Birchbox Love.

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Hey Ladies!

I thought I would write about something super girly today, and whats more girly than make-up!?!

not much my friends, not much.

I am here to introduce you to Birchbox, If you have already heard of it or subscribe to it then fantastic! But if not then listen up!

Birchbox is a box (go figure!) including 4 or 5 hand picked deluxe Beauty samples delivered to your door once a month.

I am pretty sure when I signed up that was all I read and I was sold. 

I have been subscribed to birchbox since march and I love it! 

It helps you discover great products you wouldn't normally buy, but end up loving!

Sometimes you even get full size products!

I have received a few full size products that are now part of my daily routine :)

I always look forward to getting my birchbox, its like Christmas morning once a month!

I love it!

Also if you decide you want to purchase full size products of some of the samples you have received you can purchase them straight from their website where you can earn points towards future purchases :)

I haven't made a full size purchase yet but I plan on making one very soon, I found a face scrub to die for!

Well If I havent convinced you to sign up yet, then email me and I will tell you more things I love about it. 

Birchbox should really hire me as a spokesperson because I have already gotten two people to sign up for it :)

And I am pretty sure they love it as much as I do.

Dont waste any more time, Go check out Birchbox.com and get you some samples!!

And then let me know what you got in your box, because not all the boxes are the same :)

Happy sampling!!

-Jamie

Starbucks is stealing my money........& a recipe.

Noooo, Starbucks isn't Literally stealing from me, but I sure felt robbed when I ordered my first pumpkin spice latte of the season and paid almost $5!!

Has it always cost that much?!? Getting one of those now will definitely be a treat.

So I of course went on the lookout for a cheaper version of this delicious drink and I found this recipe :

[source]

 (this one looks more tasty anyways :))

Recipe:

Pumpkin Spice Latte

Ingredients:

2 cups milk
1 cup very strong coffee (4 tablespoons coffee grounds to 1 cup of hot water)
2 tablespoons vanilla
4 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon spice
2 heaping spoonfuls of pumpkin

Directions:

Pour all of the ingredients into a pot and heat over medium-high heat until the coffee is steaming hot, whisking with a wire whisk until the ingredients are incorporated and a little frothy. Pour into mugs and top with fresh whipped cream & cinnamon. Enjoy!
Note- If you are not a fan of the cinnamon texture, I am seeing in the comments and through Facebook that adding a cinnamon stick to the coffee mixture while heating it can be a great remedy to the cinnamon texture. This way you get all of the cinnamon taste, but none of the grit!  This is just a base recipe that can be played with to your own tastes and preferences.  It is meant to be personalized depending on how you like your latte! Thank you all for trying and sharing this recipe! The response has been overwhelming on this one!
Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes

Serving Size: 2

Now go and Enjoy your Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte :)

And if you wanna make some extra for me and invite me over that would be nice too ;)

Cuz lets be honest, I will probably just be picking up the pumpkin spice coffee creamer the next time I go to the grocery store and pretend it's Starbucks ;)

-Jamie

Creative Capture Photography and Design.

So this is what I have been up to for the past few weeks....

Breanna and I had the pleasure of Photographing these three lovely ladies for their senior pictures.

There were so many Beautiful Pictures...obviously, Did you see these girls? They are Gorgeous!

Since there were sooo many pictures, It took us a while to Edit them all, but they are finally done! 

I will be showing you some more later ;)

-Jamie

Ps. If you would like to see some of our other photos go ahead and check out our Facebook Page :):)

A-Z

 So Ive seen this A-Z survey thingy floating around some of the blogs I read and It reminded me of old myspace surveys we all used to do. Come on don't act like you wouldn't spend your Friday nights filling out those super lame surveys and posting bulletin after bulletin full of useless information about yourself. Oh it was just me?? Its ok I don't mind owning up to it ;) 

Anyways I saw that Danielle from Sometimes Sweet (who btw has some of the coolest tattoos!) had done it, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon and borrow it from her and fill it out too!


Enjoy!




