Halloween 2017

I knew Halloween this year was going to be super crazy (with my folks still in the Philippines and Ralph at work the day of), so I tried my best to prepare for the holiday and start the festivities this past weekend.

As some of you have already seen on my Instagram and Facebook, I've been on a cooking/baking SPREE. I think it's because I've been meal planning/prepping the same foods since Henry was born (just to make life a little easier), so I've had this need and want to try new recipes.

I searched Pinterest for easy and kid-friendly recipes, and I found several that did not disappoint. Over the weekend, I baked pumpkin spice cinnamon rolls and pumpkin spice bread.

Pumpkin Spice Rolls recipe can be found HERE.

Pumpkin Bread recipe can be found HERE.

And on Sunday, I made Mummy Dogs to get Owen excited for Halloween.

Just use Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, cut them in strips, wrap them around hot dogs, and throw them in the oven. Use mustard or ketchup for the "eyes".

He loved everything I made, but he can't get the pumpkin spice rolls out of his mind. Every morning, he'll point at the oven and ask, "Pumpkin rolls?" *Sigh* I WISH we could eat those every morning too...

Halloween morning/afternoon was pretty nuts. Henry, my normally well-behaved and chill baby, was just not content unless I was holding him and patting his back. By the time I put Owen down for his nap, I was about ready to lose my mind until Henry, miraculously, decided to take a nap in our bed for 2.5 hours.

I used that time to eat my lunch, clean the house, get our costumes all ready, make myself look presentable, and bake a pie (I didn't have to, but I did because I'm insane).

Once Ralph came home from work, we got ready and drove to my parents' house down the street. (We've gone Trick-or-Treating in their neighborhood the last two Halloweens, so we figured we'd do the same this year). We snapped some quick photos before it got dark.

After that, Ralph went inside my parents' house with the boys to catch the first part of Game 6 of the World Series while I drove back home because my dumb ass (pardon my French) FORGOT MY PHONE ON THE SOFA AS WE WERE LEAVING!!! (So stupid...) I also picked up some dinner; after we ate, we finally went Trick-or-Treating.

I didn't get a lot of good photos because it was too dark...so I'll spare you a bunch of blurry images.

And because Owen is only 2 and doesn't need a ton of candy, we stopped Trick-or-Treating after about half an hour. We headed back to my parents', just in time for the 9th inning.

Owen's loot.

Chocolate Pie recipe can be found HERE. I used the left over cream cheese frosting from the pumpkin spice rolls to make the "spider web".

After he had a few pieces of candy, we had some of that pie I made a few hours prior.

Finally settling down...he did not want to take off his uniform!

And that was our Halloween night! When we got home, Owen had a second wave of energy and putting him to bed was a struggle; but after kicking the walls and singing loudly for 10 minutes straight, he finally passed out.

We all woke up this morning super tired, but Halloween candy (and coffee) can definitely fix that...although it seems that Owen has completely forgotten what he did last night and asked for his usual oatmeal with bananas and raisins for breakfast instead of M&Ms and Kit Kat.

*Shrug* Fine by this mama!

Until next time!

Hello, October!

Lots to talk about...

MICKEY'S HALLOWEEN PARTY

Last Wednesday, we went to Disneyland to go to Mickey's Halloween Party! It was our first time going, and it was so much fun.

We came as Mr. Fredricksen, Russell, and Kevin from Pixar's "Up". Wendy is Dug, but since we couldn't take her , we brought Owen's stuffed animal Dug.

I hand-drew his buttons, cut and sewed his scarf and sash from old scrubs, and made the Wilderness Explorer logo out of felt. SO much fun to make this costume!

Once again, Ralph's costume was the easiest one - only thing I did was remove the lenses from his glasses because the glare kept showing up on pictures. My costume was pretty easy as well - a no-sew tutu, blue shirt, and then I attached some feathers on a headband.

We only went on one ride because our focus was to collect ALL the candy...but Ralph's mom insisted we ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad while she watched Owen, since we can't ride "big kid" rides whenever it's the three of us. Thanks, Mom!

