December: Month in Review Part 2

Dec. 18th:

After dinner we decided to check out Christmas Card Lane. Reminds me a lot of when I was little and we would go to Chino Hills to look at all the lights. It was pretty cool. Lots of Disney inspired houses. Here are some highlights from our trip. I had more photos on my regular camera but these are just the ones from my phone. 

Dec. 19th:
Worked the early shift on Thursday and for dinner we went to get some Vietnamese food.

Dec. 20th:
Both Tony and I had the day off Friday and it was time to do some last minute Christmas shopping. We had pretty much finished our shopping for the most part but we were missing Tony's grandmother. We met up with Tony's mom and brother for some Cheesecake Factory. I absolutely love the pastas at Cheesecake Factory.

spicy chicken chipotle pasta with no peas

peppermint bark cheesecake for the holidays

Dec. 21st:

We met up with one of Tony's friends in college and wet bar hopping in North Park.

drinks at hess

Dec. 22nd:

yummy pho with tripe only

xmas goodie bags for my staff :) 

Dec. 27th:
The Fab5 girlies had an amazing shopping day at the Santa Anita mall. We literally spent the whole day there and found a bunch of good stuff. Definitely got the shopping bug out of my body before the new year started with this goal of mine to not buy any clothes for the entire year. We saw a little friend while we were eating lunch at Cheesecake Factory lol.

louisiana chicken pasta

Dec 28th:
The day was finally here for one of my bestest and oldest friends to get married! We had been through so much through the years and I couldn't be happier to be apart of her special day. It was very hard not to get teary-eyed through out the entire day because it was like seeing my sister get married.

absolutely loved the bead detailing on her dress!

the beautiful bride

we're a fun loving bunch lol

school themed wedding - we were in the 10th grade

pencil topper name place holders! 

the original gang from potrero

a fun picture

Dec. 29th:
The morning after the wedding, we went to visit my grandma in the hospital. My grandma had been in the hospital for the past few weeks and since I live in San Diego, I hadn't really had the chance to go to the hospital to see her. Luckily, I was able to see her when I did because unfortunately she passed away a few days after. I had seen her maybe a week ago and she was completely knocked out by meds but this time she was actually alert. After visiting my grandma, we went to Kim Ky Noodle House to eat this beauty. It was very good and I don't know of any places that sell this in San Diego which is why I wanted to have this while I was in LA.

After we got home, I finally go the final few cards to fill up my little card wreath that I made! Now I just need to make another one for the rest of the year! I made this wreath because our fridge was getting bombarded with cards and I don't know what's wrong with magnets these days but they aren't strong at all! So every time we would open the fridge, the cards would come flying off. Thanks for all the beautiful cards everyone!

Hope everyone's having a good start to the week! I worked this weekend so it really doesn't feel like a Monday to me. I have the day off tomorrow so it actually feels more like a Friday to me. Hopefully I can get the rest of January up and start on February so I can be up to date! Happy Monday ya'lls!!

December: Month in Review Part 1

Alright guys! I'm back for a December Month in Review Part 1! Using my day off to get caught up on these posts! Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day/Single Awareness Day and Happy Hump day!


Dec. 1st: Work

Dec. 2nd-3rd:
Started off the month by heading to the Troubadour in LA to see Sam Smith. His first show sold out but they added a second show and we were able to get tickets. What an amazing singer. He has an amazing way of relaying his emotions through his music as if he's been through everything he's singing about (maybe he has?). Since we were able to use the carpool lane for most of the way, we actually got to LA quite a bit earlier than expected so we decided to grab some grub. We decided on a sushi restaurant off of Santa Monica Blvd. called Ajisai. Really great stuff. Very fresh.

We were going to drive back to San Diego that night but we were both really tired so we stayed at my parent's house. In the morning we had a bunch of boxes from Crate & Barrel to go through. I had entered their Thanksgiving Giveaway because I had felt bad for the person trying to collect information. People are often so concerned about data collection and for goo reason but I had once been that person at the mall calling out to people to try such and such product so I know how it feels to seem invisible and ignored. Anyways, I signed up and the Monday right before Thanksgiving I get the call that I had won! Super crazy and below is a picture of the six boxes of stuff I'd won. It was a set of 12 large plates, small plates, bowls, utensils, a turkey baster, and a roasting pan and rack. It even came with a cooking magazine. I think it could've been a sign that I need to start cooking lol. I still haven't started though haha. I probably should have made that one of my new years resolutions. I thinking cooking itself takes a lot of prep time. First you have to find the recipe. Then you have to go buy all the stuff. Then you have to prep the food. Then you can actually cook. But I digress lol.

