Owner, Designer, Maker, Curator
Welcome!
I am a night owl with coffee running through my veins. There is nothing more important in life than family. Girls really do have more fun, and every little girl should be made to feel beautiful.

My Inspiration

Tutus for Tots

When I got pregnant with my daughter I put a plan into place to be able to stay at home with her in a way that I could still put all of my creative energy into use.

When my daughter was born and as she grows, I continue to create things that makes her feel as beautiful as she is. I truly believe that every little girl deserves amazing things and that every day should be turned into a special occasion.

My shop, Bijou Baby Boutique was created in the beautiful Monterey Bay area of California. Candy Curls Bowtique is its sister store.

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You can see the real thing by clicking on any of the photos.

On a similar note, I just posted in my shop announcements the last day to place an order and was shocked that it’s coming up in two weeks! How does time fly so quickly? And how do you feel about Etsy’s new About page?

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Ingredients:

1 lb. Tilapia

1/8 Cup Doenjang or Miso Paste

2 TBSP Honey

1 tsp Sesame Oil

1 tsp Rice Wine Vinegar

Sesame Seeds and Green Onions as garnish

1. Place fish in large baking dish or pan and drizzle with sesame oil. Broil on high heat for three minutes.
2. Meanwhile combine Doenjang, honey and rice wine vinegar in a bowl. 
3. Remove fish from oven and flip over. Either brush or scoop sauce on top in a thin layer. Broil for an additional 3-5 minutes until fish is done and flakes easily with fork.
4. Serve over rice and garnish with green onions and sesame seeds. Kimchi optional

Want to learn more about the health benefits of Doenjang? Click here!

Happy Cooking everyone!

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This project should take you 1-2 hours, tops. It is a perfect nap time project.

Here’s what you need:

Felt, 2 sheets should be enough. I used purple in two different shades.

Scissors

Some form of measurement, like a ruler.

Needle and thread

Scrap fabric

Dried herbs, in my case, lavender

Ribbon, elastic, string, (for the handle, this is completely optional)

Hot Glue (also optional)

• Cut two squares of fabric about 4.5″x4.5″.  Press. Place on top of each other (right sides together) and pin. Sew all the way around (I used a 5/8″ seam allowance), leaving a 2″ opening on top. Snip corners and turn inside out. Fill with dried herbs and hand sew the opening shut. This is your lavender satchel. Set aside.

• Next cut out another fabric square 5″x5″. Press.
• Cut out 1″x2″ rectangles from your felt in both colors. You’re going to fold the outer top corners down into the center, as shown in the photo below, and hand stitch to the 5″x5″ fabric. Each felt piece only needs two stitches. (You’ll see the rectangle in the photo below has a stitch in the middle, that was only for demonstrative purposes. No need to stitch it first, just stitch it straight onto your fabric.)

• Continue to hand stitch the rectangles (folded as explained above) around the border of the fabric, layering as you go. I mixed the light with the dark purple, adding a light purple rectangle after ever 2-3 dark purple rectangle.

• Once the entire fabric is almost completely covered, I made a little felt flower and glued it to the center.
• I then flipped it around and hand stitched a strip of shimmery dark purple elastic to the top to act as a handle. You can use ribbon, yarn, or anything else that you have laying around. You can also hot glue it on if you prefer.
• I cut out a felt square 5″x5″ and glued it around three sides of the back of the felt flower square, leaving the top where the handle is located open.
• You can now just pop in the lavender satchel straight into the top and hang it on a door, chair, or wherever you want. When it no longer releases the lavender scent (a few months maybe?) you can just replace the satchel. Or in my case, just let your daughter hijack it as a purse. Easy peasy!

Linking to Serenity Now

This makes me smile so big because one second after I snapped it, she let out all of the excited energy she had been holding inside which translated to the most delighted shriek! It was a wonderful moment.

Look what Little Moo brought to my door!!

Annabel’s new friend Loves that she loves animals so much.

So true, and such a good daily reminder.

Broiled Tilapia, Korean style (recipe coming soon!)

Packages filled with tutus, all ready to be mailed out!

