This Is Our LA #LoveThisCity

There are a million ways to do Los Angeles and having lived in Southern California for over 26 years, I hate to admit that there are still things I haven't seen, done or ate yet!  That is the beauty of this city, everyone has a different, priceless version!  There is always an adventure, I love this city!

Family and friends from out of state have visited California over the years and we always play tour guide.  We love playing tour guide, I think we're awesome at it.  One of our ways to do LA and my favorite is our traditional Sunday Funday - we start off at the Hollywood Farmers Market, order lunch from one of the many vendors, grab a spot on a community table and just enjoy the beauty in the food and people.  Checking out music, sampling fruits and getting fresh squeezed orange juice are other farmers market musts.  Sometimes we peek in at the shops at Space 15 Twenty which is right next to the market.  There's an Urban Outfitters and one Sunday Funday we saw Mr. Brainwash looking at a pair of Adidas.  Random, right?  Next door is Hennessey + Ingalls - an incredible bookstore with amazing titles.  Across the street is Amoeba Music, one of the last standing music stores!  One afternoon we lucked out and watched Peanut Butter Wolf spin a live set.  The area is also known for Nike Montalbán, Iguana Vintage, The Pantages Theatre, W Hollywood, Katsuya.

After eating, we venture out to see art and shop!  My favorite museum is LACMA.  We recently checked out the Stanley Kubrick exhibit.  One of my favorite directors, he definitely understands the art of making a movie.  Our favorite galleries are Gallery 1988 and La Luz de Jesus at WACKO.  I never turn down visiting WACKO - it is a fantastic shop.  Next door is Ozzie Dots, a cool costume shop.  There is no shortage of places to eat/see/do.  The possibilities are endless - culture, adventure and discovery await you!

Will you wanderlust LA with me?  I guarantee you a priceless experience.
priceless.com/losangeles
@priceless

LA is diverse - Chicken Kabob plate from the Greek vendor!

LA is art and film.  The Shining at Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA.

LA is innovative.  Only a rock can bring so much fascination to a city!

LA is random! Ran into tattoo artist Kat Von D outside one of my favorite stores!

LA is fun, silly and full of personality.  LA is not shy!

LA is unique - forget red velvet cake, we do it blue velvet style!

LA is the city of dreams.




Disclosure:  I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias®  and MasterCard #CBias #SocialFabric #LoveThisCity

'Tis The Season To Gift Exchange Part II

You know that saying, "the right place at the right time" - thats how I kinda felt that this gift exchange happened.  I was checking out my Instagram when I saw bellandpistol arranging a book & ornament swap for something like 20 followers.  I added my email and made the cut!  Korey (bellandpistol) emailed us asking for the little one's name, address, age and titles of 3 books on their wish list.    The limit for the whole gift exchange was $20 minimum, $25 max!  Done deal!  I emailed our info with these titles:   Dragons Love Tacos, My Abuelita and Hello, Rock

And we had to include info on our kid, sweet!  The cool thing is that the little we were sending to wouldn't be the one we would be receiving from.  I totally forgot to take a picture of what we gave before I wrapped!  I impressed myself with that ribbon cause I suck at creativity!  Looks great on Pinterest but not when I try haha

We received from ohdearmama and it is such a lovely, lovely package!  Duke loved everything about it!

He really adores these drawings with information on all the kids!  They are so cute too!  We learned a lot about their family!

And this book is funny!  I read it to him and Omieoso and they loved it!


Thank you ohdearmama family XOXO

'Tis The Season To Gift Exchange Part I

We participated in TWO very fun gift exchanges this year!!!  I really love doing this with the kids, it teaches them about giving.  You want well-rounded kids, show them the many, many ways they can give.

Tee and I decided on a book, ornament and drawing exchange for Teagan & Duke.  We met up one Sunday afternoon at Hollywood Farmers Market and hung out for a couple hours.  The kids hung out with a goat, had a jam session mini concert, we ate coconut cake from the Thai vendor, sampled fresh squeezed orange juice, apples, grapes, oh my!  It was fun!  We're very blessed to know The B family!

Here's what Duke gave!

They were so excited for gifts!

Here's what Teagan gave Duke!

This drawing from Teagan is so adorable!  I love the curls in our hair and my eyelashes are fantastic!  Duke taped it to his toy shelf!

They make such good friends!  It was precious watching their little souls take in the music, help arrange the instruments and offer up their chairs to kids that were smaller than them.

My Future As A Mommy Rapper...

My husband and I are silly and random.  So when he tells me to bust out a rap, I don't question him - I do it.  Turns out he was recording me with Auto Rap app and this is my song, My Boys Shirts.  Its kinda catchy and makes us all laugh.  I think I sound a little like Kreayshawn.

More proof, I am that Mom!  This app is fun for the whole family!


This post is so not sponsored.

My Family Rocks!

This post is brought to you by The New Santa Fe from Hyundai. Think your family rocks? Show us by uploading a photo of your family rocking out. Enter now for a chance to win great prizes.

My husband and I love music - hip hop is our favorite but we don't discriminate, there is equal play at play in our home and when we're out & about.  We encourage our kids to dance and sing-along.  My husband and I take everyday things and make simple, funny songs.  A family favorite is "Apple Juice & Fries" - My husband makes a funny voice and just starts singing apple juice and fries.  It is so SO funny to watch.  Especially when Duke starts dancing to it.  I've been begging him to make a video but he's not going for it.

And just last month I made a video singing to our baby.  I'm that Mom.  I have no shame.  See how fun it is to rock out with your kids?!  I have the whole family singing to Omar now and he loves watching the video!



