Blogathonning

Posted on October 1, 2011 by la_florecita

In January I went to BlogathonATX and it may have changed my life. Now I’m here again. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. Months. I don’t know when blogging regularly fell off my schedule but it did.

You: ARE YOU KIDDING? “Regularly” is not your strong suit. See: meditating, running, blogging, you can’t even wreck a journal.

Fine. So it’s my eternal challenge.

I told a friend of mine what I was doing today and she said, “Good, because your blog has been sucking.” I love honest friends.

I didn’t expect BlogathonATX to recharge me the way it did in January and I’m looking forward to learning whatever BlogathonATX has to offer me this time. Here we go…

Posted in blog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Accidental Life List Thing

Posted on September 28, 2011 by la_florecita

Let me just say that the Life List thing I’m crossing off is NOT “take a vacation without overplanning it.”

In my planning for Hawaii the 2 things I did the most planning for were what I was going to wear to the rehearsal dinner and the wedding. These things are a big deal! Photos! Immortalized on facebook until the next social media comes out forever!

I shopped for a dress for weeks. I wanted a summery dress but not too casual. I didn’t want fall colors or styles because we’d be on the beach. And I didn’t want anything too edgy, this was Honolulu, after all, not Milan. And I found a nice, classic strapless floral print dress that looked like something Trudy from Mad Men would wear.

For the rehearsal dinner I wanted to be still more casual so I decided to wear a pair of pants my friend bought me for my birthday. I know, sounds weird, right? Who buys their friends PANTS? I won’t even buy my husband pants. My friend called me last year from a thrift store, frantic, “OMIGOD JEN I FOUND PAIR OF DIANE VON FURSTENBURG NAVY BLUE VELVET TUXEDO PANTS! THEY’RE $5 AND SIZE 6 AND I’M BUYING THEM FOR YOU! THEY MIGHT BE A LITTLE SHORT BUT WITH SOME STRAPPY SHOES-I DON’T CARE, SHUT UP I’M BUYING THEM FOR YOU! FIVE DOLLARS!!”

They were a little short. Not cute short just too-short short. So I had them cropped a bit more and thought they’d be great for the dinner. Dave and I went shopping the weekend before the wedding and I bought a blouse, strappy shoes and some funky necklaces to dress it up.

And I wore it to the rehearsal dinner. On the way, we stopped at Pali lookout and you can see the shoes I was driving in. The next photo (with my aunt) shows the shoes I actually wore to the dinner.

In another world, this would be considered casual. When we walked in to the restaurant I realized I’d overdressed. People were in flip flops, shorts, beach cover ups over (YES) bathing suits. This has never happened to me before. I’m the girl who thinks eyeshadow and boots = dressing up. Jeans and a tank can be accessorized for everything! Grocery shopping (flip flops), the movies (flats + cardigan), drinks with friends (heels and funky jewelry). (You could even argue that what I’m wearing is a variation on jeans/tank top. An extra fancy version.) Overdress is something I never thought I’d do so I put it on the Life List as a joke.

And yet there I was. But I rocked it, didn’t even change into the flats. And there was an upside, it turns out. My cousin turned to me just before dinner and said, “Well, everyone here has voted you Best Dressed.” The people at the table agreed.

!!!

As you might have guessed, I’ve never been that before either. So I might have unofficially been the best dressed of 30 or so people at a tiny restaurant on a Thursday night in Ka’a'awa, Hawaii, but I’ll take it.

Posted in blog, jeans, life list, non-/consumerism, the boy, travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Big Day

Posted on September 13, 2011 by la_florecita

I apologize for the lack of posts but lots of things have happened that I will discuss when I get BACK FROM HAWAII!

Our flight leaves in 2.5 hours and I’m actually 90% packed. That, and my new appreciation for blue nail polish make me wonder who I really am.

Anyway, it’s a short trip (as far as Pacific vacations go), 6 days, 2 of them being travel days. We land today at 2:41pm and leave Sunday night at 9pm. Should be enough time to swim, snorkel, kayak, sail, shop (DUH) and do some family things.

Last night I realized the moon was almost full and got excited thinking about seeing it from Oahu.

Another reason to be excited? This.

