jamess birthday surprises.

funny story: a few days ago, when i was writing saturdays post, james looked over my shoulder, saw the tiny little sentence about it being his birthday, and said "thats really all youre going to say about my birthday? gee, thanks", which, on the one hand made me feel kind of bad that i wasnt making a big deal about our birthday plans, BUT on the other hand, i really couldnt say too much because, they were surprises. and i can NEVER pull off surprising james. 

now, long time readers (and i mean REALLY long time readers) may know that while im a big fan of birthdays, theyre not as big of a deal to james. you also may have read about how last year was the first time ive ever been able to take james out for birthday dinner, AND the first time id ever gotten to throw him a birthday party. well this year i miraculously managed to pull of something that i never thought id be able to do. i SURPRISED him. 

with a WHOLE DAY chock full of surprises with the express purpose of spoiling him and making a huge deal about it being his birthday. this only made him really uncomfortable, but i think he warmed up to it in the end. 

we started the morning at our churchs pancake breakfast (it was a fundraiser to help some of our kids go on short term missions):

which wasnt really so much of a surprise for james as much as he forgot that it was on his birthday so he was surprised on friday night when i told him we had to get up early to go. also, i never actually cook breakfast, so james and alice were pretty stoked on having pancakes. then alice went over to my moms for the day so that the REAL surprises could get started. 

and by that i mean, we went home to our suspiciously clean apartment (james later told me he noticed that it was REALLY weird how clean the house was on friday), where i made james help me move ALL THE FURNITURE because i had booked us a couples massage from soothe (which would ordinarily be WAY beyond what im willing to spend on something frivolous BUT i had gotten a half price coupon a couple months ago), because on the list of "things james wants to do that i always say we cant do", "couples massage" is probably #2. 

obviously (if you know me at all) the #1 thing on that list is "steak dinner". so, obviously, that was the next surprise:

(everybody please notice that james ordered steak and steak alone, giggling about his order was probably the highlight of the day for me)

now, OF COURSE in my post-massage stupor (in case youve never had a deep tissue massage, the first day or so after feels like youve been hit by a truck) i forgot to get any pictures of the two of us together. but if i had one, this is where id put it. 

and right when james thought the party was over because it was time to pick up alice, there was dessert and friends waiting at my moms house:

and, since i dont have any cute pictures of james and i together, heres alice and her bestie sharing a sundae instead:

so, happy birthday to my dearest james. alice and i love you so much and are so glad you enjoyed your birthday surprises. and im sorry i didnt make a big deal about it beforehand, i just really, REALLY didnt want to ruin the surprise. 

the time i tried to wear my wedding dress to disneyland (+ what we did this year for dapper day)

so, this past sunday was dapper day at disneyland. but before i tell you about this years spring dapper day, i thought id take a few minutes to tell a rather hilarious story from last years dapper day that i just remembered that i never actually told here:

see, at the beginning of last year was when i first found out about dapper day (which, if youre not familiar with it, is an unofficial disneyland event where people go to disneyland in formal/vintage attire and its amazing), and obviously WE HAD TO GO. my mom even offered to watch alice so that james and i (plus my sister and one of her friends) could chill out and go on big rides and stuff. awesome. 

then i got to thinking about vintagey formal wear. and you know what i had in a giant ziploc bag in my closet that probably still fit and needed to be put to some kind of use? my wedding dress. (oh, come on, im really supposed to just wear it once and just begrudgingly store it for the rest of my life, oh please) so my mom and i spent an afternoon sewing a bustle into it (since it wasnt a wedding wedding dress it didnt have one in there already) so it wouldnt drag and it was decided that i was going to wear it to dapper day. 

then when the day came we got all fancy and snapped a quick family photo before dropping alice off (please notice how she is NOT amused that we were going to disneyland without her):

but unfortunately thats the only photo we got while i was still wearing my wedding dress. 

because as soon as we got inside the park, i was made VERY aware that wedding dresses are NOT allowed inside disneyland. like, at all. as in, a security guard escorted my sister and i out of the park to the outside bathrooms so that i could change, to the locker room to be SURE that it was locked in a locker, and back inside the park. 

so obviously we made a big fuss about how they totally ruined our wedding day (a lie) and that it was totally illogical that ALL OF THE OTHER CAST MEMBERS that saw me outside of the park didnt say anything (that part was true). and then they gave us two eight-person fast passes for any ride we wanted. (and then we got to ride the cars ride without waiting in line which should be a lessons as to why its always a good idea to lie to disneyland cast members)

and since i totally anticipated something of this sort happening, i did bring a back up dress:

and really everything after that was awesome. obviously we were SUPER stoked for when dapper day rolled around again (and, this time i planned an outfit that would not get me sternly escorted out of the park). 

