Happy Birthday Carlos!

Here's Carlos enjoying is birthday dinner of homemade Camarones a la diabla, by request, rice and beans. Oh hey! BEENZNRICE!

More of the dinner party:

 And of course a picture of the dinner plates. Everything was DELICIOUS!

Purple Pin-up: New graphical style from Naomi

Here is my pin-up illustration for a weekly artist contest! I didn't win, but I really love the direction I'm going here! Expect to see more in this style soon!

Deadline Tattoo Flyer Design

Created this for an amazing tattoo artist, Josh Simpson. If you're in the 805 and looking for someone good, I highly recommend!

Our Hearts Go Out.

We cannot even begin to imagine what the people in Newtown, Connecticut are going through. As parents to 3 kids of our own, our hearts hurt. I am fighting the urge to go pick my son up from school right now. In fact, I started cleaning his messy room that I'd been nagging him about all week to make me feel a little better. It's funny what we as parents feel guilty about when we hear something like this. Some things in life just are not as important as we feel they are.

Our hearts and our prayers go out to the kids, the parents, the teachers and school staff. Not that any time makes it any better, but we especially feel heartbroken in this holiday season. May your angels be looking down at you, in peace. :(

Love Pho 'N More in Camarillo

It's delicious. We are now regulars and actually went there twice this week. It's that good. CJ got a kids meal and I got the #96 pictured here. There's a ton of items on the menu!

CJ's Minecraft Birthday cake

Almost forgot to post this! I made this cake-the first time I've ever made one from scratch, and created the Enderman face for my boy CJ!

FLASH SALE! 40% off Phone Cases

Hi guys, just in case you were interested, there is a sale going on today and you can get 40% off any of our phone cases. Coupon code is MAGICALSALES

Go to our shop at http://www.zazzle.com/beenznrice/electronics

Nohea Arabica Berry Hawaiian Mask

Carlos is very excited this morning because another packaging project he designed goes out into the market today! The product is Nohea Arabica Berry Hawaiian Mask. Here's more about it:

"A unique and luxurious Nohea Arabica Berry Hawaiian Mask is now available at a special online launch price of just $49.25 (50% off retail). Just click www.noheanatural.com and type in the code LAUNCH when you checkout. For gifts just say so in Special Instructions and we will wrap!"

Here's to more and more packaging projects!

Quick Mini Vision Boards

Not only can I create awesome pics with my son, but I've found a way to create quick mini vision boards and inspiration boards! I think it's pretty obvious, but that second one is a vision board for a studio I'd like to have one day. :)

Here's a vision board I create before I had the iPhone:

Italian Sunday: Homemade Ravioli

So for a while now, we've done Italian Sundays where we start cooking a sauce from scratch early in the day. That coupled with our Walking Dead and Boardwalk Empire shows, quite a nice Sunday tradition indeed! Well, with the seasons over for the time being, we are continuing our food tradition and decided to up our game yesterday by making ravioli from scratch as well. Came out really tasty! It was a LOT of work though, and next time we'll be starting earlier. My hands and arms are nice and sore today! You can find the recipe HERE.

Carlos rolling out that dough!

Our cute uncooked raviolis! We used a mason jar for the shape.

The end result! AW YEAH!

And Carlos's parents brought some garlic bread. yum!!

Boardwalk Empire Season 3 Finale

So I have to say that the final episode was OFF THE FRIGGIN CHAIN! I stayed up late after watching it 5 times over and over again to create this portrait of Richard Harrow. I just had to. It's available as a print at our SHOP.

Night of the Living Dia de los Muertos Art Show!

I know this is late, but we've been busy! It was a blast and we really hope to be a part of the show next year and every year! Check out the photos from the show:

An interactive altar that allowed us to write our passed loved ones' names on butterflies as part of it. I wrote my Grandpa Frank and my Grandma Mieko.

Carlos's piece! Very cubist inspired!

My piece! It sold! 

Close up of the inside of my altar.

Date night!

Carlos having a Dali moment!

Me in front of one of the altars.

Very talented Ventura artist, Veronica Valadez. I had my first Dia de los Muertos show experience at her gallery back in 2008.

We made paper flowers. :)

Speak of the Devil at 423 West Gallery

"Mole in my Eye" My painting using the lovely Alfie Numeric as my muse.

Our friend, Ian Fleming from the band Ritual stopped by!

Me and 2 of the kiddos :)

Very cool live painting outside

My gallery ninja/pirate child

CJ's favorite piece of the night!

Definitely one of my favorite pieces!

 

This one probably inspired me the most.

It was a great night and a fun show! Everyone at the show was very cool. We even had a couple of zombies show up (which CJ took his gun and shot at when they weren't looking hehe). My painting is the one at the top, called "Mole in my Eye." I based this painting on the superstition my grandmother taught me. She is from the Philippines and has lots of them, but this one in particular always stuck with me. She told me that if you have a mole on your eye, you are able to see ghosts and the spirit world. Have had my own paranormal experiences since I was a kid, and still do now, I always tried to see if I had a mole in my own eye, but I haven't found one. My muse is the lovely and talented Alfie Numeric. She is super cool and totally relates to my story. The piece is up for sale at 423 West Gallery for $350 if anyone wants some art based on Filipino superstition!

To see the whole photo set, click HERE.

Speak of the Devil Art Show

Check out this show tomorrow evening! Beenznrice is going to have a painting among all these AMAZING artists. We are honored! We also created the flyers for this event. Very excited! Hope to see you there!

Finally Painting Again

It's great to feel like an artist again. I'm working on a painting for an upcoming show at Gallery West 423 in Los Angeles Oct 20 for the Speak of the Devil show. Based on old wives tales, idioms and superstitions, I chose to base my piece on something my Filipino grandmother used to tell me when I was a kid. She told me that people with a mole on their eye can see the spirit world. Cool, right? To this day, I check my eyes every once in a while. Here are some photos of my progress so far..

Sketching Tonight with No Expectations

It's been a long time since I've done this. Just watching TV and sketching, just for fun, whatever pops into my head, like I used to do when I was a kid. Watching my guilty pleasure Awkward. and drawing fairies and whatever else. Slight buzz from a Guinness and some sugary desserts (don't worry I'm still eating well, exercising and losing weight).