Zay Momo’s Neighborhood

What's your guilty television pleasure?

That's easy:  Gossip Girl of course!  Despite my annoyance with most of the characters, I can't help but keep watching it week after week. 

Gossip Girl Season 3

You know you love me.
XOXO, Gossip Girl...

as you are getting ready for the holidays, you may noticed it getting a little bit chillier than usual.    why not get a head start on spring cleaning and go into your closet to see if you have any outdated or old coats you no longer want?

one warm coat is an organization will helps distributes a free coat to homeless which will keep them warm during this winter.   you can easily find drop off locations across the nation.

http://www.onewarmcoat.org/

Dear Kylie,

In two days, you'll be 6 whole months old. I am still in shock over this!

In retrospect, I am so glad I wrote you letters after your first and second month. My apologies for having missed your 3, 4, and 5th month. Thing is, your mom battled a bit of ppd and it was gawd awful those first 8 weeks, but month 3, 4, and 5? We couldn't be bothered to update on those months because we were too busy catching up and having ourselves the time of our lives. If that's not a good excuse, I don't know what is!

So... let's backtrack a little. During that third month, your personality started to form. You are outgoing, flirtatious, and easy to laugh. You are also highly demanding, impatient, and spoiled rotten.

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We celebrated your 100 days of life with a little family dinner and soon after, you started to fill out.

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you, 100 days old:

100 days old

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your great-aunt lovingly made you all of these traditional sweet breads by hand!

100 days old dinner

"put them in my mouth!"

The night after your dinner, we shaved your head. Sometimes I wonder if this was a bad move, as your hair has come back in curly!

At your 4 month check up, we found out that you were filling out maybe a little too much. 99% in weight? wow. I vowed never to be that crazy Asian parent but immediately, my first thought was, "Why are you missing 1%?? Where did I go wrong? Why didn't you do the extra credit question!?"

i've got a couple rolls...

but one look at your chunky thighs and I know that you are 100%. probably 101% and totally G.A.T.E. material, at that.

You and I were baptized the same day, and you were adorable in a dress one of your aunties gifted you.

For your first Halloween, you were 1- a hotdog, 2- Flava Flav, and 3- a lion. The hot dog costume lasted all of 3 minutes, Flava Flav was for a church outing, and the lion because your grandma insisted.

During this month, you learned how to hold your own bottle, sit up, and outgrew the majority of your 3-6 month sized clothes. You attended your first birthday party and your first garage-red-cup-beer-pong-party. Your almost daily explosive poopy diapers have become 1x/2 week occurances and I thank you for that. You slept 8-11 hours a night, solid, and your dad and I got used to this.

We recently moved out of our rental condo and into our very first home and things have been hectic with the house remodel. You seem to know that your surroundings aren't the same as before and wake up 2-4 times a night to whine and cry. It's killin us, smalls, so please stop doing that soon.

I'll take it!

You insist on standing instead of sitting, any chance you get. You *adore* your over-the-door jumper and laugh to yourself with every jump. You just started to get peek-a-boo and you love skyping with your Lao-Yeh in Korea because he will peek-a-boo you and coo at you and you will coo right back. and by coo, I mean shriek at the top of your lungs. It is the best sound in the entire world. 

Timbeeeeeeeeer!

This is the end of your 5th month, baby girl, and it makes me so sad to remember back on those first few weeks and how much I missed of your new babyness because I was too involved with dealing with my own feelings. I hope that these last 4, though, have made up for some of that. When you laugh, it makes me and your daddy laugh. When you smile, we smile. As cheesey as it sounds, you are the sunshine in our lives. I can not remember what I was living for before you were a part of my world, and I can not imagine a world with me but without you.

my kylie

all my love, forever and ever,

your momma 

I put my kitties on CL and now someone wants them. :((

      As a craft-procrastinator (why I procrastinate on something I love doing? no idea.) Thanksgiving signifies that x-mas is but a month away and if you haven't started making your gifts yet, you need to ASAP.  Since this year I am very, very, very, seriously, poor and unemployed all x-mas presents will come to fruition through my super stash of yarn and fabric and my own two hands.  I've come to the realization that I can pretty much make and do anything I want depending on my level of interest and my access to materials and tools.  I know how to do a ton of amazing stuff and I'm learning more everyday.  Yesterday I learned how to nest my seams to make my quilt blocks lay flat, and today I taught myself to make doll clothes patterns with just the measurements I found online.  More importantly than realizing that I can do and make and thing I want is that I SHOULD make and do what ever I want.  That I should be contributing to the craft community and stop wasting my talent and super awesome studio space by being a "lurker".