After some serious packing up, we were able to widdle down the 6 boxes to just 3 boxes (they sure put a lot of packing into those boxes but nothing was broken so good job!) and we headed to eat lunch with my dad at Din Tai Fung. People often say this place is overrated but I think their ingredients are extremely fresh. You can really taste the difference.

After lunch, I wanted to make a stop at the Santa Anita Mall. Every year I always send in my wish at Macy's. I believe they donate money for each letter that is submitted to Santa. I feel like if they actually read the submissions, that would be such a fun job lol.

After spending some time at the mall, we headed back to San Diego. We decided to try this new soon tofu place. One of the things I miss about LA is the abundance of BCD Tofu houses! Like can you please extend your chain to San Diego. It's definitely not the same but it's a lot better than the other soon tofu places. I was pretty appalled that most of the soon tofu places in San Diego don't have any side dishes or very few. Like wha?! I'm always like "Where's my fish?!" (even though I usually give it to someone else lol)

Dec. 4th-6th: Work

On December 5th we had a Holiday party for work at Tom Ham's Lighthouse. It was so nice out with a small breeze. It was one of those days that really makes you think "Wow, I'm so lucky to be living in California".

Had some post-party drinks and some life conversations with some other PICs. Sometimes I wish we could get time off and just hang out because we all have the same problems and pressures from the higher ups. It was definitely very enlightening to be around such intellectuals. I really just wanted to pick everyone's brains lol.

Dec. 6th:
Decided to check out December nights at Balboa Park. This was my first time at this event and it was very pretty and crowded (which I was told that this day was actually the most empty it's been). There were some food trucks there so we tested a few places out. I saw a sign with Sweet Potato Tots so I had to give it a go! They were pretty darn good. Also tried a bunch of cultural foods that I didn't get a chance to take a picture of because my phone was crapping out.

Dec. 7th-8th:
Celebrated Sophie's birthday in LA with some Korean BBQ. For some odd reason I have no pictures from this day! I gotta hunt down the scrapbook person lol. I only have this picture and Sophie's not even in it!

stole this one from pearl!

Dec. 11th:
We went out to dinner with Tony's parents and tried out this new Japanese/Italian Fusion restaurant called Ristorante Kaz. I ordered the Squid Ink Pasta which was a bit of a surprise. So my coworker recommende Bencotto in Little Italy for their Squid Ink Pasta. Bencotto's Squid Ink Pasta is actually pasta that is made out of squid ink. This squid ink pasta is with the squid ink pasta sauce. Man, this is definitely something you don't have to eat on a first date. I spent most of the night wiping my mouth lol. Definitely something I want to take home to enjoy and slobber all over the place.

Dec. 14th:
Tony's cousin had a super cute jungle themed baby shower. We got to keep these super awesome mason jars. I never usually win any games at these kinds of gatherings but I ended up getting the poopie diaper lol. I like these kinds of games where it requires the least amount of effort on my part hahaha (my laziness talking there).

Dec. 15th:

Had a small gathering at my house and invited some of my favorite people :). Missing a few peeps but it is a true rare event seeing us outside of work. 

Thanks for reading and I'll talk to ya'lls real soon!!

Debt Free by 33: 2014 Budgeting How-To

A lot of people tend to get overwhelmed by their New Years resolutions. You want to lose weight, eat healthier, spend less, learn more, etc etc etc. That's a lot to take on on top of a full time job. By the start of February, you've realized that half of those resolutions have already been broken and you're back to your old habits. The key to following through with those resolutions is breaking them down into steps that you can actually accomplish. When you're in school, you are given a syllabus to get through a class. For example, a book that you must read during the semester might be broken down into 2-3 chapters a day. In life, the same rules apply. For the majority of us, just simply stating "I want to be healthier" isn't enough. There needs to be specific parameters that you can measure to see if you are or are not meeting your goals. Sometimes there's a lot of pre-work that you must do to set yourself up for success.

