A Day At The Flower Fields

April is the best month of the year to visit botanical gardens as a lot of flowers are in full bloom. This time I have decided to visit the beautiful Flower Fields located at the Carlsbad Ranch in San Diego. This is my first time waiting The Flower Fields and it was honestly very breathe taking!

50 acres of rainbow colored giant Tecolote Ranunculus! One of the best place for flower site seeing as the garden is very well taken care of and there's also a lot of variety of flowers to look at!

I decided to dress up in a loose and flowy Spring outfit wearing a Esley asymmetric skirt and tank along with a cardigan as the weather was kind of chilly that day. To top everything off, a sun hat is definitely essential for the spring and summer time!

Pictures of more beautiful flowers!

A beautiful bed of flowers with a different color for each section.

The Giant Tecolote Ranunculus flower looks beautiful up close as there's so many layers of petals making this flower very unique.

Alright this is all the pictures for my glamorous Spring day.... I will definitely be back next year!

Dr. Hu's Jalili Face Mask Review

Dry skin is honestly a girl's worst nightmare as makeup does not stay and skin appears very flaky. Sadly, my face has been super dry lately due to the change of weather so I've been actively using face mask to keep my face moisturized at night so that I can wake up to much more hydrated skin. 

I actually have never heard of this brand, Dr. Hu, before until I purchased this face mask at a local street festival a few months ago. The ladies at the stand told me that this line Jalili from Dr. Hu is actually one of the top selling mask in Taiwan and was on sale for $1 a piece so I bought a few to test out.

 Dr. Hu's Jalili mask comes in 8 variety each with a different set of benefits. The one I've tested today is made with Ascorbic Acid which is used to help with whitening, firming, and moisturizing.

Direction says to apply the face mask after face is cleaned. Next allow mask to sit for 15-20 mins on face before removing the mask and then lightly pat the excess moisture into face.

The mask is very moist and there is plenty of left over serum in the package!

Sorry to show you guys a  picture of me with the mask on but I wanted to show you guys the texture of the mask so here it goes! The mask is very thin with a lot of moisture. Mask sticks very closely to the face and I love the two little flaps that I can pull up to moisturize my eyelids.

Wahhhhhhlaaa.. I super love the results. As you can see in these pictures the before picture of my face looks very oily and my pore are quite enlarged and after using the mask for 20 minutes my face looks much more hydrated, whiter, and pores are a lot smaller. Overall, I am super excited about this product and I will definitely buy more to use! Hope you guys give it a try too!

Picking My Own Strawberries!

Sometime leaving the city life and going out to the farm land for a fresh breath of air is very relaxing. I'm quite happy that it's currently spring and there's so much stuff to do and the weather in California is perfect for a lot of outdoor activities.

Now looking at the pictures the strawberries look so plump and juicy! Unfortunately, the strawberries were not sweet at all.

Haha... I found my self a big and juicy strawberry!

It was a bunch of fun picking strawberries at the U-Pick Strawberries in Carlsbad, California but it was a lot of hard work too. The rows of strawberry plants are very narrow so I had a hard time walking and bending down looking for strawberries. Man, picking strawberries and really make a person appreciate all the fruits we have at the market as a lot are hand picked by farmers!

Here's an up close picture of the strawberries. You can see a lot of strawberries are still green, white and tiny so I really had to dig real hard to find the big juicy red ones! Since this is a public strawberry picking farm some of the strawberries are damaged do to human abuse so I had to be real careful for not picking a spoiled strawberry!

See... I really have to squat to pick the strawberries as the plant is so low. Picking the strawberries was so expensive, the tiny cup you see in this picture cost $10 and I cannot overflow over the top too. I guess I was paying for the experience and not really the strawberries as a whole basket only cost $1 at my local market.

Eating my hard pick strawberries is very satisfying so I'm definitely going to try apple pickings next time!

Photo Session With My New Nikon 35mm Micro Lens

I recently purchased a new lens for my Nikon 3100 camera so my first round of testing subjects are of course the beloved pets! The cost of this lens was almost $300 with tax but I think the results are pretty much worth every penny I paid for it!

I realized that the results of the 35mm lens is almost the same as the 40mm so buying this lens I will not have to buy the other one so horray!

This is a picture of using the lens under macro mode. Wow... I can see almost every detail of the flower that I couldn't even see with my naked eye.

Here's a picture of the sweet and gentle MeiMei! I took her out for a stroll and she sure is enjoying the weather. Talking about his picture perfect shot...

Another shot here is my cute kitty fat cat! You can see every inch of his fur so closely.

Oh my my sister's doggie, Porky, looks real cute here. Porky looks like she's drooling while waiting to get a taste of that doggie bone. Yum Yum...

The lens pick up such great color, of course the subject must be beautiful too!

Here's another shot.. this one MeiMei is smelling the flower. OMG... she's just too cute... I just want to hug her right now!

Here's a picture of fat cat at night. The lens picks up a great amount of light even at night.

Side profile of Porky. She looks real good for a 10 years old dog.

I will end this post with a picture of MeiMei strolling down my block. Absolutely stunning... Overall, I like the results of the pictures and there's definitely no regret in buying this lens. It's so easy to use and the outcome are great but the only thing I need to learn is to focus correctly so hopefully I'll get better with practice.

Thanksgiving Dinner + Black Friday Purchases 2012

Sadly this year I didn't buy a lot of cheap stuff during the Black Friday sale as stores all opened up at 12:00am and I was sleepy plus the lines were 1-2 hours long for the good stores. The only thing I purchased was a black faux leather jacket at Target for only $15! It was quite a good deal as regular price is $39.99 so I figured $25 discount is quite nice.