so we got all fancied up and went to disneyland. unfortunately though, i was still EXTREMELY drained from the previous days blogger brunch, so instead of a super exciting do-all-the-things disneyland day, it was more of a relaxed lets-just-people-watch-and-have-a-nice-lunch disneyland day. and those are nice too. 

actually, I'm really glad we decided our intentions for the day ahead of time, because sunday was seriously THE crowdedest that I've EVER seen disneyland, EVER. it took us about a half hour to park, IN THE MOST PERFECT, EFFICIENT, WELL DESIGNED PARKING STRUCTURE EVER. it was insane. 

anyway, once we FINALLY got into the park (and a nice gentleman gave us his fast passes for indiana jones), we decided to take pictures. they're doing a bunch of construction in new orleans square right now so my normal photo spot wasnt accessible, so we decided the next best place would be the mark twain. 

here we are separately:

 

and then together:

next we tried to do a proper outfit shoot, but it turns out thats a difficult thing to do when youre on a steam powered riverboat, but we did our best (also, a stranger lady was TOTALLY taking pictures of me too, which was totally weird):

outfit details:

top, skirt, stole, and bag: vintage

tights: target

shoes: urban outfitters

glasses: zenni optical

so, it was about 80 degrees out on sunday, and i was wearing a fox fur stole it got uncomfortable a couple times, but, i mean, how often do i get to wear, as alice calls it, my "puppy scarf" (no joke, when she woke up sunday morning and saw my outfit the first thing out of her mouth was "mommy! i like your puppy scarf!". the stole has a funny story: one day a friend of mine sent me a facebook message asking me if i wanted some old furs his friend was getting rid of, and i answered (somewhat facetiously) "only if they're the kinds with the heads and legs still attached", to which he answered "even better, the glass eyes dont even match", and i was like "sold!". and now alice calls it my "puppy scarf" which is equal parts adorable and observant and sad and gross all at the same time and i love it. 

now as SOON as i saw these pictures i realized something: i should NOT have been wearing black tights. i TOTALLY needed nude or white stockings but i didnt have any and now i feel really self conscious. 

but otherwise i really loved this outfit (and that i managed to get my hair looking nice), and apparently lots of other people did too, because seriously SO MANY people stopped us to take our picture. like, the only other time id been photographed that much was at my wedding. 

then after pictures we had lunch at cafe orleans, which i cant believe that id never been to before because HOLY CRAP THEY HAVE MY TWO FAVORITE FOODS EVER. garlic fries (with an AMAZING remoulade sauce) and a mixed green salad with raspberry vinaigrette and goat cheese:

 remember how i said it was super crowded? well there was a 45 minute wait for a table. 45 minutes. for lunch. i mean, its not like we had anywhere we needed to be and it was totally worth it, but still. thats forever in waiting for lunch time. 

as we were eating we noticed that the mark twain meet up was starting (and by that i mean, entire boatloads of adorable dapper day folks were on the mark twain waving and shouting), so james and i decided to join them, since last year we missed all the official dapper day activities.

now remember yesterday when i said i made a new friend at the brunch that was going to dapper day too? nikki and i totally hit it off at the blogger brunch and had been tweeting each other about trying to meet up at some point sunday, and we were able to find each other in the line for the mark twain line!:

 and had a grand old time during the meet up itself:

(photo stolen from nikkis instagram)

after the mark twain, we used our star tours fast passes (i think id go so far as to say thats my current favorite "big ride") and james asked my how i was feeling (since he know that two big outings in a row is something that usually doesnt go well for me), i said "im not feeling bad yet, but i definitely dont feel good anymore" and being the gentleman that he is, he suggested that we get going before i actually started to feel bad, and me being me, i replied "ok, but can we get ice cream first?". so we got ice cream. and then went home. 

it was a nice day. 

i really hope we can make it to the fall dapper day too!

the completely normal persons guide to coupons.

im going to take a wild guess here and say that you probably dont use coupons. because its too time consuming. too complicated. to inconvenient. the money you save wont pay for the newspapers/printer ink youre using. there arent coupons for the things you use most. it tricks you into buying things you dont need, making you spend more money than you would have without them. 