For this Budgeting How-To post, I will go over some steps to find what your monthly budget should look like. In order to spend less and save more, you have to look at what you have to work with: your monthly income and how much you spend on a monthly basis.

1) Monthly Income
This one is easy enough. Just look at your weekly or biweekly paychecks for the month of January (hence why I'm posting this in February) and add up those amounts. Take that amount and round down to the nearest $250. According to Wikipedia, the 2011 median annual household income in the United States was $50,054. Divide that by 12 months gives you $4,171 per month. So lets say average Jane made $4,171 in the month of January, you're going to round that number to $4,000. Unless you have a salaried job, your paycheck amount my vary from time to time so $250 seemed like a nice round number to work with. On your budget sheet, you will put this down as your "Monthly Income". What about the rest of the money you ask? This money goes towards something you want out of this year. Did you want to save up for a house? A vacation perhaps? Maybe you just want a pair of Jimmy Choos or a designer handbag? This hypothetical person would be saving $171/month. That's $2,052 in a year. This doesn't have to be something you're saving up for. You can use that monthly money as seed money for shopping or dining out or coffee fund lol. Just do something nice for yourself (if you haven't noticed, I'm all for spoiling yourself :)).

2) Expenses
This category is where people tend to give up. Face it, everyone has a ton of expenses. Living is expensive lol (although death may be quite costly as well, but let's not digress). To make this step a little less daunting, let's break it down into sub-categories. (I have a category for parental expenses because I, like many other children these days, support my parents in some of their monthly bills. You can remove this category if you don't and add additional categories i.e. child support, etc as needed.)
*note if you use your credit card to pay for certain bills (i.e. you have an automatic bill pay that pays your cable bill through your credit card) do not create a subcategory for those items since they will be included in your expenses under your credit card. Example: I use my credit card to pay for my cable/internet at my parents house so I will not create a subcategory for that under parental expenses since then I'd be doubling up. 

• Home/Apartment Expenses: 
• Rent
• Cable/Internet (if you have two separate bills, put these into two separate categories)
• Water
• Gas/Electric
• Parental Expenses:
• Home - Water
• Home - Gas
• Home - Electric
• Student Loans:
• Credit Cards:
• This number usually varies from month to month. This is where you'll have to do a bit of research. Go through your 2013 credit card statements. Write down those amounts and look to see if there are any severe outliers. Maybe you paid off a vacation one month and the amount skewed your payment. Maybe you did a lot of Christmas shopping and your December bill was crazy. Whatever it may be, if there is month where your spending deviates over $500 from the rest of the amounts, you've got yourself an outlier. What you then want to do is just remove that outlier from the picture. So if you've got 2 outliers, you will then add up the other 10 statement amounts and divide it by 10. This will give you your average monthly spending on your credit card. If, however, your payment amounts vary all across the board where there isn't one sore thumb sticking out, just average it out. Round this to the nearest hundredths place. (note: this only works if you're paying your credit cards off in full every month. If you're not then that's probably something that needs to be addressed first).

Last step in expenses is to add these all together. This gives you the total amount you spend a month.

3) The Difference

Take the amount you got from "Income" and subtract the total you got in "Expenses". This is where you find out how much wiggle room you have each month. If you find that you are in the positives, you're in luck! This means you can put this money towards your savings or towards repaying a loan. If you have unpaid credit card debt, this money could go towards that too. If you're in the negatives, that means you're spending above and beyond your means. This would be a good time to take a long hard look at those expenses, break down each credit card expense into categories and find out what categories you're spending the most money in and cut down those expenses. Again, it's a long tedious process but the reward will be huge. 

I hope this was helpful to those of you trying to make a budget and stick to it for the new year. I wish you all the best on your New Years Resolutions!

Sunday Sounds: Coachella 2014 Series - MS MR

Awhile back we had gotten tickets to see MS MR. They were running a promotion on the site for $0.91 per ticket. Including fees, the tickets ended up being around 5 bucks. We didn't end up going since they had to reschedule the show to a date that we had a scheduling conflict. That's when I started listening to them. One of my favorite songs from them (not listed below since I couldn't find embed the song on here) is Bones. Here are some of my other favorites below. Happy listening!

Sunday Sounds: Coachella 2014 Series - Adventure Club

Coming to you real quick this Sunday since I have work today. A few of my favorites from Adventure Club.