Will these make me look fat?

We are having a fund raising event (formal event) for the Junior League soon. One of my friends from the JL sent me a link to these jeans. This was her comment in the e-mail.

"Should I get these for the Spring Fundraiser? I figure I could wear them with a sequins top? Sara"

I'm not sure what I would wear with them, though. I imagine one of those bikini-clad girls at the car shows wearing them now. Oh car show people, you totally know what I'm talking about.

I think my muffin top would spill out the top, or well, perhaps the sides. I should have waited to post this tomorrow for Wordless Wednesday.

What would you wear with these jeans?

Link to Jeans!

My Latest Karma Event

Over a week ago, I went to an OC Blogger/Twitter meet-up at the wonderful California Pizza Kitchen. I was happy because this was the second meet-up within a month. I had to leave the last one early, because I had furniture being delivered.

The day before this meet-up, I told my 24-Hour Fitness Instructor, Doris, that I was going to try out her spin class the next morning. This was my original plan: drop kid off at school, go to spin class, shower and get dressed at gym, go to meet-up. It sounds like a perfect plan, right? So I got up extra early that morning. I asked Angry Husband to take the kid to preschool, because um, I was going to do that spin class with Doris. He agreed but vented how hard it was for him to take the kid to school and get to work in time. What do you think Angry Julie did that morning? Oh, she did some light house cleaning, and sat on the computer all morning. Ooops, yep, I missed the spin class. My legs were pretty sore from running the day before. I was going to use that excuse.

I arrived at the meet-up in time to meet all the girls. We had a lovely lunch. I had a salad. Suz commented on how they only had Pepsi from a gun at CPK. She has a thing about Pepsi in general. I like to make funny Twitter comments about that. I ordered a salad, not because I was trying to save calories. But because salad actually sounded good that day.

One of the gals, Kristin makes fabulous cupcakes. She brought each of us a cupcake as a little gift. I ate the cupcake after we left (ok, so I ate in while in the parking structure). It was so good. When she gave us our cupcakes, I took mine out of the box and set it in front of me. I wanted to take a picture for Twitter, of course.

This is where my Karma comes in. As I'm trying to take the picture, I look up. There is a Starbucks right next to CPK. Guess who I see walking out with a coffee? Yep, that's right Doris. I say hello, an apologize for being a work-out flake. Of course, she noticed that beautiful cupcake in front of me. I knew that I would hear about it later!

Thursdays are my hard work-out days. I do a 24-Lift class in the mornings, and I have Lululemon Run Club at night. Yes, I do both events every Thursday. I'm a little nuts. And of course, Doris runs both events. Oh boy did I hear about. I knew this was coming. I love Doris no matter what. She is inspiring to everyone around her. She announced to the entire Lift class about running into someone, and of course it was me. We heard all about it at run club too. I've found that Orange County is a small world. Sometimes when you try to lie or flake on things, karma will get you. I always say, "Everything happens for a reason." I will know better next time. I will not make promises I can't keep.

But back to the meet-up. I loved the conversations and our intimate little gathering. It was great to hang with everyone: Suz, Marcy,Rochelle, Kristin, Dana, and my BFF, Stacey.

Oh, and I couldn't forget this lovely photo taken of me. You wonder why my blog is titled, "Angry Julie Monday"? This is my usual pose. Even on vacation, I can't get away from work.



Cupcake photo courtesy of Suz.
Angry Julie photo courtesy of Marcy.

Vans Pier Classic 2009

On Wednesday, I headed to Huntington Beach with my mom aka Angry Nana or Angry Grandma. She was actually in a good mood. I had a laundry list of things I wanted to do in HB, and she went along.

We parked in the parking structure on Main St. I hate parking in structures with my huge SUV. The Angry Toddler is kind of hard to park in those tiny spots. I also have a history of hitting parked cars, in my work vehicle, not the Angry Tahoe. We wandered around the shops on Main St. We also stopped for some yummy food at Wahoo's. I swear I eat at Wahoo's like 2-3 times a week.

We then headed towards the beach. I knew that there was a surfing competition, Vans Pier Classic 2009. I follow Vans on Twitter, and some other companies. They have been talking about the competition for the past few days. It was a beautiful day in HB. The weather was perfect although the waves were a little flat. My camera was rocking though. I'm finding the my camera is really working great outdoors lately. I'm getting some perfect shots. I really like going to these Action Sports Events and taking some candid photos. I even opened a Flickr account the other day. I'm going to post some of my better photos there.

