And now for the Fall Update post

I'd like to sum up the last few months in a few choice words to explain why I haven't been blogging as much.

Honeymoon planning. Working on getting Ariel here. Too many hours at work. Too few hours at work. Stress. Anxiety. Sleeping 3-4 hours a night. Panic attack in the shower. Emergency room visit. Xanax doesn't do shit. Mental Health appointment. Diagnosis: Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder. My reaction: "Duh". Celexa, Trazadone, Klonopin. Getting worse before I get better. Drugs making me zombie tired.

So, that aside...I'm feeling a lot better. I've been on the Celexa for about 3 weeks now and I'm starting to feel some changes. I don't get anxious as much. I can sleep. I'm actually doing things now. That's the worst part about depression. I lost interest in EVERYTHING. I felt completely hopeless. I wanted the house to be clean because it was stressing me out but I was too depressed to bring myself to even load the dishwasher. Dustin has helped me a lot and bless him for it. I couldn't have done this alone. But the dear, sweet boy can't sweep the floor as well as I can.

I'm still working on things and am trying to get through this the best I can. I've been through it before as a teen so I know everything will be back to normal eventually.

Here's some non-serious things that have been happening as well:

-We're almost done Christmas shopping! We're only doing parents and siblings this year and that's still 13 people. And we're only doing stockings for each other so we can save money and buy a lot of Disney crap in February.

-Last week I was running around and dancing with Apollo when I slipped sideways on Dustin's old PT sweat pants that I was wearing, and smashed a lot of body parts on our hard linoleum floor. My hand quickly puffed up and eventually bruised. I also bruised my right knee, hip and arm. But, the thing that broke my fall the most was my face. I fell right on my cheek bone and temple and my head literally bounced off the floor! I was a crying mess and was most scared about ruining my face and no longer being pretty. But have no fear! My face didn't even bruise! I'm still pretty.

-We've been buying a crapton of Christmas decorations at the BX almost every time we go that I have no idea what we even have.

-Gingerbread pancakes. Enough said.

-Our fabulous friend Matthew Frye got orders to Kadena!! He's probably the number one person Dustin would want here because they're basically in love with each other. We're beyond excited and can't wait until March of 2011!

-We're planning a Thanksgiving feast at our house this year with people from our jobs. It's our first time ever planning a party together and it's my first time ever having Thanksgiving at my place. We have a lot on our plates and we hope everyone else will too. Hahahaha.

-Dustin's on bowling league here which makes me happy because he loves it and I won't go with him because I'm not naturally amazing at it and I don't like to be bad at things. Especially in front of people.

-My mom and younger sibs get to see Mickey Rooney in some play in England in January and I am so jealous, I want to cry. Hopefully they can get me an autograph or something.

-My Mickey Rooney mania is getting worse thanks to TCM and their showing a Mickey Rooney film nearly every day.

I'm sure I'll think of more later but I will also try to update more because I do love blogging and I really hate when there's such a large gap in between posts.

"Are you Tara??"

That's what my co-worker, Ken Miyagi, asked me when I walked into work with my new hair. I finally sucked it up and got it done at a salon on base. Luckily the girl that did it spoke English. It's a lot darker then I was planning. I was actually gunna go lighter! But I found a picture that I liked, brought it in and then looked through their samples to find one that matched.

I really like it though. I wasn't sure at first since I haven't gone dark since I was about 17. I used to dye my hair this blue black color that came in a box. It was awesome cause it just looked black but when the sun hit it just right, I had a blue tinted halo around my head. This new color does the same thing but with a purple-ly reddish color. It's pretty cool.

And with new hair comes new eyeshadow colors that just stand out more. I see a lot more pinks and purples in my future.

As you can see here...my makeup looks amazing because I'm just that good these days. You can also see from the picture that Dustin never leaves me alone. My hair is still wet in this shot but when it dries my curls are all sorts of shiny and bouncy. I had about 4-5 inches cut off so my hair is really thanking me for that. It's a lot healthier and my curls are curlier since they're not being weighed down as much. I can honestly say now that I've learned to embrace and even love my curly hair.

This has nothing to do with my hair and everything to do with my makeup. I should've had Dustin take a closeup shot of me with my eyes closed. There's some blue, pink and about 3 different shades of purple in there. Someone please get me Urban Decay eyeshadow (and Primer Potion) for Christmas!! Sephora.com doesn't ship here!

That is all.

Breakfast of the Week!!

Dun Dun Dun!! Apple Walnut Muffins!!! Martha Stewart. I suggest you make them like now.

