I am between sorting about 2,500 images before the end of the weekend so we can get our clients DVDs before we leave for our trip. It’s coming at the woooooorst time. If we hadn’t already booked and paid for everything (and spent HOURS getting those dang reservations) we would not be going. We’re actually cutting our vacation short so we can get back sooner.

So this is just some rambling updates about fun things we have done:

In October, for Ricky’s birthday, my friend gave me extra tickets she had to a Baltimore Raven’s game at M&T Stadium. My husband is a huuuuge Ravens fan so he was so happy that we got to go.

Here’s us at the game:

A panorama shot of M&T Stadium before the game!

Then there was Halloween:

I dressed up as Minnie Mouse to hand out candy. I think that was the only PG rated costume I could come up with, haha! Ricky just stood there, as usual. Too cool for dressing up.

We, like everyone else, were patiently waiting to upgrade our phones to the new iPhone 6+. We both wanted gold, but I wanted 128GB (Ricky said no, so we settled on 64) and he “had” to have 128GB (annoying but it’s not a big deal). I could upgrade mine in September (Yay Sprint for letting you upgrade 90 days early!) and he had to wait until November 2nd. After stalking the availability around us all of October, we were sure we would have to order them online to get what we want. So naturally, on November 3rd, my husband is about to order his phone online and I said, “Let me look one last time…” and SURE ENOUGH! ONE store out of all the stores in our area had both of the Gold iPhone 6+s for our carriers in the capacity we wanted. Like whatttttt? We live near DC so there’s like 30 Apple Stores around but this one was near Arlington, VA. So naturally we drove all the way there! Haha

We literally jumped out of bed, threw on the first clothes we saw and got our phones!! It took about an hour, but here is our first iPhone 6+ picture:

Last weekend, we had a photoshoot in Ocean City NJ and we had to leave the house before sun came up. Ugh, I am such a nightowl so this was painful. whyyyy can’t the day start at noon?!

But the sunrise was gorgeous that day.

Tomorrow, yet again, we have to wake up super early to drive to Georgetown DC for my hubby’s haircut. Usually we going around 11:30-1PM and then have to leave Georgetown immediately after because the traffic back from DC (especially on Fridays) is HORRIBLE!! buttttt we are lucky this time! I think we may go to a cafe? Not 100% yet though.

Whelp, here’s a quick little update. I’m hoping to have some time to write about some more AMWF/interracial marriage specific things soon. Instagram is just sooo addicting though… haha

Mid Autumn Festival Vlog

Hello Everyone!

So now I have created my first vlog on Youtube!

Please view it and if you like it, please subscribe!

Thank you!!

Shopping in NYC♡♡

Hello everyone! Long time no see (^_^)

I recently typed an entire post about an award I was given and I clicked somewhere and lost the entire draft. UGH. So I will try to re-do all of that again^^

Recently I was able to go to New York City for five days with my husband. It was so much fun! We got to do a lot of shopping because we didn’t have to pay for a hotel. I wanted to share with you some of the stuff that I got^^

Things from Super Dry, Kinokuniya, Hollister (I know, I know), and MoMA!

A beautiful white skater skirt from Hollister! and this adorable and super warm white hoodie from SuperDry! It’s actually a British brand influenced by Japanese street fashion and we visited their NoHo Flagship store. Lately my husband has started to love it, so we’ve started shopping there a lot! It has “Osaka” written on the back which makes me giddy because I love Osaka but unfortunately have only been stuck inside 関西国際空港 (Kansai Kokusai Kuukou, or Kansai International Airport) during the immediate aftermath of the Tsunami/Earthquake.