I really need to get some photo software for my new MacBook. I'm just using the basic iPhoto right now to edit. I need some recommendations for photo editing software. I would love to get Adobe CS4 or something like that, but unfortunately that's the price of my car payment.

Here are some of my candid shots. Enjoy!

Baby Shower Invites and a Great Designer

If anyone knows me well enough, you know that I'm a procrastinator. I've always been like this. When I was in college, I used to stay up all night long writing papers at the last minute. I even wrote a 20-page research paper in one night, starting at 6pm. I got an A though, that's got to count for something.

I told a co-worker that I would host her baby shower. I love baby showers, as long as they are not for me, ha.

I'm still on vacation and one of the things I'm doing is re-organizing and Spring cleaning. I drag all my work crap stuff in those bags from the mall. You know the handled ones that can hold a lot of stuff. We have a shelf in our garage where I let the bags accumulate. Well I was going through my bags, and realized that...oh crap..I had not done the baby shower invites yet. The shower is mid-April, so I had to get to it.


I started searching on Etsy and found this really cute invitation. I contacted the seller, Kim, she explained the process involving the invite. I gave her the information for the invite and she designed it. She then e-mailed the file to me and then I uploaded it to Costco Photo Center. I picked up the invites and hour later. Kim was really and I'm happy that I got to work with her. I wanted to tell her how much I appreciated it, by doing a little highlight on my blog about her.

Kim is a graphic designer living in Orange County, CA. She has been designing custom cards and items for close friends and family for the last few years. She saw a need for affordable and personal cards and creations. After becoming a stay at home mom last year, Kim became determined to make time each day to do something she loves. The only time to make sure it would happen was while "the bubsie boy" was sleeping, therefore "bubsiedesigns" was born. After getting multiple requests, Kim recently decided to open a shop on Etsy. It is her priority to make each design modern, personal, and affordable.

Stop by Kim's Etsy Shop, "bubsiedesigns". She has great invites, save the dates, and even blog headers~

Harvey's and some new Limited Edition Seatbeltbags for Spring

I got an e-mail from Harvey's Seatbeltbags the other day. It included this graphic with three new limited edition designs. There are only 250 handbags being made with each design.

I love my Harvey's Seatbeltbags. I have two of them right now. I seem to use them more now than my Gucci, or Louis Vuitton purses. I think they are getting a lot more popular now also. I gets searches on my site for them daily.

They are very durable and easy to take cure of too. I've had one of my purses for about four years and it still looks brand new.

Robotic Rabbits

Today was a bonding day for Angry Toddler and me. Angry Toddler slept in and I played on my new Macbook this morning. He asked for some waffles when he got up. Thankfully, we had bought stock in waffles awhile ago. Actually we didn't buy stock, but one of those HUGE boxes from Costco. The kind that doesn't fit in a normal freezer, so you have to take the individual packages out.

I was stumped and what to do. The weather was yucky and I had no desire to go to Disneyland or watch Angry Toddler play the Wii all day. I hadn't worked out since Thursday so I took him to 24Hour Fitness. I love their $3 Kid's Club. While I was driving there, my mom called and told me to meet her at the mall at noon. So that's what we did. Angry Toddler me that he was not hungry and just wanted to shop, ok random.

We went into Pottery Barn Kids, one of my usual stops. They have been clearancing out some of their floor models. A great time to catch a deal on an otherwise expensive piece of furniture. I've been searching for a small table from PBK for about a month now. We are going to set up a small table in our office so that we can build a computer station for Angry Toddler. He's really into computers right now, and we are tired of him messing with our desktop. Well, I walked in and there was the holy grail of furniture. An espresso colored large farm table. They were selling the table for $54. This table is $219 retail. It is the exact color I was looking for also. There were a few scratches and nicks. I can fix those blemishes with one of those stain sticks from Home Depot. We bought the table and a blue chair to go with it. While we were debating on getting the table, Angry Toddler grabbed a book from their display, and sat down at the table with it. That's what really sold us on it. He can read books at the table and use the computer.

