The Adventures of a Calamari Queen

Hi Friends! I hope your week is going great:) I’m in my “Simplifying my life Era” HA!, I’ve been decluttering and on a low spend journey (just me not my family) for almost 3 years now and I think there’s improvements (my closet is not overwhelming me anymore!) The kids toys and clothes are somewhat manageable now but there are still areas of my family life that I want to simplify, like our meals at home. I want to prepare simple meals (but healthyISH!). I don’t expect us to go unprocessed and organic, home cook 100% here! That’s not what I see happening. Let’s be real!

I like shopping at Trader Joes. I think they are affordable and have lots of fun treats. The problem is I get carried away and end up buying junky food that my family eats! I plan to share my groceries shopping/meal plans here to help me be intentional with what I get/prepare. I hope you get to join me!

Simple Meals that I’ve prepared so far for the family:

Shrimp Tacos

Eggplant Salad

Oven Baked Chicken Teriyaki

Baked French Toast/ Bacon/Pickle cucumber! I had pork belly and rice!

Fried Fish!

Steak and Black bean noodle

My Trader Joes Haul! Mix of produce and processed treats..I also got pretty flowers ($4),not bad Trader Joes!

Our breakfasts are usually toast/pancakes/eggs/cereals.

Lunches are usually sandwiches/cheese/crackers/snack type food/leftovers

Here’s to simplifying family meals friends! Have a great Evening and Stay Safe:) Take Care!

Hi Friends, this weekend we visited Great Wolf Lodge here in our state. It was part of the kids Christmas gifts. We got a decent price so we decided to take it, especially since Mia has been asking when are we visiting the water park again! So we surprised the kids and they were really excited! We’ve been here before so we kinda knew what to expect, etc. We didn’t like the restaurant food before so for dinner we tried a restaurant near the resort (Burger Claim, food was great!).

Mia enjoyed the big rides so much and Matthew wanted to try it but due to the height limit, we will have to wait until he is taller!HA! We visited the arcade and get to check out some of their games.

We stopped by Dutch Bros before we headed home!We really like their coffees and the super friendly baristas but this time, they messed up Hubs drink! Oh well! We still love Dutch Bros though!

Jollibee (a Filipino fastfood) had a 2nd location 45 minutes from Great Wolf Lodge, so we stopped by for a late lunch! My kids love their spaghetti and chicken joy! The Hubs does not like Jollibee at all! He ordered another dish at the nearby Hawaiian restaurant. HA

Have a great night friends! STay safe and Take Care:)

Hi Friends! Earlier this month, we celebrated our 16th wedding Anniversary! Hubs and I got married in New York, one spring Saturday afternoon! We thank God for all the blessings and guidance in our relationship! We went out for dinner to celebrate at Prime Steakhouse in Redmond while my In laws watched the kids:) Dinner was great! We indulged a little and got steaks/lobster/Foie gras/steak tartare!

We didn’t give any gifts to each other, as we have travel plans in the coming months!HA.

Have a wonderful rest of your evening friends! Take Care and Stay Safe!

Hi Friends! I’ve been off here for a while. The kids had spring break and Hubs was out of town last week (he’s back now). We’ve been sick (.cough/colds/runny noses) and just starting to feeling normal now. During the break, we went to Seattle and visited the Pacific Science Center! Kids had great time, our favorite was the laser show and the dinosaur exhibit:) We really want to take the kids to places like this for experiences. They love to explore and discover things, Washington state has a lot of places like museums, science centers, and exhibits I’ve noticed.

Lots of park time, play dough, games and we even watched the Kung Fu Panda 4 movie! We don’t go to the movies often because it’s really expensive now (smallest popcorn is $9) and kids/matinee is like $8-9! HA. I wanted to surprise the kids while Daddy was away. It was worth it:)

I hope you are having a great week friends! Take Care and stay safe!

Hi friends! I hope you had a blessed Easter with your family and friends celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus! Thank You Jesus for what you’ve done on the cross for our sake. We attended good Friday service and Easter Sunday service at our church. They also had a Spring Kids festival, lots of fun things going on like bouncy houses, a little petting zoo, and egg hunting! It was a busy weekend for sure!

We had Easter dinner at our house with my In laws! DIL prepared the HAM (we loved it!), We had the usual sides of potato gratin, asparagus, and mac n’ cheese. Before dinner we had a mini egg hunt in the yard for the kids (as if they need more goodies!HA). I decided not to give any Easter baskets for the kids this year. They really don’t need anything (Grandparents gave them chocolate bunnies and stickers).

Spring Kids Festival at Church!

I made this lox dip (it was YUM!)

We have a brand new month Friends! Have a great rest of your evening. Stay Safe and Take Care!

