The Adventures of a Calamari Queen

Hi Friends! Happy weekend:) The Hubs just got back from a work related event yesterday (gone for a week),so it’s been an exhausting week for me (kudos to all the single parent out there!) taking care of the kids/home. Thank God things went smoothly, just the normal everyday things like school, park, homeschool, cooking/feeding kids! Mia started her gymnastics class and she is loving every moment. Matthew is really adjusting great at his preschool too, no more tears when I dropped him at school! He seems to look forward to school now!HA

I’m looking forward to slower days this week! Have a great night friends. Take Care:)

We had a wonderful time swimming with friends today. Mia had a blast hanging out with her little BFF! They swam and played in the water. We are experiencing smoke around our area because of the fires in surrounding areas (since couple of days ago). This morning wasn’t that bad at all while we were at the beach. The rest of the afternoon was spent napping and relaxing. We’ve had busy weekends this summer,so it was a nice change for sure.

My sis who was spending summer with us, went back to the East coast last night. Before going to the airport, we had a nice yummy Dim sum/dinner of Siomai,pork buns, Lechon kawali (Filipino Crispy fried pork belly). We miss our family, we pray that we will get to see them these coming holidays!

Have a wonderful Saturday night friends! Enjoy the rest of the weekends. Stay safe!

Hi Friends! Been a while since I posted here, it’s been a busy last few weeks with us. Hubs was away for a long weekend weeks ago to visit friends in Idaho (he’s back now). Mia and I started our homeschooling 3 weeks ago, so far we are doing great. Matthew started his preschool (4 days a week). Dropping him at school is hard but he’s fine once he is with his other friends. We also celebrated his 3rd Birthday last week. It was a simple celebration with family! Time flies so fast, he is such a miracle. 3 years ago, we started our 3 months NICU journey at Seattle Swedish Hospital and now he’s going to preschool! Praise the Lord!

He’s loving anything Dinosaur right now, so I got some Dino Party decors for his birthday theme. We got the cake from Metropolitan Market.

Hubs smoked ribs and we got some side dishes from Met Market also.

First day of school pics!

Have a great Wednesday Friends! Take care:)

Hi friends! We had a lovely dinner at Daniels Broiler earlier because Hubs got a gift card from his workplace many years ago. I really wanted to use it before we forgot that we had a gift card!HA. We’ve been to their Seattle restaurant before, so we wanted to try their Bellevue location. Mia joined us because we wanted her to see a “nicer/fancy” restaurant and she loved every minute of the experience! It was so special:) We enjoyed the experience, service was quick and very accommodating. Steaks were very good! Sis and I shared a Tomahawk Rib eye, Hubs got his usual Ribeye too! Mia had Fish and chips. We all loved their Filet Mignon Steak bites (we had it as an appetizer). We shared a very decadent chocolate cake for dessert.

Hi friends! Happy Friday! This summer my family had really indulged in Dungeness Crabs. We have a local seafood market in our area where we get fat crabs! It’s pricey but for the amount of crabs we get, and when we compare it to eating out/crab restaurants it’s worth it to us to buy it from our local market. I do all the cracking and getting the meat out! I don’t mind it at all:) We did a couple of crab dishes like crab fried rice, crab rangoon, crab dip, crab rolls,sushi,crabs with noodles! We did this over a 3 day period. HA! Just like any other seafood, you have to eat it ASAP to enjoy the freshness. They go bad quickly.

Hubs made rolls and it was so perfect with the crab meat.

Hubs made us sushi crab roll. We love crab rolls, we normally pay extra just for real crab meat when we go out to sushi restaurants.

This is a filipino dish called “crab sotanghon”. Rice vermicelli with crabs and herbs. In the Philippines, we normally use chicken meat when we make this dish.

Have a great Friday friends. My mouth is watering as I look at these pictures again. HA!

Take Care!

Hi Friends! How’s your summer going? I’ve finally been able to get in here and share what I’ve been up to. My family visited us and we got to have some special family time. We didn’t travel outside WA and visited local cities. Lots of lake time and enjoying the waters. WA is such a beautiful place during summer time. We had a heat wave a little while back too, not a fan of that! HA. Mia had VBS at her old preschool and she had fun, especially seeing her preschool friends.

We celebrated my sister’s birthday, we had brunch and a home cooked dinner for her. It was scrumptious!

I hope you are having a great Friday friends!:) Take Care!

Hi friends! We are enjoying our summer (finally) here and celebrated Independence day yesterday with family. We’ve been spending most days in our backyard and our local parks. We got the kids a kiddie pool and they’ve been using it daily! Between that, and watering the garden, I don’t even want to know how much our water bill will be! HA! Brace for impact! LOL.

