Daily Photo

If you ever meet a photographer who says that they only have to take one or two pictures to get the right shot, they’re totally pulling your leg. On average, it takes me about 20, especially when a baby and/or a cat is involved.

Obviously, when we go trick-or-treating tonight, Connor isn’t gonna be able to eat her candy…and that’s where Mom comes in. 🙂 I hope she gets pounds of Snickers and Twix.

I had a mini Twix the other day, and it was phenomenal!

It’s been years since I had a Twix, which now, in retrospect, is a travesty.

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I was talking to somebody about this the other day, about perfectionism and how there are so many things that I want to do in my life, with my house, writing, everything, but I want to do my best, you know? Everybody does. For me, I feel like unless I give something 100%, it’s not even worth trying, and even when I do give 100%, I still see the things that I could have done better.

It’s a theme that’s been running through my life for the last few years, and to be honest, when I got pregnant, it got much worse.

Something happened with my hormones, and I don’t talk about it a lot on the blog, but I developed anxiety. It’s not something that, you know, I want to lead with ever, but I have it, and I’m working on it. I work on it every day.

The person I was talking to was my therapist, and she said that sometimes 70% is good enough, you know. Sometimes 60%. Sometimes 50%.

I think most of us know these things, but it’s so easy to forget them… 🙁

I was telling her that the thought of doing things, like a task, becomes so debilitating for me sometimes that, because I want to do it well, but I don’t feel like I have the tools or the time or the energy, I won’t even do it at all. In my mind, I see this perfect picture of how the task should go, but because I feel so married to that thought, because I can’t do it this way or that way, I get paralyzed, and it’s… I’m kind of over it. I’m really over it.

This has held me back in so many aspects of my life, to be honest, with my family, my writing, my house, it’s just made everything so difficult, and I’m at a point where it’s just, you know what? I want to not feel like I’m being held down by so many things. I want to feel light and free. I want to do things.

So I’m just going to commit to doing stuff at 70%, you know? 70% may not be 100%, but 70% is still something, and I’m gonna do that for a while and hopefully move forward in some ways.

My gawd, if you could see my house… It’s such a mess, but I have this perfect picture in my mind. But I’m letting that go now. If I can just get it to 70%.

Actually, 50% in regards to the house. That’s what I’m committing to. If I could just do 50%, then at least I’m moving forward a little.

I’ve basically been like this pretty much all my life. I mean…I did not expect to get teary right now but…

Please don’t ever feel like you’re alone, you know? You aren’t. Things happen to us all. I’ve never met a perfect person in my life. Not a single one of us is perfect, and you don’t have to be perfect. Ever. Please remember that.

With any task that bothers me, like with my office or any room in the house, if I give myself an hour and tell myself that I only have to work on one pile, if I get through the pile in the hour, that’s great. If I get to anything else after, that’s good, too.

I’m gonna try to remember that small steps, no matter how small they are, are still steps. It’s about taking bite-sized steps. You’ll get there. You can do it.

Have a good day, my friend. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

In case you were wondering how Cost Plus feels about felines, FYI, they appear to love them…and the ladies who love said felines. I spotted these there the other day, and I thought, “Would it be too crazy cat lady of me to buy all of them??”

It probably would, right?

Cat Ceramic Cookie Jar ($14.99)

Black Lucky Cat Ceramic Cookie Jar ($14.99)

Cat Ceramic Measuring Cups ($12.99)

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My sweet tooth is throbbing! In the best possible way!

Two words: flavored snow. I tried it for the first time at Sno Crave Tea House, and yes, it’s a thing.

It’s like a mix of Hawaiian shave ice and ice cream, and it comes in a bunch of flavors, but the thing is…most of the flavors aren’t sweet, so if you want more sweetness, you have to add one or more toppings.

I know this sounds complicated, but it’s not. Stay with me here…

OK, your first topping layer is usually a syrup, and I picked condensed milk because, let’s get real, I can chug a can of that stuff if left to my own devices.

Then you add other toppings on top. I chose Japanese adzuki beans (like you can get in Hawaii with shave ice) which, to be honest, wasn’t the best idea, because we went to the movies afterwards and…

Anyway, next time I go, I want to get fruit toppings and maybe a caramel sauce.

The “sno” flavor I got was taro, which is a purple root similar to potato (in Hawaii it’s what they make poi out of). It was very tasty. Taro is pretty common in Asian cooking.

They also have different kinds of tea, of course, at the Sno Crave Tea House, if flavored snow isn’t your thing. I saw customers with boba teas, which are those drinks with the little tapioca balls in them that look like bubbles, and other customer with hot green tea and things like that.

