The Fat Mirror

First, Happy St. Patrick's Day! I got pinched today by a certain 7 year old even though I was wearing green! She said my shirt looked turquoise (definitely green) but I think she just wanted to pinch me, ha. I had an audition this morning for a print ad. I don't normally go out for print work but I think I'm going to have to start... So easy! You just show up looking cute and they take a couple pictures of you and if you happen to be what they're looking for, $5,000 for a day's work (plus residuals). Nice! Fingers crossed St. Patty sprinkles some luck my way...

So, let's talk about our fat mirror. I wish I had taken a picture of it (but not of me in the mirror because let me tell you, 'twas a scary sight). The only picture I could find of it is one of the many pictures I took of our apartment when we first moved in.

Mark and I found this long mirror in our old apartment and hung it in the back of our bathroom door at our old place so you could see the back of your hair in the bathroom mirror (and your entire outfit). Anyway, we brought it to our new place and have had it hanging behind our closet door. It's been very convenient, as it's the only long mirror in the house where you can see your whole body. But what's not so convenient is that this mirror makes you look fat!!!

We had no idea until a few weeks ago. Or it actually didn't even do this until a few weeks ago! I told Mark that I needed to lose some weight. My metabolism must be catching up to me, I said, because my hips had gotten huge! And my thighs! Mark, of course, denied this. Told me I look beautiful always and am so not fat. He tells me I have the perfect body almost every day :)

Well, I tried to believe him but every morning picking out an outfit and trying on skinny jeans in front of that mirror, I could just not believe he hadn't noticed I must have gained like 20 pounds!!! I didn't actually know if I'd gained any weight because we don't own a scale. But the mirror said it all.

So, one day after trying on 3 different pairs of skinny jeans and throwing each of them off I decided I had to go on a serious diet. Hence, the 10 Day Detox diet (for pre-diabetics lol!) After a few days on that diet, I nearly fainted from low blood sugar so I gave up and have been trying to eat super healthy and exercising but I still looked ridiculously fat!

Finally, last Friday night Mark and I were getting ready to go to the temple and I put on my dress. It's a really baggy dress that needs a belt to cinch it in but after I put my belt on, I just stared at myself in the mirror, feeling like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka. I told Mark, "I look so fat! How can you tell me I don't look fat?!" He looked at me and said I was crazy. I looked in the mirror and wondered if that saying about anorexic girls looking in the mirror and literally seeing themselves completely different than they actually looked might apply to me. Or maybe my husband was so in love with me, he literally couldn't see I had gained weight! Well, Mark came up behind me and looked in the mirror. He then stood back and looked at me without the mirror and did a double take. He stood in front of me and looked at himself in the mirror. That's when we both saw skinny Mark with love handles and short stubby legs, hahaha. "This mirror is messed up!" Mark said and he took it off the hook. Sure enough, the mirror was bent at the bottom and tweaking the image like a fun house mirror making the bottom half of your body look fatter and shorter!! Hahaha, not to the extent of a fun house mirror but pretty noticeable! I was so relieved!!!! Mark bent the mirror the other way to make me look tall and skinny. I told him we should leave it like that. Hahah. But we just threw it. Oh shoot, hopefully it didn't break!! Well, it's St. Patrick's Day so the luck of the Irish would probably save us ;)

So we now no longer have a long mirror to see our entire body before we leave the house. And let me tell you, that is just fine with me... :)

Happy March!

I've been meaning to blog since March began but it's already been a busy month and I haven't had a chance.  It's been a good start to the month!  I started up the Feel Great in 8 Challenge again this month and while it hasn't been off to the best start (worked on set on Wednesday and there were just too many temptations!) I have high hopes for the challenge this time around.  It's seriously an amazing idea but when put into practice, it's not always super practical.  Maybe if you didn't have a huge sweet tooth like me it wouldn't be that hard but I am kind of addicted to sugar!!!

What I really love about the challenge is that it's not just about losing weight (although diet is a big part) but it's full of spiritual and mental components that can really help you turn your life around and start focusing on becoming a better person overall.  Although the diet part is hard and time consuming (counting calories and tracking protein and fiber can be a lot of work) I'm trying to do better on that because I want to start changing my eating habits now for when I'm eating for two ;)  I don't want my baby coming out addicted to sugar!

