***PIE DAY 2011***

"Hey, pie day is on Sunday!"
"Duh, pie day is on March 14. Hello? 3.14? pi?"
"Ummmm, why would you want to celebrate pi day when you can celebrate pie day?!"
.....................(cricket chirp)..........................................."I love math"

I feel like I have this conversation every year. Multiple times. I guess I'm not a math person. But I am definitely a food person. I had never even heard of this March 14th-thing until someone denied my knowledge of pie celebrating. And why would anyone ever want to deny a celebration where pie-eating is involved? This all escapes me.

National Pie Day is January 23. Please always celebrate it. You get tons of pie. Nuff said.

Here are some highlights from this year's celebration and a look into pie days of yesteryear...

Pie Day 2007 -Gilbert, AZ

Pie Day 2008 -Provo, UT



release party Feb 13, 2011



Pie Day 2009 happened, I just don't have any documentation of it. I just remember it was yummy and I played a lot of Guitar Hero.

Sadly, Pie Day 2010 didn't happen. I don't remember why. But I will assume there were darn good reasons. Darn good.

And here we have Pie Day 2011!!!!!!!!!



Oh so proper



 Some people had a little too much fun...

So, I'm thinking I don't want to wait until next year for the next pie day. Who's with me?!?!?!?!

Wienerschnitzel Holiday

As last Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day (aka: Civil Rights Day), Camaron made sure we both had work off -I mean, come on, it's a holiday:) Then we spent the whole day together. We started out by going on a picnic to the park we had just found by our home. There's also a Wienerschnitzel nearby, and I had never been (but was always intrigued), so we decided to let them cater our picnic. We also made it a film day. We used my film camera to document the picnic and then later attempted to make a pinhole camera. (It's basically done, we just can't make the film advance. Any tips?)

Here, we picnic



We like this pic because Cam looks so cool. Like when cool means I'm about to throw up.
He wasn't, he just looks like it



Sunny!



I don't like to be messed with when Imma drinkin my shake





typical




models




super models



Man who was stretching for like 52 minutes



Then I blinked and his shirt had disappeared



The reason I'm glad we forgot to grab napkins

Pillow Talk

Woo-hoo another tutorial! I'm so domestic. Sorry, I had really not planned for my blog to be home-makey, but it's gonna happen every once in a while (I have my own home now). Deal with it.

As part of making our apartment more home-y, I decided our couch needed some throw pillows. I really am liking pillows with neat textures on them. Target had some way cute pillows, but I couldn't justify paying that much for a pillow that I knew would not be that hard to make (Plus, I always like things better when I know I made them. Good old pride). So a few Saturdays ago, I embarked on pillow number one: The Target Pillow



The inspiration. Love it.



Step one

This is for a pillow with just one flower



I decided to make mine black and teal. I measured out and sewed a case to cover a thrift store pillow. I then cut out a 2" wide strip of teal to make my flower out of. I think it was around 2' long. I cut out more strips and added them in as I went.




Step Two

I put my pillow in the black case and then began hand-stitching the flower. I started on the outside making a circle (placing the stitched on the inside on the circle). I then twisted the fabric every so often as I went. So basically, I was making a tight spiral going from the outside in. This could probably be done with a sewing machine, but I was back in my apartment (no longer at my mom's house), so I went old school.


Step Three


My teal strip lasted for most of the flower, but when I ran out I just started another where I left off. I folded the end like a triangle and hid it under where I had finished the previous strip each time I started a new one.



Finished



This pillow ended up taking a little longer than anticipated, but I still was able to finish it in about a day. Next time, I'm going to see if I can get the flower on there using the sewing machine instead of hand-stitching.



Then, I was at Bed, Bath, & Beyond last week when I came across pillow project number two.

Uhhhh, so I just looked for a picture of it online, but not seeing it. Hmmm, well I'll just describe it in vivid detail. I looks just like mine exscept I think the flower things were a little bigger and closer together. And it was a gorgeous dark burnt orange color.

This one was so easy. It's all felt, which is now my favorite material to sew with (no frayed edges!). I really wanted to use the same burnt orange color, but I could not find felt that color ANYWHERE (If you happen to come across some, pleeeeease let me know). But I still like the off-white.

Step One

First, I made a circle pattern by tracing a mug onto a paper towel. I pinned it to the felt and then began cutting out circles. For my pillow, I used 30 circles. I cut them out while the fabric was doubled over, so I only had to cut 15 circles =nice

Step Two



Next, after cutting out the 2 pieces for your pillow cover (measure your pillow to figure out how big to make these pieces), I took each cut-out circle and folded it in half. I then folded it in half again, so it looked like a triangle. I pinned the triangles to one piece of the pillow cover in rows of 5. I ended up making 6 rows.