A defining moment in parenthood is when your child shares their love of anything with you.  I remember when my parents would turn off the tv, put on some records and just relax with us when I was a kid, they are such great memories.  When our preteen expressed his love for Wu-Tang Clan, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Metallica it was such a bonding moment for us...  The littles are slowly coming around!  It's an amazing thing when their taste in music reflects your own, like you done good, you raised 'em right.

MY FAMILY ROCKS!!!


Hyundai Santa Fe and Rolling Stone are looking for families who rock and whose values include kindness, sharing, hard work, loud singing, mud, practical jokes and mischief in general.  

Does your family rock?!  Enter Hyundai Santa Fe and Rolling Stone's contest! 

Prizes include a photo shoot in Rolling Stone featuring the winning family shot by an industry photographer, airfare, hotel and transportation to the 55th Grammy Awards, and a fully tricked-out Hyundai Santa Fe custom rock ‘n’ roller.

Contest ends December 14, 2012.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Frank Ocean + dream hampton letters from the soul.

Two beautiful and powerful letters in one week.  I implore you to read them.
There has been an incredible amount of support in the Hip Hop community - my community.  This is the World I want to live in.  


The initial letter from R&B Singer/Songwriter Frank Ocean of Odd Future fame (Ghostwriter for Justin Bieber, John Legend) coming out.  

And a response letter from Hip Hop Journalist/Filmmaker dream hampton.

Thank you, Frank Ocean.

It’s true, we are a lot alike… “spinning on blackness. All wanting to be seen, touched, heard, paid attention to.” In your opening few lines, you simultaneously established your humanity, a burden far too often asked of same sex lovers, and acknowledged that in this age of hyper self- awareness, amplified in no small part by the social media medium in which you made your announcement, we are desperate to share. You shared one of the most intimate things that ever happened to you – falling in love with someone who wasn’t brave enough to love you back. Your relieving yourself of your “secret” is as much about wanting to honestly connect as it is about exhibition. We are all made better by your decision to share publicly.

You and Anderson Cooper have the same coming out calendar week in common, but in many obvious ways, you couldn’t be more different. Anderson Cooper is an heir to one of America’s great Industrial Age fortunes and a network professional whose maleness and whiteness backed by his considerable accomplishments guarantee him work. You are a young Black man from New Orleans who fled your still struggling city. You didn’t arrive in Los Angeles with generational wealth and privilege, only the beautiful lyrics and melodies that danced through you and your dream of making it in a music industry whose sand castles were crumbling.

You are in fact, connected to one of hip-hop’s great cadres, in the tradition of Oakland’s Heiroglyphics, The Native Tongues and The Juice Crew. Your music family, like all the rest, will likely grow apart, but in this moment Odd Future bends hip-hop’s imagination with utter abandon. You fulfill hip-hop’s early promise to not give a fuck about what others think of you. The 200 times Tyler says “faggot” and the wonderful way he held you up and down on Twitter today, Syd the Kid’s sexy stud profile and her confusing, misogynistic videos speak to the many contradictions and posturing your generation inherited from the hip-hop generation before you. I’m sure you know a rumor about Big Daddy Kane having AIDS and with it, the suggestion that he was bisexual, effectively ended his career. You must have seen the pictures of pioneer Afrika “Baby Bam” from the Jungle Brothers in drag and read the blogs ridiculing him, despite the fact that he’s been leading a civilian life for nearly two decades. I know as a singer you love Rahsaan Patterson and bemoan the fact that homophobia prevented him from being the huge star his talent deserves. Only last month Queen Latifah unnecessarily released a statement denying that her performing at a Gay Pride event meant she was finally affirming her identity for thousands of Black girls. Imagine if Luther had been able to write, as you closed your letter, “I don’t have any secrets I need kept anymore…I feel like a free man.”

But you’re not an activist. You’re a Black man in America whose star is on the rise, working in hip-hop and soul, where gender constructs are cartoonishly fixed. Your colleague Drake is often attacked with homophobic slurs when he simply displays vulnerability in his music. He seems to respond by following those moments of real emotion with bars that put “hoes” in their proverbial place. But you’re a beautiful songwriter (your question to Jay and Kanye, “What’s a King to a God?” on their own song on an album about their kingdom, was brilliantly sly). Your letter is revolutionary not least of all because it is about love. It is about falling in love and feeling rejected and carrying both that love and rejection with you through life. The male pronoun of the object of your desire is practically incidental. We have all been in a love that felt “malignant…hopeless” from which “there was no escaping, no negotiating.” Your promise to your first love, that you won’t forget him, that you’ll remember how you changed each other, is so full of love and grace.

You were born in the ’80s, when gay rights activists were seizing the streets of New York and other major world cities, fighting for visibility and against a disease that threatened to disappear them. The cultural shifts created from those struggles in some ways make your revelation about your fluid sexuality less shocking than it would have been decades before. Still, there are real risks with coming out as a man who loved a man. I hope you hear and are reading the hundreds of thousands of people who have your back.

We admire the great courage and beauty and fearlessness in your coming out, not only as a bisexual Black man, but as a broken hearted one. The tender irony that your letter is to a boy who was unable to return your love until years later because he was living a lie is the only truly tragic detail about your letter. A million twirls on this spinning ocean blue globe in this vast endless blackness for you my love.

Beyonce penned a letter to Frank Ocean too.

This is one of my favorite songs from his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra - His debut album, Channel Orange will be released on July 17th.  


Original post by Frank Ocean
Original post by dream hampton.
Original post by Beyonce