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special guest: Ma Nouvelle Mode!

By on April 5, 2012 in friends, guest posting, Lifestyle

I “met” Natalia last fall, and she is a sweetheart!
I’m just now getting to know Christie and I can already tell she is good people as well :)
allow them to introduce themselves, I’m sure you’ll love them, too!
(oh and pssst, you still have a chance to win a set of our BlankCanvas™ cards as well as a quotable art print over on their blog!)

hello Tico & Tina Readers!

I am so glad to be here today! I always love it when I meet fellow adventurers and Tico & Tina definitely fit that mold! Recently they have been spending their time in Costa Rica. Um.. little jealous! Except I live in France, so I’m not sure I am allowed to say that!

Well today they have been so kind as to allow us a little time on their beautiful blog. We feel so honored! So let’s get to it and allow us to introduce ourselves! My name is Natalia and Christie and I blog over at Ma Nouvelle Mode. If you have no idea what that means, that’s okay, it’s in French! It means my new style. I started Ma Nouvelle Mode a little over a year ago. I had two babies and had kinda sorta forgotten what it was like to take time for myself and even what my sense of style was! I am still constantly learning and have so enjoyed the process along the way.

Christie has recently joined the Ma Nouvelle Mode team and this week we are relaunching our blog with quite a bit to celebrate! We moved over to wordpress {love it!}, got a brand spankin’ new design, and we are celebrating our new partnership! Which is why we are over here today, to tell you all about it!

“Our mission at Ma Nouvelle Mode is to encourage, motivate and inspire women of all walks of life to discover {or rediscover} their own fabulous panache.”
How do we work our magic? With fashion we share ideas of how to shop your closet, build a wardrobe on a limited budget, and find new ways to style old items. We like to have photo shoots featuring different styles and eras so there is something for everyone. In the beauty department we have a plethora of tutorials from smoky eyes to red lips to help our readers gain the confidence to be able to create these looks themselves. We love sharing do-it-yourself techniques for the home to inspire to create a space that fits the style and feel of our readers. We both have traveled quite a bit, with and without our kids and we love to share our stories and photos. We also include plenty of recipes for the culinary inclined.

We hope you enjoyed our little guest post today and we would LOVE it if you stopped by to check out our new site and support our relaunch. We also love meeting new people, so make sure you say hi!

Comments { 1 }

when I’m too lazy to blog about adventures I steal them from other people.

By on March 19, 2012 in Costa Rica, guest posting, HA! ☺, Lifestyle, traveling, ★ dreams

I just noticed that Krista had written about a couple of our tiny adventures lately, and so I asked if I could swipe and hack them over to here. makes my lazy brain rather pleased. except I had to go through and remove the double spaces. what are they teaching kids these days?! I thought you were home schooled, girl, I expected better. (not that I’m trying to bite the hand that’s feeding me in this case or anything… tee. hee.)

Krista: When a friend of [Mr. D] offered to let us stay in a cabin that she owned up in the mountains, we decided it’d be fun to go there for a day.  We left on Thursday morning with [Mr.D's] aunt and his parents (who are visiting from the U.S.) It took us an hour to drive there and I got to sit in the back seat with Maeve and Maverick. Maeve can NOT just sit there and enjoy the ride. So, we played thumb wars (which she calls thumb tag) and approximately a hundred games of 20 questions. Maverick does not understand how to play 20 questions (one person thinks of any random thing and the other person asks 20 random questions to try and figure out what it is)  but he tried to play along. Instead of asking questions about the thing, he would just guess what the thing was without any clues.

“Is it a car?”
“No”
“uhhhh… a truck?”
“Nope”
“ummm… a cow?  mooooooo”
“hehe! no!”
“Is it a truck?”
*sigh*

When we got there, we found something we were not expecting…

I probably would not call that a cabin.
I was picturing a nice little log cabin up in the mountains but this beautiful house was really cool too.

(allow me to cut in here and say that no, there is NO WAY this could be called a cabin. there must be some sort of weird translation discrepancy going on here. Mr. D and I wanted to stay for a good, very long time. and we asked God to give us something like that someday to bless other people with… sooner than later would be sorta cool.)

checking out the view

How awesome would it be to have a porch that looked out onto this?

We had a little snack once we got settled in a little bit.

Apparently, the lady who owns the house has grandkids and so it was well stocked with toys and games, which Maeve and Maverick took full advantage of.

Here are a few other snapshots of the house.

looking through a mirror

It was a beautiful day.  So Maeve and Maverick played outside a lot…

and I joined them for a little bit.

When our stomachs started telling us they weren’t happy, we walked across the road to a little restaurant.