And just for fun, I seriously want this shirt. In a size small please

How was everyone else’s week? Anything fun or silly happen?

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Nature and Art Project!

Here’s what you need:

Egg Carton

Paint (you can also use crayons, markers, paint pens, etc.)

Wax Paper

Iron and board

Hot glue gun (any kind of glue will probably work, though this way its super fast with no mess!)

Nature

• First thing I did was hand Annabel a recycled egg carton with a couple of paintbrushes and paint colors. I instructed her to paint each cup one color.

• I put the egg carton out in the sun to dry while we had our morning snack. I then told Annabel that we were going on an adventure to find colorful leaves and flowers. Whenever she found something she liked I had her organize it by color in her little egg carton (lavender flowers put in purple cups for example). You can bring along a book of plants and try to figure out the proper names of everything, or even classify all the flowers. We took our time looking around and describing everything that we saw (what bugs we ran into, how some of the plants were wet, how they smelled, size, etc.)

• After we found at least one flower for each color we brought our egg carton back inside. This is where you want to pull out your wax paper (cut it about 7-9 inches long) and have your little one arrange their new flowers and leaves on it. Make sure there is a bit of spacing in between plants. Lay another sheet of wax paper on top and carefully carry to ironing board. I put the wax paper on a piece of scrap fabric, and folded it over the wax paper to cover since I didn’t want to get wax on my board or iron.

Here are the flowers/leaves in between the two sheets of wax paper.

The wax paper is between this folded piece of fabric

• Iron/Press on HIGH heat, no steam. The iron has to be piping hot for it to work, though it doesn’t take long for the wax to melt and stick to each other. Keep checking, this step should only take about a minute.
• After you’re done, remove the fabric and hot glue your new wax paper onto the top of the egg carton. I wrapped a bit of the paper on the back of the carton too. Then trim edges off.

• She was really excited to see her flowers on the egg carton

Turns out, this period is very short lived, or at least it was for us. By the time she was12- 15 months old the pickiness started. And it just kept getting worse and worse. It got to the point where she would only eat a handful of things: peanut butter and honey sandwiches, apples, bananas, rice (plain), grilled cheese and mac and cheese. Plus milk. She was quite the milk monster actually. I had to limit the amount of milk she drank in fear of milk poisoning. The subject of food was very stressful to say the least.
I think part of the problem was the fact that family members and friends would give her junk food. I believe it was with the most innocent of intentions, but once Annabel tried greasy pizza and sugary cookies, it’s all she wanted. I literally spent hours upon hours researching on how to get my baby to eat, and thought “None of these tips work!” I had her help me cook, she loved to mix and add ingredients. I had her help me pick things out at the grocery store, I let her have choices, and ate the same foods that were on her plate. And she loved doing those things, but she still wasn’t eating.
So I came up with a plan. I had a serious talk with those that spend time with us and with her and let them know how important it was to me what she put in her mouth. I was as firm as possible. And I had to get more creative. I pureed steamed veggies and mixed them in the foods she ate to try to get more nutrients into her body. I started making her baby spinach smoothies, and would throw in every healthy ingredient I could think of and added bananas and honey to disguise the taste. I bought expensive powders from Whole Foods and Omega oils and Flax seed. I would bake muffins from scratch and throw in veggies and all kinds of weird stuff. Sometimes they didn’t turn out great (a really bad zucchini and cauliflower one stands out in my head) but she ate them. Sometime after she turned two we made a rule where she had to eat at least two bites off of her plate. If she didn’t want any more after that, then that was completely fine. She had two small snacks, one in the morning and one right before bed, and that’s it. A couple of months before her third birthday she started getting more and more adventurous and eating more! Thing about picky eaters, not only are they picky, but they don’t really like to eat either! At least it was that way with mine.

She loved this healthy vegetable and rice mixture

The foods she now eats blows my mind. I can’t believe she’s the same little girl. She requests spicy squid and kimchi every day, and loves seaweed. She eats vegetables and all fruit. Last night she had a tomato for a snack! She loves Thai and Indian cuisine, though Korean is her favorite (it’s in her blood, she really can’t help it). She loves pink fish (salmon), raw almonds and I am happy to say, meal times are now relaxed, and I love to watch my daughter eat! My point is, if I would have given her the cookies and pizza she requested all day, I never would have had a “picky eater” per se, but she wouldn’t be the adventurous and healthy eater she is today. It took over a year and a half to get to this point, but I am so glad I stuck with it!