and for the most part, youre entirely right. yes, you read that correctly. couponing, at least in the way that most people think of it, IS time complicated AND time consuming AND inconvenient AND expensive (you know there are people who buy coupons from other people? im not kidding, just search #couponsofinstagram). and it doesnt work for most people. 

it certainly didnt work for me. 

see, for the past year or so (mainly due to continually decreasing incomes for both of us) ive worked my butt off trying to trim off any and all unnecessary expenses so that we can at least occasionally enjoy the finer things in life like disneyland and fancy dinners. naturally i started with groceries, because, like most moms, i was sure we were spending way to much in that department. 

and what was the first thing i did? i subscribed to the la times and read some blogs and joined couponmom.com and figured that if i learned how to use coupons it would fix all of our grocery budget problems and life would be so much easier. and boy was i wrong. for the first couple months, our grocery/target spending actually went UP, by a lot. 

it was really disappointing. but over the course of the next few months i slowly figured out what works for us, and these days id say were probably spending about half of what we were spending on groceries/household consumables at this time last year. and thats saying something because im on a MUCH more restricted diet now than i was then. 

and honestly coupons are a very small part of that equation. one day ill write a more detailed post about all the ways ive been able to trim down our grocery spending, but since a lot of people have asked me how i make coupons work for me, i thought id share a few (completely normal) tips on how to make coupons work for you:

1. forget everything youve seen on tlc or read on a couponing site. everybody claims to have a proven method to couponing, and if you do exactly what they do than youll save money too. but it wont work. why? first of the majority of these people treat couponing like a full time job. spending 40 + hours a week just planning their grocery trips. second, these people are not you. they do not have your lifestyle, your kids, your pets, your dietary preferences/restrictions, your job, your hobbies or live in your town (just an fyi, prices and promotions vary GREATLY geographically,  for example, NOWHERE in southern california doubles coupons). and what works for them PROBABLY wont work for you. you have, have, HAVE to figure it out on your own terms, in your own life. 

2. it takes patience. if you think youre going to start seeing massive results right away, i hate to break it to you, but stores have these super secret "price cycles" throughout the year so that any given item is only at its cheapest every three or four months, and unless youre somehow able to get the inside scoop, its going to take a while to figure it out (heck, i still dont completely understand it). 

3. its all about stacking. just using manufacturers coupons, or just buying whats on sale or just a store coupon is probably not going to make a very exciting difference in your overall spending. you need to learn the stores coupon policy and "stack" as many discounts as possible onto each item. for example, i LOVE method laundry soap, but its pretty expensive, so what do i do? i wait till its on sale at target (where its already the cheapest), and then ALSO use a manufacturers coupon, PLUS a store coupon if one is available (target has fantastic printable coupons), AND a cartwheel discount, AND THEN pay with my redcard to get an extra 5% off. and when you can get a $17 bottle of laundry soap for $11 (real thing that actually happened), well, thats pretty dang exciting. 

4. your best coupon deals are probably not going to be on food. you may have noticed that my example for awesome coupon stacking was for laundry soap and not say, cereal. and theres a couple reasons for this, one, food products generally have a pretty low retail markup and grocery stores operate on a very low profit margin, so food products generally dont get discounted as much as non-food products. two, manufacturers coupons are, like the name implies, only for manufactured products, so for folks like us that dont eat much processed food, there arent a whole lot of food coupons that are all that useful. 

5. heck, your best coupon deals may not even be on groceries. there are so, SO many other places that put out coupons that you probably never even thought of, restaurants (restaurant.com is a great place to get deals on eating out), fast food places, clothing stores, hardware stores, and when youre shopping online, a two-second google search will result in a discount nine times out of ten. so if you keep an open mind about coupons, youd be surprised at how useful they can be outside of the grocery store. 

6. if you werent already going to buy an item at full price, then buying it with a coupon is actually costing you money. seriously. coupons are actually designed to trick you into spending more money while thinking youre spending less. heres a really extreme example: last christmas my mother in law came to visit and was SO excited and COULD NOT stop talking about how at thanksgiving she really needed new work pants and her favorite store was having a giant sale and she had a coupon for an extra 30% off and if she used her store credit card she got a $20 giftcard for every $50 she spent so she was able to get about $2000 of clothes for $400, PLUS got $80 in giftcards and she saved SO MUCH MONEY. and on the surface this is a really exciting story. except if you were paying attention to the very beginning of the story you would know that she originally went to the store for work pants and thats it. so really she should have walked out of the store for like $100 (or less, given the coupon and giftcard promotion), but instead spent FOUR TIMES as much on clothes she probably wont even wear (since she was only there for pants and all the rest was impulse shopping) because of the perceived savings. so my number one golden rule of coupons is that if i dont need something badly enough to buy it at full price, then im not going to buy it at all, no matter how cheap it is (the only exception to this rule is when things are completely free and im at that store anyway). 

