goodbye august.

we meyerss had quite a day today. on top of being completely drained from last week, we started the morning with a birthday party:

went home for a VERY long nap (ok maybe that was just me), and then ended the day with a movie at the park (very appropriate since california has apparently been relocated to the center of the sun):

since now (finally, at 11 pm) it is FINALLY a pleasant temperature for existing, id like to take a few minutes, as promised, to talk about all the reasons im so excited for september, because i am really, REALLY excited for fall to start. 

and no, none of them is pumpkin spice lattes (ive never even had one before):

1. james and i are celebrating out 3rd wedding anniversary wednesday, and not only did james TOTALLY surprise me with an awesome gift, but i have something pretty rad up my sleeve as well, AND weve got some pretty spectacular dinner plans. 

2. im starting a new gig in a couple weeks, teaching classes at my churchs homeschool co op! im teaching knitting in the fall, and starting in the spring, ill actually get to use some of my fine arts education (for the first time ever) teaching color theory! as nice as my main job teaching at joanns can be, (though theres been some corporate level changes that have resulted in me not working much lately), i am so, SO excited to get to share some of my favorite things with the kids at church. 

3. BIG things are happening with this little blog of mine, im sponsoring the lovely aukele at 91 dash, which means im getting to be involved in some REALLY fun giveaways (stay tuned for details!), AND (thanks to the wonderful passionfruit giveaway over at hey love designs) im currently working on taking steps to start a sponsorship program of my very own. 

and most importantly,

4. fall is my favorite, because if its september, that means that october is next, and that means that ITS ALMOST MY BIRTHDAY!!! ok, and alices too, since her birthday is a week before mine, but still. birthdays. i love me some birthdays. 

and then theres the minor details like the weather cooling off and getting to wear sweaters and boots and being able to bake without wanting to die... but those four thing are really what im really pumped about right now. 

what are your thoughts on fall? does it make you excited for the change in seasons or sad to see the summer go?

summer goals, revisited.

ok, so i was supposed to write this post yesterday but 1. it was grocery day, 2. alice barely napped long enough for me to finish my grocery lists, and 3. i got the very, very distracting news that i had won a year subscription to passionfruit ads from hey love designs (more about that later), so i didnt. also its still school week, and ive been waking up at 5 to drop james off, so actually i spent most of yesterday as a sleepy, cranky, emotional wreck. 

but back to business, as we all know, starbucks is about to bring back the pumpkin spice latte, meaning that summer is just about over. except we live at the beach and its summer basically all year round. but i suppose thats beside the point. what i wanted to do today was take a few minutes to re-visit the summer goals i made back in june, before i get myself too excited about all the changes coming up in the fall (stay tuned! september is going to be a big month, i can already tell). 

so, just to refresh our memories, i made three sets of goals, for alice, for me, and for the family. and heres how we did:

for alice: 

1. go to at least two new parks. this one we did, and then some. we actually made it to three new parks, we went to delthorne park, victor park, AND, most importantly, rocketship park:

(see, its called rocketship park because it has a ROCKETSHIP. how awesome is that?)

2. take alice to the california science center. ok this one we missed. but we did go to the sea lab: 

AND the skirball center, so alice still got plenty of museum time. 

for me:

1. get my etsy shop up and running. check and check! ive got my first batch of goodies up in the shop, a second in progress, and LOTS of new ideas. definitely feel sucessful in this one. 

2. work on improving my photography skills. now i cant really objectively claim that ive actually gotten much better at photography, but i have gotten much better at remembering to take my dslr with us places, and putting more care and thought into my photos. id like to think i have made a slow and steady improvement over the summer though. 

for the family:

1. deep clean and purge the house. HA! we were sort of forced to do this one due to our apartment flooding, and while its not quite done enough for say, before-and-after pictures, we COMPLETELY emptied and deep cleaned the house AND re-arranged things a bit more efficiently, so im really happy with how we did here. 