A. Age: 24
B. Bed size: Full, although I only use the very edge to sleep on.
C. Chore that you hate: Is all of them a bad answer??
D. Dogs: none :(
E. Essential start to your day: Coffee. If not I cant keep my eyes open and I end up getting a headache, I would just get hooked up to an iv full of coffee all day if i could.
F. Favorite color: Its always changing but its been yellow for a while now.
G. Gold or Silver: I used to absolutely hate Gold, but now I love it, and I also still like silver, so i guess my answer would be both.
H. Height:5 61/2.....I don't really know. I feel like I am the perfect height though, not to tall but not short either :)
I. Instruments you play: none. Wish I played the drums. or piano. or anything that makes noise really. I did play the recorder in 4th grade, but didn't we all??
J. Job title: Nanny, Family Entertainer, Self-proclaimed relationship guru.....ha ha jk ;)
K. Kids: Zero :(
L. Live:Cali...
M. Mother’s name:Janet
N. Nicknames: James, 7-11
O. Overnight hospital stays: not since i was to young to remember
P. Pet peeves: ill pass on this question cuz I could probably go on for days.
Q. Quote from a movie: "I'm gonna do it too! I'm Gonna do it too!!" Vince Vaughn from four Christmas's.
R. Right or left handed: Right handed.
S. Siblings: Two younger sisters Megan (21) and Morgan (18) and One Brother Michael (19)
U. Underwear: well I wear them if that's what your asking.
V. Vegetable you hate:peas. bleh!
W. What makes you run late: things that are out of my hands, because I hate, hate, hate being late. It gives me anxiety and makes me jumpy when I am gonna be late.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: back and dental
Y. Yummy food that you make:Top ramen. For realzz...
Z. Zoo animal: The Monkeys usually make me laugh.

-Jamie

Rainboots and Spiders.

 

This is a picture of my rain boots debut.

Unfortunately it was not because it was raining :)

I wore them for the first time to clean all the trash off my porch this weekend. And by trash I don't mean stuff, I literally mean trash.

Yeah, we are gross. I know.

So anyways, On Saturday morning/afternoon we had a roommate cleaning day, and after we finished the inside we decided it was finally time to tackle our patio that we had been neglecting pretty much since we moved. If you saw how close the dumpster was to our porch you would probably gasp at our laziness. Basically if you have a good arm you can throw the trash into the dumpsters without stepping off of our porch :/ 

But somehow we managed to just let it pile up on our patio.

So we all got into our rain boots because we were honestly afraid of what might try to crawl on our feet while we were cleaning and rain boots felt the safest. 

I really wish we would have had someone video taping us while this went down. We had a few of the neighbors just stopping what they were doing and watching us.

We were so grossed out and we were not being quiet about it. 

Especially Breanna, if you have seen the movie four Christmas's then think of the scene when the baby spits up on Reese witherspoon and Vince Vaughn's reaction and you get Breanna. Except even more dramatic.

K here comes the part where I toot my own horn.

(beep,beep!)

So we got to the bottom of the bags and there was a few bags left but they were covered in spider webs and spiders so Hula and Breanna decided that one of their boyfriends could just throw those away for us the next time they came over. 

I was like, forget that!

 Ill do it myself! I'm not scared of some tiny spiders and spiderwebs!

So I just went for it and grabbed it all up and threw it away myself!

Yep, its true, I'm pretty BA ;)

So if any of you need a spider wrangler you know who to call.....

The Exterminator! 

Sorry, I will only tolerate cleaning up spiders in my own home thank you very much ;)

-Jamie

Ps. I don't really understand spider phobias. I mean unless its like a tarantula or something because they are so small, you can just step on them and they are dead. I just don't get why they are scary, I'm sorry for all of you that are terribly afraid of spiders, I just don't get it.

friday night dinner

If you know me at all you know that I don't cook.

Its not that I am not capable, I guess I can if I try, I just don't.

So the only time I eat a really good home cooked meal is because my Roommate Breanna decided to cook (who loves cooking, she even asked for all things having to do with cooking and baking for her birthday!) or I went to my parents house because I was tired of eating Top Ramen and McDonald's Cheeseburgers.

Last Friday she decided she wanted to cook us all dinner (her, Hula and I). Which happens pretty often, even if she isn't cooking for us she usually has leftovers of whatever it is she is cooking and lets us have some. Thank God! If it wasn't for her I'm sure I would have died of starvation by now. 

As she was cooking she was all " ooo take pictures of me cooking and blog about it!"
So here I am. Blogging about it.
And although I got distracted and didn't get any pictures of her actually cooking it, I did get pics of the end result, which was pretty, pretty tasty if I do say so myself. 

Thanks Breanna for keeping me alive and not allowing me to become malnourished :)
 -Jamie

Ps.
She found the recipe here. Its a Creamy caprese pasta and its super duper cheesy! So if you are a cheese luvah then you need to check this recipe out!

Rhinestone Cowboy

Every summer our local radio stations hosts $5 concerts at our local park (which is conveniently located right down the street from my apt, win!) and last week was my first one ever!

My mom asked me if I wanted to go with her and my dad and I just so happened to be free that night, so i said why not? So i dragged Hula along with me...jk I didn't have to drag her, she would never pass up hanging out with me ;)

First of all, why was this the first time I have ever been to one of these concerts? Of course the first one I go to is the last one of the season. pshh, you can bet ill be there next year though!