so long story short, you can use coupons productively without crazy extreme couponing antics, IF you take the time to carefully stack deals on the items that you already buy. but if youre looking for a magic bullet to "cut your grocery bill in half" (like the coupon mom method claims to do), then coupons are probably going to leave you disappointed.  

stay tuned for tomorrow when i update you about my new sponsorship options!!!

a birthday outing and an outfit post.

 so, my actual birthday was on friday (since james was home the three of us celebrated with disneyland and lots of ice cream) and today my mom threw me a little family lunch party (with a fabulous gluten free feast that ill tell you more about tomorrow). but my big birthday thing was yesterday, when james, my sister, and i went up to silverlake for an adventure:

first, my friends marisa and stacie met up with us at the silverlake art craft and vintage market for some shopping:

which was really, really fun. ive wanted to go to this market for like, three years (im not kidding) and even though it happens every month it never works out for us to be able to go. since it was my birthday i made SURE that we would be able to go, and im really glad we went. its not a huge market, but it had a really great selection of vendors. 

a couple weeks ago james sold some cards so that i could have spending money for my birthday (seriously the sweetest thing ever, i can never justify spending household money on myself), and id been saving it for what felt like FOREVER because somehow i KNEW that this was going to be the perfect opportunity for me to get the new clothes that i (badly) need. 

AND I WAS TOTALLY RIGHT! im not going to post pictures of all the stuff i got, because i really want to start doing outfit posts more regularly (and now i have a TON of great pieces to work with), but i got at least half of the "things my wardrobe really, REALLY needs" list crossed off. AND to make it even better knitted dove was having a sample sale, so i was able to get this skirt (in red!) and this dress (plus a sweater!) for $45!!! it was seriously the greatest part of the day. 

until we went to lunch, that is. i spent a LONG time searching for a gluten-free friendly (but still enjoyable) restaurant in the silverlake area, and after poking around urbanspoon for a bit i came across heywood grilled cheese shoppe:

which, like the name implies, only sells really, really fancy grilled cheese sandwiches. they have several signature sandwiches on their menu, or you can build your own with their list of breads, cheeses and toppings. i had "the heywood" (2 year aged english cheddar and caramelized onion confit) on gluten free bread, "inside out" (meaning it had a THICK crust of cheddar cheese on the outside of the bread) and it was BY FAR the best (gluten free or otherwise) sandwich of my ENTIRE LIFE:

even though the sandwiches are on the expensive side ($10-12, and the gluten free bread and cheese crust cost extra), they do come with soup and salad (the soup isnt gluten free so they made me an extra big salad). and more importantly, the gluten free bread is TOTALLY NORMAL SIZED AND DECENT TASTING. see, one of the big problems with eating gluten-free at restaurants, is that you usually end up having to pay extra for significantly LESS food.

 but that wasnt the case here. yeah i had to pay extra for the bread but at least i still got a regular sized sandwich. and more important, it was an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC SANDWICH. but the best part? for the first time in i dont know how long, i felt satisfied and FULL after eating (literally two days prior i was crying my eyes out about never getting to feel full). and if i can finally feel full, honestly i dont care if that sandwich costs $100. 

anyways, remember back in the beginning of this post, before i started gushing about sandwiches, how i said i wanted to start doing more outfit posts? no? well i totally did. and heres what i wore out shopping yesterday:

dress: hand-me-down (originally from simply wonderful, belt: target (from a skirt), tights cotton on, glasses: zenni optical, bag: vintage camera case, bracelet: vintage, necklace: target, shoes: urban outfitters

 like most of my dresses, this one is a hand-me-down from my sister, from when she worked at a super cute boutique at the mall. even though i LOVE the squirrel print, this dress has just been hanging out in my closet because i remembered it being a really weird tunic length on my sister and i wasnt sure how to style it. of course, i totally forgot to consider that my sister is like six inches taller than me and its a totally normal dress on me. 

the only problem though was that its kind of shapeless, and i didnt have any belts that fit my new somehow smaller than pre-pregnancy waist. at least i thought i didnt, i found this one on a skirt that i bought right after alice was born (that of course i wore non-stop for a few months and now kind of hate), and it was perfect. 

