"Mixed Kids Are the Cutest"

I saw this article and it got me thinking. I often get comments like this about my daughter. While I do believe my daughter IS THE CUTEST, it bothers me sometimes when people make that comment after they find out my daughter is of mixed race.

My family is the "color of the rainbow" and I LOVE each and everyone of them unconditionally regardless of their skin color.

I don't entirely agree with the article where it says that statements like these are "racist". I think that's a bit of an extreme. I do think people make these comments thinking they are being complimentary when in actuality, they are not. I mean, telling me my daughter is cute because she is of mixed race implies that J & I (who are not of mixed race) are just mediocre. I beg to differ. I happen to think my husband is the hottest guy out there and I am sure he will tell you the same thing about me :-).
I like to think 2 beautiful people made an even more beautiful baby :-).

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with this article and why?

In the meantime, here's a picture of my princess with my handsome hubby all ready for Church.

Hope you're having a fabulous week!

Sitting & standing

Its been quite a busy week and I am glad the weekend is upon us. J is almost done with school. He graduates in 2 weeks. Yay!

On Friday evening, JOE started sitting on her own for a few seconds. However, as of Wednesday morning, she is officially sitting on her own. I am so proud of my little princess. 

Here she is, trying to figure out what's in front of her. I was using my iPAD this picture as opposed to my android phone 

She is also trying to stand on her own. She still needs to be held but if I hold her close to me, she will stand for a couple of seconds. Does that mean she'll be crawling or waking soon? Scary!!!

Last night, she decided she wanted to be sprawled out on our bed. She apparently, likes it very much.

And here is my darling handsome husband being silly. I can see this happening in a lot of her future pics. The stuff she can look forward to :-).

Hope you had an awesome week!

Weekend festivities...baby dedication & more DIY

It was a fun but VERY busy weekend. My family came to town to celebrate JOE's dedication at church. It was awesome to be surrounded by friends and family from bother sides. JOE truly is a lucky gal. In true fashion she did great all day yesterday and proceeded to be a crying mess after we got home. Its all good. She slept from 8pm until 7:15am this morning. SCORE!

Here she is with her aunt/godmother.

I made good on my promise and had a dress made for her from my wedding gown. It looked great on her and I am glad I did it. We are also having a romper made for a boy incase our next one or the one after is a boy :-). I am keeping the top of the dress and will have a different colored skirt added to it later. Perhaps it I can wear it for our 10-year anniversary. That dress will certainly be put to good use! It cost a pretty penny afterall and I refuse to only get 6-hours of wear out of it :-).

JOE with her grandparents (my parents).

More pics on JOE's dedication later. The photog (my brother) had to leave early to catch a train back to NYC so he couldn't download the pics before leaving.

More DIY Projects

I saw this picture on Pintrest and wanted to recreate something similar.

J & I inherited this buffet from J's grandmother.

I got the frame from eBAY. I already had the mirror. The glassware was from our unity candles and also a couple of flower vases I have received in the past from J. My dad used painter's tape to cover the areas we wanted to protect and I went to work on this. It took a total of about 1 hour to paint and a full day to dry. 

Here's the finished work.

Buffet: Free

Glassware: Free

Stones in vases: Already had these at home

Frame: $35

Flowers: $24 (from Michaels. They were on sale @ $3.97 a piece)

Paint for frame: $6 (2-small bottles of glossy black paint)

Brushes: $1 (got 2 @ $0.49 per brush)

Another flower vase I received from J in the past. He buys me flowers often. I love that man...

Candle holders: Free (we already had these at home. They were a gift to J from way back when)
Vase: Free
Flowers: $12 (they were on sale for $3.95 from Michael's)

Hope you had a fabulous weekend!

Making our house a home...dining chairs DIY project

I managed to get another DIY project completed. Rather, I was forced to. 

It all began with a dining room set. We inherited the dining set from J's grandmother. The chair fabric was pretty worn but the main furniture pieces was pretty solid so I decided to keep and use them in our dining room. Any way to save a buck!

So last Friday, I started to remove the old fabric. 

On Saturday, I picked up the fabric and chair cushions from Walmart.

Fabric: $13.44

Cushion: $13.66

On Sunday, we picked up a heavy duty staple gun and staples from Home Depot. 

Staple gun: $18.99

Staples: $4.25

Well, things got quite busy since we were celebrating our anniversary so this project was put on hold.

However, because J had already unscrewed the chair bases and I had already started removing the cushion and fabric, J and I had to immediately finish the chair since we're having guests this weekend.

