What is a juice?

• liquid that is naturally contained in fruit or vegetable.  (keyword, NATURAL!)

Why juice? -

• Juicing helps you absorb more nutrients from the fruits/vegetables
• Juicing allows you to eat an more vegetables
• You can add a wider variety of vegetables in your diet

What kind of juicer?-

There are all different kinds of juicers that are available, knowing which one is the right one for you is the tricky part. If you already know the kinds of juices you wish to make, you can kind of gauge by the hardness of fruits/vegetables in the ingredients. Certain juicers are better equipped with motors handle both hard and soft fruits/vegetables.  If we want to get technical about it, there are 3 major categories: Mastincation, Centrifugal and Triturating (twin gear). Each has a different method of extracting and separating the yummy juice from the pulp. (Which I actually didn’t even know until after I bought my juicer.)

There is also the question of: Pulp ejection, or Non-Pulp Ejection?

Pulp ejection will separate the pulp into an external container that can easily be removed and cleaned when full, Non-Pulp Ejection types need to be taken apart completely, emptied and reassembled. (Pulp ejectors are more convenient for making lots of juice, the NPE is good for 1 to 2 people.)

I was originally going to go with a Jack Lalane like my man RawRawn got a while back. But after some searching, I went for a one up and picked out a Breville. My lovely bought me the juicer I wanted for my birthday!

I haven’t experimented with a whole lot of juices, but I started with carrott. There are all kinds of juices out there and the best way to juice is to constantly mix it up and have different vegetable combinations. I’ve found that juicing is very expensive, so I try to do juices as much as I can. The more I learn about juicing, the more I fall in love with it!

Happy Juicing everybody!

Friends and Family traveled from all over to join us for a small celebratory ceremony on the Cocoa Beach at the Pier. Atlantic Ocean Grille accommodated us for the reception and we had an extremely helpful staff to lend a hand. We had an awesome Officiant from Dream Beach Weddings that saw to a beautiful ceremony for us. Throughout the year, I had been super busy gathering all kinds of supplies for the decorations we would use on our special day. With the help of Etsy.com and various wedding websites, I had planned the perfect little decorations for our beach wedding.

A week before the wedding we met up with the manager at Atlantic Ocean Grille to see the reception hall and take a run through of where everything would happen. We changed our reception from the main dining hall where we would be seated with everyone, to a private banquet hall lined with a wall of windows looking over the ocean. It was the perfect size for our little group! You can watch the video we shot while we were there on September 03,2011 Here on Youtube!

My sister and my mom spent the day with me getting ready, while Dan had brunch with his family nearby. He got ready at the house and I got ready with my family at the hotel near the Pier. I have to give a round of applause to La Bella Spa for the beautiful job they did on my hair and makeup! Just before the ceremony was to start, a drizzle started and forced us to move location from the beach side to inside the reception hall on the Pier. Small adjustment made for a beautiful inside setting! They managed to use my decorations around the hall and everyone had a front row seat!

I had managed to take every camera with me, so I don’t have any footage of the ceremony, but I took what we did shoot and made a little video. You can watch it here on Youtube!

And we were off to our Hawaiian Honeymoon! Lots of videos and blogs for those comming soon!

So, it’s been a while- that means I should have several update blogs here back to back telling you all the fun stuff I’ve been up to while I was away.

Lets Recap some major highlights thus far: I’ve had two videogames published and released in stores, I married my best friend on the beach and honeymooned in Hawaii. I celebrated my birthday with tons of friends including my sister!

Lots of fun posts comming up for the holidays! It’s good to be back, stay posted for more!

A while back…I can’t remember exactly when; well, lets see… I think I have the receipt …right… here… April 23! Alrighty, so on April 23 my fiance and I drove up to Micheal’s Craft Store to do a routine craft pick up for wedding stuff. Normally I go in with a huge list of craft projects and I comb the aisles until I find something that screams “buy me”. This was still in the beginning of the craft venturing, so on this trip any craft project was fair game. After we had already found a couple small things to contribute to our look and feel, we happened to stumble upon something that looked very similar to this…

Well isn’t this a great situation, I’m in need of a gift box; And these just happened to be on sale! “WINNING!!” With much searching for the perfect size and opening mechanisms, we found the perfect “gift card box” specimen. An ordinary manufactured gift box would soon be victim of my crafty fingers, and it will turn into the perfect beach wedding gift card box fit for a homemade natural vintage feel.