Next was Kinokuniya, a three story Japanese bookstore in NYC! It has a cafe and lots of manga/anime in the top level and the bottom is mostly magazines, stationary and textbooks for learning. I got an AWESOME! Sailor Moon t-shirt. Have you watched Sailor Moon Crystal? Oh my gosh, it is lovely♡♡♡ I wasn’t able to watch that much Sailor Moon as a child, but I did have Sailor Moon dolls! So cute! Ricky also got a shirt that says stuff about “Original Sakura Romancing” and a shop name. I don’t know. He said it was cool so I’ll roll with it, haha

I also got a Hello Kitty Plushie in a cute kimono. It’s a special KawaiiJapan x Hello Kitty collaboration! And also a 10-pocket Rilakkuma Folder with a “space theme”. Soooo cute!!!!

Last, we were able to go to MoMa!! This picture turned out kind of blurry but meh. It’s fine^^ We got a SoHo/Prince Street Station magnet and also some postcards from our favorite artist. It was so amazing and we were lucky that a lady gave us two free admission tickets! She said she didn’t need them so we saved $50!

 

Next post, I will share some photos from my instagram, which, by the way, if you don’t follow me, please do! I am also going to start making videos now that I’ve found my Lumix camera and upload them to my youtube channel.

As always, thank you for reading!

Studio and miniphotoshoot.

Hello~

So today I do not have to be at work until 1:30, so I can quickly blog before work. w00t! 

We met with the designer, but it turns out I was working a lot more than we thought and we ended up decorating it ourselves (which is what I wanted to begin with but whatev).

 

Here is an instagrammed shot.

 

We have a few pieces to add, which I believe we will maybe tomorrow. But not bad for a start, eh? We did our first shoot in it yesterday and it worked out pretty well. I’m very pleased.

 

To test out the setting, Ricky and I did a little test shoot. Here is one of them.

Isn’t this awesome?! I’m so in love with it.

 

It was a lot of fun and I’m really excited to see the other photos from the shoot.

 

In other news, my two football teams – The Dallas Cowboys and the Baltimore Ravens both won their first pre-season games, so that makes me very happy.

We had lemon curd from Trader Joe’s on toast this morning for breakfast. SOOO GOOD!! Overall, I am in a pretty good mood despite having three hours of training later (blargh) and closing on a Friday.

Since we are getting close to the obon festival, I’m going to do a write-up about it and with my experiences.

 

「SAYONARA ITSUKA」+ feelings♡

I was off today, so this morning we woke up (late as usual x_x) and mowed our backyard and cleaned our basement because we had an interior designer come over to look at our basement. We’re going to make a plan to go shopping at IKEA and a few other places for the pieces. I’m really excited to get it done because the husband said I will be his first subject in our new studio. oho ho~!

I snapped the following picture a couple days ago when we were setting up our futon. Took sooo long. But now it’s coming together.

Once we met with the designer, we went to our bank and then the liquor store and picked up some Peach Twisted Tea (mostly for me, so I have something to drink when he has a beer), some Redd’s Apple Ale (Ricky has been wanting to try it for awhile), the new Parrot Bay frozen drinks, and a bottle of Strawberry Moscato that I found for under $10.

 

We came home, opened two bottles and sat outside on our deck and listened to the Kane show on the iHeart Radio app. Considering how hot it has been lately, it was so refreshing to just sit outside and chill in weather that won’t kill you. さっぱりしました♡ I recently started watching “SUMMER NUDE“, the new drama with Yamashita Tomohisa (aka Yamapi, a former member of my favorite Johnnys group NEWS). I watched first episode and it has really made me wanna just barbecue and chill every day.

This ad is just so cuteeee! hehe.

 

Tonight Ricky suggested we got to the movie theater to see a movie, but I suggested that we be cheap and watch a movie on Netflix. After looking and looking, I reminded him he chose the last two movies so it was my turn. I say it was my turn, but I suggested a movie and he got to say if he’d sit through it. We ended up watching 「SAYONARA　ITSUKA」 and drank the entire bottle of Strawberry Moscato. After it was done, we watched the first episode of “House of Cards”, the new Netflix show with Kevin Spacey set in Washington. It’s crazy, because we live less than an hour away and we’ve never taken even a day trip to DC!!! We’ve only been there a couple times for photoshoots and to Georgetown (still DC but a much different feeling than downtown) when we go to get his hair cut at the Japanese Salon. We need to do that soon.