We weren't going to stop for anything else, BUT we noticed Pooh Bear was dressed up, so we just HAD to pay him (and Tigger) a visit.

Behind Ralph is one of many candy stands.

With heroes/villains from the DC Universe!

Our loot!

We got home at midnight, and we all passed out shortly afterwards. We had so much fun, and we plan on going back next year.

WEIGHT LOSS

Last post, I talked about how I met my weight-loss goal of losing 50 lbs since giving birth to Owen; but I figured I'd continue with my monthly weigh-ins until 2017, just to see how much I can lose in one year. This morning, I weighed myself and lost 5.6 lbs since last month, making it a total of 30 lbs since the beginning of this year. I don't expect to lose much in October because...

CELEBRATIONS

There will be a lot of reasons to celebrate, which means there will be a lot of eating. There are so many birthdays this month, including my mother-in-law's, Ralph's, my dad's, and my brother's. Oh, and Ralph and I will be celebrating our 3rd anniversary on the 20th.

For my dad's big 5-0, we're going to Disney World! We'll be leaving the 12th and returning the 18th. We recently got our MagicBands in the mail, and my mom has given me and Ralph permission to plan our itinerary for Disney World. I mean, I think we know a thing or two about Disney resorts, right?

When we come back from our trip, we'll be in the process of...

MOVING

A little over a week ago, our apartment complex served us with a notice of lease violation, stating that we were making "excessive noises". We figured our new neighbors (they moved in about a month ago) downstairs were the ones complaining about Owen walking/running in the apartment because we never had any issues with our previous downstairs neighbor.

I'm not going to get into it too much because I can already feel my blood pressure rising, BUT, long story short, we've found a new home in Tustin. We cannot be more happy/excited to leave our current place. We have been good residents at this complex for 3 years, and we're really disappointed with how they handled the whole situation. I mean, who serves someone a violation notice without any proof?! Ugh. I'm hoping the people who move in after us are DDR-loving, drum-playing, rambunctious college students.

So that's what we did today - we went apartment-hunting. My friend Trang recommended her complex, which, oddly enough, was the one that we chose. What's even better is that her townhome is LITERALLY on the other side of ours! We signed the lease contract, and we'll be moving in October 27th.

After all that, we treated ourselves to some ice cream. Owen deserved it.

So that's what's going on. Why do I have a feeling that the rest of the year will be even more eventful? We'll just have to wait and see.

Until next time!

Owen's First Halloween

It's no secret that my husband and I are Star Wars fanatics - during our wedding recessional, we walked down the aisle to the Star Wars theme song; our firstborn son was either going to be named Luke, Lucas, or Owen; and there are just dozens and dozens of Star Wars toys, posters, figurines, etc. in our home.

So when family and friends were asking what Owen was going to be for his first Halloween, it didn't take very long for me to decide that he was going to be a Star Wars character...and it didn't take very long after that for me to decide that he was going to be Wicket, the Ewok.

Of course, I wanted to incorporate Ralph, Wendy, and myself in the Halloween fun, so I was going to be Princess Leia (Endor outfit, of course), Ralph was going to be Han, and Wendy was going to be Darth Vader. And since Star Wars costumes are usually expensive, I wanted to try and make as many of the outfits as I can.

Having ZERO experience with a sewing machine and never even been at the "Fabrics" section at Joann's, I came to the conclusion (almost right away) that I was in way over my head. I mean, I wanted to make our costumes from SCRATCH, for crying out loud! And by "scratch", I do mean buy-yards-of-fabric-and-cut-them-into-pieces-then-sew-them-together "scratch". After trying (and failing) with Owen's, I realized that the only outfit that I could make was Leia's poncho. And I did.

So what was I to do about Owen's outfit? I found a DIY tutorial on how to make an Ewok costume on Pinterest, and it sounded sooo easy - just combine a bear costume with an orange t-shirt, and voila! You're done! Uhhh, no. For the life of me, I could not find an inexpensive dark brown bear costume NOR an orange t-shirt. Luckily, Owen had a dark brown onesie, and I just bought a bright orange t-shirt and used brown dye to tone down the color. Here is a more detailed step-by-step of how I made Owen's Wicket Costume.