After leaving PBK, we started walking around. My mom eyed the Easter Bunny. She gave me that, "Should we try again this year?" look. I said, "why not, we have nothing to lose". Last year, he freaked and ran crying from the rabbit. I can't blame him, it's kind of freaky to me too. This Easter Bunny is not an ordinary Mall Easter Bunny. Oh no, this is a robotic rabbit. The employees program it with your child's name, and it talks to them. Angry Toddler sat down and had an entire conversation with it. He didn't want to leave.

We bought our pictures and walked away. My mom got annoyed as usual. Angry Toddler is doing a funky smile right now for pictures. He has this same smile in any picture he takes lately. It's just a phase. I told her, just wait, until he has to smile with missing teeth.

I'm still creeped out from Robo-Bunny, even after 2 years of seeing him.

I'm going MAC!

I got a brand new laptop from Dell last February, 2008. I picked out the color especially for me, pink of course. I was very excited to get a new gadget. Except, it had Windows Vista on it. Vista was brand new and I did not know much about it. Angry Husband knew that it used a lot of memory and that was about it.



I received the laptop and started playing with it. I got frustrated with it the first week, but kept using it. I mostly used it for the internet. But slowly over time, it turned into a really expensive DVD player. It was sooo slow because Vista really uses alot of memory to function.

Everyone around me is going Mac. My next door enighbor has been using Apple products for years. I'm on my 3rd iPod. We have AppleTV. The next decision is obvious. We are going Mac. I vented to Angry Husband about a month ago that I wanted to throw my laptop on the 405 Freeway. He agreed. He told me that for Christmas, we would buy a iMac and that would be our gift to each other. I agreed that was a good decision.

When we received our tax return, Angry Husband told me to go and buy a Macbook. He knew that I was going to BlogHer in July and that I would need a reliable notebook. We had originally set aside money to buy a DVD system for my Tahoe. I was in shock. I felt a little guilty about spending that much money on myself. I did set aside a portion of money in my savings account. What have I been doing to get the rest of the funds? Craigslist! I sold my Dell laptop on there, plus other goodies (Louis Vuitton planner). I'm still a little short for the money, but I should have the rest of it by this weekend (Angry Julie gets paid!).

I'm very excited. I have been stalking the Apple store at least once a week for the past month. I can't wait to get my MacBook.

New E-Mail Address for Blog

I'm getting tons of e-mails and requests in reference to my blog. It is quite overwhelming, but I love it. I have finally created an e-mail dedicated just for my blog. It will be much easier to categorize. My regular is always full and things get lost in there.

So here it is!

angryjuliemonday@gmail.com

The Ultimate Leprechaun

I had to do a blog post dedicated to St. Patrick's Day. And I found the perfect stuff to blog about, extreme sports, of course! I love living in So. Cal. We have such a variety of things to do here. We are within driving distance of snow, sun, and even sometimes rain. We can surf one day and snowboard the next. I've come to the fact and acknowledged it, that yes, Angry Toddler will be involved in some extreme sport in the next few years. Because he is extreme. He loved the skateboard show on Saturday and is still asking about it.

I have Freestyle as one of my contacts that I follow on Twitter. They sell watches and sunglasses for that extreme lifestyle we all seek. It just happens that I went to high school with one of Freestyle's peeps. I follow him on Facebook and got the link to their blog. I saw a preview of their St. Patrick's Day surprise with the photo posted above. Isn't that photo great!

They released their surprise today. It was an awesome video of The Ultimate Leprechaun. It's the leprechaun being extreme of course, by snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing!



Freestyle is also releasing their Lucky Green Shark Watch. The green is so bright. I wish I could wear a bright watch like this to work. I think the supervision would question it though. They already don't like the Hello Kitty pen sticking out of my uniform pocket.



They also have this new watch, releasing April 15th for little groms (aka kids). I'm sure Angry Toddler would like it. Perhaps for his birthday in May. After looking at all the watches, I think I'm probably going to get this one for work. I know that it's not a woman's one, but my job really isn't too girly.

I love promoting Orange County businesses. It's my heritage and I love it here!

I hope everyone has a Happy St. Patrick's Day. Don't drink too much green beer. Cause remember, I may be on vacation but my peeps are still out there!

