Just utterly unorganized

I have so many things that i want to write about but i either don't feel like writing or it's been so long that i don't remember what i wanted to write about the thing. It really is mostly from being lazy. I'm on the computer a good bit of the time, so only excuse is that i didn't feel like it.

I'm slowly in the process to try and finally get my life on track. I am trying to get healthy, be more active, keep things clean, do more things with my daughter that is fun. and lots and lots of things i want to do, including getting back into trying to write at least one post a day.

Will see how well i do...

My birthday (late posting)

My birthday was October 19th and i'm some how just now getting around to writing about it when i took the time to post about it on almost every other site i'm on. I guess better late then never.

This last birthday was my 24th birthday. Only gift i was expecting was a new phone. I was using the first iphone that use to be my dad's and it just sucked because i could hardly use many apps because of outdated IOS. I ended up with more gifts than just the new phone, here's what i got.

My new phone is an iPhone 5c, a pink one. It's such a nice phone, sooooo much better than i was using. My mom(but her saying my daughter got them) got me the bleach, was trying to change my hair color and bleached it soo many times because i kept getting crap bleach(those ones were too) but also i was trying to bleach once dyed black hair. The Starbucks gift card and the giraffe were from my brother. We went to the mall for my birthday and because of deals and discounts and having a gift card, i got the body shop products for $11.50 as a gift to myself (originally would of been over $70). Then i went into Spencer's because an app i downloaded for coupons had a 20% off one for there, so i got a necklace for $8, which my mom gave me $10 to pay me back for buying it.

I had also gotten about $10 in cash from people. so was all more than i was expecting all together in gifts, i thought i was only getting a new phone.

On the way home from the mall, there's a krispy kremes near by it and We ended up getting some on the way home. My mom already had it planned but she told me were because i had made a comment that we didn't plan a cake or pumpkin pie for my birthday. I don't do cake often, and had been doing pumpkin pie for some of them because i love it. After i mentioned the lack of dessert, she said we were getting donuts. I needed to still blow a candle out, so we used a donut.

Was their Pumpkin Spice one, i didn't really like it though.

I felt pretty depressed as my birthday made it's way around. Lack of friends and hardly much real celebrating. My birthday was better than i was thinking it was going to be though.

I spent my time at the mall looking like this though.

I still needed to do more with my hair when i went to the mall and i didn't want to take my hair down just to have to put it back up again. so i went with a weird messy bun on my head that was mix of dark hair and pink and badly bleached hanging hair. But it was fine, just sucks my hair didn't turn out exactly as i hoped, but i'll probably try and fix it later on after i let my hair heal from the mass amount of bleaching i did that i shouldn't in a short bit of time.

Just between friends kids consignment sale

This is an AMAZING sale! It's so large and can find some amazing deals on saving. I go to my local sale that is in Portland, Oregon. There are many other sales else where, you can check here to see if you have one near by you, http://jbfsale.com/stateLocations.jsp?webPageName=usaLocations. Check out http://jbfsale.com if you would just like to gather more information on the sale. Your local sale might have a facebook like page too, here's my local one https://www.facebook.com/jbfportland.

I first heard about this sale through someone my mom bowled with while i was pregnant. We hadn't gotten a lot of things yet that i needed for my daughter before we heard about the sale, so me and my mom decided to check it out because the lady had only good to say about it. We were pleasantly surprised about how many it was. I was able to sign up to be a first time parent which got me into the sale before the public. That sale we had managed to get practically everything i needed, a travel crib, diaper pail, changing table, clothing and whatever else we ended up getting, it was a few years ago that i first went. Since that sale, i had been to every sale. I even started to sell at them once my daughter started to grow out of her stuff.

Fast forwarding to the most recent sale. Here's some pictures from https://www.facebook.com/jbfportland to show how how large this sale is.

All the racks of clothing just get blurred in distance.

There's always a lot of stuffed animals. Not sure how well they really do though. I did by that large giraffe at the bottom of the picture though :)

Here's another section not in the first picture.