This craft-epiphany was due to a culmination of influential women in my life:

• Mama Hughes for being an amazing mentor and for always believing in me, encouraging me and giving me endless opportunities to learn from her and really making me feel like all things are possible.
• Ayla from the Jean M. Auel book The Clan of the Cave Bear for showing me that sharing your talents with the your community enriches the lives of those around you unless you are a complete troglodyte like Broud.
• My very talented friend Katy, (she designed my website and business cards) who was jealous of my craft room and made me realize that I was wasting my precious gift of space and tools and being unappreciative of what I have.

Sewingroom

And this is what I've been up to:

      I'm making a denim quilt for my parents.  We have an "heirloom" denim quilt that has been passed down from my dad's parents no one remembers who made it, or how old it it is, it's just always existed.  While being shoddily pieced together and not very attractive, it is highly utilitarian.  We used it for going to the drive-in theater when we were kids, countless picnics, music festivals in the park, trips to the beach, camping, you name it we've used that thing everywhere for everything.  Now it's gotten pretty beat up over the years and some of the patches are beyond repair.  I've also noticed that we use it a lot less now that it's all tattered.  My parents also just got a new RV so what better present than to make a new quilt that we can use the hell out of and make memories with.  The picture above and left shows the plaid I want to use as the backing (it's from France and I got it at a designer leftover sale) and the above and right photo is a sample of the block pattern I'm using.  Cool side note about the denim I'm using, it's all from jeans that I've worn dating back to middle school.  I harvested all the denim over the years knowing that someday I wanted to take on this project of creating and "heirloom" quilt.

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I've taught myself to make doll clothes.  My cousin who is 9yrs old, loves the American Girl dolls, and Michael Jackson.  What better than to make her doll one of the most iconic MJ outfits!  I will be making the red sequined military jacket and cropped tuxedo pants that the king of pop made legendary on his Victory tour.  Now if i'm super cool, i'm going to attempt the sparkly glove and socks, but we'll see about that.  here is the jacket I'm going to attempt to emulate.
 
                                            

Turkey day was hella laid back with only minor family drama when my sister's dead-beat-baby-daddy (DBBD)decided he was mad at my boyfriend for not being welcome at our new apartment and threatening to

Black Friday, talk about epic let down!  Nothing I wanted (or wanted to buy for someone else) was on sale, or was on sale enough for me to want to buy it.   Even my 9 month old nephew protested by smashing his glass bottle on the floor at Wal-Mart.  Why my sister uses glass bottles is beyond me.  My sister and I gasped in horror, but he laughed and smiled, finding the whole event quite entertaining.  this picture is of him biting a defenseless kitten (only joking, no one was defenseless or injured, in case PETA or CPS is reading)

reef infection highly recommended these packing cubes from ebags.com for packing your clothes for a trip.  i have to agree with her: they rock!

packing cubes from ebags.com

they typically retail for $29.99 however you can get them from $25-$30, depending sale and/or promo code.   you get three different size cubes in a set.

you may think they wouldn't be impactful like i did. they made a big difference in terms of packing and organizing.  i did not to have to go through a pile of clothes to find what i was looking for.  since i knew what belonged in each cube, i simply picked up the bag i wanted something from, unzipped, zipped, and threw it back into my suitcase.   when i opened up my suitcase, i never groaned at a mess because there wasn't a mess.   these bags were awesome to travel with as they were able to carry 5 days of clothes.

• largest bag can hold: jeans, sweaters 
• medium bag can hold: shirts
• smallest bag can hold: socks and underwear

i wasn't able to fit all six pairs of jeans in the largest bag but i could fit about 4 pairs. not bad!

http://hoobears.wordpress.com/

A new form of procrastination!

Having spent the last 12 hours unpacking boxes, juggling the baby, moving furniture, cleaning, wiping, bleaching, building, and remodeling our new home with my husband, our baby, my brother-in-law, and my in-laws... I can honestly say that this has been the most blessed year of my life.

Fantastic family, awesome friends, steady jobs, food in our pantry, roof over our heads... I have so, so much to be thankful for!