Peanut Butter

Did you know there's an entire blog devoted to peanut butter?

Peggy over at The Peanut Butter Blog found our lunch bags on etsy and was kind enough to feature us in her post today! It's always fun to be recognized and hear that someone likes your product.

I always thought peanut butter was a worldwide thing [actually if I'm being honest I never actively thought about who has access to peanut butter, but I definitely assumed it was pretty standard] so I was more than a little surprised last year when we had some relatives from Sweden come visit and say they had never even heard of peanut butter. What do the Swedish school children eat for lunch? Baltic herring and boiled potatoes? Uffda! as my Scandinavian relatives might say...

My mother insisted they try a peanut butter & jelly sandwich before leaving America. She thinks PB&J is so good that if peanut butter were really expensive to make it would take on the cultural cache of caviar and be reserved for special occasions and fancy parties. It was the most extravagant wedding I've ever attended--they had a 40 piece orchestra, vases and vases of imported fresh flowers, and they had servers walking around with trays of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches!

The sandwich did not go over well with the Swedish relatives, though I thought it was cute that one of them said she did like the "marmalade" (Welch's Grape Jelly, it wishes it was as refined as marmalade). In any event, visit Peggy's blog to see our bags and learn more about peanut butter than you ever thought possible...and remember, choosy moms really do choose JIF. Creamy JIF to be exact.

The Eyes Have It

When I was in grad school I adopted a policy of "deferred maintenance" when it came to taking care of myself. My living stipend was very small, and my health insurance was comical--I think I paid $400 a year. Thankfully I never got sick but if I had I can't imagine that would have covered any more than a pillow for me to rest my head on as I died.

Now that I'm out of school and (somewhat) gainfully employed, I've been able to do some things I couldn't do before--exciting things like going to the dentist and the doctor(!) The past few months I've been taking care of my eyes. First I decided to get contacts. I'm not going to wear them everyday since I have astigmatism and the ones I got don't correct for it, but they'll be good to have on certain occasions.

Of course, when I went to order the contacts I checked out the glasses frames and found a pair that I simply had to have. My prescription hadn't changed too much, but I sat on my old pair of glasses a few years ago and they haven't been the same since, so I decided to treat myself to a new pair. My new frames are geek chic...the geek is the thick black frame, the chic is the awesome pink enamel and rhinestone detailing on the side. They are so me.


After taking care of my eyes from a medical standpoint I decided they deserved a little beautifying as well. I went to the MAC store (the cosmetics, not the computers) and had a fabulously gay man show me how to do use some beautiful green eyeshadows to make my brown eyes pop. It definitely takes longer in the morning to achieve the new look, so to make sure it lasts all day I invested in an eyeshadow primer that I saw recommended on another blog. The picture below is of my eye after a very sweaty 4th of July picnic, 14 hours after I applied my makeup...

The green shadow is still in place! (Though i definitely could have touched up my undereye concealer--eesh). Impressive primer, eh? It wasn't cheap, but you only need a little bit and the tube is big so it'll last a while. It's by Urban Decay, you can buy it straight from their website (click on the pic), but I got mine at Sephora.

I've also been to the dentist quite a bit in the past few months, but I'm thinking pictures of my fillings would not be as entertaining...