Jan
4th

To change it up a bit, I’m going to do style resolutions this year because my usual resolutions are the same every year. Some are new and some are old but here they are:

Dark and sultry is the new sexy. Blond is done ladies (well on non-natural blonds)! Have you noticed all the hot girls are dying their hair dark now? Stop bleaching and frying your hair this year; people will take you more seriously and you get to look all exotic like Nicole Scherzinger and Kim Kardashian. Blond is more interesting but I always though brunettes are hotter (no offense(!!) but compare Kim to Paris) so I can’t wait to dye my hair dark and join them (not like it’ll help much for me though). I might still sport some blond lowlights if I don’t have the guts to go purple because I’m not a girl to have one hair color… but definitely no highlights or all-over blond. Also I want to try straight bangs and maybe a wavy perm this year.

Purple. Thank god purple is still considered “trendy” because I LOVE PURPLE although I’d still wear it for years to come despite what the fashion nazis say. I remember a couple years ago, my sister bought a purple sweater from Zara and I was like, why the hell would you wear purple? What the heck was wrong with me? I was pondering for a long time whether to blog about that because that’s such a hypocritical story and I’m so ashamed of myself.

Gold. Everybody is doing gold now from Vivienne Westwood to Dior to Louis Vuitton. I use to be a huge silver fan but I’ve been wearing a lot of gold colored clothing and accessories lately… mainly because I discovered that purple looks awesome with it so now I’m officially addicted. I’d want a white-gold wedding band though (*hinthint*Boyfriend).

Necklaces. I LOVE accessorizing with necklaces whether they be huge and chunky or just layering thin chains, they can effortlessly complete any boring looking outfit. I will also expand my scarf and belt collection (and accessories of all sorts) because you can wear the exact same outfit but change up the accessories and it’ll look totally different. You can never have enough!

Prints. I’m not too bold when it comes to prints and colors but 2009 is the year for it so I might as well take a step forward and sport more of it in my wardrobe as well.

Other resolutions:

• Spend less on clothing and become a bargain shopper. I feel icky wearing people’s throw aways but I need to put that aside and check out those thrift stores because everyone seems to be finding fab stuff in them.
• Buy a sewing machine. Learn to use it. Hem my own jeans. I have 11 pairs of designer jeans that I haven’t worn yet because I’ve been too lazy to get them hemmed and it really adds up.
• Stop buying designer jeans. Thankfully, I don’t care much about designer items except for jeans but I don’t need anymore and designers are slashing the prices because of the economy so they’re not even special anymore. I can sell a couple pairs to get that sewing machine and do more DIY projects with it as well.
• Change my purse more often. I have a habit of carrying the same bag for 5+ months because I don’t want to move my stuff from one bag to another. I really need to buy some bag organizers to make it easier on myself.
• Be more high maintenance. GASP.I may seem like it but I AM NOT HIGH MAINTENANCE. I might take a long time getting ready for a night out but on a daily basis, I’m lazy as heck. I never gave a crap about my skin (and somehow I still have clear skin). I don’t style my hair unless I’m going for a night out in town. I don’t make an effort on weekdays when I have work (I don’t know why people do, there’s no one to look good for anyway… it reminds me of girls who work at McDs with caked on make up and fake lashes). I always forget to pluck my eyebrows. I don’t remove chipping nail polish; I just continue to chip it all off. I don’t even always properly remove my make up before I go to bed. I shall change all this in 2009.
  • Wear more make up. I know people say you should go natural but I went through a make up phase where I bought sooo much so I need to use them all before they expire. Currently, I only make an effort with make up on the weekends and barely on weekdays.
  • Make an effort to look good everyday. This will definitely be hard… if you see me everyday, you’ll see how inconsistent my outfits are. Some days I’ll be totally glam-ed up while on other days I’ll be wearing a totally mismatching and boring outfit with no accessories… and maybe even flip flops because I left my boots at home. The problem is that I stay over at Boyfriend’s a lot and I tend to leave stuff home so I need to consider moving some of my wardrobe to his house.
• Start growing out my hair. First step is to make it healthy which is already in progress because my hair wasn’t growing before from bleach overload. I want long hair so I can have supermodel waves… I’m bored of the stick-straight hair. I think I’m just going to cheat and get a weave. :blush:
• Shop with a plan. The only time I ever go shopping (not online) is during my lunch break so I don’t have much time because I’m too busy (OR LAZY) to otherwise. It’d be a lot more efficient if I come up with a list of specifics before heading out.