Step Three



After pinning the rows, I sewed a straight line right over the very bottoms of each triange. After all of the rows were sewn, I then sewed the two pillow cover pieces together with the flowers on the inside, then turned it right-side out, put the thrift store pillow inside and then hand stiched the opening closed:)

*********ATTN: PIE DAY 2011 POST COMING SOON*********

Gus "TT" Showbiz. The extra T is for talent

I'll admit, that blog title has very little to do with this post. Actually, it doesn't really have anything to do with this post.

I'll also admit I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year. Camaron and I talked about them for like 6 seconds on New Year's Eve, but neither of us could really think of any. In the past, my resolutions usually consisted of "getting my first kiss" (I won't elaborate on how long I had that one for) and then it became "getting married." So both of those have now been checked off (Don't worry, I also always had health and spiritual ones too). I'm sure there are lots of things I need to work on this year and that I want to achieve, but (cheesy as it is) life is just so happy and perfect-feeling that I don't really want to change anything. Aww man, I probably just jinx'd myself by writing that. Ok, I'll change it. There, much better.

Looking back on this month, I can't help but think I should have made "more frequent blogging" one of my New Year's resolutions. I would be rockin that one. I don't know what it is, but I'm just on a bloggin rampage or something. When I first started blogging, I was so unsure of myself that I would type a post and then delete it like 3 times before finally posting it. And I would only post like once every couple of months, when I thought I had finally found something worthy of blogging. I'm glad I overcame that. Last week, in an FB conversation, I was even referred to as a "blog-o-holic" (by myself)

See.

Then look at what my sister, Beth-annie, wrote. Notice she attributes my habit to my being married. What a hasty generalization. This makes no sense to me at all. But I guess it's true.

And now my husband blogs too, and he's mighty good at it. Seriously, I'm impressed with every post. If he wasn't my husband, I'd totally follow him. Well, I guess I will anyway. He's even making a full-fledged effort to make blogging a daily habit by participating in Lauren's 30 in 30. Who else blogs? Do you blog? Do I follow you? If not, why? Because I should. And you should tell me. You may tell me to my face, with a creepy letter stabbed into a watermelon (picture coming soon), or in the comments at the bottom of this post. I will leave it in your hands.

UMM IDK

So, mid-last year, Camaron was driving on the freeway when he came upon a car with an amazing license plate. Here is the photographic evidence that he risked his(and probably some other driver's) life for. It soon became the wallpaper on his phone. I had a photo of the two of us on my phone, and he had this on his. And who could blame him?!


"UMM IDK"


So, that's pretty magical in itself

...but then the license plate fairy decided to sprinkle a little fantastic-license-y-ness dust on the whole thing by having me(who wasn't with Camaron when he saw this license plate on the freeway) witness this plate as well! And it wasn't just another happenstance drive-by on the freeway or what have you.

No.

I was doing my morning school duty of helping out with the kids being dropped off for school in the front parking lot when who should pull away right in front of mine own eyes? None other than "UMM IDK"!!!!!!!!!!!! The clever owner's child apparently attended my school!

mind=blown

Other magical license plates
  
 

Other magic: I now know how to spell license on the first try

Talent



All of the credit goes to my dear darling husband

You see this? It took me about 25 years to be able to do this without using one of my fingers to help guide my eyes. So far in life, I have always had 20/20 vision, if that changes in the near future, we'll all know why.

I have a hard time staying cross-eyed when the flash on cameras goes off ...obviously. (see below)

Remember that time when I didn't totally creep you out? Yeah, me neither

This may be my greatsest feat of 2011. Where do I even go from here?

Always keep ipod charged

I have the gen 5 ipod nano. It's pretty sweet. I got it for my birthday last year after my other ipod was stolen (remember when that bum face stole my purse? Yeah, not cool. But I will get my revenge). Anyway, I wa gifted this ipod and I loves it. It has cool games, a speaker, sweet display, and all of my most favorite tunes. Only thing I'd improve if I was its inventor would be the battery charging. You see, for some reason, this generation of ipod was designed to only be charged when hooked up to your computer (ie: ipod docks and car charge/transmitter things don't charge it :(  ).

Typically, I do a pretty good job keeping it charged. Lately though, I've been majorly slacking (Cut me some slack, I just got married and started back at work and I'm lazy mmmk?). So my ipod has been dead for the last few weeks. At first, it was no big because I had my favorite Shins CD in the car. So it was me and James Mercer jamming it out everyday ...until I really just needed to switch things up (no offense, James. You are and always will be wonderful). But instead of simply finding the cable and plugging my ipod in, I decided to lay my musical fate into the hands of the fm radio gods. Bad choice.