i finished the outfit off with just a couple small accessories (for a girl, im REALLY terrible at remembering to accessorize my outfits), this dress-and-scissors necklace i found while cleaning out my jewelry box:

a vintage kodak camera case for a purse, and a very, very special vintage silver charm bracelet:

james got me the bracelet when he worked as a gold buyer in arizona, and its actually the only piece of jewelry that james has ever bought for me. a lady sold it to his shop and he thought id like it so he bought it from his boss for whatever the silver cost, and its been one of my most prized possessions ever since. all the charms are old, dainty, sterling silver charms that make the cutest little jingle with every movement, AND they are just THE most bizzare assortment of charms you could imagine. seriously. theres a wheelbarrow, an elephant, a buffalo, a mailbox, a ladder, a pair of ice tongs (?), all kinds of crazy stuff. i wish i knew more about whoever collected them. 

so that was my outfit for the day. stay tuned for tomorrow because monday is weekly wishes day!

our third anniversary.

just in case this is your first time here (in that case, welcome!), and you havent noticed that ive mentioned it about a thousand times, yesterday was jamess and my third wedding anniversary (you can read more about our wedding here). this anniversary was absolutely, by far my favorite ever, because well, our first two were kind of weird: the first one i was eight months pregnant and the second was during a totally crazy transitional phase. but this third one, it was everything a girl could ever ask for. 

first off, james was home so the three of us had a picnic lunch at the beach. 

second, we actually exchanged gifts. i know gift giving is one of those couple things that is supposed to be totally normal, but for some reason, we really suck at it. both of us. somehow we really pulled it together though. 

 last week james treated me to a surprise haircut, and i totally thought that was it, but he also wanted me to have something to open on our anniversary when i gave him his gift, so he got me a hello kitty case for my 3ds. im sure to any mature adult this sounds like a totally weird and silly gift, but 1: i saved up a lot of money for my special animal crossing 3ds xl and its always either left out somewhere or jammed in my purse, and 2: ive got games and chargers and such lost all over the house, so this was really sweet and thoughtful. 

now my gift for james almost didnt happen, i had wanted to get him a pair of rainbow flip flops for months, because he only has the one pair he got on our honeymoon that are too big and falling apart and really terrible and he REALLY needs some nice, grown up flip flops (when you live at the beach, "nice flip flops" is a thing. trust me). the only problem is that theyre pretty expensive and weve been super broke all year and since im barely employed these days i didnt know if i was going to be able to make it happen. for a while it was looking like i wasnt. well i taught private knitting lessons all summer and at the last minute was able to scrape up the money i needed to get them (on sale with free shipping to boot!!!), plus a super rad card from julie ann art:

and third, james took me out for literally the best dinner ive ever had. we went to aliottas via firenze in torrance:

which i found kind of by accident when i was searching yelp for restaurants with gluten free options (because one of these days wahoos, in n out, and sushi are going to get old), and i found that this place not only has a huge gluten free menu if things i actually want to eat, but also has separate gluten free equipment for celiacs!!! literally EVERY single part of the meal was fantastic. i wasnt going to bore you with blurry, poorly lit food pictures, but hey, this is my blog and i really feel like gushing about this food. 

 i got a pasta with clams and white wine sauce:

and james got a seared ahi steak with veggies:

both of which were SO good that we not only demolished them, but also scraped up every last drop of sauce with a spoon, completely throwing away all etiquette so that we could savor every last morsel of deliciousness, it was that good. and not only was it a wonderful meal, for the first time ever since being diagnosed with celiac, i got to order something totally normal (and not weird hippy crap) at a nice restaurant and enjoy it without worrying about getting sick. 

and then there was dessert. normally i dont get dessert when we go out because usually the only thing i can have is ice cream and i am not paying $8 for one serving of ice cream, but this place happened to have my very favorite, creme brulee:

and this was heavenly. im really glad james got a cannoli and i didnt have to share, because i literally almost started crying over how good this creme brulee was. it was perfect, with exactly the right ratio of crust to custard and i swear there were like nine vanilla beans in it. 

i seriously cant even get over how perfect this anniversary was.

thank you aliottas for actually caring about people with celiac getting to enjoy your lovely restaurant, we will definitely be back. 

and thank you james, for taking me out and treating me like a princess, happy anniversary!

p.s. stay tuned for tomorrow, because ive got a GIVEAWAY coming!!!