It's a good thing Ralph's was easy to make because I was OVER IT after finishing mine and Owen's. Overall, I'm happy with the outcome. Ralph's pants should have been brown, but dark brown slacks (just like dark brown bear outfits and orange t-shirts) were hard to come by.

We went to my parents' house in Irvine to have dinner and go Trick-or-Treating around the neighborhood. We were joined by Ralph's mom and cousin Bella! I didn't get any good pictures while we were Trick-or-Treating because it was too dark...but Owen didn't last very long anyway. We only went to about a dozen houses before he rested his head on his Daddy's shoulders, which means he has "tapped out".

His "Can you stop taking pictures of me so I can go to sleep?" face.

Of course, the candy that Owen collected today is really for his mommy and daddy (sorry, son), but my mom was kind enough to make him a Halloween basket with baby-friendly snacks. :)

Until next year! Hope everyone had a Happy (and safe!) Halloweeeeeen!

24 Weeks / Halloween

Halloween came and went without much event. I was never really a big fan of Halloween (because I'm such a chicken when it comes to anything scary), but being pregnant during this holiday presented itself with some cute costume ideas; so I decided to dress up this year.

Unfortunately for me, I had to work...and not only did I have to work, I had a mandatory meeting to attend at 7:00am, so I had to wake up EXTRA early to get ready. This year, I was a skeleton with sugar skull make-up. I'm not gonna lie, I enjoyed the outfit and received plenty of compliments from my coworkers and patients...but I don't think I'll ever wear face paint for a 10-hour shift EVER again! My face felt sooo oily and disgusting; by the time I got home, I washed my face and re-applied my make-up after half an hour of letting my skin breathe. And then I applied Ralph's make-up too. Here was the outcome!

Wendy REALLY wanted to be Elsa. ;)

I purchased the maternity skeleton shirt from CutsieTootsieApparel, which is an Etsy shop that sells adorable maternity shirts (here's the matching shirt for future dads). I purchased Wendy's dog costume at Target (they didn't have a skeleton one...it would've been perfect!).

We barely got any trick-or-treaters this year! I think we had, at most, 7 kids stop by...oh, well. Next Halloween will be better because I'll have a little baby to dress up! (Haha, now I like Halloween!) 

Alright, on to this week's pregnancy update!

How far along?: 24 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: +14 lbs
Sleep: The maternity pillow I bought last week is amazing, but my poor husband is losing more and more space on the bed. Hahaha! Sorry, honey...
Best moment this week: My relatives from Vegas visited this weekend, so it was great to catch up and, as always, EAT!
Movement: I'm starting to see a pattern - baby boy is more active at night...my friend told me it means the baby will be born at night time. We'll see!
Symptoms: Achy feet. I find myself wanting to sit down more at work. :/
Symptoms I DON'T have: Nausea.
Food cravings: Sinigang - it is a Filipino soup that is kind of sour...and it's weird because I don't normally like this type of soup. I'm more of a tinola or nilagang type of person. I don't even know who I am anymore!

Food aversions: For the most part, sweets. There's a huge bowl of leftover Halloween candy, and I don't even look at it more than twice a day. If it was a bowl of CHIPS or something, then it'd be gone.
Gender: Boy!
Labor Signs: Not yet. :)
Belly Button in or out?: In.
What I miss: Fried eggs. I know eggs have been under my list of "Food Aversions" for a majority of this pregnancy, but nothing beats a plate of rice, kielbasa, and a fried egg. :(
What I am looking forward to: Weather change! It's been cold this whole weekend, and I'm excited to bust out my California winter clothing!
Weekly Wisdom: Don't buy shoes online if your feet have changed! I'm now a size 7/7 and 1/2!
Milestones: Baby Herrera is now, at least, 1 whole pound.