Show Me Your Teddy Bear

Well, I have a few orders of business today.

First of all, “Coco” the nameless puppy is feeling just fine. She’s currently going through a de-parasite (not sure of the English term here) treatment, and has the last of it today. It involves the vet force-feeding her some sort of creamy liquid through a syringe. The first day went fine, but yesterday she really wasn’t having it. After it being forced down her throat, she spent the next half hour burping up a storm. (puppy burping is extremely cute, btw). Suki and Dolly were given a de-parasite treatment in pill form. I won’t go into the poo-ey details, but Suki and Dolly seem to be parasite-free and Coco seems to be successfully getting rid of any and all parasites.

With all the doggie drama, I’d forgotten to mention that Jorge went to check out tuxedo rental on Monday. He picked out a very nice black suit with subtle pinstripes, along with a black vest and tie. He looked very dashing, except for the fact that he had no shoes on. On Saturday, we’ll be taking some of the groomsmen to try some stuff on at another tuxedo rental store.

Lastly, for today’s Show Me Your… , I’ll be fulfilling my friend Catie’s request and posting the one thing I’d pull out of my house during a fire.

The obvious answer is….

MR. BEEPS!!!!

Mr. Beeps has been around for just about as long as I have. Considering his relatively old age for a teddy bear, I’d say he’s in great shape. His fur and limbs are entirely intact. The only thing missing is his “beep”. No, that’s not a euphemism. His nose used to beep when you squeezed it.

Years of use, however, have rendered Mr. Beeps un-beep-able.

Mr. Beeps sleeps in bed with me every night. Ya’ll will be happy to know that he now has a teddy bear wife names Mrs. Beeps, who sports a stylish Aeropostale sweatshirt, and a Baby Beeps, who enjoys dancing ballet.

Awww! Look at that face!

Show Me Your Poodles

For Show Me Your… , Magpie from Dazzled for Life asked to see my most treasured possession.

Magpie won a Jersey Shore costume contest this weekend. Congrats on your achievements!!

Well, folks… you’re about to be overwhelmed by cuteness.

My most treasured possession is my dogs. Here’s the story:

My in-laws have a white french poodle named Sisi. Almost 2 years ago, she had a litter of 8 puppies. EIGHT. ridiculous for such a small dog. For about 2 months, these puppies overran my in-laws’ house.

All 8 in one picture. 🙂

My in-laws kept one and named her Dolly. She was the smallest one, and almost died when she was born. The vet was able to revive her, and I’m happy to say that today she is a very very healthy doggie (but still small!)

Dolly as a puppy and Jorge's foot 🙂

Jorge gave me one as a present. I named her Suki, because the name is so gosh-darned cute.

Suki!!

A few months ago, my future mother-in-law was diagnosed with some heart issues, which often cause some blood pressure issues. (She’s fine, no worries) She was told she shouldn’t have as many dogs in the house, so she asked me if I could take in Dolly. Since we already knew and loved Dolly so much, I said no problem.

Around that same time, Suki and Dolly’s brother (Tedy), who lives with Jorge’s uncle, had a litter of 7 puppies with his “lady friend”. Six were sold, but Jorge’s aunt and uncle couldn’t seem to sell the last one. She won our hearts, and being the suckers that we are, we decided to take her in as well after some careful thought.

(Yes, I realize this family of poodles seems to have huge litters, and yes, I will be getting all 3 of my dogs fixed this year.)

So we took in this new puppy (who is 3/4 poodle and 1/4 terrier). She has no official name yet, but her nicknames include “La Negra” (the black one), “Coco” (short for cocodrilo, bc her mouth looks like a crocodile when the chews on my hand), and “Frijol” (bean… what my roomie calls her).

This weekend, they all got sent to the groomers. They looked so cute with more fur, but my house is incredibly hot. I have some interesting before and after pictures.

Suki before the haircut

Suki after her haircut... look at those ears!

 

Dolly before her haircut

Dolly after her haircut

Coco before her haircut

Coco after her haircut

And now for some bonus pictures:

Suki, Dolly and Coco (being cleaned after playing in the yard)

feeding time

"I'm so cute! Look at me just prancing around."

"Where's the leash? Where's the leash? I can smell the leash."

Suki says "Please don't go to work! Don't leave me with these two intruders! I love you!"

fluffy ears and skinny dogs!

Yum!

"This is my come-hither look."

"ooooh, what's that bright light?"

