Calla Lilies-Part 1

 I came to a realization, I don't need to leave my house to find beautiful and interesting things to photograph. I use to think that I had to go somewhere with someone and photograph my entire outing and then weed through the photographs for the best ones to tell the story of the day.

This past weekend I stayed home and didn't really leave but for grocery shopping, I know super boring right?  It was kind of nice though, I caught up on all sorts of stuff and went outside and decided to photograph some of the beauty that surrounds me. A year after we moved into our house, I bought some Calla Lilies. I didn't know anything about plants back then and thought they would be in full bloom year round. They're not, but I'm okay with that because every spring these beautiful flowers come back! Even if I forget to water them! I can honestly say these are some loyal plants.

They were getting close to wilting so I decided to cut them and put them in a vase but before that I photographed them. I took so many pictures and thought these beauties would make a great post. I'll be breaking up the posts this week featuring these beauties so I hope you come back and check them out.

Also, please forgive me for not knowing the difference between Calla Lilies or Calla Lily. If you happen to know leave me a comment or at least tell me what type these are.



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Today I woke up feeling angry. 

 

I also felt sad but mainly angry.

 

It was a familiar feeling.

 

I felt this anger after my dad passed.

 

The people that died this time are strangers.

 

Innocent strangers.

 

They didn't deserve to die.

 

Nobody deserves to die.

 

Nobody has the right to take a life.

 

Anger does not justify killing.

 

Religion does not justify killing.

 

We may not agree with everyone's religion.

 

We may not agree with everyone's sexuality.

 

We may not agree with everyone's political views.

 

Didn't we all learn about respect?

 

Didn't we all learn about love?

 

This is basic shit, somebody fucked up.

 

Bawse!

 

 



 

A few weeks ago my friend invited me to a launch party at the world famous Smashbox studios in Culver City. With no hesitation, I answered her with a big fat yes! Smashbox collaborated with youtube star Lilly Singh and created a matte liquid lipstick that Lilly named Bawse.

 

It was such a unique experience, we were treated to a makeup retouch, free stuff and professional head shots. Oh my gosh you guys, I didn't think I was going to get nervous to get my photo taken but I did. It was the funniest thing ever, my lip was shaking and I couldn't even hide it.  When I was done, my friend was also done with her mini photo shoot and turns out she was just as nervous! We laughed all the way home!

Lately...

Wow! My last post here on my little corner of the Internet was on March 5th! I'm sorry you guys! I got really busy with work, well actually every March is insanely busy at work. So I knew I was going to be swamped and wouldn't be able to work on my site.  April rolled around and I was playing catch up at work and at home, so again I was left with not a whole lot of time for my neglected blog. We are in May now and I figured I would catch you up with what I've been up to. I'll break it down for you by months. Also, I think I'm going to go back into February because I feel like February was when everything really started to slow down.

 

February

 

February consisted of my husband and I going to a Laker game. This was a gift I had bought for my husband last year when I heard Kobe was retiring. I wanted him to see Kobe live in action for once in his life.

 

It was a true pleasure to see Kobe play in person and really appreciate the game.

 

Okay that was about the only fun I had in February because the rest of the time I was working.

 

March

 

March was nothing but 10-12 hours of work everyday including Saturdays!

 

April

 

Tired of sitting down for 10-12 hours a day for a whole month,  I started walking and working out. When the weather was warm my husband, mom, sister, sister in law, brother in law and friend would head to our local track and walk laps. We all walked laps and my husband was the only one that actually runs. The track we frequent has recently gone through a renovation. They planted various types of plants that require very little water and this is one of my favorites!

 

 

Another beautiful place frequented in April is this a park that isn't near my home but worth the drive. When I say "isn't  near" I mean its like 20 minutes away from my house, so technical it is near but if its more than 10 minutes away its far for me!

 

 

Oh a fun thing I did in April was that my sister, a friend and her boyfriend went to the Nashville Concert! Nashville the show not a show in Nashville, TN. Oh my gosh you guys, they were amazing! Some of the main characters did not perform at this concert but the ones that did were amazing! A truly talented group of artist.

 

 

Oh yea, I'm totally bummed that this show has been cancelled! Why God, why???

 

I also went to another concert in April that is quite possibly the polar opposite of the Nashville concert. My husband and I went with his siblings and their spouses to a radio station concert known as Krush Groove from Kday. This concert was basically a handful of west coast classic rappers such as, Too Short, Warren G, Mack 10, Dj Quik, and Snoop Dogg to name a few. This was so much fun as well. This concert was at the recently renovated Inglewood Forum.

