Dia De Los Muertos Fair

After the Halloween festivities, many Mexican families celebrate Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). We celebrate the lives of  those family members or friends that have passed away. We set up altars with photos of our loved ones, food and or drinks they enjoyed along with colorful decorations. Last year I set up my first altar dedicated to my Papa (grandfather) and Mr. G's mother. This year I am planning to add more decorations and memories to celebrate the life of my late nana (grandmother). Usually I would just decorate a few skeleton  heads and add some left over Halloween decorations to the altar but luckily this year I found some glittery finds at the annual Dia De Los Muertos Festival in Uptown Whittier.

This was our first time at this local festival and I am so glad we went. There were some amazing artists that had their paintings displayed. Along the walk, we also saw some interesting altars dedicated to a range of people; everyone from the artists' family members to the Beatles. I couldn't resist snapping so many shots. It was like a color explosion! Enjoy:)

One of the first altars: symbolizing a mother and her child

Cactus fruit, enjoyed by a loved one

Bride and Groom- one of my fav decorations

Colorful right? I am SO going to throw a DDLM party one day!!!

One of the artists signing my painting

This is one of decorations I bought to add to my altar...eeekk can't wait to display it!

REAL ART:) 

Gotta love Frida

This altar was amazing! This was a display from my mom's friend Sonia Gonzalez, an artist at the fair.

Another vibrant altar

Oktoberfest

My Mr. G celebrated his birthday this year, Oktoberfest style! Since we couldn't make it out to celebrate drinking the day away we decided to have the partay come to us! I was just getting back into the swing of things so I didn't do much decorating...but really what more do you need than an Oktoberfest keg, pretzels and bratwurst?

It took us a while to find these beer mugs, but we ended up finding them at Walmart.

We found these coasters at Cost Plus World Market.

You know we had to dress up-see my baby bump!

Peacock Mask

Animals & Insects. This is the theme that my first grade colleagues chose for our school's annual Halloween parade. Every year we play dress-up, as a grade level, to get into the spooktacular Halloween spirit. I'm gonna be a peacock! Sounds kinda fancy for a school parade, right? Not really. We all decided to just create a mask to mimic our animal/insect's best features. I love fancy things so a peacock was an easy choice! Here is the before and after of my mini-craft Halloween costume.

All of the materials came from Michael's.

Viola!

Halloween parts and pieces

Since 2003, Mr. G and I have dressed up for Halloween as famous couples...i.e. Willma and Fred Flintstone, a mermaid and Poseidon, a USC cheerleader and The Heisman Trophy,  male and female circus ringleaders...and the list can go on. I know, I know. They are ALL not famous couples but at least they match. As you can tell, I love dressing up for Halloween. I lu, lu, lu, love it! Not only do I love the oncoming of fall and the holiday season, but I love making my own costumes. Yes, I am very proud to say I really try to hand make our costumes every year. Sooo sad that this year is a different story. I have my very good friends' wedding this weekend, in Vegas! We are super excited for this momentous occasion in their lives! So, I won't have much time to sew up a storm. BUT! I am still not resorting to buying a costume. Plus my grandmother, an extremely talented seamstress, would just die knowing that I could have tried a little harder to put something more original together. That's exactly what I'm gonna try to do...put (not sew) something together. So, here are a few clues from our couple's costume...(psss...here's a hint: think of me being pregnant in the costume).

My yellow leotard is from American Apparel and the tights are from Forever 21. Mr. G's costume parts come from Forever 21 and I'm making the net. Guess what we are going to be yet? I didn't think so:) But I've excluded a lot of detail that I still need to piece together!



Months and baby Bumps

In my spare time, I like searching for creative, crafty, photographic, baby, and baking blogs. During one of my many searches I came across a photog blog that created this crazy maternity picture. Although I wasn't pregnant at the time, I imagined doing the same thing whenever I got the bump. So here I created a knock off, of the orignal idea from Pacing the Panic Room. Hope you love my version as much as I do!

August-Here I am at 3 months.

September-4 months

October-5 months...finally you can see the bump!

Book Worms

I come from a family full of book worms. My mom is an avid reader, especially in the summer. My four younger sisters also love to get their hands on a good fiction piece. Mimi can enhale a 300 page fictional novel, specifically those about vampires, in about two hours. Even my cute little old Nana used to love to read a story or two about Mother Teresa and the many Popes we have had. As for myself, I am not so well read. In the summer I do try my best to conqure a hard covered tale, but my genre taste makes it hard to do becuase I have a weird little secret. My mom and sisters know this secret but I don't even think Mr. G knows it. I'm an expository freak, like my dad. Ahhhh! Weird, right? Well, I think so. I can't help but grab a self-help, historical or informational text. This makes the good pickin' books a little more challenging to find, since most of the best sellers are fictional or romantic.

On Tuesday, my luck changed when my co-worker came up to me. While rubbing my belly, she let me in on a fabulous book find. Yes, I actually was able to get excited about a book that I would enjoy reading. She said it helped her daughter and many of her friends get through the first few months after the baby was born. She recommended The Happiest Baby on the Block book. She told me it had the mother load of secrets. Now I'm excited to get my hands on it and finally feel like I'm part of the book worm family!

Fruit of the week

Once I got pregnant, I knew I wanted to capture every single moment of this blessed time in my life. So as I was searching around the net, I came upon The Bump.com and I got inspired. Ding! The light went on as soon as I saw the tab "How big is your baby?" , which gives you a week-by-week idea of the size of a baby in comparison to a fruit. I thought it would be cool to take a photo of my belly while holding the fruit of the week. And so, my belly photo journey begins.

