A Love Story

Anybody who knows me well enough knows how absolutely and madly in love I am with my husband. I think I just recently started to get over the "honeymoon stage" after almost two years of being married.. Haha! He really is such an amazing, funny, sweet, compassionate, man- I can never get enough of him! Not only is he the love of my life but he's my best friends as well, I love him so much. 
(Ok Amy, we get it.. move along) 

Many 'til this day don't know our "lurrvv story", or how it all started. So, I'm here to share it with you all..

In The Beginning  
In the summer of 2011 I met Thomas' sister working at a summer camp. I remember telling her how I was a sucker for "white guys" so she showed me a picture of her "hot Marine brother" whom I might be interested in. I saw his picture and really thought nothing of him. If any of you have ever seen a Marine's official military picture you would know how serious and may I say, unattractive they can sometimes look. Lips pierced, chin up, looking like a real Devil Dog.. Thank you, but no thank you.

(See what I mean? Not the best picture, right!)

A few months later I randomly came across Thomas' Facebook page and noticed we had a mutual friend. I became curious to know how they knew each other and found out that they knew one another from high school. To my surprise, we went to the same high school but never met each other. As I scrolled through his "normal" everyday pictures I thought to myself- "Oh, I was wrong. He's a hunk!"

(Much, much better picture.. Maybe it's the puckered lips!)

Love At First Type?

We began messaging each other, two 20-year-olds, living on different ends of the country, just friends, not looking for love. I was living in California going to school and working. He was stationed in Virginia serving in the Marine Corps. In a short amount of time, our conversations became more intimate and our phone calls became more special. Somehow, we just clicked. As I mentioned, neither of us were looking for love at the time.. But, without realizing it, our relationship grew deeper and I quickly became smitten- the feeling was mutual.

The Best 3 Days of 2011
Thomas came home to California for Christmas, and after months of countless phone calls, texts, and Facebook messages, it was finally time to meet face to face. I probably spent half the day getting ready.. My palms were sweaty, my knees were week, and I had these little things called butterflies causing a ruckus in my stomach.. the day was finally here and I could hardly contain my excitement. To make the long story short, we spent a total of only 3 days together before he had to be back in Virginia, and those 3 days were nothing short of magical. I know, it sounds extremely corny. But for the first time in my life, I felt things I had never felt before, I was witnessing my very own fairy tale with my very own Prince Charming.. and I was in love.

(By the way, our first meeting almost didn't happen. I got upset because he wouldn't give me an exact date to meet so I told him to forget it and get lost. He felt bad so he finally set a time and place to meet. I was extremely late and he almost left.. Thank God he set a time and day and thank God he didn't leave!)

(The first picture we took together when he came home for Christmas. We look so different!)


Reunited & It Felt So Good
Three months later Thomas was sent to be in 29 Palms (next to Palm Springs) for a few weeks. It was a 6 hour commute there and back but I knew I had to take the drive to see him again. Just as before, the time we spent together that week was amazing and I was more sure than ever that he was the man of my dreams and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. By me making the trip (two trips to be exact) to go see him it gave him the reassurance he needed that I ,too, was the one for him. 

(Once again, this trip almost didn't happen. I was going through so many inward doubts and issues about us and our relationship that at the last minute I had decided I wouldn't go see him and call it quits. But Thomas used his sweet persuasive words and assured me that everything would be ok, and it was. Thank God he didn't give up as easily as I did!)

I Said Yes
Thomas returned to California in June for another visit. While he was there he took the opportunity to take me to one of his favorite places, Laguna Beach. He took me to a cliff over looking the ocean, got down on one knee and proposed. And I said "YES!" 

Cut To The Chase 

Originally, we wanted to wait before saying our "I Do's". We knew we were young and should probably wait, and on top of that we wanted to plan the fairy tale wedding I always dreamed of .. But when love hits you, it hits you and you don't expect it. Eventually we grew tired of the late night phone calls and miles spread between us and we decided that we didn't want to be apart from each other anymore.. so we said, "Let's just get married. Let's get it over with". 