Other than the Feel Great in 8 Challenge, March has been busy for me with auditions, work, and spending lots of time with cute kiddos...

Most Saturdays I get to fulfill one of my childhood dreams and be a Disney princess, making little girls' dreams come true.  I am usually Princess Anna :)

Then on Sundays, I get to play with the sweetest babes for two hours and witness moments like these...

No words! hahahah

Make a funny face Kobina!

Serving in the Nursery makes me so anxious to have a little one to call my own!  When the parents arrive, there is a look of pure joy on each sweet face as they race to show their mommy or daddy what they made for them that day.  Parents can do no wrong in the eyes of these children.  Tired, grumpy, or just preoccupied with other things, their parents are their whole world.  Oh how I want to be a little babe's whole world!

After church!

My handsome man

Then, after a weekend full of kiddos, I get to look after some beautiful, intelligent, creative little girlies two days a week.  Meet Sofia and Lilly.

Sofia

Lilly

Oh and Smorgie (we have a love-hate relationship)

Working on my french braiding skills

No, she isn't trying to flip me off haha

On days when I'm not watching these two, sometimes (like this week) I'm over helping my sister-in-law Al with my two nephews, Jake and Sam!  No pictures because I never remember to take any but basically my life is FULL of kids.  None of which are my own but that's okay because I'm getting lots of practice :)

This week I had two auditions for musicals, one based on the book series "Pinkalicious!" and another for the "Newsies".  Haven't heard back so it's probably a no but fun experiences!  Then on Tuesday I worked on the set of "Drunk History" and made some new friends.  Every day is an adventure, let me tell you!

This month I'm also attempting two 30 Day Challenges at once!  Feeling ambitious...

March is off to a good start, but I can't WAIT for April!!!!  More on that later :)

Our Day of Love

We had a pretty awesome Valentine's Day this year!  That may have been due to our insane amount of decorating...we may have spent more time on our Valentine's decorations than we even do on Christmas decorations!  And they did not disappoint.  Waking up to a house full of hearts started the day off just right...

While these hearts were so much work, they were so worth it!!!  We watched movies as we worked (and Dance Moms...Mark's new obsession ha).  While I wrote my messages, Mark made a matrix of numbers (the different sizes of hearts) and composed a layout of how many of each size should go on each string so they would be perfectly scattered.  He explained his method to me and after 5 minutes I just stared at him like he was explaining the fundamentals of calculus in Chinese.  He is way too smart for me.

So after we finished cutting and writing, he was in charge of standing behind the strings and taping and directing me as to which sizes were going on each string and I carefully selected the colors (perfectly scattered) and held them while he taped.  Seeing the finished product made me ridiculously happy...all those hearts overflowing with messages of love for each other!  Afterwards, we lay on the couch and admired our work, reading the messages and picking our favorites.

The other Valentine's project I took on this year was a homemade card for Mark!  I researched ideas on Hallmark.com and came across this card

The inside message says: I'll be right there beside ya

That's when I had my brilliant idea to make a 3-D hot air balloon card!  I didn't like their message so I researched hot air balloon love quotes until I came across one I loved.  Here is the final product!

I was pretty impressed with my skills since Mark is the crafty one at this house.  Guess I've learned a thing or two from him...

For breakfast, Mark made me Eggs Benedict.  He ate 5 OF THESE!!!  

How he can eat so much and stay so skinny constantly amazes me.  You should see when we make pasta.  The helping on his plate looks like a serving plate for a family of 5 and then he has seconds!!!  Hahaha...he doesn't even work out (sometimes I force him to do 30 Day Challenges with me and we do go running) but never gains a pound!  That boy amazes me.

After a delicious breakfast, we were both stuffed and lazily watched Dance Moms on the couch for a couple hours.  No shame.  Then we headed for the mall to try on my Valentine's present!

My Valentine's Outfit!

I tried on the Nike Dual Fusion Run 3's that I posted a picture of a few days ago and hated them!  They had so much padding on the bottom they felt like I was running in wedges.  They just felt like a separate weight on my feet instead of becoming a part of my feet.  I tried on like 5 different kinds of Nike's and was hating all of them.  Mark asked what was wrong and I told him they were all soooo tight on my feet.  I tossed the 5th pair aside and he picked it up, undid the laces and handed it back to me. What a difference!!!  Hahaha, all their sample shoes were so tight (I always try on the samples out front instead of asking for my size because lucky for me, the sample shoe size is generally a 6, something I learned when I became a shoe model for a day) so I was barely able to squeeze my feet into any of them and once on, felt like my feet were shrinking!  So when Mark undid the laces they were much better!

