I'm Peanut Butter & You are Jelly

For our anniversary last year I bought PB&J keychains from an etsy shop. I had been singing, "I'm peanut butter and you are jelly..." for a few weeks in preparation for the reveal of this cute gift, and Jared would even sing the song to me. Well those stinkin' keychains both broke within a matter of weeks and we were left with two little pieces of bread and nothing to do with them. Until now. 

Introducing: an anniversary fail turned into a Valentine's day success!

I have had this idea brewing for a long time, and of course waited until the day of to put it all together. Wait til you see it. It's precious. 

Materials:

I measured and cut the fabric and pillowcase to fit the frame using my new rotary cutting set that Santa gave me. It is awesome! Then I brought back my old stitching skills and got myself a hand cramp as I stitched some of the song's lyrics onto the pillowcase piece.

After that I indulged in some peanut butter m&ms, tested out a few new styles of stitches on my sewing machine, and sewed the two pieces together.

After that, all it took was some super glue to attach Jared Peanut Butter and Lauren Jelly - I'm not about to be the chunky one - and now I'm waiting for Jared to come home and open up his gift!

I really shouldn't point it out, but see how the word "bread" slants upward? That is proof that my left hand was completely cramped and almost useless at that point. But I'm very happy with how it turned out and that I could still get my money's worth out of those two keychains.

Give it 100

I first came across this concept several months ago, but didn't look into any more until today.

CLICK THIS --->

  

The idea behind this is that you choose a talent or goal that you can work toward each day, stick to it for 100 days, and see how your commitment has changed you.

Some people choose to learn a new language, learn how to juggle, or they choose a fitness goal, like doing 100 jumping jacks every day. I just made that up, but I'm sure someone's doing it! I saw one project where all the guy did was try to touch his toes! I compared his Day 1 to his Day 11, and let's just say he'll reach his goal well before the 100th day.

Anyway, you record yourself working on your goal and upload ten seconds of your video onto your personal profile. It's called "Give it 100" as in "Hey, give it a try for 100 days", or if you're feeling a bit more ambitious: GIVE IT 100%!

I'm thinking I want to jump on the bandwagon and I have a few ideas as to what I want to do. I'd like to maybe do tummy toning exercises, practice ASL (possibly just signing the alphabet), or something to do with photography. Any input?

Oh, Christmas Tree

Putting up the Christmas decorations

Trimming the tree

Plugging in the lights, get ready!

Oh...

I Hope I Never Meet This Guy

Have you heard of "The Matt Walsh Blog"?

I'm not putting his picture up and I'm not posting a link to his blog, but his posts get a lot of attention and are shared on Facebook by many of my friends. You might recognize his post "Abstinence is unrealistic and old-fashioned" or "You're a stay-at-home mom? What do you DO all day?"

Sound familiar?

He has powerful opinions and what he has to say is interesting and usually worth the read, but he can be a meanie. I hope to never meet this guy. If I do, I'll probably say or do something he won't approve of and then he'll blog about me. He'll go home and create a 30 paragraph long post (aka - rant) based on what I said or did.

Ever since I first read his thoughts on the stay-at-home mom, I can't help but pick it out of each of his posts. When he told a woman that his wife was at home with their babies the woman said, "Oh fun! That must be nice!" That's it. That's all she said. And that merited her the titles of "quietly presumptuous and subversively condescending" and "rude, pompous, and smug".

Woah. "Oh fun!" sounds like something I would say. It would just come out - it's friendly conversation.

I hope I'm not being hypocritical here by posting about him. After all, it is his criticism and strong views on touchy subjects that make his words so interesting to read, but does he really think like that as much as he makes himself out to?

Thoughts? Have you noticed it too? Would you want to meet him?

A Peterson Tradition

My family has the tradition each year near Halloween to invite a family over for homemade caramel apples and a movie. 

We always watch the animated Disney film of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and last year my mom sent the dvd to me, so I pulled it out again for this year and invited Uncle Whitney's family over. 

Our caramel apples cooled while we watched the movie.

Kara said this image would haunt her nightmares more than the headless horseman:

 The first bite is really awkward, but after that we chowed down.

Uncle Whitney did not eat his caramel apple, but here is a picture of him telling us all that he will never ever watch "What Does the Fox Say?" Had to capture that after just hearing that my dad watched the video several times that day!

To Be Young

Jared and I are in a unique situation, living with his parents and having no children of our own. Sometimes we get to act like the kids. 

Take yesterday for example. We went to the San Diego Safari Park with my mother-in-law (MIL, as Ami would say), and got to run around with the animals for a few hours.

Jared was sick with a cold, and I had a sore throat, but oh my goodness, does that park make you sanitize and wash. The animals should be okay!

We stopped in at the petting zoo (which had only goats), posed as bats, stood next to lemurs, went on an African safari tram ride, and fed nectar to the birds.

My favorite photo

The bird on my shoulder was SCREAMING in my ear

Jared had to take a picture on this rhino, something he's been doing for years. The two children playing on it when we approached fled the scene, but I saw one of them sneaking back as soon as we left. Popular rhino.

We also got to watch a cheetah run, and apparently this park is the only place outside of a conservation reserve (or the wild) where you can witness this!

That night while saying our prayer, I gave thanks for the new things we learned at the safari park. I then remembered we had seen a giraffe drink from a peeing female to test for fertility.

Yikes.

On This Day in History...

Can you think of anything better to write about than the events of this day in history? 

Me neither. 

Wikipedia lists many things that happened on October 13th. Here are a few that I found interesting:

- Roman Emperor Claudius was poisoned to death under mysterious circumstances. His 17 year old stepson, Nero succeeded him to the throne. Hmm...mysterious indeed...

- This day does not exist in Italy, Portugal, Spain, or Poland in 1582 (awkward)

- Establishment of the U.S. Navy was ordered

- The cornerstone of the White House was laid

-  The world was graced with Paddington Bear

- AT&T launched the first cellular network in the U.S.

- A plane crash in Bolivia killed 100 people, 97 of whom were on the ground

I'll go ahead and advise you to never fly on October 13th, as there seems to be a lot of plane crashes and hijacks on this day (though all in foreign countries).

See, now wasn't that interesting?