Day One of BLOGMAS- Where Have I been? Spilling the tea..

HIIIII Everyone. I am back.

I just finished my MASTERS program, while working full-time with four children one being only 2 years old. It was a challenge, but now I have more free time. I've been doing yoga and meditation to rid myself of all the extra stress and negativity.

If you don't know, I now live in the United States and I am no longer married. This is a whole new world I've been adjusting to for the last three years. You'd think I'd have it down by now, but I still learn everything the hard way. I believe I learn things the hard way in order to help others in a  empathatic, non-judgemntal, caring way. I find myself to be very wise although I also feel very naive. Oh well.

I've tried several times to create a new blog, but I just couldn't. I wanted to leave the past in the past, but the past is what has made me the woman I am today. The woman I was then is much different than the woman I am now.

I am still totally a foodie, a beauty junkie, traveler, and lover of photography. It's all about finding time and saving enough money. All these things I will continue to share along with my family and other aspects of being a working mom doing the damn thing. There are many things that makes my situation quite unique that I will not elaborate on right now. However, when I hear or read about women in a similar situation as mine, I get so giddy- haha. But we are so damn busy to even spark up a proper greeting or at least I am. I am too busy for anything especially with older kids getting into everything outside the home and a baby who gets into everything inside the home.

So why did I decide to do BLOGMAS? Well, I am kind of a youtube junkie and I love when my favorite vloggers do vlogmas. It's where they vlog everyday. I know some people find it trivial to follow "regular" people, however, I love it because I am nosy and look for inspiration everywhere haha. I feel like blogmas is a way to get back to blogging, but also hopefully inspire that mom who doesn't think she is doing enough- which is me almost 100% of the time 65% of the time hehe.


Day 1 was a day at home. I work all week so I enjoy my rest. My son had a soccer day that my boyfriend who is also his coach took him to. I stayed home and did my yoga as well as meditated, played with the babies.

 I also decided to dust some old cookbooks off to use. My kids ask me why I don't use them anymore. Well it’s sad, but I thought I didn’t  need them and the internet is so much easier when I need to tweak a recipe or find one quickly. After going through them I didn’t realize how much I missed them! So this week, I am cooking straight from the books.  I did my meal plan and as I work 40 hours plus over time- which is an additional 10-20 hours a week- so the more simple the better.

This is the very first cookbook I bought over a decade ago. I look at it now and when they say basic it's truly basic haha. But the recipes are easily tweakable and we all enjoyed it then, so why be boujee about it now haha.


Also we haven't done any decorating for Christmas yet, but Elf Skywalker has decided to pay a visit today.

The kids were cautiously excited. The baby just wants the candy haha.

I also to bring some christmas cheer in this home, I decided to bake cookies every weekend and everyday during the 12 days of Christmas. So that may mean making some dough in advance haha.

I made Ina Garten's Pecan Sandies. I also added Hershey kisses to some because.....why not?

The kids and the elf enjoyed them.

Thank you for reading and see you all here tomorrow <3 p="">

Tips For Buying Halloween Costumes for Military Members Overseas

Well folks, it's August so it's about that time to start thinking about Halloween. Yes, Halloween. When you're overseas you have to prepare for holidays well in advance. My husband and I were shopping at the commissary and we noticed that there was Halloween candy out! So yeah it's time to get on it. 

I've lived overseas for 9 years and of 5 of them, I and the kids went trick or treating at Halloween. What I learned is that if you're not so crafty (like me), you must buy your Halloween costumes well in advance. If you're one of the lucky ones who can sew and make their kids' costumes from scratch.....GOOD FOR YOU :P lol I'm not hating, I promise. Ok, maybe I am.

I made my son's costume when he was 5 and whilst trick-or-treating, he made me promise to never ever make another costume for him again. My daughter loved her cat costume and still remembers it to this day. My son has nightmares about his however.....dang where did I go wrong.

As I am scouring through pinterest looking for costume and decorating ideas, it struck me that maybe I should share with my fellow military families, the newbies at least, my experiences with Halloween costumes. I had plenty of time to get things totally WRONG. So learn from my mistakes! Trust me. Living here in Japan now hopefully we learned our lesson!

TIP #1

Make sure your kids are totally sure who/what they want to be by early-mid September. There aren't a lot of great choices at the PX/BX and if there are any they're whisked away with a quickness like anything else that's awesome overseas. And people often buy multiples of the same dang costume and they only have one kid! 

 So look online now in August, like me. My daughter wants to be Frankie Stein from Monster High and my boys want to be Mario and Luigi.....again. But of course they outgrew last year's costumes and they wore their costumes all day everyday so they look too tattered to wear this year anyway if they were to fit well.

(www.buycostumes.com)

TIP #2

In the last couple years I've lived in Germany they extended their costumes choices from clowns, 'indians', witches, princesses, and cowboys to way more mainstream choices. I saw a few different costume choices at stores, but there aren't nearly as many choices as there are in America. They don't really do Halloween like Americans do and I am sure the Japanese don't either. Though in Germany it's definitely becoming bigger and they have the AWESOME Fasching in February.