So once I figured out the tight laces thing, I re-tried on most of the shoes and LOVED these!

The Nike TR Fit 4 Free 5.0

They felt like an extension of my feet!  So comfortable, so thin and light and just so easy to move around in.  I wasn't a fan of the color though (I had my heart set on aqua) so we searched online and I chose these ones!

I can't wait to start running in them!!!  I love them so much, I want more colors!

After shopping, we went to the movies!  I love going to the movies but both of us hate spending money and I don't know if it's just L.A. or everywhere but movies have gotten so expensive!!!  Matinee is like $12 and evening is anywhere from $15-$20 depending on the theatre.  So we went to a $3 theatre (seriously just as nice as any other theatre!) and saw Annie!  I expected it to be pretty cheesy (it was a little) but it was really good!  I only cried twice.  :)

After the movie, we went to our favorite, Cafe 50's.  Except this time it wasn't so good.  We both ordered our usual, cheeseburgers and fries.  There was something wrong with my burger that may have turned me off burgers forever.  In every bite there was some meat that I just couldn't chew, a stringy super chewy chunk that I would have to spit out.  I ignored it for a bit but once I got to the middle, every bite became inedible!  I wondered if I was crazy so I had Mark take a bite.  His face said it all.  He went to spit it out on his plate and I said, "Mark!" and gave him a napkin.  Yeah.  That bad.  To top it off, our fries were soggy and the shake just wasn't as good!  It may have been because we went pretty late or a new chef or something, I don't know but we won't be going back anytime soon.  It's near our old place in Santa Monica anyway so we'll find a new better place near us.

We didn't let that ruin our night though!  On the drive home, we listened to an audiobook I've been listening to at night called, "The Sh!t No One Tells you: A Guide to Surviving Your Baby's First Year".  It is HILARIOUS!!!  While listening to it at night, I frequently laugh out loud and sometimes have laughing fits and worry I'll wake up Mark.  Seriously, I don't even have kids but I have a feeling if you did or are a new mom, it would be even funnier.  Honestly, it's kind of terrifying me to have kids but I'm expecting everything is a bit exaggerated and if not, then here comes an adventure!

So that was our Valentine's Day!  Pretty long day (or that's what it felt like to us) but we both loved spending every second of it together.  Maybe next Valentine's we will have a little one celebrating with us! :)

Valentine's Week!

Happy Love Week! This is my third Valentine's Day with the love of my life. The last two years Mark got me flowers & chocolate and took me out to dinner. Typical Valentine's! This year I requested new running shoes in place of the flowers (flowers are ridiculously expensive and while they are sweet I am in more need of running shoes than a few days of flowers). I have my eyes on these...

Mark and I started running together 3x a week in the New Year but then we both got sick and it rained here (excuses, excuses) and we haven't been as good about it. I'm hoping these babies give me newfound motivation!

I have no idea what I'm going to give Mark this year. I can't remember if I ever got him more than a card the last two years but since he's getting me an actual present instead of flowers, I feel like I should. I spent all day yesterday making him his card and I love how it turned out! I'll post pictures after he opens it!

This year Mark and I attempted a Valentine's craft project that turned out to be much bigger than I had anticipated. I saw this on Pinterest

And fell in LOVE!!! I immediately knew we had to do this for our house. So this week Mark and I have been spending a few hours each night cutting out hundreds of hearts!!! At first we were overwhelmed but after we started making real progress it became a fun project and now I'm going to miss it when we're done! We are about halfway done but I am confident we will be finished before Valentine's Day! (We're leaving this up through March hah.)

We also baked lemon squares this week (although not really Valentine's treats but still just as delicious!) We will be going out for dinner on Valentine's Day (not sure where but I'm thinking P.F. Changs!) and I am so excited to spend the day with my love!!!