 

 

 

In April, my husband and I decided to try public transportation.  If you live somewhere other than California the use of public transportation is common, but here we depend on our cars! So us using public transportation is a not common. Our first destination was Universal City Walk. This was so much fun and we felt like tourist in our own city. It was very easy and so economically, it cost us about $7 to ride public transit (for both of us) and if we would have driven there we would have paid $20 in parking and been stuck in traffic. Needless to say this was not the last time we used it but more on that later.

 

 

To wrap up April, we headed to Staples Center to catch a Clipper game.

 

 

We also went to this game using public transportation. 

 

May

 

May! I'm usually a big fan of spring and especially the month of May, because this is usually when the weather starts to warm up and you can start to pull your shorts and sandals out. This May however, has been a total bust! I'm soooo over May gray! I need sun!

 

 

I know, I know, I shouldn't complain we have nice weather the majority of the year. I'll move on.

 

Okay so moving on, in May my friend invited me to a  launch party at the Smashbox Studios! Smashbox collaborated with YouTube star Lilly Singh, and created a matte liquid lipstick called Bawse. You guys this was so much fun and such a cool experience but I think I will do an entire post on this event. So stay tuned.

 

 

I'm almost done, I promise.

 

This past weekend my husband and I did some babysitting, actually teenage sitting. We were left with two of our teenage nephews for the entire weekend. We wanted to treat them to a fun weekend and planned a busy weekend. we kicked off Friday with some home cooked burgers and a trip to the movies, we saw Captain America. After the movie we took them to the market so they can get whatever snacks they wanted to eat while at our house. New to public transit, we decided to take them to a Baseball game and made our way to Dodger Stadium.

 

 

Once the game was over we headed to Union Station to catch the subway back home.

 

 

So basically that's what I've been up to lately. What about you guys? Any plans for Memorial day weekend?

 

Window Shopping

 

 

 

 

 Last night my friend and I headed to Hollywood for dinner and somehow ended the night walking on Rodeo Drive. Everything was closed and nobody was around so we did some window shopping/dreaming. These are just a few snaps of some of my favorite windows on the very expensive drive. It's nice to dream. 

Shadows of Love

Today is the last day of February, the month of love. The month where red roses sell like crazy and chocolates can be found in every household. I just want to remind everyone that just because the month is ending, the acts of love should not end. My suggestion, try not to fall back into routines, keep the love alive all year. Go on dates with your spouses, bring home flowers once in a while, buy someone their favorite chocolates, or have a weekend gateway. Give someone you love a gift for no particular reason. These little surprises can make someone's day and can keep the spark in any relationship. 

 

Let's not limit the acts of love to only spouses or partners, parents, siblings, and friends count too. I think this is something that a lot of people tend to forget and sometimes its hard to show your love, I know I'm guilty of this.   I'd love to hear what you guys do to keep the love alive everyday, feel free to leave a comment down below.

 

Big Bear Diary

My sister in law normally works weekends but this this past weekend she finally had the weekend off. She wanted to take advantage of her weekend and treat her kids to something fun and special. She invited my husband and I to tag along. Her top pick was a snow day! We live in Southern California and we are fortunate to have mountains two hours away. But because it's Southern California it was warm and the only snow to play with was man made. We didn't know this until we arrived but we didn't let this stop us.

 



 

 

We drove around and found a place where we were able to go snow tubing. It was a little busy but we made our way through the crowd and went into the park. Now, I've said this before and I'm not ashamed to say it again, "I'm a big chicken!"  As soon as we saw the slope my sister in law asked if I was really going to do the tubing? I took a good look and said "yes, it's not that high." She asked me because she is also a little bit of a chicken and figured if I backed out she can back out too. We collected our tubes and made our way up the slope.

 

 

 

This photo was taken by my husband.

 

 

Once on top there was even more people so I didn't really get a good look down until I was about to slide down. It was finally my turn and my husband decided to slide down with me. We each had our own donut but he held on to mine and we went down together. OH MY GOD! It was a lot scarier than I thought and as we were going down those were the exact same words I screamed out loud!  It was so scary but so much fun! We laughed so much but lets just say I stayed in the baby slope for the rest of the day.

 

 

After spending most of the day snow tubing, slipping, falling, and laughing we decided to call it a day and headed to the lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While at the lake we entertained ourselves taking pictures, throwing rocks into the lake and taking in the beautiful sights.   Once we were all tired we decided to head home and grab some pizza.  Our drive home did not disappoint, the sunset was beautiful.

 

 

 

It was so much fun to get out of the routine for a day and laugh so hard all day. I'm still laughing at some of the falls we had.