Now lets get to the important part of this post.

The Rhinestone Cowboy.

I just have to inform you first that I realized while enjoying this concert that I have more fun watching other people enjoy the concert then enjoying the actual concert myself. 

Am I the only one who feels that way? Please tell me I'm not alone! 

Anyways....

There was a cowboy there. Well not just one, there were dozens actually, besides the rodeo I have never seen so many wranglers and cowboy hats (and not to mention girls in booty shorts and boots to go along with it) in one place.

But there was this one who was with his friends and decided to sit right next to us, like extremely close. I had to scoot even closer to my parents so that Hula didn't have to rub arms with this dude.

There were several things wrong with this guy. He lost all hope before he even said hello.

Poor guy. Never stood a chance. 

#1. He was wearing an Ed Hardy button up with his wranglers, boots and cowboy hat. No explanation needed.

#2. He was chewing. Then spitting. Then chewing again, and spitting some more. All as he sat right next to us. We were wearing sandals. What if he had missed and spit on our feet ?!? I. would. have. lost. it. 

 #3. He obviously was already to faded to notice Hula waving her engagement ring in his face. Fail.

 #4. He was dancing. By himself. Until the lady walking around picking up trash stopped and danced with him. He looked like he was having a grand time, I'm just glad it wasn't me. 

And last but not least....

He made fun of Justin Bieber.

I know its hard to believe anyone would say anything negative about the Biebs, but he did.

And that was the last straw. 

If he had tried to talk to us at all anymore that night I had already mentally made this list in my head so that I could explain to him the reasons why the conversation wasn't gonna go anywhere. 

Although this guy was kind of annoying, he did add to the entertainment. Him along with two 12 year old girls standing below the stage all night screaming their heads off and the lame flirting going on all over the place.

Hula even saw a girl introduce herself to a guy and wrap her leg around him while she shook his hand. K I am exaggerating a little. But there was a lot of body language being spoken in their introduction.

Until next time :)

-Jamie

Weekend Recap :)

Welcome to last weekend :)

We started out shopping at the Del Amo shopping center, where we found lots of goodies.

I even found a hat that fit my head! You don't know how rare that is people, I have a huge head, and not because of all the compliments i get either ;) haha jk!...But I do really have a huge head.

In between all of the shopping we had to stop for lunch (shout out to Frankie who slipped us some money for lunch and sent us off with a great breakfast w/plenty of Bacon)

By the time we decided to eat we were famished. 

We didn't even care at that point where we were eating so we headed to BJ's because we knew we liked it, and on the way there we noticed this interesting eatery called "Stacked"

 This place was soooo cool! You ordered on Ipads! There was one on every table, so there were no waiters, you just send your order to the kitchen and someone brings it out. And the ipad made it so easy to specify your order to your liking.

When they told us that there were no waiters and just ipads, we were like what!? You don't have to interact with people?? Where do we sit?!?

We took advantage of the time while we waited for our food (which wasn't very long) to take some pictures.

[Breanna using the handy dandy quick pod, which is basically your own personal paparazzi]

We also decided we should open up our own version of this place in Fresno and call it "Piled"
What do you think? Would you come eat there???

After a full and fabulous day of shopping Frankie and Noni wanted to treat us to Chinese for working so hard all day going from store to store ;)

Things started out pretty normal....

Then just got weird. Or we got Delirious.

And somehow we turned into walrus's...

Hula wanted to join in but kinda failed.

And then I failed.

And finally success. Sort of.

A little girl at the next table wanted to be just like us and grabbed her chopsticks and attempted the walrus and immediately got shut down by her parents. They obviously didn't have a very good sense of humor. Poor girl is being raised by un-funny parents, such a shame.

[This is how we attempt to let the air out of an air mattress, there was a lot of jumping involved.]

Then we tried to imitate this photo from last year when we stayed with Frankie and Noni:

And this is what we got:

Don't mind my awkward leaning tower pose.

On sunday we spent the afternoon at the Spectrum shopping center.
I loved it! It was so nice and had such great stores to shop at. There was even a Ferris wheel and a carousal!

 

And since we had lunch the day before at a super high tech place we decided to kick back and eat at Ruby's Diner :)

So there you have it folks, My weekend was a blasty-blast! I cant say that this weekend will be as fun because we decided to have a deep clean our apartment this weekend, and cleaning just isn't fun my friends. Hopefully we can squeeze a few laughs and awkward pictures in there for good measure. And don't worry I will be sure to show you ;)
-Jamie

Ps. I'm not sure how this happened since Hula is the one getting married and I am the one that is very, very single but we somehow planned the theme of my wedding on the drive to la. Lets just say you will definitely want to be invited, it is gonna be EPIC ;)

Leisure World....My future home.

