[ ♡ ] A Gush of “French”

Posted: July 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

I’ve been tingling to work harder at dressing nice and caring for myself and my skin, especially with the humid weather outside but since my boyfriend’s been here, I haven’t had a chance to just sit down and relax and just read a good book. But we’ve been having a few rain storms lately and it’s put me back in the mood to treat myself to some me time.

Last month’s Vogue featured a Excerpt out of a book called, “ The House in France” by Gully Wells that I fell in love with. It’s a memoir about her days growing up in Europe and summer vacations in France as a young, impressionable girl who just wanted to grow up and I thought it was amazing. I just loved the way she talked in the story and I loved the idea of vacationing in seaside France. I’m going to go pick it up soon with my border’s 30% off coupon.

I also recently read a blog post by Fiona of How to be Chic called, “Being French” and I just thought, how fitting! I am feeling sort of French at the moment, trying to be natural, simple and chic.

There’s an especially compelling part in the post about using your good things and I just thought that was so cute. When I have my own home and my own things, I will definitely pull out the good china and use it once a week. I’m trying to think of what I have now that I consider “good,” and put away for special occasions but I can’t think of anything. I love having my stuff out in the open and not in storage because the more I see it the more likely I’ll be to use it so I don’t know if there is anything special I keep for later uses. I do have shoes that I reserve for special occasions like dinners but mostly because they’re too dangerous and painful to wear otherwise. I also have makeup that just sits in my drawers because I forget to use them or they’re just too colorful and too much for daily wear so I can definitely start there. I really have a collection of everything but nothing so special that I keep it hidden for special occasions but one day, when I do start to collect beautiful things, I will definitely take Fiona’s advice and take them out to breathe a little life into a dull week.

Credit: pictureimperfect.tumblr.com

♡ PaNhia

[ ♡ ] Recent Purchases – 07/17/11 I do really try not to

Posted: July 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: shopping | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

I did some minor shopping over the weekend even though I keep telling myself to save for vacation. Here’s a snapshot of my buys.

First, I got a few things from F21. I got a magenta floral skort.

Some undies, 4 for $9.50

A basic black tank:

And a double ring with a rusty gold rose setting on top.

Then I got some accessories from CR. First, a super cute earphone set that is anchored by this little Japanese bear character!

Then I got another headphone set that I couldn’t resist. I really liked it because of the pink cord.


I also recently bought this red skullcandy one from Target for the gym.

All three headphones together. I realized I didn’t need this many so I gave the red to my sister and the bear one to my little sister and I kept the pink bow one.

I also bought a clustered pair of earrings:

And finally, a cute bird ring. I like rings that jut out and that are not just flat on your finger. I also really like that this ring shines with shades of pink and champagne not just white or gold.

I went to Aerie and got a tank top:

And finally I got some lashes and a polish from uptown.



That’s it for purchases this weekend!

♡ PaNhia

[ ♡ ] Weekend recap – 7/15/11

Posted: July 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Daily Outing | 1 Comment

Again, old promises: I will try to be more diligent on the daily blogging so I wont have to keep bunching things together like this.

Last week I spent almost everyday eating out with my boyfriend. We went to this new place (well, new to us) called Sak’s Sports Bar. It was a sports bar and grill type of restaurant and we ordered this huge burger called HMFB…tehehehe. The name alone got me. The burger was so huge, it came with its own knife stuck in the center.


Since Harry Potter came out Friday we also had a mini ( I mean microscopic) HP marathon. The original plan was to watch 1, 3, 4, 6, 7.1 but we got too tired and ended up only watching 1 & 3 because they were just too long to fit into a day. Here are a few snapshots of our one day marathon:

The lazies:


On Saturday the girls and I were out for a day around town. We started at the flea market for lunch and contact lens shopping.

My boyfriend and his brother stopped by to have lunch with us and then I made him stop by my house to drop off some pho ingredients that I bought my mom while the girls and I went to the mall for some retail therapy. On our way out of the mall we stopped at a Japanese store where they were having free clay crafting lessons so of course we tried it!

We were told to choose one of the designs in front so we chose a little cake type charm.

Here we are with the beginning pieces:

Here’s the beginning of choua’s charm:

And here’s the finished product, mine is the far right one:

After charm making, we went to uptown for some more shopping and then to dinkytown for some frozen yogurt goodness.

On Sunday I had a late lunch with my cousins and spent that morning planning our second summer vacation.


Then we went swimming with the girls at a manmade lake that was far too crowded.


After I met up with my boyfriend and his friends for a late night dinner at the buffet which was a waste because I was still so full. The boys decided to do a $30 plate challenge. Basically they would try to use what ever was at the buffet to create expensive looking plates and the girls would choose the winner.
Here are the three contenders:



The winner was deemed to be the last plate because the sauce looked more elegant!

And that concludes my activity filled weekend! Hopefully we do more and more and more before the summer’s over!

♡ PaNhia

[ ♡ ] Outfit of the Day(s) – Captures

Posted: July 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: fashion, outfit of the day | Tags: , | Leave a comment

I really need to get on top of this constant blogging thing. In other unrelated news, the extreme humidity is making it hard to dress nice. Here are three outfits from three different days last week.