I will try and be better at taking pictures, I promise! Pictures are the best part of blogs anyway, I just need to get in the habit. Next Disney trip is going to be a picture trip! I'm bringing my professional camera and everything :)

Lucky

I've been feeling so blessed lately and finding new things to be grateful for that I normally take for granted. Seriously, what did I do to deserve such a wonderful life? I was born into a blessed home with the love of the kindest, most selfless mother anyone has ever had. I have an amazing, loving father who has always treated me like a princess, a brother and sister who mean the world to me and a huge extended family that is also full of love and kindness.

Growing up I had a wonderful childhood full of innocence and happiness, never wanted for anything and had the opportunity to live all over the U.S.! I have the love and support of a family friend who bought me a brand new car, paid for all my dance lessons growing up and took me all over the world. She taught me to read and be an independent thinker and then paid for me to attend one of the most prestigious universities in the country to study things I'm passionate about. Before graduating from college I met and quickly fell in love with the best person I have ever known. Mark is everything I never knew I wanted and needed and is the best husband I could ever have gotten. He treats me like a Queen and makes me feel beautiful every second I'm with him. We have been married for a year and are (finally) getting ready to have a BABY which makes me happier than I can describe.

We both have jobs we love and are good at and, most importantly, have plenty of time to spend together every day. We never want to leave each other's side. We look at other married couples we know who often do their own things on the weekends or sometimes we will see one but not the other. That is never us! Wherever I go, Mark goes and vice versa. He even drives me to all my princess parties all over LA and waits in the car while I go play princess and make little girls' dreams come true. All so we can spend every second together and hold hands the whole way there. We have a beautiful apartment with beautiful furniture (that we got a super good deal on because Mark's old mission companion owns a furniture store), live in one of the coolest cities in the world and get to go to Disneyland whenever we want!!

Yes,  I am one lucky and grateful girl.

Happy 2015!

I have broken my streak of weekly (or daily for a while) blogging but it's mostly because now that the holidays are over, I never feel like there's anything worth blogging about.  Oh to have kids and have every day be an awfully big adventure!!!

Although Mark and I felt like we had a kid for a few weeks...except we skipped a baby and had a teenager!  My gorgeous 17-year-old sister came to live with us for two weeks while our parents were both traveling in different foreign countries (Brazil and Guatemala) and since she was here so long, it actually felt like we had a child, haha.  We ran the dishwasher double the amount of times we normally do, went through twice as much toilet paper (although that may be due to one of my New Years resolutions to drink 8 glasses of water a day...which I have actually been keeping since January 1st!!!), and basically just felt like we had a little family of 3 instead of 2.  Not that we didn't enjoy having her here, it just made me realize how much the dynamic changes when you have a third person and how it's going to be after we have kids.

Anyone who knows me knows that all I think about lately is having a baby!  I have been asking all my sisters-in-law about parenting book recommendations, the scoop on breastfeeding, finding the right doctor, and the list goes on and on.  For Christmas I got 8 parenting/pregnancy books and I can't wait to start reading them!  I'm not letting myself start one until we're at least trying though because I don't want to forget everything by the time the baby gets here.  So if I am so excited and anxious and impatient to have a baby, why aren't we trying yet?

That is what I ask my husband every day.  We have given ourselves a date to start trying and as much as I keep trying to push it up, he insists we need to wait because we are simply not ready to have a baby as soon as I would like.  That is mostly due to living in Los Angeles where everything is outrageously expensive so we would like to have more money saved before we need to start buying everything for baby.

We are actually entertaining the idea of moving to Houston, Texas in the near future!  My dad found a possible job opportunity for Mark within his company but then it fell through because H/R decided it wasn't fair because Mark would be indirectly working under my dad.  We were so excited for the 24 hours it was a possibility though.  Haha.

Both of us want to eventually end up in a small town, like Kingwood where my family lives.  It's just so much more affordable down there!  When we visited for our early Christmas, Mark and I were driving around looking at houses and the majority of houses were between $180-220!!!  These were 3-4 bedroom, two story houses with pools and in gorgeous neighborhoods!  Basically, those prices don't exist in Los Angeles.  Here little 2 bedroom one story houses in the ghetto start at half a million dollars.  It's insane!  Mark's brother's family just bought a 3 bedroom home in Studio City that is beautiful but about the same size as my parent's house in Texas for nearly 1,000,0000!!!!!  My parent's 4 bedroom home with a pool cost around $230!!!! Hahhaa it just makes me laugh it's so outrageous.  So basically, unless Mark becomes a millionaire this year there is no way we could ever afford to buy a home out here and I do not dream of raising a family in an apartment so at some point, we WILL be moving!  Until then, we will just have to suffer out here living in Los Angeles, haha.  Okay, so it's not all that bad, especially now while we have no kids or really any responsibilities.  We got annual Disney passes this year so we are excited to be using those!!  We went with my sister last Saturday and we are going again this Saturday to California Adventure because Mark has NEVER BEEN THERE!!!  OMG it's going to be so fun and exciting!!!