2. institute a weekly family bible study. ok, heres where we didnt do so well. i mean, we tried, we really did. and we did a couple, but we ran into some problems. our irregular work schedules and separate daily routines made it really difficult to set aside time to do it together, and the study james chose happened to start off with a difficult topic on which we dont agree, so we quickly got discouraged and gave up. not saying thats what we should have done, but thats what happened. 

so over all im really happy with how our summer goals turned out, honestly i did MUCH better than i thought i would (i guess maybe because i made it public?), and now that i can see how much we did, im REALLY excited to put my fall goals together (obviously family bible study is back on the list, though). 

so tell me, how was your summer?

a fancy outfit for a fancy party.

my middle sister, emily, turned 19 last week and celebrated with a "fancy dessert party" saturday night. and by "fancy dessert party" she meant that everyone was supposed to dress fancy and come over to my moms house for a dessert bar. obviously i was super excited about this because, first of all, dessert bar (and not just any desserts, made by my mom desserts), and second of all i havent exactly had much opportunity for dressing fancy lately with it being summer and us being broke and all. i probably spent the entire week brainstorming outfit ideas, and heres what i wore to the party:

dress: hand-me-down, tights: cotton on, shoes: aldo (purchased at wasteland melrose),  necklace: vintage, bracelet: tiffany, glasses: zenni optical

so this dress. it was in my sisters closet. with the tags still on it. when she gave it to me, i started giving her a hard time about buying clothes and not wearing them, and apparently this dress was given to her by someone else. this dress. this totally super cute and flattering and comfortable and all around awesome (ok, maybe the fabrics a little thin and it needs a slip, but every girl has a million slips, right? or is that just me?) dress was just sitting around in peoples closets not getting worn. how sad is that? needless to say, i was more than happy to take it off her hands and give it a loving and appreciative home. 

but seriously, i cant get over how much i love this dress, especially the teeny little pleats in the skirt:

and how the lace overlay on the bodice went perfectly with my vintage pearl necklace (which i scored at the torrance antique fair for $3):

i also wore heels. which is a pretty huge deal because ive only worn heels like two or three times since alice was born. but lately ive been reading a lot of blogs by other moms with toddlers and ive been seeing a lot of outfit posts with fancy dresses and heels. heck, emily at the freckled fox is a million weeks pregnant still wearing heels all the time so if she can do it so can i. 

and i did:

it actually wasnt bad at all. honestly im not even sure what i was trying to avoid by wearing flats all the time but i think now ill probably start wearing heels more often. these are actually the "real" shoes that i bought for my wedding. i was really sad that i didnt get to wear them then because they looked SO cute with my 20s style lace dress, but my "aisle" was a steep stone pathway and i was REALLY sick the week before my wedding so i could barely even stand up straight in the flats i ended up wearing. anyways, im glad that i still have them and get to wear them now, because i probably would never have bought shoes this nice under any other circumstances. 

now, since my mom is far too modest to show off her amazing parties herself, i also thought id share a few photos of all the wonderful decorations and desserts that she made for the party so that everyone out there can see how great she is.

like this super sweet paper bunting:

and wine bottle centerpieces:

heres the drink table (stocked with my favorite sparkling lemonade, too!):

 and the dessert table: 

which featured (from left to right) cookies, mini apple pies, cake pops, chocolate dipped strawberries, cupcakes, mini peach cobblers, chocolate dipped marshmallows, peanut butter bars, and (just outside the frame) mini strawberry shortcakes. AND all of it was homemade, except the cookies, which were from diddy riese, but thats better than homemade anyway. 

and because my mom is the greatest ever, she even accommodated the guests with dietary restrictions by making vegan cupcakes (also please notice the cake stands, which she made from candlesticks and plates):

 and gluten-free apple pies:

probably the best dessert of the night (even though i couldnt eat it) was the make-your-own ice cream sandwich and milkshake station: 

because diddy riese cookies (if youre not from the la area, diddy riese is a bakery near ucla that has THE BEST cookies EVER):

i actually didnt really take any pictures of people at the party, but thats because my sisters boss set up a super amazing photo booth. i mean SERIOUSLY: 

does my family know how to party or what?

happy birthday emily! 

our week in review. and our favorite cheap date.

probably the best thing to come out of our crappy living situation last week is that we did everything in our power to be at home as little as possible, we ended up having a really fun and busy week.

saturday we got to spend some time with our arizona friends (and they were kind enough to help us move):

then monday we met my old friends from portland at the pier, where we saw a very large pelican:

and alice literally only wanted to play in front of the kite store:

(after that we went to the park and i found $20!). tuesday alice and i went to the beach, then after james got home we all went out for dinner (because that $20 was REALLY burning a hole in my pocket). wednesday alice and i went to storytime AND the park. thursday we had dinner with friends. friday we went to the beach again, because why the heck not? saturday was my sisters super fun birthday party (which was probably my moms cutest party so far, pictures coming soon):

sunday there was after-church potluck, and then monday afternoon we FINALLY started the moving process. wow, just typing all that was draining, and thats not even all the stuff we did. needless to say that yesterday we were all pretty spent, and our fridge was completely empty from me avoiding the grocery store all week, so we went out for our favorite cheap family date:

we started the night at micky finzz in redondo beach, for tacos:

if we didnt have other stuff going on most of the time id probably go there every tuesday, since dinner for the three of us (alice only eats chips and beans off our plates) comes out to only $14 AFTER tax and tip (they raised their prices recently, it used to only be $12, but i still think its pretty great). 