Have you listened to the radio lately? Sure there are some fun new songs on there, but they are played 22,576,844, 663,431 times a day! Who are these DJs?! I blame it on the man. I'm pretty sure this is all his doing. So then I switched over to the no fail KOOL 94.5. My oldies never let me down. ...until now. Disco, 94.5? Really? Eighties, 94.5? Really? Now I feel way old. Those are not oldies. Please put them back on the easy listening station they were always on.

Sure, I'll admit I do like a little Beegees here and there and I am a big fan of 80s, but I really just want me some 50s and 60s please. The way things are going, where will it end? Am I going to tune in to 94.5 to find myself drumming my steering wheel to Ace of Base? Wash my car to Alanis Morisette on KOOL? Pull up to some hottie in a hot red convertible (It would be Camaron, of course), roll down my window, and turn up my volume to blast the fab 4 at 4, only to hear NKOB's "Hang Tough"?!?!

My only conclusion is, always keep your ipod charged. You will only be saddened (unless you're playing some kind of game where you get $5 every time the radio plays "DJ Got US Fallin in Love," that could be fun)

Awkward & Awesome Thursday

So... my cute little new sister-in-law made quite an interesting blog post today. It was inspired by this blog. I thought it was a cute idea. But then I could only think of awesome things that happened today, nothing awkward ...and then one of my 1st grade students humped my leg. 

HELLLLLOOOOOO awkward.

Here we go:


This picture came up when I googled the word "awkward". Well done, Google. Well done.

AwkwArd

• The aforementioned incident with said 1st grade student (At least it wasn't an 8th grade student?)
• The lock on my car's driver's side doesn't work, so I have to get in on the passenger's side and then slide over the stick to my seat. This morning, a neighbor was on her porch and watched me.
• The doodles I found in one of the "How to draw Superheroes" books in my classroom
• Me trying to actually form words when another teacher was talking to me (ie: "Oh, yes, nice day it is. Haha sun nice. Haha ha.  ha."
• It always smells like dog poo on the first step of our outside stairs. Always. Yet no poo is ever found. Interesting...
• The innuendos strewn about the ads at Lenny's Burgers
• Now I'm a Libra? But what about my Scorpio tattoo? And what sign am I supposed to be attracted to now?



Again, all the praise goes to Google. I've seen this before. Where have I seen this? I'll keep you posted

Awesome

• Having 7th grade students from last semester tell me they miss my class (Well, duh.)
• It's Thursday!!!! aka: Tomorrow is Friday!!!!
• Today is temple day for Cam and I :)
• I "got to" sleep in and then husband packed my lunch because I had slept it -and it was dang good.
• We bought sprayable pancakes last night -that's right, an aerosol can of pancake batter. It sounds so weird and wrong that I couldn't leave Walmart without it.
• The high today was 75 degrees. 75 degrees in January!!!! AZ I love you so. Anybody up for a swim?
• The throw pillows I'm gonna make for our couch. Serious, awesome doesn't even begin to describe...
• We ate at Lenny's tonight and it was DPS officer night apparently. There were 7 cop cars parked outside! Awesome.

Getting thrifty

Relationship books/people always seem to suggest that relationships work better when the two of you come from similar financial  backgrounds and/or have similar views about money and finance. See, I told you. Well, luckily, Camaron and I have very similar ideas when it comes to spending money (well, as far as I can tell right now:) ), so when we wanted to furbish our apartment, it was nice to know that we were both down for hitting up the thrift stores. I totally believe in thrifting -if you do it right. Thrifting a chair= right on. Thrifting lingerie= oh my puke. We needed a kitchen table/chairs and a couch (although I will always miss eating lunch on the floor). We found a sweet table/chairs through some friends for quite a steal (ca-ching!), then we found a huge/awesome/comfy couch in great condition at a little family thrift store for a major steal (ca-ca-ca-ching!). Through the search, we came upon a nice little coffee table at Goodwill; It was only $13, so we snatched that one right up. It was in good condition, but it had that honey wood color that was big in the 90s. So it became my first big project of the home:) We bought some spray paint, and then last Saturday I went to town on that little table.

I forgot to take a "before" picture, but I found a picture that the table is in. Behold its before-ness:

After:

Check out that heavenly glow ...and that heavenly man:)

I sanded all of the shiny finish off first, then painted it a burgundy color. I then went over the burgundy with black. A lot of black (I've never painted furniture before with spray paint, so I'm sure there was an easier way to do it, but oh well). Then I went back over the edges with a little bit of sand paper so some of the burgundy would show through (You know, gives it that antique-like feel). And voila!



Entranced by Percy Jackson ...and our awesome "new" coffee table