Photos Courtesy of Freestyle and their wonderful blog!

Even Boys Like Princesses

Yesterday was Angry Toddler's BFF's, Stella, 4th birthday. Stacey decided that she was tired of the usual birthday parties and wanted to try something different. Well all headed to Disney's California Adventure and Disneyland for the day. Stacey had made reservations for lunch at Ariel's Grotto. I told Angry Toddler that we were going to lunch with the princesses. He made a face and stated, "Princesses are for girls, pink is for girls, I'm a boy." Ok, whatever kid. This is where we are going to lunch. Well we went on a ton of rides and I took over 200 pictures. But guess who ran up to the princesses and smiled with his cheesy grin?






Stacey wondering how she is going to pay for this really expensive lunch..Thankfully, we got at least a 15% discount since I have a Premium Season Pass.



I made Stacey take a pic with me inside Disneyland. We never get photos taken of us together. Of course, Angry Toddler wanted to be in the photo. Notice the pink Blackberry in my pocket. I got caught on Twitter several times by Stacey.

Pacsun clash at Clairemont 3

Yesterday, Angry Toddler, my mom, and I were given the hook-up by RockDaMullet at Pacsun's Clash at Clairemont 3. It was a skateboard and bmx show benefiting Grind for Life and Krause Family/Mission Valley YMCA Bike and Skate Park.

As soon as we got to the event, we were given VIP parking and entry passes. Way cool. We all had purple wristbands. Angry Toddler had his first experience with a porta-potty. That was entertaining for my OCD child. We then went to the entry. Angry Toddler was very excited by the huge Monster Energy truck. He called it a Monster Truck.



Angry Toddler sat and watched the kids skateboarding on the ramps, rails, and stairs at the park. He kept screaming, "I wanna skateboard now". We promised him for his 4th birthday, he can finally get a skateboard. Geez kid. But there were kids not much older than him, grinding away. So, Angry Toddler decided that he would just climb the ramps and slide down.



After walking through the crowds and vendors, we headed up some stairs to the VIP area. We were able to catch some of the kids just hanging out. It was pretty cool to see how bold they are. I'm glad that Angry Toddler has that boldness still. He's not scared of anything. Sometimes, it has been a bad thing.




After chowing on some awesome food from Chipotle, we headed over to the Vert Ramp. This was the big attraction of the show. It was covered with net on both sides. To prevent injuries from flying BMX bikes and skateboards. I was able to get some great pictures from behind the net.





Angry Toddler had already ventured around and pimped himself out to the vendors at the show. Notice his collection of stickers. They all thought he was hilarious and took pictures of him.



A little bit later, I took Angry Toddler to the car. He needed to chill for awhile and eventually fell asleep. I headed back to the show and I was able to capture some great pics.









At the end of the show, I was anticipating a raffle that SCS, SoCal SkateShop was putting on. I bought $20 worth of tickets, because hey it was for charity. Well I ended up walking away with two skateboard decks and a set of wheels. Angry Toddler was sadly disappointed though. He wanted to win the "pink skateboard". There was one complete skateboard that had pink on it. He instantly fell in love. For some reason, I think his dinosaur bedroom is going to slowly turn into a skateboard room. I think Angry Husband is going to mount the decks on Angry Toddler's wall.

I just want to say what an awesome experience this was. We met a ton of great people, had some laughs and Angry Toddler was in heaven. I hope that we can experience more fun events like this.

Once again, I want to thank RockDaMullet for letting us in on this. I would have never heard of this fantastic event without him.

How Not to Provide Customer Service

Tuesday morning, I headed to South Coast Plaza, a local mall. They hate it when you call it a mall, but it's a mall. Not the plaza, etc. Apparently to be considered a mall, it has to have a food court, whatever.

I was going there to purchase some baskets at Pottery Barn Kids. My son's dresser has a spot under it for baskets. I was excited to organize some of his crap toys. I'm tired of tripping over Hot Wheels. I arrived at So. Coast about 10am when everything was just opening. I headed into American Eagle Outfitters because Pottery Barn Kids hadn't quite opened yet. As I entered the store I was bombarded by employees. Within five minutes, I got these speech from four different people, "Our special today is you buy one t-shirt and you get the second one for $10". Ok, thanks. I was the only one in the store. Obviously the employees could see who greeted me. I've worked retail, I know how it works. As soon as a customer walks in, you greet them. You don't stalk them, follow them around, or harass them. It makes a customer want to run out of the store. And that is what I did. I saw some things I liked, but hells to the no was I going to purchase something from them. I now know why most of my friends shop online. My sizing is so inconsistent so I hesitate from shopping online.

