Weekly Wrap-Up #5: Birthday Shenanigans

Hello fellow interweb friends!

So for this week, the Weekly Wrap-Up will be a little longer and a tad bit more exciting just because it was my birthday week! It has been such an amazing week and I am so grateful to all of my friends and family that took their time out of their busy lives to celebrate it with me. I am now officially 22, which means I can blame all my bad decisions onto Taylor Swift since she has a song about doing weird things during your 22nd year of life! My birthday was on Wednesday, but since it was smack dabbed in the middle of the week and we all have things to do like work and school, so the celebration ended up being extended all the way to the weekend, which I'm totally not complaining at all because that's just a lot more food and fun with the most amazing people in the world!

Ok, so first thing's first, you cannot have an amazing birthday without an amazing cake! So this here is a cake from Final Touch Bakery, which is a Vietnamese-French "fusion" kind of place. It is vanilla cake with strawberry filling and custard-like spread between the cake layers. It is definitely my favorite kind of cake and so I was super stoked when I found out I got the strawberry cake. The decorations are definitely super amazing! It is just very simple but still detailed and elegant. The decor around the cake is a minty-green color and the flowers were a blushy-nude color. My cousin got the cake for me and she said that she felt it was perfect for me, which I feel like is the theme for my birthday this year!

On the actual night of my birthday, I went to Incahoots, a country club/bar in Fullerton! This was my first time so I felt a little out of place when I couldn't do any of the line dancing moves, but I was ok with that! I had so much fun trying to catch up to everyone's moves that I think I started tripping over myself at one point too. A lot of my friends couldn't come because it was kind of last minute and they all had plans, but these two beauties, Laura and Megan came with me! SO the cool thing about these two is that we met each other at Build-a-Bear, were we work, and got to be pretty darn good friends. Laura and I haven't seen each other in about a year, but we picked up as if we've seen each other almost everyday; I appreciate friendships like that very much just because you know they'll be there for you whenever you need them. Anyways, Incahoots was an interesting experience since it was my first time. I didn't know any of the moves, so I didn't really dance, but since I did know most of the songs, I just sang karaoke all night long. I'd definitely go back again, even if I can't dance whatsoever just because it is such a fun/up-beat place that just makes me feel happy.

Friday was pretty much when the festivities commenced. All my friends came out to Downtown Brea - Birch Street and we had dinner at YardHouse. YardHouse is pretty much one of my favorite restaurants to go to and they have pretty darn good happy hour, so we made it a point to come there before happy hour ended so we can have a little bit of adulthood fun because another one of my friends, Jenna, just turned 21 as well. Side note, this dinner was not just for my birthday; it was a joint birthday bash for me, Jenna, and another one of my friend CC who also turned 22 just like me! SO back to the dinner, we went to YardHouse, and as you can see, Laura was there again! I love this girl; she lives pretty far from where we were, so for her to drive out just to spend a little time with me is super special. Anyways, Friday night was so much fun! We ate, drank, walked around, sniffed candles, and ate some more. We had macaroons and then went to Rite Aid to get some Thrifty ice cream - the best $2 that I've spent in a long time. All I have to say is I have some super amazing and special friends who are always there for me and I am so grateful to have them in my life, and the best party is, I met some of the bestest friends from work and then one of them, I've known since the sixth grade!

Then comes all of the gifts that I got! Let me tell you, I got super spoiled this year because all these gifts are so fricken nice! So first off, it's the Dior Creme de Rose lip balm, which I've already told you about a few posts ago. Then I got a few jewelry pieces and a super cute dress. So here's the thing, when I got my presents, all my friends told me that they felt like these items were just screaming out my name, so they had to get it for me. I was quite flattered and surprised when they said that just because I thought I'm a very confusing person and like pretty much anything, which can make it a little hard to shop for, but apparently, my likes and style is pretty darn distinctive! I was definitely a very spoiled little girl when it comes to gifts this year and I have already used pretty much all of them because I just couldn't help myself! I am one of those super bad people who just wants to open their gifts right away and go crazy over all my gifts; I guess you can say I am very easily excited, but it's fun being excited when you open gifts though. 

So of course, I also splurged on myself a little bit this year and got my self 2 pieces from Baublebar! I got a super good deal on them because I had a $10 coupon from joining and then another $25 off for something else that I can't remember. So I used both of those and got myself these two necklaces and only paid $23 for them! The cool thing about Baublebar is shipping is free and it's tax free, which is a treat just because everything is so highly taxed in California! So I already used the ivory/gold sun-ray necklace because it matches so flippen well with my pink dress that I wore on my birthday! I felt like a super cool princess and super pretty too! I will definitely splurge on Baublebar jewelry once in a while because they are fairly priced and really good quality. Not to mention, the packaging is amazig because you get a velvet pouch to keep it in, making sure it's nicely cushioned and nothing bad, like scratches, happen to it. Then, over the weekend, I bought myself a travel sized Caudalie beauty elixir. It is a setting spray for your make-up, but I also like to use it just to keep my skin nice and moisturized. I mainly got it to use it on the 18-hour plane ride to Vietnam this summer, which I am super excited for - I will definitely be blogging about my trip so you guys get to enjoy the beachy/summery scenery that is there too! 