So while I put on the fabric and stapled it to the chair base, J screwed them back and helped with stapling when my hands got tired. 

Here's the finished product.

It was a 2-hour effort but that kept us up until late on Wednesday night but it was worth it.

On Saturday, while I was out shopping, J put together this coat rack/sitting piece for our front door. This was a wedding gift. We can FINALLY use the items we received after 2-years of marriage :-). 

We figured guests can sit there while they take off their shoes.

Furniture piece/mirror: Free

2-Baskets: $12.98 (I used a 40% off coupon I had for Michael's)

I purchased the baskets from Michael's on sale. On holds clean socks and the other will be used to put dirty socks.

While out shopping on Saturday, I found a nice set of towels at Wal-mart that I figured would look nice in the half bathroom downstairs. So I purchased them and put ribbons I already had at home (I keep ribbons from gift wrappings).

2-Towels: $9.96 total

Ribbons: Free

On another note, here's a picture of our happy baby. Right before she proceeded to keep mommy and daddy up most of the night :-). I love love love that smile!

Hope you had a great week. Have an awesome weekend! I am looking forward to spending time with my family this weekend.

Cotton Anniversary!

Hubby and I marked our cotton (2-year) anniversary yesterday. We went out to dinner on Sunday to have an early celebration.
It was so much fun. We were giggling like silly teenagers. Because of the car my hubby drives, I haven't been able to sit in the passenger seat whenever we have JOE in the car. Well on Sunday, we dropped her off at the babysitter's house and I got in front! It was nice to be driving "shot-gun". We even held hands for a bit and then hubby needed his hand back to properly navigate :-).

We went to Fogo De Chao for an early dinner.

Here is hubby EAGERLY anticipating the arrival of the next meat. My hubby LOVES to eat and is ALWAYS hungry. I don't know where he puts it but his healthy appetite is admirable. Plus he always looks good...granted, he does exercise so that helps a bit but no way his exercising burns off all the calories he consumes!

Apparently, the "Parmesan chicken" guy didn't get there quickly enough. It is important to note that JOE has that same scowl when she is upset :-).

Hmmm...it tastes quite good. I guess it was somewhat worth the wait.

Oh I LOVED these cheese puffs. We have been here many times before and I never tried them. Not sure why but this time, I decided to try it and they tasted divine! I had like 3...maybe 4 or 5...I lost count :-).

J has ALWAYS raved about the mozzarella and cherry tomatoes here. I had never tried it and just thought he was going overboard when he said it was the best he's ever had. Even when we were in Italy, he said these were better. Well, I HAD to try it. Ummm...he was RIGHT (I don't say that too often so hopefully, he sees this and saves it for his records :-))! This was my second plate. And I finished EVERY SINGLE LAST BIT of it!

For dessert, I had the custard flan and J had the NY Style Cheesecake with strawberries. His dessert was complimentary. They even wrote "Happy Anniversary" with some of the strawberry sauce. Fret not...ALL of the dessert was gone before we left. Including the sauce...yup...that's how we roll :-).

Had to take a picture of the menu. Not sure why. I guess I am a photog in training? Nah...this was just for fun.

In front of the restaurant. We had such a blast. I laughed so much I was in tears most of the evening. I LOVE my hubby sooooo much and he truly is a blessing to me. I LOVE him even more for giving me our little blessing JOE.

On to gifts. Again, J, LOVES TO EAT! So when I went to Wal-mart to do some household shopping and saw this, I couldn't resist getting it for him. He loves them so much, he posted on Facebook!

I also got him a couple of cotton dress shirts and tie hangers. J has lots of ties and they always fall whenever he goes in the closet to get one. I figured he'd be able to put these to good use.

For me, I am always cold so he got me my very own blanket and had my name monogrammed on there. It is in Tiffany blue which was one of our wedding colors.

He also got me slippers cause the in-door slippers I have has survived MANY MANY MANY years. I stole them (he knows I took them) from my dad senior year of high school. Let's just say high school was almost 19-years ago :-). So yes...they have made it that long. J also had my initials monogrammed on my new slippers.

I also got a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I LOVE yellow roses.

AND dinner from Chipotle. He even got my order right. I typically like to add and take out different things and he didn't even call me to get the order right. He must have been paying attention all these years.

We had a great anniversary. Looking forward to the next 65-years with him. I told him after 65-years, I'd want a divorce not because I don't love him but because after 67-years, I'd want to go back to the dating pool. I could get me a younging...perhaps an 85-year old since we'd both be 100 at that point :-).

Hope you're having an awesome week. I am looking forward to my family coming to visit this weekend.