bloop. insta-drop!

It's Wednesday and we all know what means.... Insta-FUN! This past week's instagram drop is a bit shorter than normal. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things. Please send me happy thoughts & prayers this week. Already, everything that could go wrong went wrong and everything that shouldn't go wrong...followed suit.

I enjoy this little blogging outlet of mine and, honestly (seriously), catching up on everyone else's blogs is the highlight of my day. I love being able to plop down in front of my computer and read/see what everyone else is going through and experiencing.

Well...

 On to dropping it like it's hot.

I think I mentioned my lovely Star Wars' ring before. This is my favorite purchase in NYC from a lovely little designer Verameat. I was in NYC for her launch. I was lost walking around SoHo and saw a sign for free cupcakes and that drew me in. Thank God for my sweet tooth and poor sense of direction because I am now the proud owner of a Millenium Falcon ring. This ring and I already have been through so much...

I know I mentioned these lovely boots in a previous post. This was one of my swaggerific black friday purchases online and they are now my new favorite boots. The zipper zips all the way down...

I have a strange obsession with trees and Brentwood is FULL of weird looking trees. There is an entire LANE of trees and all of the houses have the weirdest looking things ever. I love how this bark is all marled and tangly and so beautiful.

Hello Chains of Love! This is by far my most favorite purchase of this year. Every single time I wear this I get a million compliments. People stop me on the street and ask me what I'm wearing. It's so delicate and beautiful. Yes, I do love you!

Apple Cobbler cupcake. I think I'll take one everyday please.

The best part of instagram? I can be on it and look through pictures all day and people will think I'm doing research on my phone. You can find me @thanksgrace

dreamer.

While growing up, America's Next Top Model was a guilty pleasure of mine. I love the drama, sass, fashion, drama, and the overwhelming amount of knowledge that comes out of Tyra's mouth... There's this one instance when Tyra went off on one of the contestants. She screamed, "You don't know me! You don't know where I've been or what I've been through!" So whenever I have one of these exasperated moments, my insides turn into angry-Tyra-yelling-at-one-of-her-girls. It does bug me when people make great sweeping comments about who I am. I consider myself a very private and shy person. It's almost painful how private I actually am. There is probably 1.5 persons in this world who actually know me and can accurately predict who I am. Yes I do go on angry rants but no I don't actually hate people. Why yes, I do work hard but you have GOT to be kidding if you think I'll do your work for you and then cover for you! Yes, I love fashion and style but...okay, okay...you got me there on that one... LeSigh...assumptions... please don't treat them like facts. Don't make me Tyra you!

On a much happier note (and random tangent), I do want to dream! dream, dream, dream of a fantastical place. These pictures from Jeannine Tan, featuring Anna Denton, and styled by Kelsey Genna make me want to dream.

link

I dream of barefoot beach days while wearing fabulous dresses with flowers in my hair.

farm it.

The last week was full of agony for me! Not to sound dramatic... Welcome to 60 hour weeks and the loss of a social life! But still there is still so much to be thankful for! LIKE all of your encouraging comments and words. Thank you all so much for being so wonderfully uplifting! After the last post, I felt so down and hopeless. Randomly, I would get a comment-email which would lift my spirits immediately! So thank you all so much for you love! You are the best!

This weekend was full of rest and happiness. I didn't spend anytime with current co-workers this weekend because I really need to get away from it all. So instead, I'm going to share some of the things that made me happy this past week. On Saturday morning, I went to Farm Shop on the west side. The place is beyond cute and clean.

Yesterday I got to explore the westside with two lovely ladies. Farm Shop is so yum! 

Vanilla lovers' dream.

I wanted one of everything.

The menu.

My pastrami and eggs brunch.

There's nothing better than a good meal and even better company to wash away a bad week.

And there's nothing better than sweets to help prep the week!

My Sunday night black & white cookie. I miss you NYC! 

Are you ready for another week of work? 

This is my birthday week so hopefully I get some good news this week and the possibility of not working 60 hours...

Also thinking of gifting myself with some new inky-liciousness. Possibly on a finger or hand.. pain? thoughts?

Let's Do This!

insta-love

It's Wednesday and that means that this week is almost over. Life is getting harder. Out-dates are coming up, so that means people are trying to jump ship, others are trying to sabotage... everything is a game and I'm tired of playing. I'm sorry but I have more important things to worry about (like the color of the sky) than how to sabotage the person I'm working with. This is why I want good things to happen to good people.

This week, I cancelled all of my after work meetings (including night and weekend work-meetings) because I really need me-time. I find myself snapping at people at work or sticking in my head phones and tuning everyone out.

I'm angrier and more frustrated with everyone. My patience is wearing thin with the people I actually care about. My ears won't listen and my heart doesn't want to love. 

My empathetic side has shut down and I want it to wake up. I don't like being cold, short, and impatient.

hmm.. wake up! It's only Wednesday...

But it's now February and that means presents, cakes, flowers, and chocolates.

Lets get 

on to the 

drop!

I wanted to share the Disney love to my coworkers so I bought a box of taffy.

Delicious, yummy, cupcakes made with love from a sistah!

Carbs were a necessity.. Sorry diet but processed white flour was calling my name.

My friend was cleaning out her closet and found this gem! I said it was the perfect pouch to place your rings when washing your hands.

At Paris Baguette. The coffee cup is a boy! 

Minnie Mouse bow. I love that Mickey is on the backing..

This weekend was full of clear, beautiful skies!

my favorite game.

My favorite game to play is guess the price tag. 