I picked up a box very similar to this one, but I knew before we left the store that I was going to paint over the whole entire box so it didn’t really matter what the pattern had on it. Yes, the box has a nice little pattern on it and some of them I would’ve just bought to keep as is – but the chances of finding a good color and it not have either birds or a saying printed on it was slim, so I decided the pattern made no difference to me.

Here is the box after I painted it. *I forgot to take pictures during the painting process, so I’ve skipped a few pictures here- but you can imagine what painting a box looks like*  After going to Michael’s for some supplies and craft kick starters, we ventured to Home Depot for some spray paint. I applied each coat evenly and let it dry a sufficient amount to ensure that the spray paint wouldn’t bubble up.  I wound up needing about 2 White cans ( I chose matte white, but they have glossy and satin spray paints as well) and 1 Textured can to cover this whole box (the inside is sprayed white too). They sell a few different colors of textured spray paint, but texture is very limited compared to other spray paint color variations. Depending on the theme of your box, you could change it all up!

So here we have the top of the box getting a little more attention. This little frame was made of 2 pieces of scrap natural paper and a small square of canvas material.

I spent the time to mix up some brown paint that I would paint onto the square canvas. I then made a stencil of the “G” I wanted to display on the top of the box. I cut a piece of cardboard from a box and taped the canvas square flat and used sewing pins to pin the stencil over the canvas. Very- I mean VERY carefully, I dabbed the brown paint down over the stencil to make sure the paint didn’t cake up under the stencil. While the paint was still wet I sprinkled white pixie dust glitter over the “G” so it would dry onto the canvas.

If you see in the top left hand corner of the picture right above, there is a starfish decoration laid out on the table. I had already mock set the adornment up on the box to get the placement of the frame for the “G”. If you can see, the frame isn’t centered quiet right, but this is to balance the stuff to come next.

Here is the starting layers to the starfish decoration. I took some strips of burlap and crossed them and applied this technique to different materials. The next layer was torn pieces of natural paper fanned out and the next few layers would be of ribbon and hemp string and the starfish to top it off.  *I spaced out the paper  because I knew the starfish would cover the center; So I made sure enough of the natural paper would stick out from underneath the starfish.*  The rope and string added some finer detail and incorporates materials we use all over the wedding decorations. Make sure when planning out a decoration like this, you take into account the frame of your box and what ways the starfish legs point.

The close up here you can see the decoration attached to the box.

After the framed “G” and the Starfish were already glued on in place, I picked out some small matching seashells from a bag of assorted shells bought from Michael’s. The last touches were some peach satin ribbon and some lace to line the bottom. But with a little glue at the bottom, the gift card box was now all finished!

So all together we purchased:

1 Gift Card Box   ($6.00)
3 Cans of  Spray Paint  ($12.00)
1 Peach Satin Ribbon Spool ($2.00)
1 Antique Lace Ribbon Spool ($1.50)
1 Starfish ($2.00)

the Shells, natural paper, canvas and burlap were all scraps from stuff we bought for other wedding projects.  (and of course a handy glue gun was needed!)

So with calculating the supplies we specifically bought for this project, we spent roughly $23.50 for this gift card box. And the good thing, is that the Laces and Spray Paints will carry over to other projects that I may need.

( I actually had no idea what this cost me until I calculated this for the blog, it’s actually surprising to see what I made for so little out of pocket!)

So, with that knowledge… I wanted to see really, how much something just purchased from the store would cost me. GO TO THE INTERNETS! I googled “wedding gift card box” and checked out what was just on the first glance of the shopping page. A bunch of mediocre boxes popped up and varied upward of $26.00.  One might argue that it would be “easier” to just purchase something. But now I have a beautiful customized box that cost me less to make, and has personality and some flare that my wedding will have. (Anything customized usually runs upwards of $50.00 or more!)

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial. I tried to take pictures of all the steps, but I missed a few along the way. Really- the box is quiet simple, it’s all in your placement and balance. The rest is up to you and your glue!

More wedding craft tutorials are soon to come!

<3 Jess

I’ve gotten a good ways on my wedding crafts now, So I’ll be sorting the pictures from that and posting that stuff up here… Shells, ribbon, rope, buttons- all kinds of things bought and created it’s soo exciting!

Got that stuff.. from playlist live that I still haven’t edited together. That was such and exciting trip, I’ve finally got some editing tools to finish the job on that one.