then we followed dinner with ice cream from handels:

because conveniently enough, single scoops are only $2 on tuesdays. and this isnt just any scoop of ice cream, its a huge scoop of super amazing homemade ice cream thats probably some of the best ice cream ive ever had. 

so thats what we did while i was gone. i wish i could say that now im going to go sleep for a few days, but unfortunately ive got work in the morning and weve still got LOTS of unpacking and organizing to do. oh well...

family coffee date.

things have been excessively busy in the meyers house lately. james is back working full-time, for some reason ive gotten a weird rush of classes this week, and i have to spend tomorrow fasting in preparation for yet another unpleasant doctors appointment. on top of all this, its been a million degrees out and our shoebox apartment with poorly placed windows has no ceiling fans. i think i speak for all of us when i say we definitely deserved a fun treat this weekend. something like a big fancy family dinner date. unfortunately our bank account didnt agree with that idea. i did however have a buy-one-drink-get-one-free coupon for coffee bean, so after i got home from work this afternoon we had a family coffee date

since one of the drinks was free, we agreed to get a snack to share as well. the only thing that looked like i could eat it was the little fruit and cheese box, and at first i was like "six dollars for grapes and cheese? is this really necessary?", but then i remembered, this was a special treat. and im totally glad we splurged on it, it was actually PACKED with really great cheese and made a super satisfying snack for all three of us. this particular location also had a really cozy semi-enclosed patio area, so we got to have some much needed quiet time to relax (have i mentioned that ALL of our neighbors have been excessively loud lately, all the time?)

sigh. i really, really wish alice would stand still for a picture just once in her life. 

it was so great to go hang out as a family, that when we finished our treat, we really didnt want to go home to our stuffy, noisy apartment. we were having leftovers for dinner and i didnt need to get home to cook, so we didnt. we went over to the mall and walked around for a while until we decided it was time to eat dinner and watch doctor who. 

and thats exactly what we did. it was the most perfect saturday weve had in a very, very long time.

summer goals.

summer is definitely in full swing here at the meyers house, and alice is really into it. we have totally been taking advantage of all the free things to do around here, in addition to more regular beach days, weve also been spending more time at the park:

swimming in our buildings pool:

drawing with chalk:

and checking out the splash pad at alondra park (ok, alice wasnt super into this one):

 

in a couple of days it will be july, and our disneyland passes will be blocked out until mid-august (not that we want to go in the summertime anyways). with no free disneyland, ive been compiling a mental list of other free things to try this summer now that alice is old enough to enjoy day trips (or i guess more accurately, now that alice is old enough for me to enjoy taking her on day trips). as this mental list was growing two things came to mind: 1.  i was starting to get a little crazy and needed to take it down a notch and stick to a small manageable list that we might actually be able to finish, and 2. why limit our summer goals to just day trips for alice? why not make a short list of goals for other areas of life too? 

james and i talked about it for a bit, and we concluded that this was a much better idea than the big grandiose yearly goal list we made back in january (organized by month, with deadlines, and completely based on a projected income that well... didnt happen). heres what we came up with:

for alice:

1. go to at least two new parks. theres SO many parks in the south bay that this should be the easiest one. 

2. visit the california science center. alice has been to the natural history museum a couple times now, but not the science center, and its one of my favorite field trips from when i was a kid. 

for me:

1. get the new etsy shop up and running. this is currently in progress, and im really excited about how its going, i just want to make sure that everythings in working order by the end of summer

2. work on improving my photography skills. since i started this blog ive noticed that my photography has gotten really sloppy. i found some photos from my old etsy shop, back when i took pictures almost every day, and i couldnt even believe that i used to be that good, so i need to practice more so i can be that good again. 

for the family:

1. deep clean the whole house and purge it of unnecessary belongings. we did this with our closets back in january and it was awesome, i think the whole house will be a lot more comfortable if it wasnt so cluttered. 

2. institute a weekly family bible study time. this is something we talk about doing all the time and never actually do, so now were going to fix that. 

and thats our summer goal list! im really excited to work on these and see how they go. 

so what do you have planned this summer?