I'm Alive!

You can all stop worrying about where I have been, because I know it kept you up all night not knowing what it was I was up to the last few days. 

I was out of town for a couple days with my friends and had to wait until today to steal all the pictures Zip took from our busy weekend. 

I am warning you now there are lots of pictures.

So I am gonna break up the post A lil bit so your eyes don't go crazy looking at all the funny pictures of us from our trip.  

Cuz let me tell you. There are some funny ones. 

First, let me introduce you to this amazing place that we (Hula,Zip,Breanna and I) are obsessed with.

Its called Leisure World, and Hula's Grandparents live there, they let us stay with them last year when we went to Disneyland and again this year while we took a weekend to go shopping in la. 

Doesn't that Globe and Font just scream fantastic?!?

We are so intrigued by this place. 

It has its own everything! Churches, grocery stores, golf course...you name it, Leisure World has it!

It reminded me of the movie the stepford wives except for large houses its cute little condos and sweet older people instead of robots. So kind of not like the stepford wives at all.

And there are Rabbits everywhere! We thought that was super cool but apparently its a Problem. Who knew bunnies could cause such a commotion?

We planned on taking a walk in our matching track suits (think sue Sylvester from glee) at some point this weekend to get a better feel for the place but we decided to sleep in instead. 

What we did do was come up with a plan to eventually take over Leisure World. Not like a hostage situation type take over but more like a buying it out and living there with all the old people take over.

I think its a great plan. We could each use our different skills to run the place, and when we are married and have kids we would never run out of babysitters! 

Idk who wouldn't want to live in a community that looks like it just stepped out of the sixties with a huge globe that welcomes you when you enter.

So if anyone wants to jump on the train to Leisure world, Let me know, seats are limited.

-Jamie

 

Remembering...

People say you never forget what you were doing when something tragic happens.

And that is so true.

Today marks 10 years since tragedy struck the twin towers and America was brought to their knees.

I remember that day like it was yesterday as I am sure all of you do as well.

I was only 14 and a Freshman in High School at the time.

I remember I was getting ready for school when I walked out into the living room and saw my mom staring at the TV in dis-belief. 

My mom explained to me what had happened, and I can say now I truly didn't understand the toll this would take until much later. 

I couldn't wrap my mind around what had just happened.

How does this even happen? 

It didn't seem real. This was stuff that happened in the movies, not in real life.

As the day went on though I remember it became more and more real to me.

My classes didn't go on as normal that day, but how could they?

I went from class to class watching the news and getting minute to minute updates on what was going on.

I am remembering the feeling of emotions I had on that day right now as I write this. I can usually shut my feelings off about things as long as I don't think about it, but this was something you couldn't ignore. 

Still today at 24 years old I sometimes have to remind myself that this tragedy actually happened, It wasn't a movie or a story told, It really happened.America was really attacked. People were really hurt. People really Died.

I was fortunate to not have any friends or family that were hurt or killed in the 9/11 attack, but I know there were so many that were not as lucky as I was. And I am sure those people don't have to be reminded how real this event was. They are living the reality of it Everyday. 

Lets all remember how real this event was and how so many people were Really affected by it and are still affected by it. 

Lets keep these people in our prayers.

And Lets also honor the Hero's that came out of this disaster. 

Because without them things could have been a lot worse, so Thank you :)

The New BabySitters club

Except not like the Babysitters club at all.

More like the blessings club.

Yeah the name was super creative I know. I am the Vice President and Zip is President since she came up with the idea to actually get together and make these Blessing Bags!

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 Zip and I found this project on Pinterest. 

They are ziplock bags filled with things Homeless people may need that you keep in your car and can pass out as needed.  

Basically you get zip lock bags and and fill them with travel size items that Homeless people may need like:

Toothbrushes

Toothpaste

Deodorant

soap

Food

Etc...I think you get the point.

 We decided to add a note with encouraging words and verses on it :)

I am really glad Zip got the ball rolling with this project, I am always wanting to do things like this but have a hard time executing my ideas. 

There is no greater feeling then the feeling and satisfaction you get when helping others in need.

How are you helping bless the needy and unfortunate people around you?

"It's criminal to ignore a neighbor in need,
   but compassion for the poor—what a blessing!"

-Proverbs 14:21 (MSG)

-Jamie

Ps. If you want to join our club you totally can. We still have a few positions open ;)