If you guys like these necklaces, there are even more pretty ones on Baublebar's website too! I will leave you with the link and an invite code if you want to go check them out: https://www.baublebar.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/239903/! Go get yourself something beautiful and there are always amazing deals on Mondays and Fridays!

Until next time,

With love,

Uyen

Weekly Wrap-Up #3

Hello fellow interweb friends!

So if you haven't noticed by my posts, April is the month of birthdays for all those around me! My friend, Monique (aka MoMo or MoRo) just turned 21 not too long ago (WOOT WOOT)!!! Since it was on a Monday, I unfortunately couldn't celebrate much with her and our other friends, CC and Shannon - or as we'd like to call it, our "sisterhood of the pants that don't travel" - we decided to go to Taco Tuesday at El Torito! Within our little sisterhood, MoMo is the last one to turn 21 and since CC, Shannon, and I love margaritas and tacos, we thought it was a MUST to take MoMo out on the first Tuesday after her 21st birthday to enjoy the feeling of being carded for a margarita while scarfing down some economized, shrunken tacos! We pigged out on some good ol' tacos and margaritas and just talked about everything in the world since it's been a while since we've all got to hang out together. Especially now that MoMo is legally 21, she can now drink with us, which makes everything that much more fun since it's never fun for everyone else to drink except for some (and trust me, Shannon and I know the pain of not being able to drink while everyone else around does pretty darn well). Anyways, after we had our drinks and tacos, we busted out the cake and cupcakes! So Shannon did a little grocery shopping before meeting up and she went to Stater Bros. for the cupcakes and cake, and well, let me tell you, they tasted pretty darn good! When you think about cakes and cupcakes, you wouldn't think that chain grocery stores would have decently quality ones, but these ones were really nice. The cake was just the right amount of moistness and butteriness. I had the chocolate and got to try my friend's vanilla one and I thought the vanilla one tasted a little bit better but that's because the chocolate was a little too sweet for me, but still, for them being cupcakes from Stater Bros. and are much cheaper than something you'd get at a bakery, I thought the cupcakes were not bad at all!

Then, on Saturday night, I got to work/host a Girl Scout slumber party! The party started at around 11:30pm and lasted until the morning! Now, let me start by saying, wow, these girls are quite the party animals! When I first heard we were doing an overnight party for a bunch of 9-11 year olds, I thought it wouldn't be too bad and they might just knock out pretty early on in the night, well obviously that wasn't the case! Some of them made it a point to stay up all night and they did. In this picture, when I left around 4 in the morning, a bunch of them were still up, somewhat running around, but most were either watching movies or playing Guesstures. Even though the hours of the party was kind of odd, I had so much fun that night at work with the Girl Scout troops. At some point, I felt like I couldn't hang cause I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep but yet these girls are still wide awake! The best part was when I was at the door, these 4 girls did everything to keep me awake and entertained. They were showing me their gymnastic tricks and routines and then 2 broke out into song and started singing and rapping. I was cracking up so bad cause they were singing to Mackelmore's Thrift Shop and one got all up in my face during the rap part, which I thought was just too cute. And then there was also this younger girl, maybe around 5-6 years old and she was just the cutest little "love bug." She went up to all of us and gave us hugs and was just being way too cute. She was one of the ones that took a mini power nap and then was up and running again around 2AM. That night was just too much fun for me, making me appreciate my job even more just because sometimes, I feel like I'm just having fun with these kids and not even really working, which I know cannot be said for a lot of other jobs.
 

Ok, so pretty much I got home after work close to 5AM and at that point, I just couldn't sleep anymore, I'm not sure why, but I just couldn't. Sunday also happened to be Cinco de Mayo and my greatgrandmother's 7th week of passing. Usually, in my culture and religion, when people pass away, we always do a little prayer/commemerence for them every week until their 100th day of passing. The 7th week - the half way mark - is huge, therefore, we went to temple and had a little lunch there. After temple, we went home, changed, I tried going to sleep or taking a little nap but that didn't work, and then we went over to my aunt's house. Even though we say that it was a "Cinco de Mayo" party, but in actuality, it was to celebrate her birthday since hers was on May 2. So at the party, there was just a whole lot of food, beer, and loud people! If you've ever been to one of my family parties, you know we are crazy, especially after a few drinks. So anyways, since I didn't get to sleep much, I decided to eat to compensate for my lack of sleep, which I know makes no sense, but it did for me for some reason. I ate my little heart out cause there was just food everywhere I turned. And well, I had to have a few drinks too just cause they were there! At one point, I even hopped on the barbeque or as I'd like the say, the "bar-beee" and did a little grilling myself! I had so much fun despite the fact that I just wanted to knock out and take a huge snoozers!

That was pretty much my weekend and I think my body really hates me for it right now, hahaha! At the time, everything seemed like a good idea since I was having so much fun, but when school rolls around, that's when all your bad partying decisions creep on you. I am still trying to catch up on my sleep and hopefully not fall asleep during class for the rest of the week since I have tests coming up, but we shall see what comes of that!

Hope you enjoyed this,

Until next time,

With love,

Uyen