As you can see from the pictures is that it is a HUGE sale. The volunteers, consignors, and first time parents/foster parents/teachers(i believe) get to shop before the public. I have been going at the consignor's time to shop, which is just after the volunteer's time and whenever i see the pictures of how the sale looked before it started and seeing how many things out when i drop my items off, a good chunk of the items are already sold before i even get there. There's still lots to go through when i'm there, and there has to be still a ton left for the public sale because the times i've picked up my unsold items there is a huge pile of donated items and i'll see people picking up a bunch of items that they didn't want to be donated when it didn't sell.

Selling at the sale is so easy. Make the tags at home, print them and attach them yourself. After you get everything all dropped off, you just wait for things to sell, no needing to be with your items at the sale like you would at a garage sale. You will even get updated on if anything had sold when they update the website at the end of each sale day. I love that part. It's so exciting to see if anything has sold.
The amount you make is pretty good too. You make 65% of what the items sell for and then there's a selling fee. The fee depends on whether you are donating or picking up items. It's only $10 if you just donate any unsold items, which i started to do because i keep selling less and less with each sale, so i didn't want to just go pick up a few items, though if i just never donated anything then i could still maybe have more items to sell at each sale lol.

You do sometimes come across items that seemed to be missed from inspection for quality, items with holes, stains/dirty, etc. They do a good job over all. It is volunteer based too. I've seen things with hole or stains, which if you just bring it to one of volunteers then they will pull it from the sale so that no one buys a stained or holey item. I think the shoes get a little over looked though, i find a lot of them being more on the dirty side and one time i didn't realize a pair of shoes were two different sizes until after i paid and got home with them. Though you can't completely blame the sale on accepting the items, the sellers should of looked closer at their items before trying to sell them. But also the buyer is the last line of defense on quality they are willing to buy. These were mostly just things i've noticed, overall the sale does a great job, just a few hiccups sometimes happen.

I think that is the basics i wanted to try and cover about the sale. Here's a few pictures of things i got from this last sale.

That last picture is showing the size difference in the large pillow pet to the giraffe that i got at this sale.

I spent about $165 at the sale and from what i tried to figured up, the original cost(alone with just buying online new/used) that i would of spent was between $400-500. So great savings, and great sale!

As for what i made on the sale, i only made a little over $20 because i didn't have a lot that i was selling.

Lay's wavy roasted garlic and sea salt chips

My mom ended up getting these randomly one day, probably just for the fact we hadn't tried them before, i know that's why i would get them. Though i also like garlic, so that would also be reason enough for me.

I was a little worried at trying them because they could of been really gross, how i feel about a lot of new things i try lol. So i finally opened the bag to try some.

I actually thought they were pretty good. Had a garlic taste but wasn't over powering for me. My mom didn't like the amount of garlic though. My brother who tried some was okay with them, but he'll basically eat anything unless it sounds remotely healthy(i think he thinks pretty much all healthy things taste gross. As he's told me before "I grew up on tasty food, so that's what i like"....we grew up on the same foods, but i still find a lot of healthy things tasting great). Back to the garlic, unless it's fresh garlic, i tend to barely taste garlic unless a lot is in it. Like i'll need more garlic salt on something compared to my mom.

I'm not a big fan on Lays wavy though. Sure they are pretty much ruffles, but i like lays for the thin chips. They just seem too different in the texture between lays wavy and ruffles chips.

If i had these again, i'd eat them but i don't think i'll go out of my way to buy them again. I mostly stick with the basic type chips because a lot of flavored ones i need to be in the right mood to want to eat them, not that they are bad, just don't always want flavored chips(unless lays, sour cream and onion, bbq, and regular are all basic chips to me lol)

1 2 3 cake

Where i found this: http://thehiddenpantry.blogspot.com/2011/11/aunt-bettys-1-2-3-cake.html

I've made other cake things using angel food cake that were really simple because angel food cake is like this magical mix lol. You already only need to add water to make a delicious cake, so things like this mug cake makes sense.