Then there was a fantastic trip to Ocala National Forest this past Memorial Day Weekend of 2011. Lots of pictures and some videos to post up on that.

Alrighty, back to work. Just wanted to give ya’ll a heads up!

<3 Jess

“Aaaaaand… Here to break the silence is our guest… Jessica!” *crowd cheer* yay! *crowd cheer*

So I fell off the blogging bandwagon for a tad bit, but as Shay says… just get up and keep going. So we’re just going to pick up where we left off. No use in crying over unwritten blogs, we need to stay focus on the FUTURE people! and the future starts with this blog!

Well it’s been a super busy two weeks at work and this weekend was a super uber relaxing weekend. Feeling a little under the weather, my body apparently thought Saturday was a good day to sleep…. all… day… long.  My mission on saturday quickly went from “get all this work done” to “accomplish nothing… try to accomplish nothing”. That turned out to be successful, because Sunday I woke up ready!

So today marks the 180 day mark. Only a mere 6 months untill my love and I tie the knot this year. This weekend we did a little wedding registry stuff. A little invitation and save-the-date work. I gotta get some new ink to start printing out some proofs. Can’t wait to see how these are going to turn out. Once I get them ready to print, for sure I’ll post some pics of the invitations.

Trying to keep track of everything is sure a mighty task for little ol’ me, but I’m pretty sure were right around on track. There are a few things we need to get the ball rolling on in order to be “on time” according to the million and 5 checklists I’ve found on the internet. Luckily a lot of the stuff we’ve nixed out of the wedding is going to save us some time and money. Gotta love it.

The clocks have been turned back, yay! I love this 1/2 of the daylight savings time. We’ve been getting back to using the bicycles on our commute to work during the week. This’ll help stretch our gas money while it’s not too humid to breathe outside.  The extra little kick of exercize in the morning could never hurt either. Hopefully seeing us out there on a daily basis encourages other commuters to think about cycling instead of driving as well.

Only a week and 5 days until Play-List Live! Just a short mention of this cause MAN AM I EXCITED! So many youtubers under one roof! Oh it’s going to be too sweet.  If your interested in the line up, or tickets you can stil mosey on over to http://playlist-live.com/ and see what it’s all about!

Well, this was an exciting edition of MishMash-Up Monday, but now my Monday must commence.

P.S

My thoughts go out to those lost and the families affected in this Japan crisis.

Text a donation
When Haiti’s earthquake struck in early 2010, the Red Cross was able to raise over $20 million by people donating through text, and they are using the same strategy a second time around.

To donate to the American Red Cross for “Japan Earthquake Relief”, text ‘REDCROSS’ to 90999. Each text puts $10 towards the relief efforts.

Or… Visit RedCross.Org for other ways to help support Japan.

<3 Jess

Today’s blog, however, is about my beloved youtubers. THEY ARE COMING TO ORLANDO! … and most importantly my FAVORITE daily vloggers will be there… THE SHAY TARDS!!!!

I can’t hold my excitement in…. only three words… well kinda?    PLAYLIST LIVE!

What is Playlist LIVE you might ask yourself? We’ll it’s going to be the most awesome you tube performance concert EVAR! There are going to be tons of favorited youtubers and there will be meet and greets, performances by bands and youtubers themselves. It’s going to be all kinds of goodness. AAAANNDDD… it’s TWO DAYS LONG!

A while back when I had first heard about playlist-live from WheezyWaiter (<link) I was excited at the line up then, but had decided the tickets were just to steep for my pockets this year. (Especially because i wanted like the super duper collectors tickets and they were like SUPER DUPER expensive)

Even then, when I had heard, the awesome and deffinitely talented JulianSmith (<link) announced HIS announcement in the playlist-live lineup, I was saddened but still…. in agreement that the tickets were just to steep and I would have to see the great JulianSmith preform at another venue later on… whenever that might be.

But THEN…. my absolute most favorite, daily vloggers, the most adorable family of 6, my Saytard Rebellionites (<link)  announced their journey to Orlando, Fl and the WHOLE family’s involvement in Playlist LIVE. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I gave in and had to purchase tickets for this ABOSOLUTELY-MOST-AMAZING-LINEUP-EVER!

Wow, you’ve made it through this much of my ranting, you must either be really bored or just really enjoy reading what I have to say. Either way, just know I appreciate it. Even when your sitting there thinking about making a sandwich while you read this, yeah, your IP had already registered…. so i still appreciate it

So here is the link to Playlist LIVE (<here)  Check it out!