Halloween 2009

Oh Lord. I know it's late but here's how Halloween with the Santillans went down. I'll be writing an update post as well to let you guys know what's going on and why I haven't been posting as much lately.

First off, Halloween was gunna be awesome this year. Dustin had heard from work that we could volunteer to sign in some local kids onto base to trick-or-treat. So I took off from work and we decided what our costumes would be. We were gunna be Mickey and Minnie and it was going to be adorable. I even took the whole day off from work and everything.

The first thing that went wrong was my costume. I ordered Dustin's costume for Disneystore.com because that was the only place that sold it. I, on the other hand, wanted a...well, sluttier version of my costume. So I ordered a non-official Disney costume from Amazon and it got here right quick. Only problem was...it didn't fit. And not only a little bit. It was a small and I'm not big by any means, but it seemed more like a dress for a toddler than for a size small adult. I got stuck in it when I tried it on! And since it was seasonal, I could only exchange it for another costume. I didn't wanna do that because I didn't want the same thing to happen all over again.

So I sucked it up and ordered the cute but way less slutty, Disney Minnie costume. That was about a week later. I ordered Dustin's costume on September 26th. Ordered mine the beginning of October. I thought that would be more than enough time. I thought wrong. It's November 17th today and the costumes still aren't here. I emailed Disney and they were very nice and informed me that with APO addresses, it takes about 6-8 weeks for packages to arrive. Wish I had known that before.

So we had no costumes. But I was determined to make the best of it. We would give out candy to trick-or-treaters for awhile and then we planned to meet some friends at the Banyan Tree Club and just have a good time.

But first! Since it was Saturday and I was off, I had to make Dustin breakfast in bed. I do this because I'm a nice girl and because I don't want Dustin to punch me in the mouth when I wake him up. Kinda like a peace offering. I knew I wanted to make something pumpkin because it's fall and that means everything I make should either have pumpkin, apples, pecans, and cinnamon. I searched on TastyKitchen.com and found the perfect recipe. Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal!

Let me take a moment to give props to the amazing woman that created TastyKitchen. Her name is Ree Drummond and it you haven't heard of her blog, The Pioneer Woman, then you're missing out on something truly wonderful. Her blog has reached such huge proportions that she now even has a cookbook out that I want but the BX doesn't sell. But TastyKitchen is her other website where you can search for recipes, add recipes, talk to other people, whatever. And it's grown a lot since she started it only a few months ago. It's pretty awesome.

Especially since this baked oatmeal was BEYOND good!

Oh man. I think I'm gunna make this again this weekend. It was so delicious and the perfect way to start the holidays. Those are glazed pecans on top by the way.


Here's our cauldron of candy with the flash on. The kids loved the Fun Dip more than anything else. Good thing to know for next year.

Flash off.

I made Dustin hold it up by our lamp so I could take pictures. Then I backed up and took this picture of him and then realized that he wasn't even paying attention. Can you tell the t.v. was on?? That's essentially the face I deal with on a daily basis when I try to talk to him while the t.v. is on. You'd think I would've learned by now.

We kept the door open so the kids would know we were giving out candy and Apollo could hardly stand it. He wanted to be let out and see the kids sooo badly. He basically stayed by the door like this the whole time.

I got his attention for about a second.

There weren't that many trick-or-treaters at all because it was pouring outside. That's Okinawa for you. I even heard a lot of kids crying and begging their parents to take them home because they were wet and tired. It was cute and sad. But at least we didn't have to deal with any obnoxious kids. It's nice living in base housing.

So then we got ready to go out. I was just gunna dress up in whatever and ended up with an 80's type outfit. Just from clothes I happen to have in my closet. I didn't plan it either. It just sorta happened which was cool. That leather jacket is actually from the 80's too. My Nana gave it to me when I was in NY in May. If you take a closer look you can see my orange nails.

These were my last Halloween nails for the year. :( Now I have no nails so I can give my real nails a chance to see the world. But as soon as December is here, you'd better believe I'll have Christmas nails up the wazoo!

This is what Dustin wore to the club. He calls it his "cock shirt" and I don't let him normally wear it out of the house. But it was Halloween so I said, "what the hey" and let him look weird. Oh, and he did put shoes on eventually before we left the house.

So we drank with some friends, had some fun, and laughed at some crazy costumes at the club. Someone was even dressed as Quail Man!! You know, right?? Doug Funny?? Anyone?

Anyways, even though I was mad about our costumes (and still am!) we made the best of the night and had quite a bit of fun.