What's On Tap This Month - SEPTEMBER

Live Your Best Life (LYBL) Move over YOLO, there's a new acronym in town... LYBL (pronunciation: lie-ble? I'll work on that). Every month, a special delivery comes in the 

mail... my O Magazine. Unfortunately for me, it gets mailed to my mom's New Jersey address and I live in the Dominican Republic. So a few times a year, either when my mom comes to visit or I go back home, I hit the mother load of several months worth of my favorite magazine. One of my favorite features in the magazine is the Live Your Best Life page which is always a beautiful photograph with an inspirational quote. As a writer and (very) amateur photographer, what about that would I not love? Beautiful photograph, strong words. Yes, please. And although the The Live Your Best Life page is just an introduction to a section which includes inspiring features about women who turned their passions into lifestyles or women who faced challenges and met them head on for some reason, I always look forward to the photograph and quote. So much so that I started collecting them, framing them, and making them a part of my home. Right now, they sit above our bed on our DIY headboard but will be moved to be a more central focus point of our home. Thanks, O for the constant inspiration (and inexpensive home decor!)

My favorite: "I like good strong words that mean something."

Munchkin Stay Put suction bowls

oh. my. sweet. Lord. These bowls couldn't have come in handier at a more needed time. We've got a foodie daughter - if she were able to write, I would suggest she write "The Yum Yum Toddler Blog" but alas she is only two - and with a foodie daughter comes a child that likes to feed herself. And we all know that a two year old who feeds herself can often turn into a cleaning nightmare but for the high chair and up her nose... don't ask. But these suction cup bowls have been an fan-f*ing-tastic way to   keeping yogurt out of her facial orifices. They suction cup and stay put onto her high chair tray so that when she is eating, her bowl is doing nothing but staying put. She still manages to make a bit of a mess - she is two after all - but luckily the Yum Yum Toddler would rather have the food in her mouth and not on the tray.

  

weekend family breakfeasts - a way to find creativity?

 Rafa and I have breakfast together every morning but since Husband works, the only time we have family breakfasts are on the weekends, so for our breakfeast, I've been trying to get creative and try new things. A few weeks back, I concocted a Pumpkin Apple Pecan Waffles recipe... just what the autumn doctor ordered. I threw in some blue cheese and ham scrambled eggs in the recent weeks for good measure. This past weekend I made my first attempt at Guava Brie Cheese Pancakes... oh heck YUM. And today - not a weekend but a day off - I attempted and slammed dunk swishhhed some Strawberry Ricotta pancakes... sooooooo good. What I love best about this is that because I've thrown together ingredients based off of what I had in the refrigerator - ingredients that I normally wouldn't have used - it's opened my mind to the possibilities of what else I could throw together. And those possibilities are endless. I'll post recipes soon, but for now start brainstorming. What other types of waffles or pancakes or eggs can I whip up?

 for the blogger in you

This month, things with this little blog have been doing well. Exciting. With doing well, I have also felt pressure to step up my game a little bit. Stressful. I love revamping my blog and finding new arrangements and gadgets to use but I don't want to spend days and days doing so, so when I find cool ways to revamp my blog without spending half the day to do so, I get supes excited. Enter Grab My Button, a button code generator that is fast and easy and designs a cute button to add to your blog. (Check out my button designed on Grab My Button to the right.) The second fun tool I discovered was TubeChop. For a recent post, I needed a short clip of an already existing youtube video. I found TubeChop to help. You simply put in the youtube's URL and enter the start time and end time that you want the video to be and boom! Video chopped.

Mod Podge
In the birth of Pinterest to my life, I have noticed that oh so many things were being made, decorated, and beautiful with Mod Podge. This summer, when we were in New Jersey, I decided that I would give Mod Podge a shot and bought some at an arts & crafts store. I am still in the beginning stages of really learning to play with it but what I've found so far is that it's easy breezy and totally versatile. Although they have different types of MP (glittery, glossy, outdoor, etc.), I started with a basic matte. This is my test run project, my what can Mod Podge do project so I used a picture that I was otherwise going to get rid of because it had printed with wide white margins. I cut the white margins off and used the MP to adhere the picture to an inexpensive store bought canvas. I let it dry overnight and then took colorful baker's string and adhered that on with MP. I am not quite finished with this test run project but have already discovered what the Mod Podge hype is all about. And I'm excited.

i want to see you be Brave
I am wildly obsessed with this song right now. Obsessed because it is catchy and loudly singable and because my daughter wants to watch the video on repeat. And I'm happy about that because in the last few weeks I have been thinking about how there are so many things I want for my daughter, but the thing I am starting to want the most is for her to be strong. Titanium strong. Brave strong. Because being brave is sometimes hard and scary and I want her to be courageous and to say things that sometimes need to be said or stand up for kids that might sometimes need standing up for. I want her to be brave and confident if maybe she is the kid who is a "victim of somebody's lack of love" and to know that she is stronger than words or someone else's opinion of her.  (I feel a post coming soon...)