I can’t be there when Target opens this morning like my friends will be with their spreadsheet of the things they want, sorted by department. (NO LIE) But I can try to crash their server log in from the airport before our plans takes off. And I can go straight to Target when I land later today.

Priorities!!

Posted in design, travel | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Fever Has Broken

Posted on September 5, 2011 by la_florecita

Of course, now everything is on fire, but aside from that, look at that last one! NOT HOT!! Before that, 2 months of hell, essentially.

Posted in Austin, bleeding heart, green | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Fit is Go

Posted on August 30, 2011 by la_florecita

So out of motherfucking nowhere I bought a car this weekend.

Not entirely out of nowhere. I’d said I wouldn’t buy another car until we needed a car seat. We could share a car, we have been for 3 years. We’ll just wait until we need a bigger car. But then I thought, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, NONEXISTENT BABY!

And I bought a car. I stumbled across a 2009 Honda Fit with a manual transmission and a navigation system. I test drove it. It was nice. But it’s August so there are lots of end-of-year deals on new cars. So I looked into the same configuration in new cars to take advantage of the 0% APR. Guess what? You can’t actually add the navigation system to manual transmission Fits in 2012 (and I couldn’t find any 2011s). Once you opt for navigation, you can only have automatic.

And I’m no longer adamant about a manual transmission the way I was when I bought my Civic. I rent cars a lot and an automatic transmission is nice. But manuals are cheaper, way more fun to drive and better on gas mileage. And if I wanted to splurge on the navigation but save money on the transmission, this was my only option.

So after about 48 hours of hemming and hawing and doing my homework, I decided, and bought it.

And here it is after 24 hours of ownership (aka, this afternoon).

It’s super go, right?

(No, I don’t know what that means either.)

P.S. Yes, I bought it from a place with a ridiculous name like Howdy Honda.

Posted in Austin, civic, Fit is go!, non-/consumerism, product, the boy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What to expect

Posted on August 25, 2011 by la_florecita

If you’ve been paying attention you know we stopped using birth control a few months ago and are open to starting a family.

This month is the first cycle that I’ve been late and actually had to face the thoughts of, OMG where will our guests sleep once we have a nursery? Will we even have guests once we have a thing that stays in a nursery? How should I tell Dave? How should we tell our parents? When do I tell friends/post it on the blog? Do I want to use the midwife I met or should I interview others?

As my period time neared and I got all bloated I was a little bit sad that this was potentially the skinniest I’d be for the next 9 months. Year. Ever? After I’d just joined a gym! Could I do pilates preggo? What would be the point if I was just going to get fatter anyway?

According to my app I was supposed to get my period Saturday, which came and went with no period. Took a pregnancy test, negative. Sunday. Monday. Another pregnancy test. Negative.

I had all the signs of my period: the spotting, the bloating, the hating the flavor of water, the introvertedness. My friend, who is having a baby this week (exclamation point) said that all of those things still happen before you get pregnant. “Everything’s the same,” she said. And then, no period. So would I feel this bloated and awful for 9 months? Suck!

And then, Hawaii? Would I have to not eat sushi or drink tasty beverages? Worse, would I be sick? I know the fear of throwing up in Hawaii is a total first world problem but there it is.

And on Tuesday I was logging my temperature into my app and it said this.

20110823-172749.jpg

I laughed because I’d gotten my period 2 hours earlier and hadn’t told my app yet. So yes. More yoga and pilates. And a new bikini.

And we’re probably going to stop “trying” for a bit. We have another wedding coming up in January and this one’s a cruise. Lord knows I don’t want to be throwing up over the edge of the boat or into my snorkel, so baby making is on hold. Traveling is a go.

Posted in babies, blog, joys of being a woman, la familia, the boy | Leave a comment

Serious chill time

Posted on August 23, 2011 by la_florecita

[I wrote this on Sunday night]

On Thursday evening Dave called me to tell me his aunt (who had been very sick for a long time in spite of her youth) had passed away. Work is super busy for me right now so I was trying to think of how I could ask for time off, and how much, etc. Then I remembered about the passport renewal application I’d printed out the day before. Because MY PASSPORT WAS EXPIRED.