I flew to Virginia on 4th of July and got married to the man of my dreams on July 5th, 2011. Our wedding was short, sweet and private- it was just me, him, and the officiant. We spent our honeymoon in the airport and less than 6 hours later were saying our goodbyes (so romantic). A month later I made the move to Virginia to be with Thomas for good and finally start our lives together. 

(This almost didn't happen as well. There's a little funny store about me missing my flight, or getting off at the wrong stop or something like that, and I think there was some frantic crying and several extra hundreds spent for another plane ticket.. But we'll just leave that out)

The End

And that's the short version of our story. Being young, in a long distant relationship was hard, and it became even harder when we had to deal with unique challenges that the military threw at us. But we stuck to it and we didn't give up despite all the odds against us. We're still sticking to it, everyday is a challenge to keep our love and marriage as alive and exciting as it was in the very beginning  But we're doing it, and I can truly say that I am happier now than I have ever been and there is not one day that goes by that I'm not thankful to God for putting Thomas in my life. I love him more than any words could ever express and I am so excited to spend the rest of my life with him.

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible"

Hello California!

Yes, yes, yes! Finally, after almost two long years of missing home, missing family, missing friends, missing beautiful weather- we are finally getting stationed in California! :D I don't think anybody realizes how many emotions I have running through me. Thomas and I have talked about the day we leave Virginia to be stationed in San Diego since before we even made Virginia home! We thought it would have come much sooner but it didn't. We just kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. But the wait is over, and it's here, it's.finally.here.

Though we had been anticipating the move to California for a while now, it still came as a surprise. Being that Thomas LAT moved (changed jobs) we were told we would have to wait until he graduated his MOS school (new job school) in late June for us to get orders. And even then we had no idea whether they would put us at a base in California or not. There was even some small talk of us possibly being sent to Okinawa... in Japan..... "Excuse me?" 

Needless to say that didn't happen (thank you Jesus!), and we got orders to Camp Miramar in San Diego (we though we would get sent to Camp Pendleton in San Diego, but that's ok!) earlier than expected.. and quick orders for that matter. Typically, you're given orders about 6 months in advance, more or less. That wasn't our case. Our orders were given to us with just a little over 2 months in advance leaving us with little time to plan. As if that weren't stressful enough, we have to leave immediately after Thomas returns from school... Leave it to the Marine Corps to find a way to mess with you...

Regardless of all this, Thomas and I are beyond ecstatic to finally be where we belong and start a new chapter in our lives- though, it's also a bit scary and nerve wrecking. The move in itself is fearful.. Figuring out what method you're going to use to move, packing everything and moving across country, figuring out who, what where, when, why, how. And on top of that, we have gotten so comfortable here in Virginia. Not enjoyed it per-say, but you know, we just got comfortable, use to it.

Now, it's time to go elsewhere, live in a new place, start new jobs, learn new lessons, experience new things. It's intimidating, but all at the same time exciting. We've both grown, matured and learned so much during our time here in Virginia and can definitely say it's an experience to take with us, but our time here is done.

 I'm glad to get away from these terrible allergies I suddenly developed while being here and the "much worse than L.A traffic" I got stuck in everyday after work. But I know I'll miss the snow in the winter time that makes the season feel that much sweeter. And those beautiful Cherry Blossoms that bloom all over the city during spring time. I'll miss having American history just a few miles away in DC. And I'll miss seeing Lamba play with her best friend- the only dog in existence she has ever truly loved to be around. Now looking back at it all, I guess it wasn't all half bad. Thanks for the memories Virginia, it was sweet- but this lady and gent are ready to go home! :D

How To Grow Long Healthy Hair

This post is long overdue and I apologize for you ladies who have been waiting for it- but at last it is here! This is a continuation to my post on how to make your hair grown an inch a month, you can click here if you haven't read it yet.