Today, I was at the Irvine Spectrum. I had just left my awesome 24Lift class at 24 Hour Fitness. I stopped in a new store there called "Buckle". I've heard some of my online forum peeps talk about it, so I thought I would check it out. I've been looking for some capris and they had some great styles. I'm trying to avoid that mom-jeans look. There were two sales people working at the time. They offered their assistance. They asked if there was a particular style I was looking for, and that was it. I told them that I had an extremely short inseam and that I had issues with capris looking like high water pants. They were able to assist me with the perfect fit. I tried on two different styles. I thought that the second pair made me look a little wider. They agreed that the first pair was much better. I literally fell over and applauded them for not harassing me. They were laughing.

My point is, I know times are tough. The economy sucks. People are being more conservative with their money. Consumers are shopping less. But if you harass and stalk your customers, they are not going to make purchases.

Oh and I got the baskets at Pottery Barn Kids. They work perfectly for all the junk that Angry Toddler has acquired.

I didn't poison the family!!

I posted earlier today that I was going to make Pioneer Woman's "The Best Lasagna. Ever." Well it took me a bit to get everything organized. I had to go to the grocery store twice. I had to have some phone consults with my BFF, Stacey. She advised me that it is much easier to buy pre-minced garlic. I will note that for the future.

It took me about 2.5 hours total. I had to let the meat simmer, pasta boil, etc.

I also let it cool down for an hour.

It was very good. Angry Husband was a bit skeptical about the cottage cheese. He was impressed. Even Angry Toddler liked it, he asked for two portions!

YAY me!

Speedwork with Chihuahuas

I always need to get a little running in. I can't spend all my time running on a treadmill.

I have Run Club on Thursday nights, but I try and run at least 2-3 other times a week. I probably need to run more this week cause of all the Girl Scout Cookies I'm consuming.

My dogs have been very bored lately. And they are getting a little fat. They are kind of lazy like the rest of the people in my house. I think the only one in the house who has energy is Angry Toddler. So about two weeks ago, I started taking them on really long walks/runs. I usually do about 3 miles. I loop around the lake near my house.

Well today I thought I would do some speedwork. I would run from stop sign to stop sign. Then we would walk a block and run a block. I got some interesting looks from people driving by. They probably thought, "Why is this chick running with (2) 12 pound dogs?" Because I can. The dogs love it. It's soo funny to watch their little legs trying to keep up with me. It really tires them out too.

The dogs have had to wear bark collars almost daily for a year now. They were barking constantly and we had Animal Control come out to our house. Luckily, I used to work with the Animal Control Officer. My neighbors were tired of the barking. Ever since I've been doing these walk/runs with them, the dogs are silent. They take really long naps after our jaunts.

I would post some pictures of Bruiser and Wolfie, but they need to be groomed really bad right now. Bruiser is a Maltese/Chihuahua mix and has the funniest hair. He needs to be shaved down badly. Wolfie just needs a slight trim.

So if you see my running around Orange County with the doggies, wave and laugh to yourself. Cause remember, a dog doesn't have to be eighty pounds to run with you.

Cooking in the Angry Household

As I have said before, Angry Husband is hooked on the Food Network. Alton Brown from Good Eats in his hero. He DVR's every episode of that show. Angry Toddler loves to watch it with him. The kid would rather watch the food network than cartoons.

Angry Husband bought a bunch of cookbooks and is starting to make a few recipes from them. The other night he made roast and garlic mashed potatoes. He found the recipes in this cookbook, The Taste of Home.



Last night, my son had his class At The Little Gym, so we ate Subway Sandwiches. Angry Toddler loves Subway and I'm kinda hooked on their Flat Bread Sandwiches.

I told Angry Husband that I would make dinner tonight. He gave me that look. Then I told my BFF, Stacey, I was making dinner. She kinda giggled, and then asked for pictures. She said that "this is blog worthy and she needs proof that I actually cooked."

