Oakland A's

Now that Baseball season is over, I'm finally getting around to posting my A's pics. LOL We actually went to a game a couple of weeks ago, and Phil went with us! He hasn't been to a game in years, so it was great that Ashley took him for his birthday. (although we didn't get around to going till now).

Here's Phil with his dapper hat. ;)

This photo I took right when the player (who I can't remember who it was) hit the first home run of the game! It was really exciting. There were 4 home runs that night by the A's, and they actually won against the Tigers.

Yes, I'm both an A's and Giants fan. :) I loved the movie Moneyball. It was great seeing what happens behind the scenes.

Another couple of pair...

And here are a couple of other pair I worked on. Guess I was in a green mood today. :) I had the Asian coin beads for awhile, and thought this would be a good use for them.

I just love these large green crystal beads. You can't see the sparkle from the photo, but they're really sparkly!

New Pliers and earrings

One of my favorite places to find tools is at the Gun show. Yes, the gun show. There are dealers who sell different pliers, dental tools, drills, etc that I love to look through to find something that I can use for some of the various crafts that I make.

One of the best finds ever were these pair of pliers:

They are part round nosed and part curvy. I haven't seen these before and thought they would work well for wire wrapping jewelry.

And they are fast becoming my favorite pair of pliers. They make wire wrapping beads so fast and easy! Why didn't I think to invent these!! Now my loops are coming out evenly.

So I made some earrings, the above pair are purple and clear. It's hard to tell from the photograph.
I love these Celtic heart ones. I have to find more of the Celtic heart beads so that I can make these for other people.

I will have to post more of the ones I've made so you can see.

More Jewelry

I made the green pair of earrings just because. They're a bit more sparkly in person. I just love the color, it's more of a teal than a green.

The necklace above was made for my sister-in-law. She had these beads that she purchased that she really liked, so I just put them together with some chain and made her a long necklace.

This one was made for my sister. She loved the teardrop shaped beads because they are the theme of her non-profit organization, Raining Hope. So I made her a necklace like one that I saw that I really liked. It's the first time I've worked with Brioche beads, and they were really fun to work with.

Kara's Cupcakes

So we went to another food truck event last Monday in San Mateo, just to see who would be out there because we just need to know these things. We're getting really into the gourmet food trucks.

Anyway, we found Kara's Cupcakes. We thought we'd try them, eventhough we just love our normal Cupcake truck. They had some flavors that were the same, and some that were totally new, so we thought we'd try a few of theirs.

We had the s'mores just cause you just have to try marshmallow on a cupcake! We bought the meyer lemon one for my mom, Phil had the blackberry creme, and I had the chocolate velvet.

The Blackberry creme was good, the frosting tasted like blackberry, and it was on a chocolate cupcake. I LOVED the Chocolate velvet. I'm not usually into the frosting, but their frosting was to die for. And the chocolate sprinkles on the top were awesome!

Here's a close up of the s'mores cupcake. I just love that it had a graham cracker crust on the bottom.

This is what it looked like cut open. It was really very good. I'm not normally too into the marshmallow either, but loved this!

And I was even more excited to learn that they have stores in the south bay and in SF.

If you're in the area, or see their truck, you should definitely try them out!

It's beading time.

So now I'm in jewelry mode. Unfortunately, I can't find my collection of beads. When we moved I had to store them in the basement for awhile. And I can't seem to remember where I stored them. So I've been slowly gathering supplies to start making jewelry again.

I've started with this piece. My sister-in-law bought this necklace for $2, and wanted it jazzed up a bit. She didn't like the seed beads between the larger beads. The photo below shows the necklace in its before stage, I forgot to take a photo of it before I started to take it apart.


We decided to put chain between the larger beaded sections. Since they used fishing line to string the necklace, I wire wrapped the beaded sections so that the chain had something to connect to.


Below is the finished necklace. I really liked how it turned out.

Since I started beading, I decided to make another bracelet. I found the pearls on sale at Michael's. But I thought I should wear it first to see how the pearls would wear, because they are glass pearl beads. And good thing, the paint started wearing off on the pearls, so I need to string those with non-glass/metal beads. They will wear a ton better I think.

But the pearls sure do look pretty on the bracelet. LOL

That's Sweet Desserts

So, every Thursday in Union City, they have the Union City Street Eats where a bunch of gourmet food trucks get together to sell their wares. It's a great idea, you get to try the food from all these gourmet trucks that get together every week.