When you're growing out your hair it's important to keep it healthy if you want it looking long and nice instead of long and damaged. Who wants that? In addition, if you don't keep it healthy an get too much breakage you'll be forced to cut it more often which if you remember from my last post is a cardinal sin when trying to grow out your hair! No bueno!

 So here are the steps you should take to make sure your hair grows out as healthy as possible! And remember, even when your hair is at your desired length you should still make sure to follow these steps to keep your hair looking good!

1. Use A Deep Conditioner- Our hair needs to be deeply nourished to stay as soft, silky, and hydrated as possible. You should be using a deep conditioner 1-2 times per week. It will add shine, moisture and strength to your hair to help with breakage  This step is especially necessary if you have bleached or color treated hair as it has been damaged more so than untreated hair has. 

My all time favorite deep conditioner is Macadamia Oil Deep Repair Masque. This stuff works wonders on your hair and it smells divine! 

Another good one is It's a 10 Miracle Deep Conditioner. 

A more cost effective option is Extra Virgin Coconut Oil  %100 Organic (any brand is fine as long as it's extra virgin and organic)

If you want to get even better results you can apply the deep conditioner, wrap a plastic bag around your head then blast it with your blow dryer for 15 minutes. Proceed to take a shower and let it sit wrapped up while you shave your legs, exfoliate, etc, then wash it off and feel your smooth silky hair!

Use A Sulfate-Free Shampoo- I've mentioned before in my Holy Grail Beauty Products post that my all time favorite shampoo is L'Oreal Ever Sleek Sulfate-Free Shampoo (and conditioner). If I talked about all the reason why you should use a sulfate-free shampoo this post will be much longer than it already is- so I'll spare you. I'll only quickly mention some of the negative side effects of using sulfate on your hair which are:
- Itchy and inflamed scalp (which probably means you're allergic)
- Reduce the quality of hair strands
- More breakage
- Increase in hair fall
- Lost volume (who wants thin, flat hair?)
- Remove hair dye (if you have color-treated hair)
These are just some of the side effects, if you'd like to no more just Google it.

Limit The Heat!- I think we all know how much damage heat causes to our hair yet we cannot put the hot tools down! I was one who thought I could never ever ever go a day without using heat on my hair, until I started on my hair growth journey and forced myself to! I only allowed heat on my hair once a week which is I would advice for you ladies to do. I got creative and learned how to make my curly or straight hair last for four days without using heat on it (maybe I'll do a post on that too?). Or I found other ways to make it look cute without heat. It helped me get out of the daily habbit of putting heat on my hair and damaging it by burning it! Now I don't feel the need to always use hot tools. 

When you do put heat on your hair, please please please do not forget your heat protector before doing so! It's already damaging enough to style it with heat but it's even worse if you don't protect it! That's another cardinal sin! 

Two of my favorites are 

Tresemme Thermal Creations Heat Tamer Protective Spray

and

Fantasia IC Hair Polisher Heat Protector Straightening Serum

Do Not Wash Your Hair Everyday- This is another cardinal rule that can make a huge difference in the health of our hair but not every women follows it. Each time you wash your hair you're stripping it of it's natural oils (this is why we have to use loads of conditioner afterwards). I've heard women say that they simply can't skip a day or two of washing their hair because it's too oily.. I'm here to tell you that you can!

(This is the- "I should listen to Amy so that my hair stops looking gross and oily" face)

The reason why your hair may produce too much oil is because it feels the need to being that it feels it doesn't have enough since you're always washing it. The more you wash your hair the more oil your hair will produce to try and compensate for the natural oils you're washing off.. get it? Wash your hair less = less oily hair- It's counter intuitive I know, but it's true.

You'll have to essentially "train" your hair to be able to skip washes. Start off with skipping one day more than you already do for a week or two, then increase it by one more day if you'd like. Your hair will be oily at first because it's not use to it, but after 2 weeks or so your oil glands will learn to stop producing excessive oil since there's no need.