(I bought my son this Iron Man costume shortly after the Ghost-Gate 2010 to get a head start on Halloween 2011, however he wore this to his Kindergarten's Fasching Party)

TIP#3 

Order before mid September because even online they run out of costumes and the orders may take longer because the high influx of orders coming in! If you live off base you can order from costume sites from stores in that country. For example, while I was living in Germany, I used amazon.de and amazon.co.uk often but there aren't a lot of choices, even if there are, it's still extremely expensive from my experience.

TIP#4

If you don't want to buy a costume,  make your own. There are a lot of websites to get tips from. My daughter was a cat in 2010. I just bought black tights, a black tutu, a friend of mine made ears which she glued to a headband and my daughter loved. www.parents.com have a lot of tips that I've used. From cakes to costumes they have a lot of fun easy DIY projects that I like. I love when easy and DIY are in the same sentence, don't you? But if you want something a bit different, make sure you know what you're going to do and buy any missing supplies in advance, because crafty things also move fast at BXs/Craft stores on base. Look off base but make sure you know where to go. You can also buy accessories online, but again, make sure you plan ahead.

(my daughter going for seconds on treats)

TIP#5

If ordering from Amazon and you're ordering in September or October (eek) make sure you order from Amazon and not another company. It'll take alot longer. Just order from the outside company directly, it's usually faster unless stated otherwise.

TIP#6

Walmart, Party City,  BuyCostumes, Target (it depends sometimes they do not ship some costumes to APO addresses for whatever reason) and Amazon ships pretty quickly. But shop around because there often deals where'd you wouldn't expect!

(Costumes purchased from www.walmart.com however the boys want to switch it up this year and it's ot available on walmart this year so far. Keep looking out, though!)

TIP#7

Have FUN!!!!!!!!! And make sure your kids know you get 10% of the candy loot since you're doing all of this work and all.

 

Hope this was helpful! Have a great Halloween!!!

January 1st, 2013 with Mama

I am trying to use my blog a lot more. So excuse me if there is a lot of randomness. I will really try hard to post some recipes here soon. I plan on baking a lot this week. Especially as my oldest has the week off this week!! This means more cooking and baking with the little ones, more half naked kids running around, sleeping in, playground visits, riding the streetcar around town, cuddling, and most of all driving my husband bonkers.

Today we celebrated big and loud with the exception of my lil man. He hates loud. But we like to scream as loudly as possible around the house after the "ball drops" to rid the house of any evil negative energy. 

Here are some photos from today and some 40 minutes prior to 1st

I dusted (wanted a clean start)

We celebrated with balloons.

With champagne and "champagne" for the little ones.

\

Even Candy Cane shot glasses (full of orange juice)

I baked cookies on New years Eve

I made our traditional doughnut breakfast

Cooked a good meal- Ribs with homemade asian bbq sauce, braised cabbage. and black eyed pea salad mm mmm mmmmm. and some wine ;-)

played barbies. they play with one another anyway they can 

Watch the kids get along in 10 minute spurts.

What a great day. I hope to end everyday reflecting on all the positive and learning from what didn't go well. Lately, more than ever, it's important to me to focus on what's happening right now. Sure I have preparations to make, but I will not let it consume me and distract me from what's going on now.

I hope everyone had a wonderful 1st of January. Hope this year is a great one for you all!!!!

My Children's Video Message to Santa Claus

Christmas means way more to me than buying or receiving presents. It's mostly about being thankful and spending time with my family. This Christmas is one I am the most excited about because we didn't do Thanksgiving, though I do not regret that one bit! I was anxious for Christmas, I wanted to decorate with the kids, bake with them, and do loads of Christmas crafts. However, I was in the final weeks of my first semester for most of December, so my holiday spirit kind of got soured.

But once school was finished, we got into some holiday cheer. We started our holiday traditions a little later than usual this year, but we got them done and had a fantastic time doing them. 

Last year I made a wonderful Christmas video. It was like a culmination of our Christmas and it got lost after my hard drive failed. However it did not deter me from trying again this year. We didn't get much footage this year, but we did make video messages for Santa Claus. People may say, Christmas is too commercial, it's not all about the presents, and some Fat Man Santa is getting all the credit blah blah blah! BUT the kids talking to Santa, all the extra crafts, getting presents is all going towards wonderful memories the kids will have. Also traveling, going to various of Christmas themed markets,  etc will stay with the kids. My children  have seen a lot this season, and they are so thankful and remember everything! My goal in Christmas is to make it as memorable as possible, so that when we are older the kids come over with their family they can see the many pictures and videos and appreciate the effort mom and dad put into making their Christmas magical and do the same with their little ones(if they have some)! 

I hope you all enjoy these videos

JJ's Loves Mario!

Mawa She has a HUGE crush on Eric from the Little Mermaid. She wants him under the tree

DD's He loves trains and respectful people