The Lunch Artist

Since I've been substituting at schools every day, James has started making my lunch a lot of nights. It really makes my day when he does that. But to make it even better, he has been drawing pictures on the lunch bags! It is such fantastic art that I had to share it with everyone.

Monday 2/9, Freedom Academy with special ed elementary kids.

Wednesday 2/18, Landmark High School with teenage troublemakers.

Wednesday 2/25, Traverse Mountain Elementary with energetic preschoolers.

"Have a wild Wednesday wrangling wiggly children"

Thursday 2/26, Traverse Mountain with same group of kids. This one also has a back story. Zed the zebra, rainbow-striped and well-versed in ebonics, is a story character made up by James. When we have children, their bedtime stories will revolve around this guy.

Monday 3/2, Sunrise Preschool with special ed 4-year-olds. (On the other side of the Zed the zebra bag.)

I love how he's talking through his trunk!

Tuesday 3/3, Northridge Elementary with special ed preschoolers. The latest and greatest!!! You can't teach a sneetch!

Help I Accidentally Built A Shelf

Just for the fun of it I thought I'd do a separate post about James' birthday bookshelf. You see, I always love to brag when I think I've been very sneaky.

I asked James what he wanted for his birthday and he said this bookshelf he had on his Amazon wish list. It was almost $200, but we've been talking about getting a bookshelf ever since we moved in because we still had boxes of books that have nowhere to go. But I acted like I wasn't really interested in getting him a bookshelf.

THEN, while he was gone, I scouted out R.C. Willey, Shopko, and Target on my mom's suggestion that I could probably find a similar one for cheaper. And at long last, at Target I found the perfect bookshelf that looked pretty much exactly the same, but for only $100. It also had good reviews about being sturdy.







I had to get the store workers to put it onto a cart for me and take it to the car. Then we had to lean it from the back seat into the passenger seat because the back seats don't fold down into the trunk.







I bought it about a week before James' birthday, so I had to hide it somewhere in the meantime. But James is weirdly good at finding things. You never know when he is going to randomly go through the closet, or look under the bed, or go on a cleaning spree.

So, I hid it under a canopy in the back of our apartment along with a bunch of the landlord's stuff. I wrapped it in a tarp against the elements and even added the extra touches of a mat, engine fluid and a tree stump.












Completely camouflaged.










It stayed there for a week and I am happy to say that I never spilled the beans! It was a total surprise. I had James do a treasure hunt that eventually led outside to the lawnmower, where I had stacked a bunch of his books. (I meant to put 25 books, to go with the whole theme, but there just wasn't time.) He was like, "What the dickens are my books doing out here?" Then he read the clue which told him the books needed a place, and he found it. Hooray!




We spent the rest of the evening putting it together and putting all the books on it. At last our cardboard boxes are gone.

We are now, officially, moved in! (Name that movie.)

P.S. If you haven't seen this you should: Help I Accidentally Build A Shelf

Twenty Five

Since he recently turned 25, I have put together this list of 25 things about my best friend James. Enjoy!

1. He is extraordinarily thoughtful to me, especially when I am having a hard time. He does all sorts of things I didn't ask him to do just to help me feel better, like do the dishes, make the bed, make my lunch the night before, etc.
2. He draws THE cutest (and funniest) pictures ever. I will have to put some of those on the blog.
3. On weekends he really likes to get out of the house and browse the Mall, Sportsmans Warehouse, or "The Man Store" (a military surplus store).
4. He does service for other people if given the chance, like help them move, clean up the yard, fix their computer. One time he woke up extra early to shovel my grandma's driveway.
5. He almost never loses at See-Who-Can-Push-The-Other-Person-Into-The-Lovesac. Even when I catch him completely off guard I usually can't push him over.
6. He never makes a bet with me (usually with soda or cookies on the line) unless he is completely 100% sure that he is right. This is how he gets so much soda.
7. He can fall asleep super fast. He has been known in the past to doze off right as I am talking to him about an interesting math idea, or sometimes while I'm reading to him.
8. He's an extremely "hands-on" learner and loves to touch, take apart, reassemble, use and handle objects. That's how he acquired a magical knowledge of what everything is, how it works, and how to fix it.
9. He likes to learn and read about lots of things, and particularly about photography techniques and cameras, geology, current events, historic events and wars, outdoor survival, and guns.
10. He loves to sing really goofy songs to me. The lyrics, which rhyme sporadically, are usually about whatever he is currently thinking or doing, or a description of what I'm doing. He will be a great dad.
11. He has a Kindle with loads of books on it, but also likes to have shelves full of real books. On the other hand, he doesn't see the point in having real DVDs, when he can store all movies on the hard drive.
12. He absolutely loves free stuff. Any time he sees something he can get for nothing, he has an urge to get it. He's pretty good at controlling this urge, but we still remember the incident of 2012 when he discovered Reddit Freebies. In came 3D glasses, a cheese chart, travel-size shampoo and conditioner, Apple logo stickers...among other things.
13. His favorite expression of surprise/annoyance is "Great Scott..." It has most definitely rubbed off on me.
14. He can imitate voices really well. Especially Marvin the Martian, which is hilarious. He also has a "nerd voice" which annoys the heck out of me, and a "bro voice" and a "hipster voice." My very favorite is his Mexican "a ha ha ha!" laugh, which he will never do upon request.
15. He really likes having a clean apartment and actually does more cleaning than I do. He will do the dishes, clean the counters, clean the tub and sink, vacuum and do laundry, all of his own free will.
16. The traditional gender stereotypes of shopping are completely reversed in our marriage. He will go to the store to get one thing, one thing as I repeatedly tell him, and comes back with many things. Not a single aisle escapes his scrutiny.
17. His sleep schedule hasn't changed one bit since we were dating. It's the usual midnight-to-8 most days, and if he tries to go to sleep earlier he will wake up at 2am unable to fall asleep again.
18. He creates very descriptive adjectives by sticking "-y" to the end of nouns. Me: "How was work?" Him: "Worky." Me: "How was class?" Him: "Classy." And even, one time, "How was your day?" Him: "Day-y." (Just to bug me.)
19. He is always really sweet and constantly reminds me that he loves me. I think he gets a lot of happiness from surprising me or doing small little things to show his love.
20. He has an amazing, amazing stretchy ability to bend backwards while yawning and stretching, so far back that he makes a rainbow shape. I have no clue how he is that flexible.
21. His favorite foods are pasties, fried rice, and sushi. He also loves Jimmy Johns sandwiches, and Culver's. And he snags a few tamales whenever the tamale lady comes by our door.
22. He never, ever, ever wears jeans. The last time he wore jeans was probably before his mission. And once afterward when he had to borrow my dad's for some yard work. And trust me, it was really weird to see.
23. He loves his family and enjoys talking to them and spending time with them. He will sometimes call them on the phone or Google hangout for no reason other than just to say hi.
24. When he wants to relax one of the things he likes to do is go on a walk. He especially likes to take walks with me while holding hands. We go around a few blocks or sometimes to the duck pond.
25. His favorite comics are Calvin and Hobbes, and The Far Side. Here's one that he really likes. It was the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip ever published.