♡ PaNhia

[ ♡ ] Outfit of the day – 07/13/11 black & white

Posted: July 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: fashion, outfit of the day | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Still going the casual route.

Top from F21 | skirt from Korea | bike necklace from F21

♡ PaNhia

[ ♡ ] MidSummer Tea Party – Choua’s 24th!

Posted: July 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , | 1 Comment

This past weekend was my friend Choua’s birthday party and she decided to do a pink and green tea party! It was such a cute idea and the decorations and everything turned out great!

It was dresses and hat required. We went dress shopping but I didn’t find anything I liked. So I decided I’d pull out the old sewing machine and make a dress. I knew I wanted a green floral dress so I went to the fabric store in search of it and found a beautiful green and blue floral piece for $4 a yard. I originally wanted to do green and yellow but I walked by the tulles and found this beautiful blue that matched the blue in my dress perfectly and so I changed my color scheme. The floral was also too sheer so I ended up having the buy a light yellow fabric to line it. I also got some crème felt and gold accent pieces for the hat piece. Here is how the dress turned out:

The dress itself took about 1 hour to make but adding all the tulle and making the hat added another 2-3 hours to the process. It’s a one shoulder with sweetheart tulle neckline, 50s style dress. My hat was really more of a facenet. I just folded the felt to look more like a almond shape and added tulle and feathers to the back. The outfit cost me a little under $50 to make. I’ll do a post dedicated to it soon!

Now onto the actual party. We rented out an apartment complex party room in my aunt’s building but they were out of town that day and forgot to leave us the sensor key so we ended up having to wake up some of their neighbors to do it for us. Luckily they did, otherwise the party would not have happened.

The room was really big and nice. There were two sitting areas, a private dining room, a full kitchen, a long veranda patio and 6 large dining tables complete with chairs. The others concentrated on the cooking and food prepping while I started setting up decorations and the tables. We had balloons, a cake area, and we arranged the tables into a U shape so that everyone can sort of see everyone else. We also made hanging tissue balls that hung over the tables.

The tables were also set up and looked super cute! We made some double tiered trays and setting trays for sandwiches and scones and other baked goods.


We used the kitchen bar area to serve juice and appetizers.

And then Malila set up a cute little cake area by the balloon wall:

The cake and cupcakes were very cute and delicious!
Here’s a shot of birthday girl slicing the cake:

After tea hour we played Pictionary. Here’s me trying to draw eliminate.

After the tea party and clean up I went to swim at a lake with my boyfriend and his friends and then we went over to their place for an impromptu bbq that night.

Overall it was a really good weekend!

♡ PaNhia

[ ♡ ] Outfit of the Day – 07/11/11

Posted: July 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: fashion, outfit of the day | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

I threw this on in the dark but it turned out alright.

Whole outfit from F21

And here are some bonus pictures of my Japanese pearl nails I did over the weekend:


I did it for Choua’s tea party this past weekend. The pearls are actually decorative scrapbooking pieces from Michaels and the rhinestones and micro beads are from LA. The polish is a mermaidy blue from Milani but I forgot the name.

♡ PaNhia

[ ♡ ] Blogger Missing in Action – Holiday Recap

Posted: July 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I have been ignoring the need to blog since my boyfriend got here a few weeks ago. It just so happens that he arrived right when all the action was starting so you could say I was overwhelmed by activity overload. I’m just going to take do a quick recap of the past like 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately I didn’t take too many pictures but I did take some and was able to fill the gaps with pictures from other people’s cameras.

First, my boyfriend came to town and within three days we celebrated his birthday. His ballen uncle rented party rooms at a huge bowling/game center and bought tons of wings and beer for everyone. Here’s myself and the girls:

And the boyfriend and I. I just thought this picture was funny!

One last shot:

The best part of the night was lazer tag and all the trash talking we did only to end up losing. But we lost with the utmost dignity and fun!

Two days after that we did mine and my sister’s graduation party at our house. My dad practically invited the whole hmong community to come over. I think we had like 3 doctors or something in attendance which in my dad’s eyes is the mark of a true hmong party.

I was so busy during the day with cooking and preparing that we barely took pictures but the girls did come over and gave us an awesome card!



And here is a shot of the table of elders who gave us speeches:

It was good but so tiring that I’m glad it will be the last big event at our house this summer.

We also had a family reunion on my grandmas side following that and I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the event but I did take a picture of something cute. All the families were assigned to make family tree posters and of course I was ordered to do ours.

I was so stoked because I thought it was awesome. It was made of black posterboard and decorated with my scrapbooking letters and pieces and I thought no one’s poster would be better.

And I felt like it did turn out to be the best looking but it also turned out to the be the smallest! I did not know people were going to build posters and the stands for them! One of them was even framed. Here’s a shot of all of them, our little one at the way end:

Besides my poster being flat, I thought I did a pretty good job with it!

The July 4th holiday weekend was also really packed with activity but I didn’t take a lot of photos of the actual weekend and celebration. I do have some pictures of random days hanging out with the girls and my boyfriend. Here’s some from going out to the park. First, me and my snowdrift:

The girls and I at the dock:

A piece of tres leche cake:

And my baby koko!

That’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay on top of blogging now that things have settled down a little.

♡ PaNhia