It’s been nice to have less structured days with the kids but come fall it will be a different story. I’m starting to plan for our homeschooling this year and getting materials, reading books about homeschooling, decluttering and still simplifying things in our home. We have family visiting us these coming weeks so we are looking forward to some family time. We are so excited!

Mia had fun during her soccer camp last week. This week she will start with her golf lessons. She’s excited:) One busy girl!

Have a wonderful day friends! Enjoy summer and take care:) God Bless!

Hi friends, this week was Mia’s last day of Preschool! They had a little program for all of the parents, showing us what they’ve learned for the whole year! I’m so happy for her because it was such a special year and she made lots of friends, learned so much, and built her confidence. Yesterday (Friday) we attended their end of school get together/birthday party of one of her classmates. Lots of fun despite the PNW rain!

We had dinner at a local Pizza/Italian restaurant to celebrate the event. Thank God both kids behaved. HA!

A little throwback of her first day of school!

Have a great Father’s day weekend friends!

Hi Friends! How’s it going? Our Roses and Rhododendrons are blooming right now. I don’t really notice our Rhododendrons unless I’m in the kitchen but these last couple of days the kids and I were in the park so we got to see it outside. It’s really pretty and they are all over our neighborhood right now. I particularly loved the red ones. The double delight roses that my MIL gave us are starting to bloom too. I cut one this morning so I can enjoy it inside the house. The best smelling roses that I know of / have smelled.

I did the groceries for the week and spent $96 (and another $10 for our milk delivery). I consider it low because we normally pay around $150 for a weekly grocery and that’s not including meat/chicken. We try to buy in bulk when we shop for meat/chicken/beef. Prices are going up for sure so I always check the grocery ads to see if there are sale items that we can use/like. This week the cereals that Hubs likes are on sale. Not sure if this is the lowest price we can get, but we are low on cereals and I don’t want to be driving all over the place for cheap cereals when gas prices are increasing too. It says I saved $23, so I will take it.

Hubs made homemade pizza this week. Matthew really loved it. It was good but Hubs wants to try other pizza dough recipe. We added caramelized onions and it added so much flavor:)

I cooked Chicken adobo this week too. Recipe by Joshua Weismann, my DIL sent me a video of him making adobo. (He has a youtube video,you can check it online). It’s a legit recipe and authentic to what I grew up back in the Philippines.

For affordable breakfast, I made potato hash and eggs. Toast and eggs! Easy and budget friendly recipes.

So far the grocery budget is doing well. I continue to use what’s in the freezer and pantry, but I plan to get meat this month too (running low on ground beef, pork). Hopefully I can find a good deal on that!

Have a great evening friends. It’s raining nonstop here, so no park for the kids! Going to do some crafts here.

Hi friends! I spent my morning planting the rest of the vegetables/plants that we have and I’m tired!HA. It’s been a productive morning in the yard, and I still have two pots I want to use so I will probably be going back to Home Depot to buy more flowers and 1 hanging basket, then I think we will be done. I took a couple of pictures but forgot to include the vegetable box (my toddler was having too much fun playing in the dirt too!) I got distracted!HA

Hubby is very ambitious with our garden this year. He wanted us to plant strawberries and an eggplant! LOL. Mind you we’ve planted both before(twice) and we always fail, I think it’s because of the weather. So yeah, he’s determined to plant again and hopefully we will be successful (maybe 3 strawberries?HA).

It’s been 6 months since I started my No/Low spend year! It’s been going great, I can’t believe that I haven’t bought any new things for myself. Aside from the Staub pots that were gifted to me and the Ipad, nothing new for me. It’s a big help personally that I continue to declutter my stuff/our house so I’m careful about what I bring inside the house (as the homemaker I’m the one taking care of stuff so I try to be picky). My family doesn’t follow this “challenge” because my kids are growing and they need comfortable clothes/shoes that fit them. Hubs is not participating too, he still loves his Starbucks coffee every week!HA. He buys me coffee too so I do have splurges when it comes to treats, Hubs likes to spoil me and the kids:)

I’m looking forward to continuing this challenge for the rest of the year but I “MIGHT” buy some new work out shorts because one of my work out shorts is beyond repair. HA! We will see…

I plan to have a low spend June month, because we have lots of expenses when it comes to house maintenance fees. We had our roof gutters cleaned out, pressure washed the back patio / front steps, garden weeded out and cleaned. This is just seasonal expenses that we budget for because when you own a house, there is a lot of upkeep that needs to happen.

I plan to stick to our budget and live minimal this June. I will try to share here what I’m doing in terms of groceries, meal planning, etc.

Have a great Thursday friends! Weekend is almost here:)