What has your experience been with your little one? Always been a great eater or picky? Please share your story below!

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I hand cut balloons out of hot pink felt, and one large heart. The letters you see was also hand cut using light pink felt. I just hot glued on the letters, taped to the wall and tied on the ribbon. Super simple!

He’s taught me so much in my life, and some of my best memories with him revolve around food. My dad can cook pretty much every kind of cuisine you can think of and it tastes delightful. He’s a self-taught chef and was always a really hands on father. He believed that meals were a time for family. I remember on special occasions or sometimes even on a school day, he would wake up earlier than us just to be able to surprise us with the most amazing breakfast burritos. I think of them and think of comfort.

So in honor of Father’s Day, I thought I would share his recipe so you can treat your own dad to this easy to whip up brunch.

Ingredients:

For the Scrambled Eggs:

• 6 Eggs
• 3/4 tsp Cumin
• Monterey Jack Cheese, or Pepper Jack (personally I prefer Pepper Jack), shredded, whatever you have in your fridge is fine

For the Skillet Potatoes:

• 4 Potatoes, small-medium size Russets work great
• ¼ Onion
• Pinch of kosher salt and ground black pepper
• Olive oil, just a drizzle

For the Sausage

• My dad makes his from scratch. If yours doesn’t the spicy Jimmy Dean is good too.

-Flour Tortillas
-Avocado (optional)
-Sour Cream (optional)
-Salsa (I just bought it fresh from the store, spicy with a lot of cilantro!)

Directions:
Potatoes: I like to use a cast iron skillet, but a pan works fine too. Wash your potatoes really well and dice them. Peel your onion and dice it. Heat up your pan on med to med high and drizzle in some olive oil. Dump your potatoes and onions in. Add a pinch of kosher salt and pepper, and stir. Let brown slightly then cover and cook on low stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes.
Sausage: The package says to cut them into patties and cook that way, but I’ve always cooked it similar to how you would ground beef. Cook in pan and break up as you stir. Make sure you do follow the food guidelines as far as making sure the sausage is cooked all the way, I always make sure there is no pink left, and a lot of browning. This takes about 10 minutes or so.
Tortillas: Put in 300 degree oven until warm.
Eggs: Crack all eggs in a mixing bowl. Add cumin and 1 TBSP of COLD water (Dad’s trick, it makes the eggs super fluffy). Whisk with a wire whisk for a minute to two. Stir in cheese. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add about 1 TBSP of butter. Add eggs and let it just set, 10-20 seconds. Use a rubber spatula and mix. Cook all the way through.
Slice up your avocado, put out the salsa and sour cream (if using).

Now, pile up as much food as you can onto those tortillas and enjoy! Happy Father’s Day to all the great Dads out there! And a special shout out to mine.<3

By the way, what is your favorite dad recipe?

I woke up this morning realizing that in less than two months we’ll be out of here and immediately started making a list of all the things I want to see and do before we leave central California and all of its beauty. I realized that I’ve really grown to love it; I never envisioned when my husband was stationed here that it would (almost) feel like home.

But Thomas is out of the military, and we’ll be leaving for Austin. Did I mention he got accepted into UT’s masters of accounting program? For those of you who don’t know, and can deal with my boasting for a second, it’s currently the number one program of its kind in the U.S. I know, he’s a smarty pants. Or, you could really say that I’m the brainy one since I married him. I’ll let you decide

Anyways, continuing on to big changes! My three year old Annabel will be starting preschool, I will be managing business as usual and throwing in some classes on top of that. We are officially a family of school nerds. Even our golden retriever Marley, ahem I mean Edgar, has been attending obedience lessons.

So yes, six more short weeks of soaking in California exquisiteness. Let the countdown begin!

PS What has your experience been like coming out of the military life as a spouse or soldier?