"We have come to Earth to kill you. Sleep with one eye open, Gringa."

There they are.

When people heard we decided to adopt Coco (after a short trial period), they said that’s too many dogs! However, all 3 dogs have awesome personalities and don’t destroy my stuff. Coco was potty trained in just 1 day. They’re extremely well-behaved, and we’ve found that 3 dogs really isn’t any harder than 1 dog, but it’s a lot more fun!

If you can come up with any cute names for Coco/La Negra/Frijol, I’m open to suggestions. We’re thinking a Mayan name would be cool, since we already have one with a Japanese name and one with an American name.

Show Me Your Office

I’m back after my mini-hiatus. Three days of avoiding the internet has paid off. I was able to watch the Lost series finale on Wednesday with no spoiler issues whatsoever. Finally we can get back into Show Me Your …

Leslie Limon from Motherhood in Mexico and Brooke from Livin’ la Vida Garcia both asked to see my office. I can’t show too much, since everyone wears uniforms with the company name plastered all over them, but I can show you my desk area.

Sorry Drama Mama, I can’t show you what I look like dressed up for work due to the uniform.

My desk is on the end, by the window.

 

My desk… our office only allows you to have 1 photo and 1 cup/mug/bottle. Very Spartan. I got a nice computer though!

 

I’m technically breaking the desk decor rules with this… but it’s so cute! One of my best friends brought this little booklet back to Cancun for me from the town of Tepoztlan.

 

The view from my window 🙂 This makes me happy no matter what’s going on in life.

 

Wanna know what the weather’s like in the Hotel Zone Monday – Friday from 9 am – 5:30 pm? I can tell ya. Not sure if you can tell in this pic, but we can also see the lagoon. We like to watch parasailers and the small planes that fly promotional banners over the Hotel Zone.

 

Off to the right, I can see the main road by my office. We can see almost all the way down to the airport.

 

Here’s the emergency exit on the ground floor (most will recognize this from a previous post). Excellent job done by our security team, as always. (2 months later, it hasn’t changed, FYI.)

 

For more photos of the view from my desk, you can check here, here and here. (man, I have a lot of posts of my office window. Maybe because for 9 hours a day every day, it’s the most interesting thing going on?)

Show Me Your … Parrot Eating a Tomato??

Today on Show Me Your… I’ll be killing two birds with one post 🙂

The Drama Mama asked to see my fave hangout in Cancun, and my bff from elementary school, Catie, asked to see my favorite food since moving to Cancun. So, today’s post will be about one of me & Jorge’s new fave restaurant in Cancun, “Va Que Va”.

Va Que Va  is a seafood restaurant located in downtown Cancun. Since it’s soooo far out of the way (on the opposite side of Cancun from the Hotel Zone) you’ll never see tourists here. It’s located in an average neighborhood, but you have to drive through quite a few sketchy neighborhoods to get there. It’s worth it though! Here’s why…

The entrance, hiding the restaurant from the street with foliage.

va que va!

4 out of 5 guys at my table drank micheladas

Jorge drank 2 of these! (gross?) Micheladas are basically beer mixed with Maggi steak sauce, worcestershire sauce, tabasco sauce, and lime juice, with salt and sometimes chili powder on the rim. Very popular in Mexico! Here at Va Que Va, they cost about $3 USD each for a liter. For $4 USD, you can get it with a skewer of shrimp in it.

I ordered a shrimp ceviche ($5 USD... that's the SMALL size!) and a frozen lime-ade.

4 of the guys split a platter for about $20 USD, which I believe included 4 kinds of shrimp and fried fish filet (you can pick and choose what you want the platter to include)

A parrot eating a tomato. Why not?

Why, hello there!

A mariachi band showed up...

...and spent the next half hour serenading the table next to ours.

We discovered this restaurant a few months ago and LOVE it. It’s always packed around lunchtime (1 – 3 pm here in Mexico). I think it’s impressive that I have seen no publicity whatsoever for this place, and yet it’s huge and fills up quickly. Just word-of-mouth, I guess.

Show Me Your Front Door, Neighborhood and Car

For today’s Show Me Your (fill-in-the-blank), I’ll be taking up three requests.

Tiffany from Incredibly Fierce, Leslie Limon from Motherhood in Mexico, and Kathryn from She Don’t Make False Claims each asked to see something, so here goes:

Tiffany asked to see the view from my front door…

Lovely view of a tiny front yard and some potholes. I will say that my window faces out onto this same view, and it's nice to hear the birds singing from that tree out front. 🙂

 Leslie Limon asked to see my neighborhood:

Here's my street...