Our favorite is That's Sweet! Desserts. OMG, they have the best cupcakes that I've ever had. TONS better than Sprinkles. The cupcakes are so moist, with great flavor combinations.




These two are the Salted Caramel and the Maple Bacon. I tried the Salted Caramel last week and just LOVED it. And we just had to try out the Maple bacon just because.



Phil also needed to have the Red Velvet Whoopie Pie. We tried to get these last week, but they had sold out. It's a Red Velvet cake with a cream cheese filling. He said it was super rich, but it was super yummy!

This is a close up of the Salted Caramel Cupcake.


After cutting it open, I found that they kind of cut a hole in the center and pour caramel in it, then cover it up in the most delicious caramel frosting with a drizzle of caramel sauce on top. I love this one because despite all the caramel, the salt cuts the sweetness.

Guess where we'll be next week?? LOL

Go Flyers!

Our 16U Flyers team made it to second place this weekend at the tournament in Davis, CA. We missed the games on Saturday because Phil had to work. It was great that we didn't lose the first game and have to go all that way for one game. LOL

The tournament organizer announced during the medal ceremony that our organization, the Fremont Flyers, had a team in each division in the finals. This is the first time that he's seen that in a tournament. And he runs a lot of tournaments.

I think that is pretty awesome, because when we started with the Flyers, we weren't the best team in the league. But as we've progressed and matured, the girls have become a much better team. Very proud of you girls!

Happy August

It seems like I've been blogging once a month these days. I think I have to change that. Life is a bit busy because that thing called work has been getting in the way. LOL But if it wasn't for work I wouldn't be able to do the fun things in life like...

Going to see American Idols live! Now after going to the Glee show, and receiving extra special treatment, I thought that nothing could beat that show. Well, the Idols show came close. I really REALLY enjoyed the show this year.
It keeps getting better and better. They were amazing! Loved James and Haley. Lauren is super cute. And just love Scotty. LOL Paul was one of my favorites too. And Thia was way better live than on the show. And of course it was great seeing Pia. she was my favorite on the show. And I really enjoyed watching her on tour. She gave me goosebumps, and the last person to do that was Celine Dion. :)

We went to Tahoe a couple of weekends ago and saw friends that we haven't seen in quite some time. It was so great to catch up with them. I really miss them a lot! Wish we lived closer to them.

And last weekend our niece Sadie Brown sang with the Cheeseballs in Newark's Music in the Grove. I haven't seen them play in a couple of years, and they're still as awesome as ever! :)

I haven't been very creative lately, but I've been trying to get inspired to do some things. I'll post them as soon as I can figure that out.

It's July!

OMG, it's already July, can it really be 1.5 months since I've posted last?? Yep, pretty much. Life's been a bit busy at home & at work. Not much time to play lately.

Went to Counter burgers with my friend Kristen a couple of weeks ago and had these yummy slider burgers. They made tiny burgers and put them on Hawaiian rolls. They were so good. When I told Phil about them he had to make Teriyaki sliders with pineapple on them. Those were even better!!

Here's a picture of Velcro Hogging the remotes. Just because I can. LOL She's becoming a lot more chatty lately. She's finally coming out of her shell. She's been so quiet since we moved, and she's getting back to her normal self, which is good. Only took a year and a half.

And this is my favorite photo of the week:
My niece Alex acting all ninja at Bass Pro Shops. She's a character, let me tell you! LOL

This week I'll be going to the American Idols concert, so I'll have a new update for you then. Sorry for the long time between posts. Will have to get better at that!

Fremont Flyers Softball 16U

We spent our 3-day weekend at a tournament in San Carlos at Carlmont High School. We played a total of 6 games over 3 days. The championship game was 11 innings and ran 3 hours! The girls did great. We were undefeated for all our games. We played teams from San Carlos, Scotts Valley, and Santa Cruz. And we played our fellow Fremont Flyers 16U team.

The girls with their championship trophies.

Our catcher Lindsay Carroll at bat.

My niece Alex pitching.

Safe!
Ari Monges at bat.

It was such a great time. The girls played so well for their first game, setting the bar very high! Every year our group of girls get better and better. There are a few new additions to our team this year, and they make the team that much better!

Go Flyers!!