Jan
2nd

Warning: long entry and I refuse to use the “Continue Reading” feature.

I know I said that I couldn’t wait to get home but I wish I was still in Cali; it was so hectic at times but fun. When we crossed the Canadian border, it started snowing like mad and I was so depressed because my feet got all wet in the snow carrying my 50lbs suitcase and 20lbs carry-on (I stuffed all my jeans in it) into the house. Hopefully we get to go again sometime this spring or summer!!

• The weather in L.A. was pretty good but it rained on Christmas day when we went to Disneyland! It poured when we got there but that’s about it; the rest of the day was dry… but kinda miserable because my socks were wet and Disneyland was sold out of socks (and umbrellas). Nevertheless it was worth it and our plastic sheets kept us dry… this is when you totally have to sacrifice fashion.

  

• I almost lost my camera at Disneyland!!!! It flew out of my pocket on Splash Mountain but luckily when I went back, they found it in the car and just took it to lost and found. Then I almost left my bag on the Indiana Jones ride with all our passports in it… we could’ve been stuck in Cali if L didn’t get it for me. Oh noez!
• L and I tricked Boyfriend to go on a ride at Universal Studios… and he never goes on rides!
• Finally ate at Tony Romas (we always wanted to try it but always put it off). It was alright, nothing great.
• The 8 hour drive from Cabazon to Sacramento wasn’t bad at all with red bulls, coffee and random Q&A with the boyfriend (he drove the entire way but I just stayed up with him). I found out his favorite flower is the sunflower… like WTH, how boring is that?! I’m sorry Boyfriend, but your girlfriend is a designer so you gotta come up with something more unique than that.
• NEVER leave your GPS at home. We had to follow these people when driving through San Jose and San Francisco because we forgot to bring it and didn’t know where we were going… ALL DAY.
• There’s were 40+ people staying in the house we stayed in Sacramento so the first night we all slept in the living room and I dreamt of this huge cargo ship with it’s horn blasting every couple seconds and I was so annoyed that I was about to bitchslap something in my dream. I woke up and it turned out to be someone snoring hella loud!! I seriously couldn’t stop laughing about it in the morning but that night, I barely got any sleep. Luckily the rest of the nights, I scored my own bed.
• Watching a Vietnamese wedding is a unique experience… now I gotta watch a Chinese wedding because I haven’t been to one since I was 6 and I don’t remember anything.

  

• Never drink an entire bottle of Grey Goose on vacation or else the next day would be a total waste since you’ll be stuck hung-over in bed all day.
• Being hung-over and squished in the back of a tiny Honda Civic with 4 people is the worse feeling in the world… especially when you’re in Sacramento and everything is so far apart.
• …there are a lot of ants in Cali.
• I ate more fast food in the 10 days we were there than I usually do in an entire year. It’s a grossly satisfying feeling.
• CARNE ASADA FRIES AND IN N OUT BURGERS ARE THE SHIT!! I tried both for the first time and YUM. What are Carne Asada fries my fellow non-Californians? They are fries layered with meat, cheese, guacamole, sour cream and hot sauce = FKING HEAVEN!!
• I actually finished the two books I brought on the trip so I went out to buy Eragon and Eldest. IT’S SO GOOD. Damn, now I gotta wait for book three to come out in paper back.
• I started saying “hella” too in the past year and I realized that I picked it up when we went to Cali last year. It’s so true how they say you start picking up the “Cali accent” after being here for a long time.
• Americans don’t say eh … they say huh. “You want some carne asada fries huh?” That’s a little weird for me, I think I’ll stick with the Canadian way.
• Somebody asked us if we celebrate the same New Year. Now THAT was hilarious!
• When the clock hit 12, we were still on the I5 going home but we got to see 4 different sets of fireworks from the freeway (don’t ask why we were flying back on that day… it’s a long story). The last 10 days in Cali was totally worth the countdown to 2009 in the car so I’d do it again anytime!