I'm right next to a middle school, and the kids hanging out on the balconies sure do scream a lot. (This was my fiance's middle school, btw!) Man those potholes look especially nasty after a night of rain, don't they?

Some lovely grafitti (No, we don't have gangs and delincuents in my hood. It's from those lame middle schoolers... hence the crappy quality and lack of imagination.)

This just happens to be one of my fave streets in the hood because of the cute houses and pretty yards, and I usually end up walking down it at least once a day.

I found some of the elusive canteloupe bugambilias I referred to the other day in a previous post.

pretty!!

These seem to be a cross between the "neon canteloupe" bugambilias (still can't find those) and the fuschia bugambilias

This is my favorite tree in Cancun! We don't have many big trees around here (something I miss about Virginia), so this is a fun substitute.

The trunk of my fave tree

I am DYING to get into this garden. It has eluded me for 2 years now. Doesn't it look like it has amazing stuff inside?? There are huge flower trees, some cute white buildings, and huge bushes in there. Let me in!

another view... *sigh* someday it will be mine

Kathryn asked to see my car. I have no car. So what do I use? THESE!!

My taxista let me take a picture of him this morning!! Our taxis are white with green stripes down the side. They charge around 2 or 3 USD to take you anywhere downtown. ("Tips are appreciate" HAHAHA)

So there you go… that’s pretty much what I see every morning on my way to work. 🙂

Show Me Your Wedding Attire!

Tonight on Show Me Your (fill-in-the-blank) I’m answering to my friend Cheri’s request, from CheGo2 the Kitchen. Check out her blog… she lives in the Philippines!! How cool is that?

She asked to see my wedding dress. Sadly, I can’t post it bc my fiance reads this site, and he knows it’s supposed to be a surprise.

But don’t worry! I have something else in store for you Cheri, which, for sentimental reasons, definitely deserves its own post.

When my mom flew in a few weeks ago, I mentioned that we went to Merida to check out different wedding stuff. Our first stop was at Tai Spa, which was gorgeous! The whole spa was covered in fresh bugambilias… and ya’ll know how I feel about bugambilias 🙂

I went there to get my wedding hair trial done. I brought in a picture, but the girl did something quite different… but soooo much better than what I had envisioned.

The top is going to be a bit poofier the day of, to add some more volume.

The swirly bun on the bottom is also going to have more "oomph" to it the day of, even though I think it looks beautiful as is 🙂

The juliet cap is almost 60 years old, I think. It was first used by my grandma, then by my mother on her wedding day. I can never look as good as my mom did in this because she has gorgeous long dark hair. Still, I think it looks pretty awesome.

Show Me Your Fave Thing in Cancun!

Continuing on with Show Me Your (fill-in-the-blank)… (this is so much fun, btw)

Krysten from After-I-Do asked to see one of my fave things in Cancun.

After some serious thought, I realized that the one thing that gives me instant happiness every time I see it is… bugambilias! These vividly colored flowers are all over the place in Cancun. (I might even like them better than the dogwoods we had in Virginia, because these babies are always in bloom!)

Since there are so many in my neighborhood, I decided to take some pictures. (Hope the neighbors didn’t catch me doing this)

These gorgeous flowers come in tons of bright colors… in my time here, I’ve seen fuschia, pale pink, bright red, neon canteloupe (making names up, but I swear that’s what it is!), orange and purple.

Show Me Your Local Cuisine!

Today, I’ll continue on with Show Me Your (fill-in-the-blank).

Nikki from Que Sera Sera (as a semi-Mexican blogger, I gotta love the title!) asked to see some local cuisine. The other day I went to one of my favorite places on Avenida Tulum (the main road in downtown Cancun) for some…

FISH TACOS!

"Los de Pescado" 🙂 Aren't you happy just looking at it?

The view from my chair... this plaza has a whole bunch of small restaurants all lined up in a row. Sometimes I'll get a fish taco from Los de Pescado, plus a cheese & spinach empanada from the Argentinean locale next-door (El Emporio).

Here they are! Fish tacos. My drink is Hibiscus water, and the sauces from left to right are chipotle, tamarindo, and mayo-chipotle. As you can see, I opted for mayo-chipotle sauce with pico de gallo.

