The Sky is Always the Bluest After The Rain

We’ve had a LOT of rain the last few weeks in San Diego.  Last week we even had hail.  There’s been tons of snow in the mountains near us, only an hour away.  But on Saturday Todd & I went for a walk at the coast and it was the clearest as it gets in San Diego, which is very clear and very blue!

It always makes me feel so great when we walk by the ocean.  It makes me feel super grateful to live here.

On the making front this week, I made a whipped shea butter body butter, just for experimenting with ingredients and formulation.  It’s made with shea butter, safflower oil, isopropyl myristate (to cut the oily feel and make it feel smooth), vitamin E oil, and lemon, orange, and grapefruit essential oils (but not at the amount that would cause photosensitivity).  It feels and smells great. 

I also made 25 candles for a custom label order.  I’ve never made 25 candles at once before, so I timed myself every step of the way so I could see how efficient I could be, ha ha.  This was the “prep all the glass jars and wick them” stage.

This was 2.5 hours later, after pouring all the candles.  They’re setting/curing.  They are scented in Sea Salt & Orchid and smell REALLY good!

While I worked on this candle order, I discovered the “Songs To Sing in the Shower” playlist on Spotify.  It is soooo good!  I literally danced my way through the candlemaking, LOL.  So joyous!

My nephew Andrew has a channel on YouTube called “Rogue Films”.  He had a video he made go viral last week and he texted us to tell us.  (It has over half a million views now!) So Todd and Noodle watched the video together.  I guess it became some sort of meme?  I have no idea what the kids like these days!

Speaking of Noodle, he is loving the sunshine that has returned to San Diego.

Sideways sleeping on his infinity bed.

Todd got to play Mozart and Mahler classical pieces with his musician friends on Saturday.  They get together from time to time to play together, just for fun.  I went and recorded a bunch of videos for him.

Every time I hear him play, I’m in awe of his talent, but more so his hard work.  He practices piano a lot, almost daily, after dinner.  He also plays trumpet in a brass group at work during lunch on Mondays.  They are going to play songs from “The Greatest Showman”.  Which, by the way, we watched for the 2nd time on Saturday night.  It’s even better the second time around.  So now I’ve been listening to the soundtrack all day on Spotify today.

Todd continued to celebrate his birthday this weekend, because several of his “free birthday food” coupons were expiring.  On Friday night we went to Burger Lounge so he could get his free milk shake.

Then on Sunday we went to brunch at Miguel’s Cocina so he could use his $10 off $30 birthday coupon.  They also gave him a free birthday mud pie and sang to him!

I had the carne asada benedict and it was delicious.  But what I really go to Miguel’s for is their cheese queso dip with chips, LOL.

I’ve been reading through Marie Rayma’s book “Make It Up”.  It is sooooo awesome!  I’m excited to try some of the formulas for DIY foundation, blush, lipstick, eyeshadows, etc.  The idea that I can custom make cosmetics for myself that matches my skin tone exactly, and also make colored cosmetics to my liking, is very exciting to me!  Especially since cosmetics is a category of products that’s marked WAAAAY up in retail sales, to pay for the marketing.  I have a feeling that fairly soon, I’m going to end up with lots of little jars of DIY makeup.  So fun!

I have already talked about Atlas Market in a recent blog post, but I went there today and got our whole week’s produce for $8.74! 

I got:

3.3 LBS of beets = $1.09
2.82 LBS of papaya = $2.79
3.87 LBS of naval oranges = $0.77
1.75 LBS of fuji apples = $1.21
1.9 LBS of green beans = $0.94
2 jalapeno peppers = $0.32
4 tomatillos = $0.48
Bag of bok choy = $0.85
2 bunches of cilantro = $0.29

Total $8.74

I think I mis-weighed some items, because it looks like I got way more than I needed.  I think the scales in the store may have been in kilograms, LOL.  But anyway, that means I could have only paid like $6 for all the produce that I needed.  That’s just incredible!  Seriously when I wheel the cart out of this place, I'm so giddy like I just stole some food! Local friends, you absolutely NEED to go to Atlas Market for produce and fruits!  It's an international market with a food hall, with emphasis on Korean and Persian food. Tons of other Asian and Middle Eastern food. They make announcements in English, Persian, Korean, and Chinese, LOL. In the food hall they have Korean fried chicken, which is soooooo good. And there's a Persian Bakery too. Basically I want to live there!

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2018 Year-End Recap

I blinked and it’s two months later.  I’ve had good intentions of blogging.  I’ve even put it on my Google calendar.  But alas, time got away from me.  I will attempt to recap the end of 2018 in this post, and catch-up to present next week!

In early December, Todd played a Christmas concert with The Winters band at The Legacy Church in Tierrasanta.  He and the band practiced for a few weeks and the show was so good and so fun!

Todd even sang this year.

Which is actually not surprising, since he’s actually heading up an acapella singing group at work.  They performed both at work and as opening act at the Christmas concert.

And he’s the head of a chamber music group at work too.  So many clubs, so little time!

