Las Vegas Mama

For all my local readers, you may not have heard about this yet, so here it is. Snow Day is Saturday, Dec. 4th at Exploration Park at Mountain's Edge. And the best part is that it's free!

Apparently I my blog is starting to be like the bubonic plague of blogs. Because people are avoiding it like the...plague. First of all, no one commented on my last post. Ouch. See, this is what happens when I stop trying to be entertaining and just write what is on my mind. And second of all, no one commented on my last post. I am weeping. Ok, I am not weeping. But seriously, where is everyone?? I am pretty sure most of you have nothing better than to wait around, refreshing the browser to see if I posted anything new. I mean really, it is not as if there was a holiday recently and you are all catching up on everything that got put on hold over the holiday! Oh, wait.

The Thanksgiving holiday was all kinds of awesome. There is nothing in the world like spending quiet, quality time with the people you grew up with - the people who know you better than anyone else in the entire world (except my husband, who uncanny with predicting how I will react to things). Although Thanksgiving Day itself was a lot of fun, Saturday night seriously takes the cake for fun family nights. My mom and sister cooked an amazing dinner. In other words, I did nothing ! Yay!!! We also cracked open a few bottles of wine. I am not much of a drinker but when the mood strikes me for wine, I gets all thirsty-like. So glug glug glug. I had a couple reds. A few whites. Over the course of what was probably two hours, we had that delish dinner, drank up, and had a very engaging and lively conversation about life, religion, and... well...ok, it was just life and religion. Ivy and Violet eventually decided we were not paying enough attention to them and pulled me and my sister Nat...

Hi everyone! Hope you had a beautiful Thanksgiving! I have nothing much to say, except "Good Luck!" on shopping all those Black Friday Sales! I, for one, am going nowhere. This is a perfect day for staying warm and cozy and spending quality time with la familia. I am going to start decorating for Christmas, do some crafts, and be as silly as possible with my family. What are you doing today? Braving the sales? Drinking hot chocolate and eating leftovers? Watching snoozeball? Are you still in a food coma from yesterday? Whatever it is, I hope you are happy and having fun.

This weekend we had a combined birthday for Ivy and Violet, so that our families could come up from LA and help us celebrate. Along with our families, I invited my BFF from LA and my BFF from here in Vegas. Feel special, BFFs. It was only my family and YOU. Are you so, so honored? Anyway, at the last second I decided to just go for a Candyland theme. I only had 2 days to plan it because up until 2 days before hand, I was totally uninspired. This is what I came up with. Sugar cookie lollipops, made and decorated from scratch Cupcake sugar cookies Sugar Cookie gingerbread men, decorated like the game pieces Gingerbread men, candy canes and the Lollipop Forest cutouts for the walls.  I used different sized glass containers along these ledges and filled them with different candies Fun signs Violet trying to break into the candy... ...And she succeeded. I made Ivy this "I Heart Candy" shirt using felt and a glue gun. Simple, quick, ...

Giant Ent-thingy. Photo Courtesy of MGM Mirage Resorts Are you guys ready for Thanksgiving? Did you already buy your turkey, pull out your recipes, and tear your hair out just thinking about everything you still have to get done before Thanksgiving? Take a break from the planning madness and get out of the house for a bit! My guide to fun Thanksgiving activities around Las Vegas is up at AOL City's Best -- check it out. . And here is one more that I just found out about this morning -- Color Me Mine at the District in Henderson is hosting a Kid's Black Friday event from 8am-11am for kids ages 6 and up. Drop them off so they can work on painting Christmas gifts for the family while you go out shopping. They will watch a holiday movie, paint stuff, and they will be served a light breakfast including hot chocolate or orange juice, muffins, and cereal. I don't know about you, but any time I can shop alone it is a great day!!