So obviously I couldn’t go to Mexico.

So Dave went with his brother and I stayed home with IKE. Oh, also on Friday? My car’s AC went out. It’s not the compressor because my car doesn’t want to break down when I turn it on, it simply blows regular air. Oh, have I mentioned we’ve had 65 days of 100+ temps this summer? And it’s 90 by noon? With no sign of that ending? The 10-day forecast is all 3-digits?

So I ran 2 errands this weekend: A 6am trip to Fiesta for Advil and English muffins on Saturday morning. And a 7am trip to the dog park on Sunday morning with IKE. The rest of the time?

Laundry. 7 DVR’d Daily Shows. Clean part of the kitchen. The Godfather. Fold Laundry. The Godfather [nap] part II. Sautee sweet potato greens- delicious, who knew? The Secret Life of the American Teenager (I was told this is good. It’s not. I’m watching it anyway.) Angry Birds. Clean part of the kitchen. Order pizza. Water aloe vera and portulaca. (The rest of the garden I’m letting die, like I should have a long time ago.) Laundry. Secret Life. Knit. Cupcake Wars.

Bathe IKE. Shower. Pancakes and coffee. Download audio book. Clean part of kitchen. The Hurt Locker. Knit. Secret Life. Sweep, swiffer, mop. Secret Life. Put away clothes. Luther. Knit. Clip IKE’s claws. Google Reader. Scrub kitchen. Get ready for bed.

And here we are. Clean house, in bed early. (Skipping Breaking Bad so I can watch it with Dave.)

Posted in doggies, food, maybe, the boy | Tagged | Leave a comment

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right?

Posted on August 15, 2011 by la_florecita

It’s really not my fault. It’s twitter’s fault. And Nordstrom’s.

In May, I blogged about discovering a nail polish blog. I said I’d never be the same and I was right. Now I think of nail polishes not as being just polishes, but as being cremes, jellies, metallics, foils, etc. I now know that getting bubbles in your nail polish or having sheet prints on them even though you painted them 3 hours before bed is a result of shitty base/top coats. I also used to think blue nail polish was over a line I’d never cross. Now I think green is. Green is totally crazy. And yellow. And white. Those colors are nuts!

Before my discovery of that blog, I had 23 bottles of nail polish. Mostly red, magenta, wine, purple and black. Since May, I’ve almost doubled my collection by adding 19 new bottles. 3 are base/top coats. The other 16? Awesomeness.

So it’s twitter’s fault because I’d see tweets about nail polish sales. (looking at you, Zoya) Buy one get one free! Buy one get two free! It’s Nordstrom’s fault for having a sale on Butter London, buy two get one free! I was really out of control that day. I bought 4, got 2 free. Dave said, “You went to Nordstrom? What’s in the bag?”

“Guilt.”

A few notes about these colors.

• Almost none of them are even remotely similar to anything I already have. With the exception of a warm gray/grayish pink that I thought was lighter online than it is and is in fact very similar to a color I have.

• There’s a crazy pink glitter in there and glitter isn’t really my style but MAN is it ever sparkly. (second from the right in the photo below)

• When I was in high school I wanted to find nail polish that was the color of red Christmas ornaments. Above photo, third from right: found it!!

• Never again forking over the absurd amount of cash Chanel charges for their chips-within-24-hours nail polish (above, right).

• The two center colors are a sexy straightforward metallic purple and Jem, a color Zoya describes as “A dark red-toned purple base with metallic dark pink highlights and subtle gold duochrome flecks.” Yes. Come on, fall!

• The cools and my first blue nail polishes. From right to left: a dark murky navy, a sexy peacock metallic, a light blue with silver shimmer, a light grayish blue with silver shimmer, a light gray creme and a super duper shimmery silver that I posted on Facebook and said I’d name it MacBook Pro. It also makes me feel like I’m secretly related to The Tin Man.

So that’s it. I’m cut off. I said that after I raided the Butter London counter, but then Zoya’s Smoke and Mirrors fall collection came out and they had a buy one get two free thing and so here we are. 16 new bottles of nail color in 4 months.

Seriously? I’m cut off until spring.