I can’t wait to see everyone there. There are going to be TONS of Youtube artists there and it’s going to be a blast!

<3 Jess

Still couchless this week. Oh the joys that will be on Saturday when this badboy comes to our door finally, only after what will be a month of waiting from purchase date. Our house is needless to say empty with a lonely lawn chair in front of it. But in this time of anxiously awaiting, I can look into the more positive of this adventure and take it as a time to try and train our cat. Now, I take partial to the more canine of two most popular house pets, but I never said I don’t love our cat, nor do I hate cats…. but some of the aspects that come in the bandwagon called “cat”… i just dont care for like, hair, litter and claws.

She’s an adorable black and tortoiseshell that is incredibly soft. She’s in her older years now and is becomming more affectionate (which the dog is EXTREMELY jealous of). Her favorite spots to need *yeah, like scratch their claws on* are, what used to be the old couch, the faux leather office chair and…. my sandals. No, not my Love’s sandals, you’d think because it was his cat that she’d love his shoes more. Nope, MY sandals.

So…. Santa brought kitty her very first scratching post.

But the real fun didn’t start until I bought her cat nip to accompany the new toy. Obviously, like most cats do… she goes nuts for catnip and she’s almost got a routine to when she gets ‘nippy’. But I’m hoping that this no couch time will give us a bit to get her hooked on the scratching post and not a couch.

Fingers crossed, and hands ready on the squirt bottle…

Not much really went on this past week that was of any uber excitement. Hopefully soon we’ll have some more wedding plans stuff to finalize and there will mucho blogs on that I can assure you.

And stay tuned for the announcement of my latest title! Game number 2 to hit stores with an exciting kids/family movie for 2011!

Love you Interworld, Make everyday your best day

<3 Jess

So we have a little bit of catching up to do now, don’t we?

(**note, this blog was written in the wee hours of Monday morning and i ever so gracefully just forgot to post it, so today’s vlog will be a combination of Monday’s and Today’s blog. We’ll just put the additions in crazy stars “**” to note the new stuff)

Today is the lovely day of St. Valentine; (** ok  so maybe that was monday but bare with me  **) the day were everyone finds the need to love on and upon their better half more on this day, along with Hallmark’s wallet getting just a wee bit fatter. I’m not a Valentine cynic, I sure have a loved one of my own to express my deepest joys and happiness with. I just find it interesting that we’ve chosen a single day of the year to symbolize the expression of love to one another. Being in love is something that should be expressed everyday and not just a single day of the year. Sure, it’s a great excuse to pamper each other just a tad bit more than usual, but there is very much no necessity for such events if you cherish each other’s love and company everyday, it is. For my loved one and I, we do try to go out of our way to do something cute for one another on this “Valentine’s Day” everyone seems to go nuts for, but I’m sure were not expectant so much of materials to express our love but the sheer memories we can make on Vday. But when hard times call for those splurge dinner money to be of no access, we don’t find ourselves in a rut. Try to do something “special” for each other this year, but always remember if your special to each other, that “something special” doesn’t have to cost you your wallet.

This year my beloved and I find ourselves in a bit of a bind with all these wedding expenses and such to focus on; but we’ve also had some ‘emergency’ bills arise to cause us a great deal of discomfort in the wallet area. But together, we are working out a plan of attack adjusted to this new dilemma, and we find ourselves broke, with no couch, and my love in too much pain to enjoy a waterside dinner for two. So this year, we skip our favorite dishes and give up the empty calorie mystery chocolate box and savor a night just the two of us, over a hot bowl of loving soup and some television. It’s the harder times like this, were it’s easy to get lost in the idea of “loosing”, but we’ve taken this great opportunity to cherish one another and enjoy the life we live together rather than focusing that energy on spending the bank. On a good note, we’ve found ourselves both in a situation to take today off, maybe not entirely in celebration of the day’s good saint, but we can sure as hell enjoy it while we got it!

And for my single readers out there, fear not of St. Valentine’s Day! Although many couples find Valentine’s Day as the single day to make up for all the love we get sidetracked in expressing to one another all year, you can also take today to appreciate yourself, or a loved one! Don’t get down on yourself for not having someone to cuddle up next to, be proud of yourself for accomplishing anything you have, and take the time to love the world around you. The better you can appreciate what you do have, rather then loathing in not having a date, you’ll find yourself loving Valentine’s Day just like your coupled friends.