I went out this morning and bought all the ingredients to make Pioneer Woman's "The Best Lasagna. Ever." Why did I chose this recipe? The ingredients are very simple, plus she has lots of instructional pictures so I won't get lost.

I'm fairly new to this cooking thing. I'm really don't want to learn. But I figure I gotta shock Angry Husband a little. Every once in awhile, I like to surprise him and show him that I'm not so lazy.

Angry Toddler's Room Renovation is done!

We have been working on Angry Toddler's room for about two years now since he was out of the crib. I feel in love with the Pottery Barn Kids Super Saurus bedding from a couple of years ago. We have the crib set so I searched high and low on e-bay for the twin bedding set.

We got the rug, bedding, and other decorations almost eighteen months ago. The bed was last year's Christmas present from my parent's. The dresser arrived yesterday. I had to miss leave an OC Bloggy/Twitter meet-up to meet the delivery people. The bed and dresser are from Pottery Barn Kid's Camp Collection.

Angry Husband put in the can lighting last Monday. He's so talented. I barely mentioned something about can lights and he was at Lowe's within 15 minutes buying the supplies. The lights look great and the room is so much brighter now.

Of course, all I see in the room when I walk in...is that big red stain on the expensive PBK wool rug. We will call that the "Crystal Light Incident of 2008". We thought Angry Toddler was in his room sleeping. Well Angry Husband went in to check on him and noticed Angry Toddler was sitting in the center of the rub with my container of those Crystal Light packages everywhere. They were all partially torn open and he was eating the contents..LOVELY

So now we are stuck with this stained rug. We've tried everything ourselves to clean it. Does anyone know a place in Orange County that can clean it?

Oh, and side note: Angry Husband thinks the room is babyish. He wants to re-do it all in camouflage. I told him to wait until Angry Toddler is 5.

My Distractions

I can get distracted quite easy. Angry Husband even jokes about it. It's like ohh, Julie, look at this shiny metal thing...

So I'm in the drive-thru line at Del Taco this morning. Yea, not too healthy, I got tacos, right? I pulled up to the window and paid with my debit card. I tend to multi-task alot, especially with my Blackberry. While waiting for my food, I realized ooohh I need to call Monique. So I call Monique because I had to tell her that they had Lucky jeans at Stein Mart. I never shop there but decided to go in there and browse. I know that Monique likes Lucky jeans sooo I had to call her right.

Guess what Julie did. She then continued driving back home and actually pulled into the garage. As I was getting my things out of the car, I realized, "Where is my food?" Umm, I got soo distracted talking to Monique about random things, I forgot my food. I had to drive all the way back to get my food.

Monique thought it was hilarious of course. But really, I do things like this all the time. Please say I'm not the only one who does this.

Upcoming Races

I've only done one official race this year which was the Surf City USA 5K. That was on the first weekend of February. I decided to be a little proactive and sign up for some races for the months coming up.

Here's what I signed up for:

April 4th-35th Annual Seal Beach 5K
April 5th-Carlsbad 5000
May 25th-Laguna Hills Memorial Day 5K

and I'm currently debating these races:

March 15th-Coaster Run 5K
September 6th-2009 Disneyland Half Marathon

I'm on the fence for two races, both on May 3rd.

PCRF's Cinco de Mayo Run "Reaching for the Cure" 5K and
the AVIA OC Half Marathon

My running club is training for the PCRF Cinco de Mayo Run. And my gals from the Junior League are going to do the AVIA OC Half Marathon for fundraising also. I'm soo torn. I haven't been training much for the 1/2 marathon. I was going to do my first half marathon at Disney in September. Angry Husband told me to do the Half Marathon since all the girls are really excited about. They are making t-shirts and everything.

I can't wait for Daylight Savings next weekend. I'm going to try and do some more running at night. Maybe I can even get Angry Toddler to sit in the jogging stroller, right....

Oh, and I'm a member of athlinks. Have you all heard about athlinks? Athlinks is like a Facebook for athletes. It tracks all your races and race times. It's very cool to see how much I've improved in the past few years. My friend, Casey, got my hooked on it. She's training for her first triathalon. Go Casey!

P.S. The photo above was from the SBSD Mud Run. This is one of my favorite race photos ever!