For 20 pesos (about one dollar and 50 cents), they give you one fish taco. This taco is 2 tortillas thick and includes 2 of those fried fish sticks. What I do to control my portions is divide my one taco into 2 (as seen in the picture). I separate the tortillas and put one fishstick on each. It lasts longer that way, and I feel like I’m eating more. I fill up on this pretty easily, although sometimes the craving for an empanada or 2 from next door overcomes me.

So what you see in the picture (1 taco turned into 2, plus my hibiscus water) costs about 3 US dollars total, plus tip. At the Argentinean empanada place next door, you can have 3 empanadas plus a soda for $49 pesos. Haven’t done it yet, but it’s a good deal.

Show Me Your Purse, Oldest Shoes and Pomanders!

Ok, here’s the first installment of the Show Me Your (fill-in-the-blank) series, which originally began at Luxe Chandelier:

Ang from Football, Sushi and the Pursuit of Happiness asked to see my purse and some of my must-have purse contents. I loooove my big purses because I am a compulsive over-packer. I like to carry with me anything I may possibly need throughout the day, because a girl never knows what surprises the day might have in store.

I bought this purse with part of my first paycheck eight months ago. It's Nine West, and probably the most expensive item of clothing I've ever owned. It's gray leather (??) and suede on the sides, and it goes with everything.

Must-haves: vanilla-scented travel tissues, sunglasses, 30-dollar cell phone, vanilla lipgloss, vanilla VS body spray, Mary Kay makeup case, Mary Kay brush kit, and Cover Girl foundation and powder

 I will now introduce you to my secret weapon… my planner. It goes EVERYWHERE with me. It’s a personalized planner by Erin Condren.

Krysten over at After-I-Do asked to see my favorite thing in Cancun. She’ll have to wait, because I haven’t had a chance to catch a picture of it yet. 🙂 (I’m not sure going by request order is going to work!!)

MurdocksMama asked to see my oldest pair of shoes. Well, I didn’t want to embarrass myself too badly, so I placed them alongside my newest pair of shoes.

My high school gym class New Balances (8 years old), alongside my new Zingara sandals (can't live in Cancun without a few pairs of rockin sandals)

 There you have it. 🙂

I’m also posting the trial pomanders I made, which turned out GORGEOUS.

The one on the left was dyed in cinnamon tea, while the one on the right was dyed with Hibiscus tea with red and blue food coloring

Show Me Your (fill-in-the-blank)!

Good morning, all!

Today I’m going to take a page out of my buddy Ang’s book. She found the coolest idea yesterday on Luxe Chandelier, and I’m going to shamelessly copy it. (Thanks, Ang!)

Make sure to check out her site, Football, Sushi and the Pursuit of Happiness. (Personally, I love sushi, I love pursuing happiness… not so big on the football.) She’s a total sweetheart, and her blog is so refreshing to read.

Here’s the link to the post that started it all at Luxe Chandelier:

So here it is: I will post pictures of anything you ask for (within reason, people!). Just leave me a comment on this post, saying what you’d like me to take a picture of. Wanna see something in Cancun? Something of mine? My BFF? Part of my day-to-day existence? You say it, and I’ll make it happen.

This is your chance to tell me what to post. So take advantage! I’m really excited to hear about what you wanna see 🙂

In other news, last night I made 2 coffee filter pomanders that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. I had to do a bunch of different color tests, but I finally found 2 colors for my wedding that are absolutely AMAZING. STUNNING. GORGEOUS. Roll over, Martha Stewart.

I’m not gonna lie… I’ve always been jealous of those craft bloggers (you know who you are!) who get a piece of moldy dormroom furniture from Craigslist then turn it into some shabby-chic piece of fine furnishings. Now it’s my turn! My first craft project 🙂 I’ll have a step-by-step post up and running by sometime next week.

Calorie Counting with Gringation

Wednesday, May 12: 1222 (Gold star!!)

2 cups of strawberry, blueberry and blackberry mixed

Chocolate chip cookie

Small salad with 1000 island dressing and jicama

Mashed Potatoes

Jamaica water

Corn Pops

2 large quesadillas with mixed cheese and spinach

One thing’s for sure… I need to step it up on the protein so I can avoid more evenings of binging on creamy peanut butter straight from the jar. That was a low point.

Let me know what you want me to take pictures of! I’ll try to step up my photography skills for this one, I promise.