking a couples trip to Miami for the South Beach Food and Wine Festival.  We were able to scrounge enough money for airfare and hotel.  But when we saw the tickets for events we pressed on the breaks.  We decided to wait until we could actually afford at least one of the “big celebrity chef” events.  Right now we could afford a wine tasting from someone pulled off the streets!

So this weekend there was an Italian festival with cooking demos from Teresa Giudice from Real Housewives of New Jersey (her husband Joe was in the audience) and Fabio Viviani from Top Chef.  It was a ticketed event that I found out about at the last minute (so glad I bumped into that poster).  The cost wasn’t that much at all, but surprisingly it was a very small intimate event.  They set up a tent with tables that felt like an italian family restaurant.  So gorgeous!

Teresa came in wearing a chef’s coat, but she barely did any cooking!  I think her demo lasted 5 minutes and the rest was Q&A!  Have to say she was very charming and everything she said/responses to questions were exactly like her individual interview responses on the show.   You just can’t help but adore it when someone keeps saying “ingredientses” and “beauty has to come from without”! 

Her husband Joe recorded her whole presentation.

Fabio showed how to make homemade gnocchi…so easy!  At least it sounds so easy.  Think I’ll try it this week.

He even came out into the audience so we could get a good look at what the finished dish…yummy and smelled so good!

Me and Joe Giudice.  Taking this pic of him was like leaning up against a stone statue…he is one solid muscle!

Me and Teresa Giudice.  After we took the picture her hair got caught in my bracelet!  Fortunately I didn’t pull any of her hair out and there was no table flipping!

Me and my favorite Top Chef, Fabio Viviani….he is soooo hilarious!  He needs his own show.

Me and my autographs.  If you look at the one from Fabio, he totally jacked up my name when I was spelling it out to him.  But that is okay =)  He was so apologetic.  At least I have a little story about it…

Lesson Learned:  Meeting celebrities is not overrated.  …oh and italian cooking is delicious!