And if you need to hide some oiliness meanwhile, you can use a dry shampoo or some baby powder to soak up the oil- it works wonders!

Caution: Special Care When Wet- Our hair becomes very prone to splitting and breakage when it's wet which is why you have to watch how your treat it. Make sure you're not rubbing your hair in between the towel, or twisting it to wring out the water in it- that is no bueno! Also, brushing your hair while it's wet is a no-go, too! I promise you you're breaking your precious strands if you're doing any one of these. Instead, squeeze (don't twist) the water out starting from top to bottom. Then, if you'd like you can wrap your hair in an over sized shirt which is more gentle on your hair rather than a towel. If you want to untangle your hair either do so before jumping in the shower or wait until it's dry.

Night Time Care- Even when we're soundly asleep we still have to make sure our locks are being protected. Using a silk pillowcase helps from the snagging and pulling that a typical cotton pillow case does to our hair. You can also loosely braid your hair to help keep it from breaking while you're tossing and turning and snoring and kicking and... is that just me?.. Just kidding, I sleep like a peaceful angel :)

Keep Your Hair Away From Harsh Ponies- Putting our hair up is fine, except when you have it up all the time, in a super tight hairstyle. Hair is also susceptible to breakage from hair ties or "too harsh" hairstyles like super tight braids or buns. Again, it's ok once in a while but make sure you're taking caution of how often your pulling your hair taught.

That's about every piece of detailed advice I can give to you ladies! If you want good looking hair, you gotta look after it! Hope it was helpful, let me know if you have any questions!

Make Me Laugh Monday

I know it's no secret that I'm a Pinterest addict enthusiast. How can one not be?! I'm always finding tons of inspiration on there. One of my favorite categories to go through is "Humor"- I love me a good laugh! I'm constantly finding hilarious memes and pictures and have no one to share it with but Thomas! That's a shame.. all that good humor to waste!

So I decided to start a "Make Me Laugh Monday" on this blog to help cheer up your dreadful Mondays with some funniness! I know what you're probably thinking, "What happened to your supposed weekly Favorite Things Friday?".. So I'll just say that I'll try to make this a weekly thing- that way you can't hold me up to anything! :)

So without further a do here is your first weekly dose of Make Me Laugh Monday- enjoy!

I know for a fact I'm not the only one!... Right??

I'm all for a plastered face.. but no amount of makeup could mask an ugly heart.

You bad, bad husband..

Haha! Again, I hope I'm not the only one who has fallen to be a victim of this. It happened to me just last week after washing my car! Darn you birds..

Oh Paula Deen.. Haha! I could just picture her saying this in her southern accent!

Poor little fella..

Happy Monday Everybody!

:)

Life Is Beautiful || My Weekend In A Nutshell

Sleep in. Sleep in a little more. Wake up and snuggle.. *swoon*- Talk. Laugh. Talk. Invite Lamba to bed. Hear Lamba whine in bed- "Can't she hold it in?".. Soak in the beautiful sumshine, thank God spring is here! Woop woop! Pandora. Ginuwine and Pac. What chu know 'bout that? Clean, clean, clean! Did I mention that we cleaned? Double woop woop! Call for a hair cut appointment. FINALLY! (Please don't chop my hair off!).. Go get hair cut. Yes, pamper me please! Discuss a possible ombre dye. Fall in love with my haircut.. Feelin' like a new woman! *Thank you*- Kisses for our baby girl. Try to wake Thomas from his nap.... FAIL to wake Thomas from his nap! There goes our lunch date.. womp womp womp.. Hungry. Ignore. Hungry. Ipad time. REALLY hungry! Grab a snack. The beast has woken! Talk. Laugh. Laugh. Talk. Time to wrestle. Tummie's a rumblin. Time for FOOD!- "What happened to our diet?" Buffalo Wild Wings- yum! Movie time. More cuddling. More loving- can't.get.enough! Too early.. Breakfast at IHOP?- I'm there! Joke. Breakfast at Denny's. Quality time. More laughing! Tummy hurts from laughing. Coffee coffee coffee! Take cars to get serviced. So chilly- baby hold me! Free car wash. SCORE! Grocery trip- healthy food restock! Back on the grind.. Fruit overload! Mmmmm! Play at the grocery store.. What else is new? Laugh some more. Fruit smoothie run! Addicted? Maybe. Take Lamba out, again.. Thomas' weekly haircut. I don't wanna do it.. Let's go get it done. New trainee. Witness Marine getting a bad hair cut by new trainee. Witness Marine furiously mad with new trainee. Laugh, laugh.. Give Thomas the eye.. Crack up! Mexican take out! Tacos and burritos! "Seriously, what happened to our diet?" Fried ice cream- delish! More cuddlin' more lovin'.. New couch snuggle approved! Fun weekend is over. 

