Weekend Getaway

We went to Santa Monica over the weekend. I can't even begin to explain how much fun we had. I will blog about it soon, but here's a sneak peak of our little weekend adventure. More to come....

The Grooms Cake

When I went out for Christmas my Mom kept asking me to order Fatu's grooms cake. I couldn't believe that it hadn't been ordered yet. There wasn't much time to get something custom ordered. We came up with an idea that we liked. We thought it would be super simple to put together. All we would have to do was order some tuxedo strawberries to put on top of a chocolate cake. Voila! Super simple right?! Wrong!! I called every single bakery, and chocolate factory in the Salt Lake area and NO ONE made tuxedo strawberries!! I couldn't believe it!! It was too late to change the concept of the cake so  we decided to make our own chocolate strawberries. I showed Fatu a tutorial and he laughed and was pretty confident that he could make them. He does a lot of art, but I was a little hesitant to trust a guy with the task. We decided to turn it into a contest. Yeah, our family is super competitive haha. So we held a contest between him and Sila to see who could make the best strawberries.... and Fatu won.

We did a couple of different styles of strawberries and added them to our chocolate cake. Voila! Fatu's finished grooms cake :) BTW, the coconut ones didn't make it to the cake cause we ate most of them haha.

Christmas 2011

Me and Ti talked about spending Christmas in Vegas this year. We wanted to go to Salt Lake, but because Fatu's wedding was the next weekend, we decided that it would be best to stay home for the Holidays. As Christmas grew nearer we each felt like we wanted to be around our families on Christmas day. So we changed our plans and agreed that we would be going up to Utah. The kids had some Christmas gifts that were already under the tree so I let them open them the night before we left.

They wrote Santa a letter telling him that they would be in Utah and left him their Grandma's address so that he could find them.

And he did!

The stocking were filled with lots of treats

Stocking Sweets

We had Christmas breakfast with the Fangupo's (yes we open presents before we eat haha). The boys were so excited to see more cousins.

Of course we went and visited Ren as well...

She had her own tree that was decorated in her favorite color {purple} It was even lit up with lights.

We went up with my Dad, Beans, and Misi

Everything lit up at night! She had candy cane lanterns that made cool star patterns on the grass, there were Christmas trees that lined her picture and a snowman that would glow and play Christmas music. And her little candle holders too.

Jonathan & Sia stopped by with their kids while we were there.

The kids were out of school for winter break so we let them spend that week in Salt Lake and me and Ti drove back to Vegas. Even though we didn't have the kids for a week, there wasn't any relaxing. I was running around trying to get everything we needed for the wedding. Time flew by and before we knew it, we were driving back up to Utah for Fatu & Brittainy's wedding.

Teacher Appreciation: Smore Kits

I didn't realize that the boys last day of school was on Friday, until Thursday. So I scrambled to get gift ideas together for their teachers. Thursday Mote had a pack meeting for scouts so I didn't have any time to work on the gifts. Friday when I got back from work I went straight to bed and woke up at around noon. I got to Walmart at around 1pm and made it home by 2 o'clock. I put these quick smore kits together and was at the school by 3pm. JUST before the bell rang... phew!

Check out the customized white ribbon!
I got them in the mail just in time to add them to our gifts.

Merry Christmas!

Gingerbread Builders

Does anyone else love World Market as much as I do?! They are running specials every day for the holiday season. Last week their gingerbread house kits were 50% off and I had a 15% off coupon that I got to use on top of that! I should've known that they would go quick. Me and Ti got there at around 1pm and we got the last 2 kits. When we picked up the boys from school they were so excited to find out we would be making gingerbread houses. We've made them before in Salt Lake, but never here in Vegas. The cashier at World Market said that she learned from experience that if you glue the house parts together and let them dry overnight, then it's easier to decorate the next day. So we followed her advice. The kids weren't too happy about that part, because they were antsy to decorate their homes with colorful sweets. But our patience paid off. The home was sturdy enough the next day to where we could focus on embellishing without shingles or walls sliding off. Instead of us spending more money on extra candy for the homes, we whipped out the Halloween candy that hadn't been eaten and used those treats for added detail on our homes. We split up into 2 teams. Ti was in charge of Siope and Nic's house and I was in charge of Mote's house. We let the kids choose exactly how they wanted to decorate them. We mainly did all the piping and they put all the candy in place. It was so much fun to spend time with the boys and continue another holiday tradition. Merry Christmas!

 

Wedding Bells

My youngest brother is tying the knot. I can't believe it! It's been a while since I've designed any cards, so I was nervous to start creating these invitations. It was my first time creating this type of layout... which made my nerves kick in even more. I got the printed invites in the mail today and I hope Fatu & Brittainy like them as much as I do.

October Haps: 2011 Halloween Costumes

This year I decided to let the kids choose what they wanted to be for Halloween. I admit that in the previous years I've done a lot of convincing and persuading on what the boys end up being for Halloween. This year I decided to loosen up and let them choose without any pushing from me. They're getting older and a lot of ideas that I thought would be cool, weren't cool in their eyes. At first I wasn't sure if me giving them full control was a good idea. Nic changed his mind every day! At first all his choices were scary things: zombie, and a mummy. Then he started choosing all these video game characters from Street Fighter. Siope said he wanted to be Sponge Bob. I thought that would be interesting and immediately started thinking about how we could make his square pants... but then he changed his mind. Mote was pretty set on what he wanted to be... a JABBAWOCKEE. I thought it was a little too simple and boring, but he had his mind made up and was sticking to it. Ti loved the idea. He said it would be easy... ha! He should know me better... I don't think I ever make things easy. We got so frustrated with the other 2, that I gave them a deadline and told them they had to choose a final character. Ti mentioned that it would be cool if they were all Jabbawockeez, and they agreed. I didn't start on their costumes until the week before Halloween Eeeeeep! I'm not sure who came up with the concept cause I'm almost sure I chose the colors, but Ti said he did... so I'll say we both did :) Since Jabbawockeez perform here in Vegas, we decided it would be cool to add some of our roots to the costumes. We put our Utah touch on it and came up with this...

I ordered the Utah Jazz snap backs, then based the t-shirts off of those colors.

The final product

We added the skeleton gloves to spook it out for Halloween

The back of their shirts said "trick or treat"

I got done with them right before we went to Utah... just in the nick of time.

I follow the JABBAWOCKEEZ on twitter and right before I went to bed Halloween night, I was checking my twitter line. I noticed that they were running a costume contest and were selecting a winner off of pictures that people were submitting to them. I uploaded one of the boys and hoped that I wasn't too late to enter the contest. The next day before I went to work I got a reply from one of the members saying that he chose the boys as one of the winners!

How cool is that?!! Pretty freak'n cool if you ask me! The boys were so excited!! and all my hard work paid off! ha!