The rules are:

 1. look at the item. Really evaluate it but don't look at the price tag.

2. Guess the price and set the item down.

3. Flip over the tag, shoe, item, whatever and look at the actual cost.

4. If your estimated cost is the same as or less than the actual cost, head to the cashier.

The best part of this game, is that there's no loser! If I guess correctly, than I walk off with a new bag, pair of shoes, article of clothing, fancy earrings.. If I guess too low, then I walk away with knowing that the item was not worth the cost. Either way, I come out of the shopping experience as a winner.

Being the frugal gal that I am, I guess too low so I walk away most of the time. When I do make the purchase, I feel a sense of pride for snagging such a deal.

 I saw this bag at Zara's sitting on the sale section with no sales tag. It said $60 and I turned to my sister and said that if the bag was $30 I would buy it. I walked over to the cash register and asked the very nice salesman to do a price check. He rang it up and told me it's $29.99 so I walked out with a new bag.

These shoes were a pre-birthday present purchase. I have a feeling I'm going to be saying that a lot in the next two weeks. I said if they were $60 then I would buy them. The sale was an extra 70% off so I did a price check and turned out they were $68. However, I noticed that the sticker on the bottom said 195 and he rang up 250. I pointed out the error and a bunch of recalculations occurred. The shoes ended up being $58 because the sticker on the bottom of the shoe was incorrect.

I love a good deal. 

Happy Monday! Hope you had a fantastic weekend filled with greatness.

a very disney rain.

I had a season pass to Disneyland for the past three years so I went a lot. There's something about the magic, the happiness, the children running around all hopped up on sugar, and Mickey Mouse that excites/awakens the inner 7-year-old-chubby-girl who still lives on in my heart. For me, Disney is a place of magic and a place where dreams come true. It's a place that inspires me and makes me strive for better in what I create and produce.

I want to bring joy to kids and to future generations. I want to make them believe in the greatness in themselves.

I'm so lucky to have a sister who loves Disneyland as much as I do but we do the parks differently than most people. We don't stress about the rides (we ride maybe three or four at the most) and we spend the rest of the day people-watching, eating, shopping, and reveling in excitement. For my sister's birthday, she and I took work off to spend the day at Disneyland. 

Lucky for us, it was expected to rain on Monday. Yes, we now consider that lucky because we were one of the few people who went prepared. Rain boots, huge umbrella, nylon bags, sweaters, coats, thermals, scarves, and ear muffs were all taken with us. 

Like my Disney bling?

First up was California Adventure and the park was empty y'all. We got through the entire park in one hour and we got to make beautiful pictures.

We got to ride every single popular ride with a maximum 10 minute wait. We were super excited for the Toy Story Mania ride and the lack of an hour wait.

Little Mermaid is magical.

Up next was Disneyland.

Are you ready?

What a beauty of a park. 

God was kind to us that day. He gave us a few hours of sunshine so we ran to take a picture in front of the castle.

There was a cool Lunar New Year display at Disneyland.

Notice how the animal characters are all Disney animals? 

I'm the year of the Dragon so I am a dragon! ROAR!

Sister wanted to take a fun picture too so she became Godzilla.

Sister and I spend most of our Disneyland trips shopping and every time we go I fall in love with these candy boxes..

Which do you most relate to? I have a hard time picking. I don't like any of the candies inside the box so I never buy them but I think product design is cute.

It is now Friday and I cannot wait for the weekend!

Hope you have a fantastic weekend! I have meetings planned so I'll be working most of the weekend but I'm going to try throw in some spurts of shopping, baking, and some time for fellowship. 

Happy Friday!

insta-drop.

It's Wednesday! That means that today is instagram day! So here it is folks! Here is my life according to my iphone @thanksgrace. 

My gilt groupe purchases made me very happy.

I was feeling kind of sicky this past week so I drank ginger tea like water. Made me want sushi.

I work hard folks.. you can see that behind my online shopping, my g-chat is up and running.

Little Bear LA. Belgian gastro-pub in the art district in Downtown LA.

Amazing grilled cheese from Little Bear. The fries even tasted like bacon!

This is my view from work. That's the WB water tower so I get to see the Animaniacs everday!

Do you remember that awesome cartoon?!

More working hard tricks at work.

My sister and I watched bleep Korean girls say on youtube and tried to imitate the cute girl faces.

You can see that we're not good at them..

My cute little bunny socks.

This week has not been that bad.

The question that I pose to y'all: 

Is it weird for a single girl and a single guy (who don't really know each other) to go get dinner? 

It's not a date (according to the single girl).

Disneyland drop happening very very soon! I'm quite excited to share about my past trip!

thank God for sisters.

Today is my sister's birthday. She says that she is twenty-sexy and I don't know how to respond to that. The reason I was blog-MIA for the past couple days was because I was spending the past three days with my sister. 

We spent Saturday being LA sisters doing LA things. The morning started later than we wanted, getting lost, and then being misinformed by a restaurants website. Luckily, we were on 3rd St so there were a lot of places to go. So we started the morning off right by sharing a bagel & lox plate and a side of breakfast potatoes. The potatoes were the highlight of the day!

We then looked at sweets for about an hour and bought 5 mini pies from Simple Things. From there, we just played like sisters by going shopping and eating even more food.

Sunday Funday was spent watching football and eating.

Happy Birthday Sister. I'm so thankful you're in my life. You keep me grounded and you're willing to slap me back into reality. You make me laugh, cry, sweat, jump, dance, and everything else in between. We are obnoxious/annoying together but I can't imagine my life without you.

Happy birthday you twenty-sexy female!