 

 

Posted in nail polish, non-/consumerism, product, social media | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

And then we never traveled again

Posted on August 9, 2011 by la_florecita

So yes, even as I haven’t finished my eating our way through New York posts I’m excited about our next trip. In a little over a month from now.

To a place I wasn’t sure if I’d ever visit: Hawaii.

A year ago when my cousin announced that he and his boyfriend would be a) getting married b) in Hawaii, I wanted to go for a few reasons. My family is pretty conservative and he heard some negative messages in response to his announcement. And my family isn’t one of those trust fund families so between prejudice and money there may not be many of us to represent. So it was important for me to be there if I could.

We even planned our family planning around this wedding. I was like, “I’m GOING to Matt’s wedding, so I don’t want to be in my first or third trimester.” And as I’m not prego, that didn’t turn out to be an issue, but that tells you how important it will be.

Unfortunately (but yesfortunately for my bank account) it won’t be a long trip because the other designer on our team leaves at the same time to go to India for a month through a work volunteer program. So we’re not even staying a full week and 2 of those days are flying. So we’ll only be on Oahu piddling around, laying on beaches, eating shaved ices, hiking up to waterfalls and protecting Locke, Jack and Kate from the Monster and the polar bears. Oh and finding Claire’s baby.

Anyway, we’re excited to see Hawaii and more excited to be there for my cousin on his big day. Tips on visiting Oahu are welcome. (Flight and hotel are booked already.)

Posted in bleeding heart, the boy, travel | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Living the Cliche

Posted on August 8, 2011 by la_florecita

Let’s see. I joined a gym, so I go to yoga at lunch. I went bike shopping so I can ride my bike to work. And 2 weeks ago I joined a CSA and picked up my first box last week.

Yup, I live in Austin.

First, the bike shopping. We didn’t buy anything, I just test rode a bunch of bikes. I rode the Public bike I said I was in love with. And it was good. Then we went to another bike shop (oh, and if you think running errands in 104° heat as the sun sets is awesome, it is not) and I rode the Linus Mixte as well as the Dutchi. And you know what? I liked the Linus Mixte. It has little details like brown leather handle bar wraps and stitching and a brown leather seat that make it feel like it could have been ridden by a woman in Paris or Amsterdam in the 1950s. Or by a geology professor today.

Oh, and it’s cheaper.

The gym has been good. I’ve done 3 Pilates classes and 2 yoga wall classes. (What’s yoga wall? Google image search it, it’s that.) Beginner, all of them since I’m not so hot at pilates (but man do I want that Pilates stomach!) and I haven’t done yoga in a class since moving to Austin. I’ve also gone to work out on the running and bike machines. And rowing and elliptical. And do crazy weight machines. The first few Pilates classes were nice but the 3rd was KILLER and I learned more in that class than in the first 2. And yoga wall is like, “Meh, okay,” and then the next day you can’t move.

All that’s been great but I’m not smoking hot yet because we went out with friends this weekend and wouldn’t you know that after a few drinks I think it’s a great idea to have truffle mac and cheese. Or salted butter ice cream. Or a BLT with chipotle aioli.

Which leads us back to that CSA. I wanted to join one since we moved here but we were broke and then when we weren’t broke I was lazy. But the owner of one came to speak about his story at my work and gave us all $20 off coupons. So I picked up my first box last Thursday. Unfortunately since I don’t cook on the weekends, I had to compost (see? another cliche!) the basil and the sweet potato greens. However tonight I wasn’t sure what to cook, but decided to clean out my vegetable drawer and made roasted okra (CSA) with roasted tomatoes (already had them) served over grated summer squash (CSA) and mashed cauliflower (already had it) and caramelized red onion (CSA). That’s it. A dinner of veggies. I don’t love using the oven when it’s this hot outside, but it was delicious.

I also have to figure out what to do with 400 tiny peppers, a hubbard squash, a baby butternut and 10 small chinese eggplants. (baba ganoush, anyone?) Before Thursday when I get the next box. Unless I go online and change the date to next Thursday. Farms + Technology = LOVE!

Posted in ATX, Austin, bike, food, gardening, green, ice cream, non-/consumerism, running, vegan, yoga | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment