Bee Bops and Lollipops: A Shout Out

For anyone in Snohomish, or even just Western Washington, and haven't yet heard, my parents just purchased a store in downtown Snohomish. It is the most darling thing you have ever seen! This is my mothers first venture as a business owner, and the self made entrepreneur is going to be a huge success. Click here to go in and see their Facebook page and follow them on their new journey. The store is absolutely adorable! My mother has a wonderful gift for design, party planning, and for crafting and creating something that is cute and unique to each person!

I am so proud of her in all that she does, because she is such an amazing woman and pushes her self so hard to be successful at everything she has tried, she is approaching this new endeavor as an exciting and wonderful opportunity. She is so ready for any challenge that may arise, and is confident that she can overcome it and grow so much stronger for it!

I admire my mother so much, she is everything that I aspire to be one day. A loving mother and wife, involved in my community, working at a job that I love, and still making time to pursue my own dreams and desires. My she and my father make a dynamic and unstoppable team that is held together by the love and dedication that they have to each other. I am so excited for both of them!

Please please follow the link above to check them out. If you are ever in Snohomish looking to stop by, they have some adorable products for children, they have a delectable candy bar, and a whole room for parties!

Check them out!

Baths, Beer, Books and....writing

There is nothing more relaxing and more wonderful than these four things. ESPECIALLY when you can combine them. Any of these combinations is completely wonderful and amazing. I try to do at least 2 of these a day. (Usually beer and writing, though the other two are just as great). I think that it is what keeps me sane through a busy or tough week. This week we are doing our district Easter Egg Hunts, and our bi-annual expo.

Shout to Mark from Element Fitness in Camarillo, CA. They do awesome boot camps and personal training for people! They are great! So helpful and knowledgeable! If you want to get back into shape, definitely check out their website here. Mark told me today that he read my blog it was embarrassing but kinda awesome. So he gets a shout out!

But anyways, this is an amazing time for me because I am so busy, we had our event last night with over 400 people, today was closer to 300 and then we finish up at Mugu tomorrow. It will be so amazing, both to execute the event, and to finish it! This is a really great feature about my job, I am able to go and do an event several times. Usually most events you work on for months, then in one night, usually just a few hours, it is over. Which is bittersweet. After pouring your heart and soul into a project and spending so much time going over all the details that few hours seem both so rewarding, but anti-climactic at the same time.

When you do it 3 times, 3 days in a row, it gets crazy. You love and hate it, you see ways to improve on it, but at the same time, you don't want to think about it anymore. But really it is a wonderful thing. come friday morning ill be exhausted and glad the event is done, but already excited for my ideas for next year. My next two events are very low work on my part on the day of the event. We are doing cake decorating in a few weeks, and then are doing a couples adventure to Magic Mountain after that. It will be great. Then we are doing the event that I am SO excited about. A kids Carnival. I am trying to make it seem like a traveling gypsy type carnival/midway games event. I have so many ideas and am so excited about this! I will be posting lots about this as I get more ideas and more things come to fruition!!!

Chicks be crazy

It is amazing to me that I am surrounded by people in wonderful and healthy relationships. I am so glad that I have role models that are mature and in a place where they can talk about the stuff that are their problems. I really love to see that, though there are problems in every relationship, they can work through it and their love will pull them through. Because what they have is more important than their fight.

This is true with so many people in my life I love watching their relationships grow and flourish and become stronger. They are amazing. Despite their problems. I get to learn from them and apply it to my relationship and make my relationship greater :)

I think that when you do long distance it makes it so hard and you completely depend on communication. I love my boyfriend so much and grow so close to him :) he comes home in 4 days!!!

Get published podcast

I listen to many podcasts during the week on many different subjects. Stitcher radio is the one I use, but there are many different types of ayers I'm sure. Today I listened to this American life from NPR I think it is, and one about getting published. The host is an aspiring writer himself. He has a few books coming out and stuff but as I went listening i walked away with some really helpful tips.