They also have a bunch of things on the menu with toast in them…

Toast?

Well, it’s called toast, but it looks like layers of pound cake sandwiched between scoops of ice cream, so basically a dieter’s nightmare, or a sweet tooth’s dream, depending on how you look at it.

The Sno Crave I went to is in Union City, but there are othes in California.

Keep your eye out for places like this, because they seem to be popping up more and more. Give it a try sometime! 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

I love these fracking scones. They taste like very dense, sweet and tasty pumpkin bread.

Pumpkin spice errrthing.

When I walked into Trader Joe’s (it was a Sunday evening), I smelled them from across the store. There was a crowd of people around the gal who was giving out the samples, and she was moving to meet the demand!

I got one box for $3.69 at the time, but I was a little skeptical (I’ve gotten a few more boxes since then). I didn’t think they’d be as good when I made them at home, but they were. Don’t laugh, but I made them for dinner last Friday night, and I didn’t even bother to make them cute. El Hub didn’t say anything about it, but he gave me a look, to which I said, “Yes, I made the ugliest scones ever known to man.”

I had them with a couple glasses of wine, and that was my dinner. I might even have them for dinner again tonight.

Whatever…it’s meatless Thursday. 🙂

So based on this very scientific study, these scones are the sh*t.

They’re so easy to make, too. You just add water.

Like, that’s all you do. You add water. That’s it. You add water, mix it up with a fork, and stick it on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper ’cause the dough is super sticky. Then you glaze them (they come with glaze), because without the glaze, they’d be really sad.

Your friendly neighborhood scone-loving beauty addict,

Karen

Yes, this is a bootylicious unicorn flying through the night sky with hearts coming out of its butt.

And yes, it looks like he got that rainbow tattoo at a discount tattoo place…and the tattoo artist was drunk.

Here’s my latest work of art! I did it at a really fun painting event in San Francisco last night with my friend Marisol.

It’s called Paint Nite, and they hold it at different restaurants all the time. You sign up online, and I think Marisol had a Groupon sort of deal where it was $49 for the both of us.

Basically, it’s a painting class with food and wine and a bunch of people in a restaurant. Everyone starts off with a blank canvas, so it’s not paint by numbers. You do use a pre-selected painting, though, which you pick when you sign up, as your template.

There’s also an art teacher who walks you through the how-tos, but you’re free to interpret your painting however you want.

My template was also of a flying unicorn… I don’t know why I keep calling him a he, but he initially had stars trailing out of his butt, and the script said, “Believe in yourself,” but I decided to go rogue and do my own thing.

The stars just weren’t working for me.

Did I mention that you can order food and wine? — so you can get your drank on while you paint? The paint isn’t stinky, so it doesn’t interfere with your drinking and eating experience.

It was a lot of fun, and I’d totally do it again! 🙂

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Yaay!

That pretty much summarizes how I feel about Crock-Pots.

Girl, I’ve been livin’ for my Crock-Pot lately. If it weren’t for my Crock-Pot, I would probably be eating PB&J sandwiches from now till eternity.

It makes cooking SO easy. You just throw a bunch of stuff into the pot and walk away for six hours. THAT’s my idea of THE BEST cooking scenario.

The other day for dinner I made chicken adobo from a recipe I found on this fantastic site called Skinnytaste.

Gina’s recipes are pretty healthy, and they’re always tasty.

Anyway, I basically followed the recipe but adapted it for my Crock-Pot, instead of cooking it on the stove.

I think of adobo as the ultimate in Filipino home-cooking. When I was growing up, we had it at least once a week at home. It’s really simple, savory and flavorful — soy sauce, vinegar, hella garlic, bay leaves and some peppercorns. And chicken in this case, of course, although you can pretty much adobo anything.

I actually marinated the chicken overnight in the fridge, then stuck it into the Crock-Pot in the morning for six hours.

To be honest, this has been uncharted territory for me, because I just started getting into Crock-Pot cooking. I made a yummy chicken tortilla soup a couple weeks ago using a recipe from Pioneer Woman, and El Hub made some beef stew that was all right…but that’s been about it for my Crock-Pot adventures.

Chicken Adobo (here’s the full recipe with directions)

Servings: 4
Ingredients:
8 skinless chicken drumsticks, on the bone
1/3 cup low sodium soy sauce
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1 small head of garlic, crushed
6 ground peppercorns
4 bay leaves
1 jalapeño, chopped (optional)

If you have any good slow cooker recipes, let me know! Thank you in advance. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen