Foodie Tues-dee #5

Hello fellow interweb friends!

It is that time of week again where I share with you guys my food adventures! For this week, I want to share with you an old favorite, but definitely a good one. 

Brodard Restaurant is a little place that serves delicious Vietnamese food and it has always been one of my favorite places to eat. Their infamous pork rolls are just amazing, especially paired with the shrimp paste sauce. My friends who I've taken here and exposed them to these rolls all love them, which pretty much means that they are way too flippen amazing! Then today, I tried this noodle dish with grilled shrimp, pork, chicken with a side of "Asian greens" that consisted of pickled carrots and something else mixed in with thinly cut cucumbers, bean sprouts, and various herbally leaves. 

Because all these dishes had a lot of veggies in them, it made them super light and somewhat healthy too. The flavors are a good mix of savory, sweet, and cooling/refreshing from all the vegetables. Each dish came out with their own sauce, but the basis of the sauce is either shrimp or fish.

I cannot rave about this restaurant enough! It is super affordable, great portions, tastes amazing, and I seriously cannot find one bad thing about it! If you guys get a chance, do go check them out and order some pork rolls for me!

Until next time,

Uyen

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 

Foodie Tues-dee #3

Hello fellow interweb friends!

For this week's Foodie Tues-dee, I thought I'd tell you about my first experience at Wing Stop! Very simply put, I LOVE WING STOP! It is the first place that makes wings KRISPY AND SAUCY without being soggy! Don't get me wrong, all the other places like Buffalo Wild Wings serves some really good wings, but for some reason, Wing Stop wings are just better because they manage to keep the krispy and crunciness of the fried chicken even though it's drenched in the sauce. 

So for my first time, I decided to try out both a hot sauce and a not so hot one. I ordered the 6 piece meal and got 3 original hot wings and 3 garlic parmesan with a side order of fries. I went through those wings like no other cause, well I love anything fried and chicken related. Both were really good, the only thing I'd suggest them doing is make the garlic parmesan a little more flavorful cause I couldn't really tell there was much garlic or parmesan in the season, but regardless, it still tasted delicious! As for the original hot, it's not super hot, which is completely fine with me and of course also tasted great! The one thing that I found out was a really good mix is their original hot sauce mixed with a little ranch and drizzled or can be used as a dip for the fries! Since the fries do have somewhat of a sweet taste to it, adding the hot sauce to the ranch gave the fries an extra kick, a little more flavor. My friend who was also there with me since we went there for lunch decided to try my special fries sauce/dip and she loved it too!

All in all, I think my first time at Wing Stop is pretty darn amazing and I can definitely say that I will be going back very soon!

 

Until next time,

With love,

Uyen 

Weekly Wrap-Up #2

Hello fellow interweb friends!

Hey guys, sorry for the super duper late Weekly Wrap-Up, but nonetheless, here it is! So this will be a wrap up of everything fun that's happened since I posted up the last Weekly Wrap-Up, which means it's like 2 weeks of my life - hoping it will seem as wonderful and fun to you guys as it was for me! I won't be writing anything about all the tests that I had to take, causing me to take a hiatus from my blog since it was super depressing and sad, but now onto the fun parts!

To start this off, we'll start with Saturday, April 20 (holy smokes and now we're already in May...I'm a horrible blogger at this point)! So that Saturday, my beloved sister/best friend, Elizabeth Baker, went out to dinner/dessert/late birthday celebration at BJ's in Brea. If you guys don't know who this is, check out this cheeky little most HERE! So to summarize, since we couldn't get together for her actual birthday, we decided to go out on Saturday for a little snacking, but that turned into a full on meal and dessert before we even knew it! Originally, Liz said she wasn't going to eat much since her mom made something for their family that night, however, the minute the two of us our together and food is involved, we kind of just go out of control! As for what we got, unfortunately, since I just got off of work before we went, the minute our foods got out, I kind of just devoured it before even thinking of taking a picture of it for blogging purposes (again, I'm still a horrible new blogger right now but will improve with time). Thank goodness I got my act together and got a picture of the birthday girl with our dessert! So as you can tell, we got the trio bizookie platter and my oh my, it is heaven on earth on a silver plate! Since we both have the biggest sweet tooth(s)/teeth in the world, we decided to go with the triple fudge, cookies and cream, and white chocolate macadamia flavors. O dear, let me tell you, the minute that thing came out, we went straight for our forks and digged in! Thank goodness I had some kind of self control and got out Liz's phone (since my phone was being a jerk and wouldn't take a picture) and took a picture of her and all the heavenly goodness before we devoured everything!

Then during the week at school, 2 big events were going on. The first one was Alcohol Awareness Week and the second one was Gamma Phi Beta's annual video game tournament and philanthropy Crescent Classic. Now, Crescent Classic week has always been super fun for me since I started college; before, I was a little more involved in it but now I'm just supporting in other ways! The philanthropy event is to raise money to help empower young girls, help underprivileged kids, as well as provide support for families dealing with cancer. The ladies of Gamma Phi Beta are amazing when it comes to their philanthropies and it is just such a lively week at school that I couldn't help myself and so decided to purchase a hot pink snapback hat as a way of supporting the cause! Throughout the week, they had fundraisers at Cold Stone, Blaze Pizza, and of course, selling apparels to fund raise for the various organizations. If you are at a campus where there's a Gamma Phi Beta chapter, do check out their Crescent Classic week; though they don't all donate to the same organizations on a local level and may not have the same events/tournaments, the ladies of Gamma Phi across the country's main purpose in their philanthropy is to help empower young girls and women as well as provide support for families who need it. There's no harm in getting to know more about various philanthropy events because it is never too late to help anyone out!

And then of course there was the day when I went to the hospital...this one was not super great but still worthy of a blog post mention! So about 3 weeks ago, maybe a little less, I started to have ridiculously excruciating back pain to the point where I couldn't stand up or sit straight; it was so bad that I couldn't work at all and had to go to the doctor. When I got to the doctor, he did a little back check and told me I have some form of scoliosis and wanted me to get x-rays just to be sure. Well, as you can tell, I went to the hospital to get those x-rays done (results are still not back yet...sad). Now let me tell you, that was the first time that I've been into the hospital, not to mention alone at 8 in the morning! So I checked in and all that good stuff and then I was handed a gown by the technician and he told me to take off all my clothes and just put the gown on. Being a girl and being the first time, I was kind of taken back when he told me to just take off my clothes! Besides gym and at home, I've never been literally naked before, especially not for some random guy! Hahaha, I understand it's part of his job but still, it was way too early to hear that I had to take off my clothes, especially when all I had to keep cover was this gown that is like ten sizes too big for me! So that gown, not the most attractive thing in the world either! With that said, I'd also like to add, to make your hospital look a little less horrible, always wear a nice pair of flats to balance out the ridiculousness of the hospital gown! So that morning lasted about 3 hours and it was the most awkward 3 hours of my life because not only was I naked, I was standing up against a wall as he ran this machine down my spine and adjusting my hip area just to make sure my tailbone area was in range with the x-ray machine. Pretty much, hospitals aren't fun, super awkward, horribly dressed, so just make sure to be prepared and wear some good shoes to off-balance everything else that's not as great.

However, later that week, things got much better! So on Sunday, despite the fact that I'm kind of super poor right now, I did a little retail therapy! As you may all know, I love me a good sale, especially when it comes to good quality clothes that I know I will wear for a while! Even though these two are only t-shirts, the material they're made of is just amazing and well the patterns just made it that much more wonderful! The first shirt is the Madewell shirt that I've taken a little picture on the side here. It was already on sale and when I got to the counter, I got an extra 25% off with my student discount, which was another 15% so it ended up being really good! The detailing/pattern is what really got me. It's got a semi tropical-like with a little bit of feathers on it and the neckline is a mix between a v-neck and a scoop. Since I'm a big chested girl, I was a little hesitant about the neckline, but after trying it on, I thought it was just perfect! And on top of the perfect neckline and pattern, the cut/fit of the shirt is wonderful and super flattering! It's one of those t-shirts that is a little flowy at the bottom and comes in around your waistline to give you a small-looking waist.

And then of course I had to stop by J.Crew, the more sophisticated version of Madewell since they are of the same company. So if you all have been into J.Crew then you know how expensive their things are but also how wonderful their sales are! So this shirt I pictured was on sale and then I got another 25% off on top of the sale price! Usually, it's an additional 30% but hey, any kind of discount on top of a discount is amazing to me and I kind of fell in love with the shirt even though it's only a simple t-shirt. So pretty much, as you can tell, the shirt is your traditional t-shirt with a round neckline and some printing on it, but look at the pattern and the color of the pattern! The minute I saw the shirt, I knew exactly how I wanted to style it and it is just one of those classic clothing item that you can pair with anything and just look amazing in. Besides the shirt, I also got a small little wrap bracelet with sparkling, shiny details to it! When I picked up the shirt and bracelet, I knew that I wanted to wear the two together with a cute pair of denim shorts, maybe with the cuffs rolled up. It is just a perfect spring/summer item just because it looks fresh, vibrant, and amazing! The bracelet adds a little bit of a girliness with an edge since it's pink and rhinestones wrapped around a leather band!

So if you can't tell, shopping makes me really happy and so does eating since those were the most exciting thing about my week that you missed out on!

More to come soon,

Until next time,

With love,

Uyen 

Happy 50th Birthday Mummy!

Hello fellow interweb friends!

So exactly a week ago, it was my mom's 50th birthday! Dude, that is like 5 decades, that is a lot of time but hey, she still be looking good! I know this is like a week late but still, I wanted to dedicate a post on my blog to my mom, my inspiration, my role model, my rock, and everything that is the most important to me in the world. I am super duper grateful that I have someone like her to call my mom and to look up to. She is the most selfless and caring person you can meet; as my dad would sometimes say, she has way too much fun helping people who need her. Not only that, she has sacrificed so much for both my brother and I. Instead of being out there working like other moms, my mom tries to work from home just so she can spend time with my brother and I and make sure we are safe to and from school and well-fed. There is no one that I think can be a better mom as well as a member of the community like my mom and, even though I deny it sometimes, when I grow up, I do want to be somewhat like her, not exactly but just some, especially the aging part!

Now, let's get down to how we like to celebrate birthdays within our family! Since our family is small with only four people, we usually don't make it a huge thing, especially when it's mine or my parents' just because we're not the wealthiest of families to do big parties and such, so we love to go out and eat as a family! On the day of my mom's birthday, we went out to dinner to this little Chinese restaurant place near my house called King Harbor Seafood. As you can see, we went a little crazy when ordering food but it's ok since everyone in my family loves to eat! When you hear Chinese food, you'd probably think it is greasy and nasty, but this place isn't too bad! We ordered this fried chicken (cause you all know by now, I love chicken and so does my family) and it came out super krispy but not one bit oily and gross whatsoever! So that dinner was amazing and I think our entire family was in a food coma for like the entire night and the next morning as well. We may not be partying hard but we can sure eat our little hearts out!

Final Touch Bakery

And then of course, every birthday cannot be complete with a birthday cake! So every time we have a birthday, my aunt and cousin will always bring us a cake. For my mom's birthday, my aunt brought the one cake with the flowers, and may I add, these are fresh flowers used to decorate the cake, making it look super pretty! So for that cake, it was just white cake with and I want to say some kind of vanilla cream-like icing and frosting on and inside between the layers of the cake. Besides the frosting between the cake layers, there's fresh fruits! This one was a mixed fruit cake so it had strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and black berries. As for the second cake with the really detailed icing technique, this one was also white cake but had passionfruit icing between the cake layers mixed with raspberries. This one is a little bit tangier, different kind of taste than what you'd think cake is suppose to be but still pretty delicious! So if you know anything about my family, we love cake, so these two cakes, not small at all, were devoured in a matter of days! If you ever are in Orange County, specifically Westminster/Little Saigon area, do check out this bakery; the place is called Final Touch Bakery (I will also link the bakery below in the picture's caption). I'm sure they have locations in other places too but I've only seen one, so I will post their link if you guys are interested in checking it out. Cake is super duper important for all kinds of occasion and well nothing beats a pretty and delicious cake! Since it is kind of a Vietnamese-French fusion kind of bakery, if you get a chance to try it, you will find that the flavoring is not super decadent so you don't get that sick, icky feeling you can get after indulging in a piece of cake that is too overly sweet. It is the perfect blend between butteriness, sweetness, and a slight of tart if you want to add on the fruits!

That's it for now,

Until next time,

With love,

Uyen