Hopefully I will remember to take pictures but I am making no promises.  TTFN (Ta Ta For Now!)

Christmas at the Rawlings

I'm writing this with Mark's arm draped over me, nestled up to him with my head on his chest and a cozy blanket over us, next to his parents' breathtakingly beautiful Christmas tree and surrounded by three Nativities, garland and Christmas lights everywhere with soft harp Christmas music playing in the background! I treasure moments like these...

Christmas at the Rawlings was pretty different but just as awesome as Christmas at my house. They have such cool traditions and it's really fun to have so many people there on Christmas morning and to have SOOO many presents to open! His whole family wasn't even here but there were still 16 of us! There was Remi and Chip (Mark's parents), his brother Birk and wife Al with their two kids Jake and baby Sam (barely a month old!), his sister Esther and her husband Jacob, his other sisters Marja and Charity, his brother Duncan and his roommates Yosh and Brycen (crazy bunch), Aunt Merla (Remi's sister) and Mark and I. We were missing his brother John and his family with our two beautiful, precious nieces, Faye and Norah and his sister Emily and her husband Bryan.

One of the Rawlings family traditions is that every Christmas Eve they act out the Nativity. This year Mark and I were angels.

His dad narrates the story and everyone else plays a part. This year Duncan was the King and he was hilarious! A lot of people memorize their parts so it's pretty cool (and really funny) how into it everyone gets.

The best part of Christmas was watching 2 year old Jake open his mountain of presents from all of us. He is precious! Also, I'm pretty sure he loved ours the most because when he was done opening all of them that's the one he wanted to play with! We have the advantage of living practically next door to him so we knew exactly what to get him, a Thomas the train book complete with a playmat of the train station and a bunch of little Thomas & Friends trains! He loved them!!! :D

Mark and I were pretty spoiled by his family. We got hot cocoa from Duncan, along with a book for Mark of 1,000 Things to Do in Los Angeles and a desk calendar for me of the most powerful women in the world (like Catherine the Great). Charity spoiled me rotten with a combination of both birthday and Christmas presents. She got me a beautiful multi-colored scarf, a gorgeous beaded turquoise headband, skin care products (she's an esthetician), a head towel wrap, eyeshadow, an eyelash dying kit, and my favorite Jane Iredale lip stain! I loved it all!!! Remi made me an apron and it is so lovely!!! It looks just like this one from Anthropologie I wanted but couldn't afford!

I don't feel like going upstairs and taking a picture of mine but basically it looks exactly like that! Remi is a Wonder Woman and does everything in life perfectly (no joke) but sewing is her expertise!! She made two of my sister-in-law's wedding dresses and would have made mine if she hadn't been in Finland. Anyway, so she can sew anything your heart desires and I love my apron so much!!!

Mark's dad got us a book by his friend, Elder Holland, with tales of comfort. Excited to read that one together.

Marja made everyone a book of Rawlings family memories with all kinds of cool stories about their ancestors and hilarious stories about all of the kids. Marja is sick and so she is in bed a lot and spends so much time doing family history work and genealogy that this gift was right up her alley!

Esther had everyone send her funny face pictures and made everyone a Funny Face calendar. It's awesome and hilarious! Each month is a different couple or sibling's funny faces and all our birthdays have our picture on them! So thoughtful and cool.

Al made me an emerald and gold necklace and Birk gave Mark a Monty Python card game. I didn't play it but I witnessed all the boys speaking in accents during the whole game (part of the rules) so that was pretty awesome. Mark's English accent is pretty terrible, love him to pieces. Haha

Normally, I get post-Christmas depression but this year I didn't. Maybe it's because we had three of them, haha or because I already have the best present I could ever ask for and I get to keep him all year round :)

I'm excited for the New Year and a new start for 2015! It's going to be a great one!