Party of Two, Please

James has made it through a quarter of a century! Hooray! We decided to have a just-the-two-of-us stay-at-home party. He even preferred to have homemade pasties for dinner instead of eating out.

While James was at work and class for 2 hours, I blew up 25 balloons, wrote 25 things I love about him, and then made a treasure hunt that led to a brand new bookshelf he's been wanting. Sadly I didn't have time to make 25 different clues, but I did throw in a bunch of fun facts about the number 25. For example:

• Manganese is the 25th element on the periodic table. And its melting point is 2275°F.
• The first 25 digits of pi are 3.141592653589793238462643 . . .
• Weirdly, PI written in number code is 16 9 and 16 + 9 = 25 which also coincidentally forms a Pythagorean Triple, 4² + 3² = 5².
• At the age of 25 James can now be elected to the House of Representatives.
• Arkansas is the 25th state, and their state mineral is Quartz.
• The weirdest of all: Did you know that the 25th President of the United States, William McKinley, was born on January 29th, James' birthday?!?!?!?!?!

Well, enough of that. Although it was pretty fun, and made for a pretty good party of two people.

Benjamin, Christy, and his Dad sent presents of cookies, moola, and a fancy Russian tie. They are so great! He also got a new plaid button-up shirt that is not blue. (Blue looks great on him, but he doesn't want all of his clothes to be blue.) But like I said, the present he really wanted was the bookshelf. We set it up while the pasties were cooking, and then filled it with books. He is so glad to have finally unpacked our last three boxes!

New shirt and new tie! It's a Jams Fashion Show. 

But look how handsome he is.

To commemorate, in the next post I am going to write 25 awesome facts about James.

The Jar of Good Things

Right before New Years we read about an idea from somebody on the Internet, to write about all the good things that happen in 2015 and put them in a jar. James and I liked that idea so we bought a jar. A while ago I had seen this jar decorated with tissue paper in a quatrefoil pattern. Being the unique and creative person that I am I decided to do the exact same thing. (But really. Who needs to reinvent the wheel?)

Since we were pretty far into January by the time I finished the jar and papers, we had a family home evening where we got caught up on everything we could remember from the past month. Hopefully, unlike many new years resolutions, this idea will last all the way to December! It will be pretty cool to dump all the papers out and look back on the year.

Anyway, I was so so so very excited about this crafty project that I took pictures while I was making it. I felt rather Pinterest-y.

First, and this is actually true, I made my own Mod Podge. Mostly, I just didn't want to spend a bunch of money (or a small amount of money) on something that I probably will use once a year. It's fun, but from what I can tell it's only used for useless things, like gluing tissue paper to a perfectly fine-looking jar.







I even took one of those pictures where it shows all the supplies you will need. Everyone I know always gathers and sets out the supplies in neat aesthetic rows right before starting a project. Kind of like those cooking shows where the chef already has all the ingredients measured out into infinitely many measuring cups and so it only takes 5 minutes to make when in reality it would take probably 30 minutes...Anyway.

A paper punch would be ideal for this type of thing, but I didn't have one so I measured and cut out a quatrefoil from cardboard and then traced it onto the tissue paper 40+ times and cut them all out. 

Here are the little beasties!









Then glue them on. Voila! James pointed out something which had never ever crossed my mind until I was nearly done: I am really lucky the pattern fit perfectly around the jar! It didn't overlap at all.

I'm hoping the jar will get completely packed and almost overflow by the end of the year. I wonder how much paper that would require. We'll see in December.