Apple Bee's Food Going Down Hill

So we have been going stir crazy in the house and today it was finally nice enough to go out and get some stuff done. We got most of our stuff this morning and then once we got home we realized we still needed one more thing to complete a project. We are giving up cable but we would still like to catch the local news so that we can see what idiots in Oklahoma are doing.

We had to go back and get an converter box so that we can use the antenna. Our TV was made one year before they came standard in the TVs. Yes we want a new TV too but that is another post. So anyways, by the time we get the converter box it is almost 6:30 p.m. and we are both hungry and so is Max, who didn't get a very good lunch or a nap all day. So we go to Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW). I happen to see another couple walking out as Tim is getting Max out of the car and ask how busy they were. They said there were about 25 people waiting to sit down. So BWW is out, we move on. Apple Bee's is the next closest thing.

I go in and ask how long the wait was, it was 10-15 minutes. It's doable so we decide to stay. We sit down, no problems. We get our drinks and order an appetizer, still no problems. Then we wait. There was another couple who sat down in the booth next to ours. I'm watching them and then I see out of the corner of my eye that they got their appetizer. I'm puzzled, we sat down before them and ordered before they even got to the table. Then about 3 minutes later they get their meal. Come on, we don't even have our appetizer yet.

We ordered some buffalo wings, just the regular ones. Well apparently I didn't read the menu because they are boneless now and they totally tasted like shit. I mean these things were awful. I had 2 and that was it. They tasted like they came out of a plastic bag, dropped on the floor, then thrown in the fryer and then served to us.

So then the meal comes. I had the chicken finger platter. So for the large size I thought it was a bit small, could have been a kid's portion with these 5 little tenders. I'm use the really big ones, like you get 5 but can only eat 3. The fries looked like they had been sitting under the light and tasted that way as well. Now mine was the good meal. You should have seen Tim's BBQ sandwich. The outside portion of the meat was hard and crusty, you couldn't eat it. The onion rings on top of it were like 3 weeks old, and the meat had no flavor. So it was suppose to be a BBQ sandwich and the there looked like there was about 1/2 tsp of BBQ sauce on it.

Okay so now to the point. I don't expect to much out of McDonald's and Burger King. I know what I'm buying when I go there. Something quick and easy. When I go to an Apple Bee's or Chili, or a place that is a little more expensive then Mickey D's and BK, expect a little bit more. I'm not looking for Gordan Ramsey's burger or chicken finger platter but I am looking for something better than Mickey D's or BK. Tonight, I would have eaten Mickey D's or BK over what we were served. We will not being going back. Yes I did pay, we did eat it, begrudgingly but that is mostly because we were hungry and didn't want to hear the boy scream because we were putting him back in car seat again to go to attempt to go to another place to eat. Lesson learned, NO MORE APPLE BEE'S!!!

Project Life: Mine and a Review

I'm not really sure where I heard about this project first, but I knew as soon as I saw it I wanted to do it. It is called Project Life. I talked about it a little here and I'm so proud that I have kept up with it since the first of the year.

I was originally going to do it just for us (Tim and I) but as the time got close to the birth of Max I thought it would a cool idea to document his first year. In the beginning it was all about him, but as I read what other people were doing with theirs I thought I would change it up a little and make it more about what happened his first year.

This first page (below) is on Max's birthday which happened to fall on New Year's Day, January 1st, 2010. I love the feeling of a fresh start. The kit comes with everything and this first page isn't how I think it was designed to be, but I made it work for what I wanted and there was to much going on to just put one picture and write a small baseball card story about this. I mean it was the birth of my first child, right?!
This is more how it is suppose to look. One card and one picture for each day to make a total of a week, but I know your are saying, well there are 8 picture spots and 8 card slots and there are only 7 days in a week. If you look in the bottom right corner you will see a blueish-green piece of paper. On this piece you are suppose to stamp the dates there (stamp also included in kit) and the extra baseball card slot is suppose to be another card that is similar to the "date card". I only did this a few times. I took a lot of my cues from how Ali is doing her Project Life. Which I totally love! But I thought about using the extra baseball card slots for extra pictures. I thought it was a waste of space to put some random looking card in there. If I didn't have a picture to put there, I just put a piece of mail, a receipt, or something else that was relevant to Max like a tag that came off a new outfit he got.

I also had some extra page protectors that I wanted to use for other items that were bigger than a 4 x 6 photo and that I didn't want to fold up in the baseball card slots. Below you will see it was a card made for Max by Max's Godmother's son, Hayden. I wanted to keep that so I put it in a 8.5 x 11 page protector.

I also wasn't afraid to put the vertical pictures in there too. Just because the picture was vertical I wasn't not going to put it in there because it didn't go with how the book was laid out. The one thing that I did do was to make sure that all the vertical pictures are going in the same direction throughout the book.

Also in the kit you will find these tabbed 4 x 6 cards. Recently I learned that if you fold them in half they will fit in the smaller slots, not sure why I just figured that out but I did. But I use these to tell a longer story. The one you see below in the bottom right corner is about Max's first 4th of July. The funny part about that is I don't have a picture from that day. So I used the story to go where the picture would go. The other thing that I have learned doing this project is that if I don't take a picture that day then it's okay. I was really up tight about not having a picture for every day of his life but I got over that quickly as I realized that there are other things that are more important.

So what do you do if you have a whole lot of pictures from one day that you want to put in your Project life book. Well there are two things you can do 1.) You can make a 12 x 12 layout and put it in there. The kit comes with 12 x 12 paper, for what I assume, to do just this or you can do 2.) Put a 12 x 12 page protector in there with six 4 x 6 picture slots.

My mother recently came for a visit and there were so many pictures that I or she took that I couldn't pick just one so this is how I solved it. I numbered all the pictures on the page, then I took one of the 4 x 6 journaling cards and wrote my journaling for each picture next to the corresponding number. Simple, effective, and it still fits in with the idea of the whole project.

So that's it. I just wanted to share what I was doing and what I thought about Project Life. I think this is an awesome idea to do for the first year of anything (child, wedding, year before retirement). I plan to do this for our next child whenever we we get there. It will start the day they are born and go to their first birthday. It can be time consuming but when you look back you will be so proud. I know I am. I will keep you updated on how it is going. Remember there is no wrong way to record your memories.