So. I am starting things up again with AOL City's Best. This time I will be writing a weekly article about family-friendly activities and events in and around Las Vegas. I was a little hesitant at first because I didn't know if I would be able to generate content on such a consistent basis. After all, with the blog I just post whenever I have something to say. But after discussing things with my editor and getting a clearer picture of what they need, not only do I think I will be able to do it, I think its going to be pretty fun. Fortunately for me, I will be able to sort of translate what I have already been doing on this blog and put it out there for all the world to see. Ok, maybe not all the world. But definitely a significant portion of Las Vegas families. In fact, the content I write for AOL just might replace my local reviews. Maybe. Still thinking about it. Either way, if I link up to the AOL site, click over and be sure to check out what new and interesting thing...

I went to the SITS Bloggy Boot Camp on Saturday. Because I am a major airhead, I did not even consider the fact that Utah is an hour ahead of Vegas. Duh. So I got there an hour late and missed the whole lecture on Twitter. The whole thing was very interesting, but the hands down best part was learning about SEO. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It has been the mystery plaguing me for a while now. And it is ridiculously simple. Or at least the beginners version is simple. Wanna know how to do SEO? (Am I violating any rules here by publishing it? If I am, let me know!) The very, very, very basics are: ~ Your blog titles should be the names of things people search on. Instead of a really funny and witty title, do something boring like "crafts" or "how to fly a kite" - stuff like that. ~ When you post an image, rename it as something easily searchable, like the above examples. Even if the picture has nothing to do with what you name it. Oh, and if the name...

I decided to time travel to the past to warn my past self of something. Here is the note I will leave for Past Me, from Future Me. Dear Me from the Past, I am coming to you from the Future to warn you. Before you start wondering, the answer is NO - you are not skinny yet. When that happens I will be sure to come back and let you know so that you can go out with a bang right before hand and glut yourself on chocolate and cheeseburgers. So, Past Me.... here is the warning. Next time you decide to not to intervene when the girls start fighting, to see "what happens", bring the vomit bucket. Seriously. You are about to have your peaceful morning disturbed in a big way. Ivy will be in front of the mirror. Violet will push herself in front of Ivy because she wants to "clean" the mirror with a wipe, a la Snow White. (Side note to self: buy stock in baby wipes, Violet LOVES to play with them and you will go through them like water. You will be totally rich) Ivy w...

Amazon just pulled the pedophile's how-to manual they were selling. Good. But guess what? The point is that you were willing to sell it in the first place. It's disgusting and so, so wrong. They also sell, or have sold in the past, other very questionable material that covers a how-to for illegal activities - including how to smuggle cocaine. The devil is doing a jig over at Amazon if you would like to join him there. He big puffy sparkle hearts Amazon, you see. You can read more about the sicko book here . I, for one, am saying "LATER, SUCKA!" to Amazon. There are plenty of other online book, movie and random stuff sellers out there who don't support criminal activities.  I think I will just head over to one of them for my holiday shopping. How about you?

Good title, right? Sounds epic, in my opinion. But that is because it is epic. I accidentally stumbled upon a seriously awesome parental scam. It involves frozen fruit. And the words "ice cream". It's so easy, it's almost criminal. I bought a variety of frozen fruit - strawberries, mango, and blueberries - with the intention of making smoothies for the girls, to up their fruit intake. To my surprise, they wanted to eat the frozen fruit on its own. Something about it being cold, or maybe the texture. They loved it. So when they started clamoring for dessert after dinner one night, I offered them some "mango ice cream". "Yes! Yes!" they clamored. And that was the start of something beautiful. Now, if they need a little pick me up while I am making dinner, I offer them "ice cream", which is healthy and doesn't fill them up too much. They also tend to get hungry again a couple hours after dinner. Again, I offer them "ice cre...