I am in love with Cali but I seriously need to get over my non-existent level of patience before ever considering moving down there. Before, I never wanted to move to L.A. because I thought it was always hot/warm there and I wouldn’t be able to wear my winter stuff but it’s actually kind of chilly especially at night. Also, the houses in Sacramento are so big, new, cheap and some are in cute little communities surrounding a man-made lake. I wouldn’t mind living there either.

Reasons why I shouldn’t move to Cali:

• I absolutely cannot stand the traffic. We got stuck on the freeway for three hours before we were smart enough to find an alternate route with our GPS because we thought it would end soon… but it was STILL crawling along when we were driving back to L.A. four hours later. It’s sad because nothing happened — no accidents or anything… there were just too many damn cars!! Our highways in Canada have like 2-3 lanes and we NEVER get traffic like that. LOL. That was 3 hours of wasted shopping time by the way. The second time we went to Cabazon to shop, we went on like 6 different freeways via GPS to escape the traffic but the detour only added 10 minutes to our total trip time so it was all good.
• Sacramento is plagued with four-way stops. I got soooo annoyed driving through all of them and we were on a big street too. That so doesn’t make sense!! Like P said, “no cop, no stop.”
• Everything is soo far away from each other —well in the Sacramento area at least.

SHOPPING. I actually didn’t buy much because I spent most of my cash on jeans. I was pretty depressed though when I found out I forgot to buy the Kassandra Varnish Fumes Blue (the purple version of the pair with the green R’s) because we went to there twice and I thought I bought it the first time but I didn’t! I was mainly looking for TRs but I didn’t find many styles that I actually liked so I only bought a pair of skinnies to go along with my boots. I don’t feel guilty about this splurge at all because I haven’t bought any new pairs of jeans since August… now all I gotta do is order more crystals so I can start customizing them. I also bought a Bare Escentuals starter kit in Medium; I love my Lumiere mineral foundation but I lost my last jar and my Clinique foundation is too light for my skin tone so I decided to hop on the bandwagon to see what this huge fuss was all about. I also stocked up on UDPP, bought a new Dior pressed powder and puppy pee pads for Mochi like I always do every time we go to the states. Other purchases included a lot of tops, leggings, accessories from Bebe, F21 and Wet Seal (we didn’t have time to go into many stores since we were stuck in traffic every time we tried to go shopping and line ups were insanely long), random make up from Sephora, books, Aldo flats and black Jessica Simpson pumps from Nordstrom… and a LOT of food and Starbucks.

My favorite were L‘s HELLO KITTY RAIN BOOTS because they’re freaking adorable! I’m SO jealous and would’ve totally purchased a pair if I was still in school or taking public transit to work but since I drive and park underground, I’m rarely outside so I would have no reason to wear them. Hey at least I saved myself $80.

Oh, how can I forget the fashion faux-pas that I purposely committed?! I WORE JEANS TO THE WEDDING! Well not to the formal Vietnamese ceremony but only to the reception. T wore her new Rocks so I was like WTF, no fair I want to wear mine too, so I pulled off the tags, threw them on last minute and tucked them into my boots; I didn’t really feel guilty because it was the reception and everyone was going to be drunk anyway. I bought a dress that I didn’t even wear because I never found shoes for them and I realized how short and slutty it was. If it was a friend’s wedding, I’d totally wear it (just because we all swing that way) but not to one where Boyfriend’s parents are present. I still wore all black to the morning ceremony… but I didn’t care because I just wanted my red hair to stand out. But anyway, not to say I’m proud of my fashion faux-pas but honestly I wouldn’t care what anyone wears to my reception as long as it’s not WHITE, too bummed out and as long as they don’t upstage me (or go home biatch).

Boyfriend and I were like the rebels because I wore jeans and he refused to wear a suit jacket and even left his tie in the car for the reception.

P.S. Thanks ladies for the lovely Christmas cards.

Quote of the trip:
“What the hell is beer pong? Do you hit the ball with a beer bottle or something?”
- by the same drunk dude who thought “ixi” was a word in a game of Scrabble last year.

Ending this entry with a Mochi pic of the day… because I missed her terribly.

Also sorry for not responding to Christmas/New Years text messages while I was away… I was too cheap to text you guys back but MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! I had good intentions.