1. Treat every character like a hero. At first this seems odd, I mean they are called secondary and minor characters for a reason right? Do they really need all this insight and plot and backstory? They are nothing more than plot tools to keep the story moving right? Well my original thought to this is to agree. That it is unimportant to spend much time and development to each character because that is one thing you are warned against from the start f writing is to limit the number of named characters to make it easy to keep track and remain invested in the plot. But I think on the flip side it's important that in this story, in the world you have created they have their own story and their own life and experiences to bring them to the point that they are at in the story. If you look at each character realistically and treat them as a real character instead of a name or a stereotype, you will have characters that the reader can relate to and can understand. This also gives a drive and reason to the sub plots through out the book.

2. Be open to changing. This is a difficult one. If you are an author who writes because you enjoy it and you don't need the royalties that comes with it then you have more of a bargaining power. But if you are going to make a living and a lively hood off of it, you have to be willing to look at your writing objectively and not take critiques personally. Which can be hard. I have blogged about how these characters are like my children. That I have more insight into their lives than I do in my best friends or even my boyfriend's life. I know their want and fears. I know their lives. I created the adventure. It's too much to hear someone wants to improve upon your perfect work. But you have to look at it from a different perspective and see the true problems in the work and make the needed adjustment from the pros.

3. Work on many novels at once. There is nothing worse than wanting to write but being just done with your work i have been there 100000000000 times and just feeling like you have no inspiration for it. So you just walk away from your work. I feel like that is the worst thing you can do. If you are working on many stories, then you can put it away and work on something else or start something new! It's great!!!

I love writing! If there are other writers out there and you want to share work, let me know I'd love to see what you got and get comments on my stuff!

So I fell off the horse

Wow 2 weeks into my 1 year of blogging and I already missed 2 whole days!! Yikes. That's not good. But it was a dang good weekend. I went out with the roommates today then got to see some of my favorite kiddos!

The best thing is that in 6 days Kevin will be here for Easter :) I'm so excited its been over a month. We always have such a great time together and it's just so nice when he is home. I just feel like my life is whole again. I have my great friends and my main squeeze I just want to be here and with me for forever :)

Love him a lot. :)

The lottery is how much?!

500 million. 500 million. That is so much money. Sooooooo much. Can you imagine your life after 500 million dollars? I cannot. If I lived on that money with my current lifestyle, I could live for almost 90 years. With money left over. So am I going to buy a ticket? Probably not.

My current obsession with Dave Ramsey is influencing this one. He always says "the lottery is a tax on the poor". But I don't know if I believe it. I mean having 5 or 10 to put towards it is fine. But I wouldn't say spend 100 on it. I dunno. I always lose anyways soo it's not worth it to me.

Who knows no one could win this week too an then it could get even higher. But what a life changing moment for someone who does win. Wow.

Scrapbooking, Saints Row 2, and chips and salsa

I love these. All of these things! I am seriously addicted to all of these things. Scrapbooking however is hard because you always see new things that make you want to buy them and it's easy to spend all your money there. It's super crazy! But the good thing is, after buying everything you have a stockpile and can go do it when you are a little short on cash.

Saints row 2. For those of you who don't know, I love Xbox. Like almost unhealthily. It's my escape. What I do when I'm depressed or sad or lonely. It's great. Sometimes I do it when I am none of those things. And just because I love the game. I happened upon this game not too long ago (a few days to be exact) and knew I was going to have to buy it. Went to GameStop, and $19 later, I was playing it. It is so fun. It's very crude however. Not something for young kids. But it's my new obsession for the moment.

Finally chips and salsa. I am hooked. If video games are my alcoholic escape, chips are like my actual drug. Like my injection. I crave them all the time. I generally have a bag of tortilla chips with me always. It's bad. But so good!! I think it's the salt and the crunch combination that are too much to resist.

A lady I work with makes her own salsa and sells it for our company's charity. I have bought 2 jars and been given one. It's so freaking good. If any of you SOCal kids want some it's so delicious. I have the hookups. Let me know :)