Here how the jacket looks. Sorry, I'm feeling lazy so not trying it out for you guys. I know the style is rather simply but you really can't go wrong with something that cost less than an entree at Red Lobster. I'll show you guys how I style this piece the next time I wear it out.

Unfortunately, that's all I bought as I didn't get a chance to go to the Abercromie 50% off entire store sale nor the $5 deals finds at H&M. **Sob... next year** Don't worry I have a gut feeling that more deals will come as Christmas is near!

Oh... almost forgot that I wanted to share with you guys a picture of me posing in front of our family's Thanksgiving Dinner.

Sorry about the low quality picture as my sister took it with her iPhone very quickly as we were all STARVING and was not in the mood to snap photos!

I hoped you guys had a great Thanksgiving too!

Forever 21 x Hello Kitty Collection Collaboration 2012 Haul

Lately at my local Forever 21 store they released a limited edition Hello Kitty collection with a lot of super cute home and apparel items. The collection was released on November 15th, today when I went there with my sister a lot of items were sold out, but thankfully I still managed to buy some super duper cute items!

The collection was made up of 6 Sanrio characters(Hello Kitty, Hangyodon, Badtz-Maru, Chococat, Monkichi, and Purin). My favorite is definitely Hangyodon, the comedian fish, that has not been sold in the USA Sanrio store for a long time! Yes, my taste is quite indifferent as I like weird and unique characters...

OMG.... everything is so.... so.. cute!  Looking at the way the items are arranged, it's giving me a urge to want to buy everything! Gosh, I should stop that thinking as that would create a lot of damage to my wallet.

Wow, this collaboration is one of the cutest I've ever seen so far! I'm seriously obsessed as you can see... Oh no oh no, I'm even starting to hear voices saying "come take me home, I know you want me". ** hit myselft on the forehead ** I must think straight! cannot buy cannot buy.....

Well, then I'll show you guys what my sister and I picked up then. **drum.... rolling....** I probably shouldn't over hype this as we didn't buy a lot of stuff, but I feel that we did buy most of the cutest items (at least in my eyes they were the best).

Taah...da... a super cute Hangyodon floor mat. I have a gut feeling that this will be a hot item even though I know that he's not a very popular Sanrio character so there's barely any pictures of him on google. Hangyodon is so cute, especially his sausage like lips but why is he not popular? Don't worry Hangyodon, when you become popular again people will regret not buying items of you as by then your items will sell for big bucks on ebay.

Forever 21 must be making big bucks out of this as this mat. This baby cost me $19.80 and honestly its made out of cheap sparsely sewn fabric, but I guess the cuteness will make up for my lost. I showed this to my mom and she said that its very cute but when I told her about the price she was like... I have to be careful not to step on his face because he cost so much... gosh, my mom is so cute.

Of course one is never enough for me so I had to pick up this cute pair of pajama pants in order to satisfy my need! I'm so going to wear this everyday and I don't care if people call me childish.

A good thing about this pair of pants was that it only cost me $10.80 so I didn't have to break the bank to buy it. I'm still in disbelief that I spent $19.80 on a small, cheap quality mat that I'm going to place outside my room. I guess the bright side is that I can see and use this mat everyday to tell myself it is worth every single penny I paid for it! Poor Hangyodon..... I'm going to have to step all over your face soon.

Anyways, when speaking of Sanrio, I'm not sure why but a lot of my favorite Sanrio characters are actually not very popular among the crowd. Since these characters are rare, it's hard for me to buy them anymore so hopefully they will create my items of them in the future. **please let my prayers be heard** I guess my taste is just too different.... :(

Patpatapeppy

I really liked this collection when I was a child because all the characters look so dreamy and cute but unfortunately it was popular so the items are not produced often and is extremely hard to find. It's currently ranked as number 33 on Sanrio's 2012 character ranking chart so hopefully in the near future it'll be in the top 10 category!

Pokopon’s DiaryThis is another one of my favorite character that's not being sold in Sanrio stores anymore due to it's low popularity. Although in real life I don't like raccoon as they are monstrously huge and always scares the beep out of me bypopping out of nowhere when I go outside for a walk. I'm not sure why, but I always imagine that they will bite my precious toes off if they get hungry enough so I always walk out in fear thanks to raccoon    KobutanopippoNow here comes the last one for now. This is actually my most favorite character as I was growing up in the 90s. I remember it was Pippo was quite popular too but for some reason it just gradually faded off the market. Pippo is such a cute piggy, but not a lot of people actually remember this character as it's ranked #74 out of 100 Sanrio characters in 2012. That number is just ridiculously low that I think it'll be really hard for Sanrio to produce this character again unless some miracle happen.  

Here's a picture of my sister trying on the beanie that was really cute, but we didn't buy it as it's really not that cold here in Cali so no need....

My sister did buy the Kitty inspired jewelry as it's quite classy and pretty looking. In this photo you can see her wearing the pearl necklace. Pretty right? I forgot how much it cost her but it should be around $10 or so. 

After shopping my sister and I went to eat at a restaurant known for their organic Hainam chicken. Flavor was average, but I like that fact that they chicken was boneless. 

I ordered curry beef with wild rice. Sorry didn't take any pictures of myself that day as I looked pretty messy so next time!Alright this post is super long so I shall end it here. I'll try to update more often instead of cramming a lot of information in one post. Bye bye.... :)