Hi Friends! Happy Sunday evening:) I hope you had a restful weekend. We visited 2 Korean markets this weekend and tried raw marinated crabs for the first time. I always enjoy watching Korean Mukbangs and Raw marinated crabs is so popular based on the videos I’ve seen. So after church, we stopped by our local Korean market and Hubs got some raw marinated crabs. We both liked it, and we will definitely get it next time. They didn’t have the soy marinated ones.

Yesterday, we visited a new park for us. It’s around Bellevue, nice trails and decent playground! The kids really liked it. After the park, we decided to visit another Korean market called H-mart! We rarely visit this market because the parking is too tight and the store itself is not that big. They do have a decent seafood and meat selections. We got Bulgogi and kimchi Gimbap, we loved the kimchi one.

After church we got Bagels from Blazing Bagels (Issaquah). It’s pricey but worth it to us!

We enjoyed Korean for dinner earlier. I can finally say I’ve tasted raw crabs and relate to some of the Mukbangs I watched!HA

Have a great night Friends! A wonderful and safe week for all of us:) Take Care!

Hi Friends! We had a wonderful St. Patricks dinner with family, a visit to the beach park (it was a gorgeous spring day/weekend). Dad In law prepared Corned beef and we had roasted vegetables and cabbage on the side.

It was a glorious Saturday at the Beach Park, traffic was so bad though and parking was full (Thank God we found a spot quickly after making a couple loops in the parking lot). The kids played on the playground and got their feet wet. The water is still quite cold!HA

It’s been a week since a Bird had been knocking on our windows, so we decided to get some bird feeds and Hubs and Mia built a Bird house made of a milk box! But a chipmunk has been visiting and eating most of the food for the last couple of days! The kids have been enjoying watching this whole situation unfold.

We went to Costco last Friday evening, and we got sushi for dinner. The cali-roll was a little dry and kinda disappointing. It was still a good price for what we got though!

We are off to a playdate at the park with friends this afternoon! Talk later friends. Stay safe:)

Hi Friends! Happy Sunday:) We visited our local Zoo this weekend (despite the rain, it did clear up most of the time we were there), our kids really liked the Zoo so we wanted to check the one closest to us because it’s not too big where it can be overwhelming for them. Although Matthew kept on saying he wanted to see Elephant and Giraffe (No, we don’t have that in our local Zoo!HA), he still had the best time!

After the Zoo, I wanted to try this new Korean place located at the Mall food court! I saw on Instagram about this, their Bburinkle Chicken, it was a disappointment though because they missed the cheese powder (the reason why I wanted to get it!HA). Hubs enjoyed his Bulgogi bowl and said it was great! The Kids had Burgers and Boba tea!

We passed a Candy shop and treated the kids to lollipop!

I’m continuing to declutter the house, and dropped things at our local donation center! We had Chic fil A for dinner after donating our stuff ( A little reward!). That was our Friday evening activities:)

Hope you had a restful weekend friends despite losing an hour this day! Stay safe and take care.

Happy March, Friends! Today we had fun tubing with my Dad In law! This is the first time for the kids and they were pretty excited about the whole thing. We had to drive for 50 minutes and it was a very pretty drive and clear roads so Hubs was not stressed!HA

It was just a perfect day for tubing because it wasn’t too cold and not crowded at all. We did 1 hour and 45 minutes, it was enough for us and the kids! Mia saw skiers too and she mentioned she wanted to try skiing too! Maybe next year:)

After Tubing, we stopped at Popeyes to get some chicken sandwiches (we love their chicken sandwich over chic fil a!).

Thank God we had a safe and great time tubing! Perfect weather to go and have fun, Hubs promised Mia we will do this with her before the winter season is over!

Have a good Friday evening friends! Take care:)

Hi Friends! This week we had a couple of nice sunny days where we could see spring coming soon!HA! I really need to clean our vegetable box and the yard in the coming weeks, so we can plant and start the garden.

Yesterday (Saturday), we decided to visit this Filipino restaurant that I wanted to try (thanks IG) but it was a big disappointment. Some of the fried dishes like Crispy pata and fried fish looked dry, the beef caldereta looked like its a leftover!UGH…AN hour drive just to see a mediocre Filipono dishes! What a waste:( We had dessert at a Korean Cafe called ONE DAY, dessert and our boba drinks were decent.

One Day Cafe:

We discovered a big Korean market in the area too! So that was the fun part:) I wish it wasn’t an hour drive from our place, otherwise, we would be shopping there often! So many selections and decent prices. I ended up getting this BIBIGO tteokbokki and a case of Chapagetti ramen because it was the cheapest price I’ve seen so far.

Tacoma Dome on our way to the restaurant!

That was our weekend friends! We had a relaxing day and lots of family time. Have a great rest of the evening and stay safe!