Glee Tour- San Jose

Anyone who really knows me, knows how big of a Glee fan I am. I just LOVE watching the shows, I have the CD's and DVD's. And I have to tune in every Tuesday, like my other Gleeks. So, when I heard that they were having a concert, of course I had to call my fellow Gleek, Debi and we just had to go to the show. LOL

My friend Debi knows a really good friend of Cory Monteith. And she invited us to go with her to the Glee concert as guests of Cory's! How cool is that!! Really??? A guest of Cory's???? OMG!!

We get to the concert a bit early, and after a bit of wandering, trying to find where we had to go, we met up with Cory! He was nice enough to look for Tammy and to bring us all backstage.

It was so cool to meet him. He's such a sweetheart! He chatted with us until he had to get ready for the show.

We also met Jenna who plays Tina on the show. She was so nice to stop to say hello to us all. I really loved meeting her!

The HP pavilion was packed!! I just had to take a picture from our 3rd row center seats!! Thanks to Cory! LOL I thought it was so funny when he asked us where our seats were, and then said, "Great Tix", thanks to him we had awesome seats!

Watching the cast perform was so awesome! They sounded like they did on the show! And it was really fun how they incorporated video on the big screen with live action. Heather Morris is one of my favorites. And they had her interacting to videos of Will and Sue.

At the end of the show we were able to go to the meet and greet. And there we met Darren who plays Blaine. He was so nice, he made it a point to stop and talk to everyone in the meet and greet area.


We had an awesome time thanks to Tammy and Cory!! I keep saying it would have been even better if I had been 16. But then I think I would have been too nervous to say Hi to them. :)

Thanks Tammy for inviting me to go along with you all, and a HUGE thank you to Cory for getting us the tickets and the backstage pass!! Totally awesome!

Italia Jacket

A friend of mine at work really loves soccer. He asked me to do a logo for him for the Italian Soccer team. It was one of the easier ones I did for him, I love how it came out. : )

And below is what it looks like on the jacket.

It was really cool cause now other people want me to make that logo for them. ;)

Paquiao

Tomorrow night is the big night. Ok, not a big boxing fan here, but I know that there is this fight with Paquiao tomorrow. One of my friends at work is a big fan, and asked me to do a special piece of embroidery for him. He drew the face of Pacquiao, and he had me digitize and embroider it on a couple of sweatshirts. One like the above, with Paquiao's signature.

And this one with Paquiao's signature larger on the hood. I wasn't sure how it would actually turn out, but I really liked it a lot. When you have the white background with darker thread, it doesn't look as good as having it on a dark background.




And here's a picture of Andre wearing the sweatshirt. It really does look very cool. If I were a Pacquiao fan, I might have to have one too. LOL

Lady Eagles Softball Embroidered logo

I can't believe I haven't posted since February. I think you need to blame those darn Angry Birds. LOL Ok, Angry Birds, Words with friends, Boggle, oh, and of course Farmville and Cityville. Darn those Facebook/Ipod apps. Can you say Time Suckers?? LOL Well, that plus with working full-time, life's been pretty busy.

I was in a creative funk. I get so tired after work that I really haven't been very creative, choosing to play games instead. But thankfully my niece Alex has gotten me out of that funk. :)

She asked me to do the embroidery on the American High School Softball's Varsity team's warm-up jackets. Alex never asks for anything, so of course, if she asks, I'm doing to do whatever I can to do what she has requested. Cause she's my Alex! :)

So we started with a photo of the American High School logo (which coincidentally looks like the Philedelphia Eagles logo), and redrew it, then digitized it on the computer.

This is what the logo looks like digitized above. I always like taking a screenshot of the logo just to show everyone what it is going to look like. Then I'll stitch out a sample. Below is the actual logo stitched on a jacket.

I think it looks really good. I did find out that stabilizers really do matter. The stabilizer from JoAnn's worked out a lot better than the WalMart stabilizer. So guess who has to stock up on stabilizer while it's still on sale. LOL



This is one of the jackets. On this style of jacket, there is a net lining and a zipper that is on the inside. I still have a problem understanding why you'd need a zipper. There's no pocket there, and it doesn't unzip the lining from the jacket. So now when I do the names, I'll have to unzip the zipper, then baste the lining to the jacket so it won't move while stitching.

It's always a challenge to hoop different items. I hope that the girls will like them. :)