I had such an amazing weekend with Thomas! I hope you all had a lovely one, too! 

Happy Monday! :D

Living Room Progress

Ok, I know, I know.. I haven't blogged in what seems like ten centuries! To tell you the truth I have absolutely no idea why! Maybe it's because I've been too busy working out? Or maybe I saw that I hit over 9,000 page views (seriously, how the heck did that happen?) and was too in shock to write anything else? Or... maybe I just wasn't inspired? I don't know- nevertheless I am back and in full motion people, and I've got lots to write about! :)

I wanted to start by updating you guys on what we're doing with our home decor. If you remember this post I gave you a little tour of our living room and talked about wanting to re-decorate it. Originally I wanted a very neutral contemporary decor with a touch of glam.. but as soon as the hubs jumped on the redecorating bandwagon  that quickly changed..

In my dream world I would have a husband who does not care what our home looks like and let's me make all the decor decisions, unfortunately (fortunately?) that's not the case! Thomas cares 100% about our home's decor and wants as much part in it as he can get. Bad thing about that is that we have completely different taste! I'm talking like ying and yang, day and night, chocolate and vanilla! (Mmmm) It can get really frustrating when one person wants the Lindo Beige slipcover and the other one insists on getting the Sivik Gray couch cover.. talk about stressful! So we made a deal, he would decorate our bedroom and I would decorate our living room- fair enough! Except when it came down to it Mrs.NiceWife over here couldn't set her foot down and say "NO!" to her husband and his Sivik Gray demands to get her Lindo Beige.. So we ended up with the gray.. sigh.

It may have been a good choice after all though (don't tell Thomas I said that) because the dark gray couch inspired me to go a whole different direction with our decor than what I was originally planning for. In someway I rediscovered my love for design and decor, it opened up my mind to so many different types of decor that I now love! And although I still really love the original decor scheme I was going for, I don't think it was "us". We're young and fun and have very loud and out there personalities and it would not have reflected that. With that being said, I still want to keep a neutral color scheme to keep it light and airy as I had wanted before but I want to add lots of personality and character to the space.

Alright, I'm rambling on again.. Take a look at what we've done so far! And please excuse the bad picture quality.

There you have it! Obviously it doesn't look the way it's suppose to because it's still in progress. The only changes so far is the Ikea Karlstad sectional, the Ikea cowhide rug (that thing feels sooo good under your feet!), and the thrifted Crate & Barel glass coffee table (steal!). Slowly but surely it's coming along!

I Still Need To:
Hack some Ikea curtains

Buy new lamps

Change those hideous sofa legs

Add decorative pillows

Paint the coffee table trim gold

Purchase a new entertainment center

Add finishing touches (art above sofa, portraits, coffee table accessories, etc) 

Now that I'm writing it all down it seems like there's a lot that still needs to be done but it's all fairly simple since I already know what I want! Anyway, I promise to keep you guys updated and start blogging more.. I mean it this time. Haha! Have a good night everybody!