Now I’m not trying to be a V-Day hater, I’m just trying to stress that Valentine’s Day isn’t “the” day to show people you love them, you should express your feelings all the time! But feel free to let a friend, family or sweetheart know that you care for them on this special day, even if you don’t do it with chocolates and flowers; it’s the thought that counts

So although I am broke as a joke on Valentines Day, I would like to remind you that tomorrow we are having our brandy new couch delivered to us tomorrow! Last night unfortunate events led to Dan trying to move the ugly grey-blue four seater recliner couch from our lovely little home alllll the way down to the dumpster. (Ok so it’s not really that far, but it’s far enough for the move to be a pain in the behind for anyone solo-moving a couch) But, with little procrastination, Dan found himself a helper. And despite what you may be thinking, I wasn’t the least bit strong enough to help him get the couch out. Nope, he found a cardboard box in the garage and used that for his couch-moving helper. WOOP!

I’d like to thank the people that helped make that ugly grey-blue couch ours, even though it’s been a little on the stink side and we’ve had to febreeze repeatedly and cover up the couch with blankets, that couch saved us from the back breaking lawn chairs we used to have in our living to watch tv on. Now, after a long grueling year of this heavy recliner, we will finally find ourselves in our first jointly purchased furniture piece tomorrow night! Boy, it doesn’t get any more exciting then this!

Oh wait, does it?

( ** It just so happens that this is a great area for me to butt in on my own conversation! Sometime after I wrote the original Monday vlog, a call came in about the couch. Apparantly we have to wait a wee bit more for the couch to get here because the warehouse didn’t recieve our shipment yet. A little disappointing to say the least, after we just saw off the monster couch to the afterlife. But, with only a short time we’re lawnchair’in it yet again and with great reward at the end of this journey. **)

I’ve started to work on wedding invitations! I’ve got a good first draft started up, and I’m pretty happy with the way it’s turning out. I’ve still got to figure out the cardstock I want to go with and a few other minor details, but once we have a reception place locked in I’ll be ready to be printing out the invites for the masses. (Ok, the really small amount of masses that will actually be invited)

Not much else going on this past week otherwise.

I’ve been keeping up with the gym membership. The Shay Challenge is about to hit it’s ½ way mark, both Challengers (along with the internet following) will weigh in and see their progress thus far. My progress hasn’t been as much of  a success, but it’s a small successful step in the right direction

Until next time interwebers, Keep your chin up and smiles on.

<3 Jess

I did hit the gym 2 times this week, not as much as I would have liked, but better then nothing so I’ll take it. Down a few lbs this week thanks to the minuscule amounts of sweating in the past two weeks. Hopefully I’ll be kicking it up a notch here next week, adjusting to getting up at 5:30 takes some time, so I’m trying to be patient with myself. Oh yeah and there is that whole wedding dress fitting thing in the back of my head. Keep the eye on the prize, eyes on the prize.

So what else is exciting that happened this week?… Well, actually we did buy a couch! I guess, we ordered a couch, but purchased it nonetheless! “Ptff, couch? Why is that so exciting Jessica?” you may ask.. but when you have a peice o’ crapola broken couch to rest your bottom upon, you’ll appreciate a brandy-spanking new couch picked out just for you. My fiance and I spend weeks of searching for the perfect match, and although we found it a few times… this last weekend we found something at the right price and in the absolutely right color. Apparently a red leather couch is either extremely out of our price range or the wrong color red. But our relentless searching did us good, cause we didn’t have to settle for black leather and we kept it within budget. I’ll be sure to post ya’ll a before/after living room shot with the old and new couches.

And with this couch marks the first accomplishment of 2011! There are few things on our list of things to accomplish this year and few things to improve upon on each of our new years resolutions. Yes, some of these things may vary between my love and I, but together we have a short list of “big time” goals for us to achieve. The wedding very much being 1 and the couch being a close, and ever so important Couch. (The rest of this list you’ll probably get when we finally reach our goals. Sorry, but I can’t give all my secrets away all at once.)

Woohoo for sticking to the plan. This year is the year of the planning. Got a whole lots goin’ on, and all of you along for the journey. I do have another blog that will be posted over the weekend (my re-write of the lost blog from monday). And with that, I leave you to enjoy this friday.  Hello weekend, I can’t wait to see you again!