I began with weeks 13 & 14 but then had to take a break (because of my Nana's passing). Then I continued with weeks 17 & 18. By the end of this week I should be posting week 19!

                                                                    Week 13=peach

Week 14=onion

Week 17=onion

Week 18=sweet potato



Back on the BLOG

So I have been M.I.A. for around 2 months now. But I'm back. I had to take a little leave from the FB and Blog world because I got pregnant!!! I'm still pregnant but not going to disappear again. While I was gone I had the most horrible morning sickness any woman could imagine. Luckily I was on summer break and only missed enjoying the care-free days of summer. I literally traded my swim suite for the pajamas that would get me to the toilet bowl fast enough.

Well, I am now 4 months and 3 weeks with very little if anymore morning sickness symptoms. I am ready to blog again. This time I know my blogging will be a little skewed toward all the soon-to-be mommies. I feel so blessed, excited and happy all in one so I'm ready to share my ideas, finds and fascinations with this baby bump.

Here are some special items my friends and family have given me for our new adventure in babyland. The first gift was given to me by my friend Svea. So sad that there isn't a picture of all the yummy treats she brought to my house while I was sick in bed but they (mint tea, ginger, baby talk magazine, pasta) were all put to good use!

This stuff is amazing! It makes my body feel quenched and happy. My friend Charm knew this would come in handy!

My sister, Vanessa spoiled ME a little.

Some of the cards Mr. G and I have been receiving since our announcement. Our friends are the sweetest!

Finally, the most special gift of all. I received this gold baby spoon from my Nana when I got married. She humbly put it in an envelope marked for Eve's baby. I have saved this for a little more than 2 years only waiting for the moment when I could actually use it. Now that she has recently passed it will be the most precious gift baby G will have. Although she is gone and am saddened that she will not be here to see the birth of her great grandchild I know I was blessed to have such a spiritual and loving Nana.





Changes and Camera Bags

I guess you can say I've been really thinking about taking this photography hobby a bit more seriously. Unfortunately, it takes a lot longer then it seems to create an idea of a brand that represents you, or I should say ME. Mr. G has been going over design logos, webpage templates and etc. for the past couple of weeks. But as I do my research and look around at other photo blogs, craft blogs and just blogs in general I keep changing my mind. I told Mr. G I wanted something cute, that represents my girly side, but then I said scratch that I need something modern and sophisticated. Then again I tell him no I like girly because that fits me and what I want to do with photography...fun with some frills because I'm not trying to make this a career. This will still be my hobby with a more professional look. So, if you see a new homepage template every other week or so its just my way of previewing what looks best. Please be patient:)

Now along with these changes a girl has to get a new wardrobe to match the new look. I've been browsing around on etsy, amazon and the web to find a cute yet sophisticated and durable DSLR camera bag. Here is what I've found!

Janine King Designs has a ton of fabric choices and colors for her $69.99 bags

Jessica Claire offers a similar bag called the "Shootsac" for $179.00 in black

The baroque cover is an extra $49.00

What would your choice be? Hmmm....because it's my HOBBY I'm totally going with the Janine King camera bag. 

Pillow Tutorial

 I decided that I really needed to start documenting my favorite sewing projects. This is probably going to sound really silly but here it is...my sewing confession. Every time I want to make a new removable pillow case cover I have to go back to Sparkle Power's tutorial . I figure I don't have to write it down because I have this page bookmarked. But then I thought, what if she deletes her blog? Then what would I do? So here I am, creating my own tutorial. These are a few pictures of my newest pillow case covers for my outdoor patio furniture.


Step 1: Find a pillow or pillow form. I used a 14X14 pillow form from Michael's. It was on sale for $4.99...but if you really want to go cheap you can find pillows at thrift stores for as low as $2. I know using someone else's pillow sounds yucky but not if you are gonna use it for outside patio pillow decor-like I did! 


Step 2: You will need 3 pieces of cut material. Cut your first piece of fabric, the front of the pillow, to the exact width and length of the pillow. Here I cut 14X14. Then for your next 2 pieces, the back, you are going to want to cut a length of 14 (same as the first length) but 4 inches shorter for the width. So for this project you would cut 10 for the width. These 2 pieces should be cut as 14X10. This goes for any pillow width, on the back two pieces, always 4 inches shorter!

Step 3: Make about a 1/4 inch fold (lengthwise) on back two pieces. Iron it and then fold it over again and iron it so it becomes a pleat. These pieces will be where you insert the pillow form. 

Step 4: Repeat step 3 for the second back piece of material. Then sew the pleats down.

Step 5: Pin and sew the back two pieces over the front. Make sure you place the fabric right side up onto each other so you are viewing the wrong sides on the front and back. 

Step 6: Sew around the entire pillow. I used a regular sewing machine to sew the pleats but an overlock sewing machine to for the entire pillow. The overlock machine gives the pillow case extra durability but if you don't have one a regular sewing machine will work just as well. 

Step 7: You are all finished. Just turn the cover inside out and stuff the pillow through the case! Happy Sewing:)

Here are some of my 4th of July patio furniture pillows!

                               

Hip, hip hurray!

Congratulations to my hubby and the l-o-v-e of my life, Mr. G! I am so proud of him completing his M.A. in Education. To honor this momentous occasion I thought it would be fun to have a "school" theme graduation party. Our loved ones joined us for food, treats and of course some shots in my fauxto booth!

I love making "fauxto booths!" For this one I decided to have everyone sign their name and add a little comment congratulating Mr. G:)  Here is Mr. G's dad...doesn't he look like he is tagging? LOL

US!

The family.

Us being silly.

The Graduate!