 

I had a rough day recently at the bux that just reiterates that I do not want to be stuck working there forever and that I really want to be respected by others, and I think I need to be more aggressively demanding that respect. There is only so much I can take. However, every good feeling is met with a bad one and now I’m trying to figure out what to do since I missed the FAFSA deadline and now I’m not sure if I can afford to take classes this fall. *sigh* Life. I will get there though. I have to.

いつも読んでくれてありがとうございます！

それでは、またね！

Bloglovin’!

Trying to set this up >_<

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Recently.

Life has been very busy lately.

We’ve been doing a lot with my husband’s photography business. We did a promotion on Living Social, which to be honest I wasn’t so pleased with. We wanted to do a boudoir deal for $99. We figured we could book 20ish maybe? It would be a nice chunk of change. However, there were a total of four boudoir deals running on Living Social for the same area, which means we’re competing with them for the same amount of clients. Ugh, so annoying. I wish we could have waited to run our ad until later. One or two for the same deal is fine, but four?! That means no one is going to sell well. Anyways, we decided to turn our basement into a studio, which is actually almost finished. We’re actually meeting with an interior designer on Thursday for a consultation.

I’ve also been busy with work. Finally seem to be getting normal hours again, which means less time for anything besides work, sleep, and helping my husband’s business. I’ve been researching a lot of design stuff as well as boudoir photography. I also got accepted into UMUC, which actually isn’t hard because it’s just an online school, but it is part of the University of Maryland, which is one of the best colleges around. Now I just need to get some financial aid. So, instead of applying for scholarships I’m writing a blog post. Procrastination at its best.

I was certified as a “coffee master” at my store last month. To become a coffee master, you have to read a mini-textbook on coffee, answer questions, sample every blend of Starbuck’s coffee and do a presentation for your district manager and store manager. After passing, I organized a “coffee seminar”, kinda like a mini-lecture on coffee. Our theme was “Coffee Pairings: A Beginner’s Journey”. We wanted this to tie into the “coffee tasting journey” that we baristas go on. I’m also scheduled to do a coffee tasting at our district meeting with all the store managers in the area with one of my coworkers who was also certified with me.  I was kinda excited about it, but two days ago I made a big mistake during an inspection that I think will have my manager really pissed at me. Oh well. It wasn’t entirely my fault, but I was being kinda careless and I should’ve known better. There goes my chance for a promotion, huh?

 

Nothing too interesting this time, just a bunch of ramblings. We do have a couple things planned over the next week so I will try to post more then.

the beginning.

初めまして。

ステイシーと申します。

hey everyone. This is my new blog. After some feedback, I’ve decided to try this WordPress thang out. So, for now, unless I decide I cannot stand it, I will be posting from WordPress.

My previous blog kind of died down once I stopped being so focused on Japan. It was a great outlet when I needed to just talk and talk about how much I wanted to return to Japan. How much I needed to return to Japan. I wouldn’t say I’m any less obsessed, but I’m settling into my life back home.

It’s weird. I couldn’t imagine life without my connection to Japan and now I’m doing very little in connection with it. *sigh* But, I have been accepted into UMUC (University of Maryland University College – an online school) and I do plan to study Japanese and Political Science, but I need to also study Mandarin Chinese because my husband is from Taipei, Taiwan and his native language is Mandarin. I know some basic words and my sister-in-law lives in the US, my father-in-law is a Tour Guide so they both can speak English, but my mother-in-law cannot speak much. I feel like it’s the proper thing to do^^

My plan is to make this more personal than my previous so I will update about whatever. I promise I will try to keep politics out of it though 🙂

So, here is to new beginnings.

Our wedding day.

I hope you will join me on this journey.