I have to tell you about my dreams last night. Wait. Don't run away yet! I know, usually when someone recounts their dreams you are thinking, "Holy cow, this person is WEIRD. And boring. When are they going to stop talking about this really long, insane, pointless dream? They lost me at marshmallow kazoo." What, you don't think that? Well then you are better than me, and I am the only jerk who thinks retelling dreams is booooorrrriiiiiiiiinnnnnnng . Despite my thoughts on the topic, I never, ever stop myself from recounting my dreams to everyone else. Because my dreams are fascinating. So the dream is that I was at Caesar's palace, and I was supposed to have my spa treatment at a certain hour, but we were leaving to go back to LA (I guess in my dream that is where we lived). So I was not going to have enough time. The spa attendant sent me to the spa across the street in a different casino for my mud bath. When I got to the other spa some friends were there, a...

I haven't done one of these blog hops in a while, so here we go - Monday Mingle ! Its easy to do and fun to find new blogs, so head over there and link up. In other news, there is no news. Although you come here to get your daily dose of adrenaline, today I must disappoint. The only one getting an adrenaline rush today is me, because I have a friend coming over shortly and I have yet to pick up the house or clean in any way, shape or form. In fact, I am still in my jammies. When I say jammies you are probably picturing one of those fleece jammies with feet. A onesie. But actually I have very proper grown up jammies. Its just that my vocabulary has been hijacked by my kids. The point is that I am sitting here blogging. So as soon as she texts me to say she is on her way I am going to jump into a frenzy of activity. That will give me an adrenaline rush. It might even count as my exercise for the day. And that's my strategy for today.

I'm falling apart. Not mentally, because that were the case I would be running down the street screaming something really nonsensical and slightly disturbing. People would avert their eyes and think how sad it is that I am not locked up in a "safe environment". I mean I am falling apart physically. I do not know exactly when these things started happening to me, but suddenly I have a list of ailments to rival that of my 101 year old grandmother. I think this means that I am not aging gracefully. Wanna hear 'em? I have a cold, which is mostly over except it seems to have moved into my lungs. I hate when stuff is in my lungs. At least if I had a parasite or something then I would have an interesting story to tell. Instead I just have a chest cold. Lame. I need a parasite. My right shoulder is in constant pain. Some time in the year after Violet was born my joints started giving out. Apparently sleeping on my side was too strenuous for my shoulder to take. Sleeping...

So on Friday I went to the Canyon Ranch Spa at the Venetian's Palazzo for my birthday spa day. It was great, Phillip took the day off so he could watch the girls while I went to relax. He wins the Husband of the Year award. I had an AROMATHERAPY massage. I had to spell that all in caps so you can understand the hugeness of how fabulous that is. It was SO aroma-y and SO massage-ish, I loved it. They even massaged by eyebrows. That made me want to laugh. Pinch pinch pinch, went the masseuse. I suppressed a giggle. Pinch pinch pinch. I held my breath. Pinch pinch pinch. She really needs to stop now , I thought to myself. Pinch pinch pinch. I started to laugh, tried to suppress it, and ended up making a strange gurgle-snort sound. "Andrea..." she whispered softly. "Are you doin' alright?" Totally fine, dude, but you are massaging my eyebrows, I thought to myself. Anyway, I met up with Gucci Mama there from Mama Still Wears Gucci. If you have yet ...

Halloween ended up working out quite well, despite my Halloween mojo being dead! We went to a Halloween party at my brother in law's house for the evening and then went Trick or Treating in their neighborhood. Here are some pictures of our costumes. Ivy reigns as Marie Antoinette Violet is a cake, but since we didn't give her real cake to eat she got mad. Here they are sitting together. And here they are walking up to their aunt and uncle's house for the Halloween party. So what did I finally decide to dress up as? Well... it didn't match the girls at all, like Phillip did with his princely cape. I pulled it together the day before Halloween by raiding my mom's house. Suddenly there was a big perk to the fact that they don't get rid of old stuff. Side ponytail? Check. Blazer with big shoulder pads? Check. Bright forehead bandana? Check. Frosted lipstick and blue eyeshadow? Check. Tapered jeans tucked into scrunched tube socks? Check. ...