After lunch, we went back to the house and I got to work out on the porch for a while.  It was a beautiful place to work.

Later, we went into the town to take pictures.

There was a park that was full of these randomly shaped bushes.  It looked like someone had started making them into cool shapes but had decided to go take a nap and left them half way done.

Is this a dog???

And some of the bushes had faces… kinda cool and weird at the same time.  :D

Ok, I’m pretty sure that’s a bird.

A hobbit tree?

We had a quick peak inside of the church that was beside the park.

(I must cut in here to say, can you believe this freaking thing with all these walls and the faeux marble texture on the side of the steps and such… all fake! hand-painted. each. tiny. little brick.

WHAT?!!!

can’t even imagine that making more sense than real bricks.
it’s crazy to think how little those painters must have been paid. this is my church pic, and then back to Krista)

Then, we had a little coffee break and..

got back to the house just in time to see a beautiful sunset.

The trip back home was filled with singing, because I refused to play 20 questions anymore.  ”If You’re Happy and You Know It” was one of the more popular songs that we sang several times.

ok, me again, thanks Krista!!!

I personally highly enjoyed the rousing rounds of ‘I just wanna be a sheep! ba-ba-ba BA!” :)

this is the kind of working environment we hope to someday provide for all of our team members :)
(no, not that one, the one below this sentence.)

so there is one adventure I am glad I did not have to post from scratch. woot!

Comments { 3 }

guest post shoutout – Jess from A Curious Thing

By on January 31, 2012 in Confessions, God and stuff, guest posting

Jess and I are kinda like modern day penpals :)
we wanted to trade posting for a day, so enjoy!
(and then go show her some love, because she’s just awesome, as you’ll see from her post)

Yo, I’m Jessea from A CURIOUS THING.

Thanks, Tina, for having me.

I hope…you don’t mind what I am about to talk about…you can be mad at me later lol. :)

I want to talk to you about something personal.

Something that doesn’t come through in these pictures…or maybe it does.

I was an addict.

I was an alcoholic.

I was irresponsible.

I was a mother.

I was a wife.

And I am here today, right now, because of the Amazing Grace I found in God.

I never saw myself as any of those things above.

I lived for myself.

One day, looking into the empty room of my children, I broke.

I was sick of myself.

I was completely alone in my selfishness…and no one else had driven me here but myself.

So, day by day, I quit everything.

I even quit smoking.

I was a nervous wreck by the end of 2010, but I was free.

Through it all, I didn’t want anyone to know.

So no one knew, except my husband, who I was not with at the time.

Why did I do this?

Shame. Guilt. Fear.

And now that I open up, finally, and am able to talk about it…they embrace me!

They still love me!

My Abba Father, who sees his princess from Heaven…still loves her.

He held me each night..that I was going through my withdrawls.

I was able to make it…because of my prayers out of the desperate places in my heart.

Out of life or death. Because at the time..I didn’t know how I was going to make it out alive!

AND NOW….

I am free. God has restored me!

Not only that, but I am doing better than I ever have.

I am loved.

Reach out, each one of us, to those who feel they can’t ask for help..to those who are so desperate for a friend.

Be open to being interruptable.

God spoke to me through people around me who were sensitive to God’s urging.

And to each one of those people…Thank You. It meant everything.

“I see you when you are in
the garden of grief, My princess.
I hear your cry for help in the dark hours of
night.
I Myself cried out in the garden the night I
was betrayed.
…even though you cannot see Me from where
you are, I am working on your behalf.


Give to Me the crushing weight of your
circumstances
…your trials will be
transformed into triumph.”


So wherever you may be, Princess, know that
the Kings sees you.
And loves you as you are..scars, tears, and
all.


His Princess.
Comments { 2 }

Costa Rica: someone misses their grandma and makes a big bubble mess.

By on January 17, 2012 in around the house, Costa Rica, family, guest posting, help!, traveling

I’ve been trying to upload the video tour of our digs here (which Krista so kindly edited :) ) but the internet took a nose-dive away from awesome the last few days and it keeps timing out. so in the meantime, here are two shorter videos which you might find rather amusing if you a. know Maverick, or b. appreciate cute kids :)

first of all, he spilled almost a whole container of bubbles:

 

and secondly, he randomly decided he missed his grandma, awww:

in other news, ladies, I’m talking about breastfeeding over here today.
gentlemen, I’m sure you have other things to do :)

Comments { 2 }

guest posting shoutout

By on December 27, 2011 in guest posting

hey people, I’m guest posting over at Natalia’s fun blog today. She lives in France with her basketball-playing husband and two adorable boys and I appreciate her real, down-to-earth approach to life! clickity-click  below to visit her :)

Comments { 0 }