Covet: Etsy Love

 

Honey My Heart

 Librarian chic!

 Double Hearts

I love the simplicity in the design. 

Sparkles Kitchen

Prices are not bad for these macarons, but I still have a few to taste in the City before I resort to mail-order.

 Beast of Eden

These may look familiar because they're made by my friend T, who also made a set for my wedding cake.

Sushi Booties

No babies yet. They make these in adult sizes too, but baby sizes are cuter.

I swear I've been eating vegetables too!

So my sister bought me an Iphone...and I got a little snap-happy.

I'm so glad I bought the Townhog certificate for David Christopher Macarons.  They're high on my list for taste and presentation.  Look at the pretty colors! We got (l-r) salted pistachio, butterscotch, guava lychee, meyer lemon, and chocolate.

Close-up of the glittery goodness.

These are from Patisserie Philippe. The storefront was pretty, not the best customer service around, and they suck at labeling.  I bought all nine flavors available, but only seven flavors were labeled.  And if you can't tell, they're all different sizes.  Not the end of the world, but not pretty.  We got (clockwise from top) earl grey, violet cassis, pistachio, raspberrie (that's how they labeled it), rose, hazelnut, passionfruit, chocolate, and espresso.

Did they run out of signs?

After many false hopes and promises, my dear cousin M finally brought back Sprinkles cupcakes for my sister and me. I'll let you guess which one was red velvet and Irish chocolate.  I'm not sure it lived up to its hype.  I felt like I had better.

I also tried the red velvet cake from Costco.  In my defense, it was on sale. And I gave a quarter of the cake to my sister and another quarter to my uncle.  I wouldn't buy it again for the fun of it, but definitely worth buying for a party or something at less than $10.

I made steamed egg buns too.  My mom used to make steamed egg cakes for us in giant pie pans, but never had a set recipe, so it was usually hit or miss.  I'm often afraid to go at cakes/buns without recipes, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this recipe from La Fuji Mama.  No lie, I had to make this twice to get it light and fluffy.  And grandma (my official cake/bun recipe taster) approved.

I'm a Material Girl!

That's what my nail polish says!

Finally

Escrow has closed.   Now we get to do not-so fun house stuff. 

I never imagined buying a house would be so difficult and invasive.  It really should not have been so difficult, the economy is still on its knees and the housing market is still trying to figure itself out, I should have been able to hand over money and receive keys quickly.  But strict regulations coupled with a less than stellar escrow company, incompetent realtors, and invasive lenders, we soldiered on. As I like to tell R, when it rains on me, it POURS.  He’s just proud that I didn’t shed any tears.

Now I need to get back to yoga.  All the stress is finally starting to weigh down on my shoulders.  And it shows.

I really wish I made more of that lychee iced tea. 

happy place

Close of escrow has been delayed again. I'm tired of talking about escrow.

Here's a cutie pie picture of my cousin from 5 years ago. It really cheers me up.

Resolution update

Today is Lunar New Year and my birthday is tomorrow.  I have school on Saturday and a Super Bowl shindig on Sunday.

My apartment is a mess again.  I just cleaned it last week. I hope the Lunar New Year gods don't smite me.

Where do I begin…These few weeks have been stressful again as we’re anticipating the closing of escrow (when we officially own the house and get keys) on Friday.  Small errors and ridiculous requirements set by the bank (the seller of the house) and the escrow company has delayed closing for almost a month.  I’m tired of talking the damn process already.

After spending an hour signing our lives away on Monday, we find out that the escrow company doesn’t like checks.  We will have to wire it.  Who does that? Isn’t that something from the movies? To offshore accounts? We’re sending it to LA only.

On to lighter brighter things!  Before this house thing took over my life, I made some resolutions.  Resolutions I have yet to start working on.  Well, I did try a few new things in the wardrobe area, but since I didn’t document it.  It doesn’t count.

Let's revisit.

1. Yoga -My favorite yogi doesn't teach on Sundays any more.  The next most convenient time he teaches are on Thursdays, but it's during dinner time.  I know it's a bad excuse, but this watching our finances until the house closes thing I've been doing have kept me away.
2. Crafts - I tied a bow on my narcissus plant to keep it from falling over.
3. MPA -I logged in a total of 2 hours of project time, but still no topic.  Only have 98 more hours to go.
4. Style - I bought heeled boots.  Still a little afraid to wear them.  Reconsidering this "jeggings" trend.
5. Finance - I looked at a few sites.  I keep telling myself that I will look seriously into this category once the house closes and I regain some disposable income.
6. Camera - Found out the BIL fried 4 of 5 batteries.  I'm waiting for R to buy me more.  And waiting for free time to come around so that he can teach me how to use it.

So there. I'm a big FAIL on my resolutions. 

What's the name of the game?

We've been married for a while now.  I chose not to change my name when we got married because I'm lazy.  I didn't want to go through the headache of filling out forms and standing in line. And I didn't want to be the only Me R'sLastName out there.  Really, I checked, I googled, I don't like standing out.

I have a fairly common first and last name, at least in this part of the country.  There's quite a few of me on facebook too.  Then something snapped.  I wish I could pinpoint where I wanted to change my name, but I can't. It would have come in real handy when I was trying to get a library card.

When I finally got around to getting my library card, and because there were so many of me in the library system, the automated machine wouldn't let me sign up.  I was asked repeatedly if I had a middle name (which I don't) to distinguish me from the rest of the mes out there.  It's the second time this has happened at the library.  My father has a common first and last name which has made him a target of many fraud problems.  We were getting a lot of phone calls about defaulted student loans and I believe his credit history was shot to hell as a result.

I've been having a hard time getting personalized emails too.  I really hate having emails with numbers at the end too.  They look incredibly unprofessional on resumes. I've been creative the first few letters of my name so that my emails don't require digits. When I started my new job, there was already a firstinitiallastname@company.org, consequently I became firstname.lastname@company.org.  I am the only one. I hate that.

It wouldn't be immediate though.  California's experiencing some bureaucratic delays with the new IDs, so I would have to wait quite a while. It's kind of weird looking too. I mean, look at this beauty -

Source

 So there you have it, I'm thinking about changing my name to first maiden R'slastname.