All you need is a box of angel food cake and another type of cake mix, i chose to use spice cake because i don't get to have it often, and a little bit of water. In a container that you can put an air tight lid on, mix the two dry cake mixes together. Then after that you just take a mug you want to make the cake in and put 3 TBS of the mix in and stir in 2 TBS of water. Once mixed, put in the microwave for 1 minute.

The mug i used seemed to be a little too big as the cake turned a little dense/over cooked with that amount. I doubled the amount and cooked it for 1 minute still and it turned out a lot better. It's spongy like the angel food cake since it's basically what you are making with another cake mix as a flavoring.

In the end, it works. And is nice for when you want cake but you don't want to make a whole cake that ends up going to waste. That's usually what happens at my house, i want to make cake but then no one wants to eat any. I've only made this the one time, so i still have basically all my mix left. Once that some how gets all ate, or i decide to just dump it, i will try another flavor, maybe a chocolate cake one.

Olive Penguins

I probably could of tried to get a cuter picture, but this is what i got.

I was following this: http://www.persnicketyplates.com/2012/11/olive-penguins.html

My mom ended up seeing the picture i had pinned for these and she wanted me to make them for her. I could of made more, but i got tired of making them and at least there were some of them. I like mozzarella cheese, but not in big clumps like they were on this, so i found it weird to eat. My family didn't say too much about on whether they liked the taste or not, well combined taste of the foods. They all at least thought it was cute or just liked the idea of them being penguins.

My daughter didn't like eating them but she loved them being penguins. She'd ask for one or just barge her way into the fridge to take one. She would try to eat it, but just didn't like the taste. It was either the cheese or olives she didn't like, or both. But she got sad when they were all gone.

If you want a cute snack for a little party, i think these would be good to try out at it. Maybe if you have someone else also helping to make them though. Me doing it alone started to get annoying and i didn't want to make that many on my own. Or could be a cute after school snack to just make a few for each kid. As long as they'll actually eat it and aren't picky like my daughter.

Picmonkey.com

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While my paint shop pro program is down due to losing my activation code(that i haven't even had for a year yet), i've been using picmonkey for my editing. It's been pretty good for being online editing program. There's things that i wish it did differently or could do in the first place, but i'm slowly learning what i can do. I ended up paying for a years worth of the premium tools, so that i wasn't limited and it was cheaper that way than paying each month.

The above picture are 2 pictures i edited with using their vampire, zombie, and witch editing tools. The kids are my daughter and nieces. I've been loving these features because i find it a little easier using those than my main program's tools to get the look i want. So maybe even when i get my main program up, there might be still features of picmonkey i will use along with it.

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It even does a pretty good job at just basic editing. I removed a twig from the picture, straightened it, fixed the coloring and such.

 I do find a lot of people who had some odd looking pictures from them trying to edit it. i don't know what tools they are using, usually the filters that end up being too harsh on the picture. If you at least know what you are doing, whether just from using picmonkey a lot or from already knowing how to edit and just relearning how to do the same thing with a different program, then picmonkey can be a pretty good at editing. I just think too many people add a filter and call it good without adjusting things.

For a long time of using the program, i was annoyed that i couldn't change the background of people's pictures. well i finally figured out a way to do so. It isn't too hard to do, just makes me do it through one of the tools that i about never used, the overlays. So i just open what i want the background to be and then use the overlay to add my own picture, in this picture being the guy, then i just erase the background from that picture so that the new background shows through. And then i can move the person around to find the right placement in the picture. It's not much different than doing it through my main program, just i can't adjust the different layers like i can with it. Not too bad of a difference, just something to get use to. Below is the before and after i made to show what i did to the picture.

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The more i'm getting to edit with the program, the more i'm loving the pictures i'm managing to make with the program. I just wish i had more pictures to edit. I do offer to do edits for people through a facebook page (click here) but i don't get many offers. Not sure if people just aren't interested or if it's because i'm only able to use picmonkey right now. If you are reading this and are willing to let me edit your picture, feel free to just send one to my facebook page and i'll see what i can do with it :) better quality pictures are easier to edit, fyi.