As usual I’m so very proud of all his music abilities, hard work practicing, and how great his shows are.  Considering music is not his full time job, or any paid job!

I helped Todd put together some hot cocoa packages to give away to his coworkers for Christmas.  So cute, right?

I had a ladies holiday luncheon with my ex-coworkers and it was so fun.  I put together some gift packages of my handcrafted candles, lotion, and salt scrub for everyone.

We spent Christmas in our usual San Diego fashion:  at the beach!

Instead of snowmen, we have sandmen!

We had a night out of movies and dessert with AJ & Meera.  We saw Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Gindelwald, and had dessert at Baked Bear.  Blurry photo but great memories!

On Christmas Day we flew out to Orlando for a last minute trip to meet up with my sister Joyce and my nephew Andrew.  We went to Disney World Hollywood Studios the day after Christmas.

It was seriously so fun!  My favorite ride was the Slinky Dog rollercoaster.  We also went on Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

And we did meet & greets with Kylo Ren, Chewbacca, and BB-8!

We both got sick for about a week right after we got back from Orlando, so we started off the New Year down for the count.  We snuggled up and slept a lot.  And relaxed to get better.

It was a whirlwind holiday season!  My Pacifica Grace Studio Etsy shop did well for the holiday season.  I closed up shop on 12/21 for a break, after working really hard to make and fulfill orders for over a month.  I spent the end of the year being very thankful that I didn’t have to work at my corporate finance job for year-end.  For 25 years I always had to work between Christmas and New Years to “close the books” for year-end accounting!  I reveled in the fact that I didn’t have to do that this past holiday season. 

Come back soon for a catch-up post of 2019 so far!

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Flashback Friday

So I saw a tweet from Matt Warshauer today. Matt is the bass player for a band called the 2am Club. They are signed by RCA Records and MTV has been buzzing about them. They played live at MTV this week. Anyways, I went to check out their video for "Worry About You" and I saw Mattie's face in there!

How do I know Matt? That's why this post is called "Flashback Friday"!
Todd played in the band The Northstar Session with Matt for a couple of years.

Here they are playing in the 2005 Rock N Roll Marathon.

Yes, Todd has played in two RnR marathons and hasn't run one yet! But he will be running the half marathon in about a week.

Matt, Matt, and Todd at our 10th wedding anniversary dinner cruise.

Matt Warshauer is the middle one.

On tour in Austin, Texas.




Playing at the famous Belly Up:


Official band publicity shots, courtesy of Rebecca Waer.

You know that rockstars don't really smile, right? :D









You know that Todd loves to smile and laugh, right? It makes me chuckle to look at all these band publicity photos of him not smiling, ha ha!

So anyways, flash forward back to today. Matt's band 2am Club's single "Worry About You" can be found on "Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 34" here! It's track #18.

And here is the video. Look for Matt!

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Neighborhood Jam Band

I slept until 7:30am today, which made me a pretty happy girl. Since we had the day off work today, we drew all the shades before bed last night. I'm really sensitive to light, so it helps me sleep more. First thing in the morning, we dropped off Todd's car for an oil change. Unfortunately, they called later to say there's all kinds of things wrong with it and we'll probably have to do about $1,000 worth of work on it next week. We've had the car since Oct 2001 and it has over 120,000 miles on it, so we do expect to pay money to maintain it. I still hate it when it happens though. Right next to the mechanics was a McDonald's, so I got a holiday treat of a sausage egg McMuffin sandwich and McCafe caramel iced coffee for breakfast. I helped Todd make this Balsamic Carrot Salad, which we had for lunch with our leftover steaks from last night. Todd did a ton of housework today. He sanded the bottom of our front door down. It had gotten wet and warped, so the door would get stuck when you try to open or close it. It was annoying. He also drained out all the crusty yucky stuff in the bottom of our hot water heater. He drained the dirty water from our jacuzzi outside. We would fill the jacuzzi again, but San Diego is under a level 2 water restriction right now due to drought, so we would get penalized if we used too much water. I take that to mean that filling up a 500 gallon jacuzzi is not a good idea right now. Todd also put new mulch down in our front and back yard. We had bought six big bags of mulch from Home Depot, but Todd said he needs another eight bags to complete the mulching. The funnest part of the day was the late afternoon, when we went two doors down over to Mel & Margaret's house for the neighborhood jam band party! Fred next door invited us a few weeks ago. Then Margaret next door to Fred stopped Todd at the mailbox a few days ago and invited him again. As you know, Todd plays piano/keyboard. Fred plays guitar, and Mel plays drums. They invited some other neighbors/friends, and we got a jam band going! There was also singing involved. (Margaret, Mallory, and Maureen.) Margaret prepared lots of snacks, food, and drinks for everyone. Plus people brought stuff too. Remember my blog post two days ago, when I said I was swarmed by bees at Togo's parking lot? Both AJ and Lynnette made comments today about the Padres game last night, where the left outfield was swarmed by bees too! They had to stop the game for 52 minutes because of the bees! What the heck is going on with bees around here??? Now I'm scared to go to the Padres game this Sunday!

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