The Many Faces of Perry Felix Shaffer

Friday, June 24, 2011 by Amy





Just took pictures of his face for about three minutes. My favorite is the Chuck Norris "I'm probably going to cut you" shot in the bottom left corner.

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The Golden Hour

by Amy

Let's just say that Perry is a little bit obsessed with Jon. Just a little bit. Perry has two favorite times of day: when Jon gets him out of bed and when Jon gets home from work. I'd be offended except for the fact that it's so cute. So, rather than set up passive aggressive scenarios where he has to choose between mom and dad, I just take the pictures.







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Draw Me a Bath

by Amy



A bath, a pipe and some slippers and this little gentleman is ready to turn in for the night.

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It Begins

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 by Amy

In Dante's "Inferno 2.0," the circle just below "inconsistent/absentee bloggers" is reserved for "shameless mommy bloggers."

So I think I'm in for a lot of hellfire and brimstone. Give me a few days and I'm sure I'll repent back to absentee status.

But for now, there's this.



He's kind of amazing. He really is the best little boy. He manages to be sweet enough to make things feel easy but a handful enough to let me know that he has his own little ideas on things. He has a grumpy old man face that makes every smile a study in contrast. And one of the first things I learned about him is that the kid lets you know what he thinks with his hands. Exhibit A-F:





There is a legendary photo in my family of my little brother as a kid, with his huge wire-rimmed glasses and satin Donald Trump pajamas, with both of his hands clasped under his chin and his head cocked to one side. By the look on his face, you can't tell whether he just finished a show tune medley or was just channeling his best Punky Brewster cute-face. Needless to say, the overall effect is lovably, amazingly gay (said in the best, most literal way). I would post it but I think my brother has managed to destroy all evidence of it. But when I saw Perry start vogueing all of these, I loved that I knew where he got it from. And, based on my brother's impeccable taste in designer tableware and my husband's interest in women's shoes, I think this little guy will be carrying on a great metro tradition that will make his future wife very lucky.

I really love being a mom. So much. As much as I've loved being married to this guy for the last five years (this is the segue into the "brag about your spouse" post-- I'm really hitting all the blogging red flags today).




But seriously, I really am the luckiest. There's something about seeing your husband as a dad that makes them sexier and cooler than ever. I can't believe we've been married for five years today. I've gotten five years of all the ultimate genuine character, inappropriate jokes and sweetness that anyone could ask for. We've come so far from the MTC. Never thought I'd type that. Love you, babe.

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Things around our yard

Sunday, July 25, 2010 by Amy

Well, it's been a while. For a long time, I blamed my lack of blogging on a super sophisticated ambivalence I had developed to online sharingness, but really I think I was just lazy.


I am an internet sloth no more. Maybe.

So, here's what's happening around here. In a burst of productiveness fueled by the spoils of government cheese, Jon and I bought a house. And we're kind of in love with it. I'm so grateful that Jon talked me out of the one we looked at that was gutted to the studs and which almost fell off the planet in a landslide a month after we made an offer on it (for reals). I moped for at least a day after Jon vetoed that one (with several episodes of tears and maybe a door slam or two for effect) and said, direct quote, "We'll never find a house this cool again!"

Fortunately, Jon was willing to keep looking at houses even after my super sweet sixteen tantrum and we did in fact find a house about ten million times cooler. In our favorite neighborhood we never thought we'd be able to live in.

Now, this house does have its quirks. As in, this.





That's what some people call a yard. And that's what Jon calls a summer with less golf. I think that's why his first solution consisted of lighting everything on fire and then pouring concrete over it.

As tempting as that was, our actual approach looked a little more like this.




It turns out that all we needed was a friend with a Subaru, a chainsaw and way more experience than us. We did all kinds of crazy stuff. I swung a hatchet for the first and last time ever (At 15, I cut my hand open and ended up in the ER within the first ten minutes of my first job ever at a bagel shop. Turn the bagel knife into a hatchet and you can see why we almost ran into serious problems.)

After a few 10-12 hour days of that, things were looking a bit better but we still had a really long way to go. Cue my amazing family, who, fueled by our desperate thanks and a few 64-ounce Diet Cokes, managed to turn our 24th of July into a real festivus miracle.




We actually came up with a pretty genius business plan around polygamist yard care. Call me if you want in. Because this is what the nine of us were able to pull off.





Now, we're obviously not done. But what we've been able to accomplish has almost made me able to forget that I showed up several times to Home Depot looking like this.


Anyway, I'm a very sore but very happy girl. Next on the list this summer is the new fence, taking down the 80 ft. dead pine tree, and starting to make the courtyard (my absolute favorite part of the house) as amazing as I hope it will be. I'll be posting our progress to make sure we keep making it. Other things I'll be posting about very shortly include pics from my work trip to Europe, reasons why we love our dog and why the DMV thinks Jon is gay (spoiler alert: he's not).



The Never-Ending Story

Thursday, April 16, 2009 by Amy

A PLOT SUMMARY:

Two best friends start a stationery company, despite knowing little about such things as "invoices" or "money." Although the odds are long, these underdogs openly defy them and take the industry by storm with their impeccable style and strangely catchy vocal mannerisms. After being declared paper goods moguls, they retire to a luxe life of endless supplies of Bugles, long lunches and "America's Next Top Model."


No, this isn't the script for the next Hanna Montana movie. This is real life, people. Or at least we hope it will be.

As many of you know, we (Kristin and Amy) have been working for the last several months on a stationery line called Junky Heirloom. We got accepted to the National Stationery Show in New York in May and are busting our faces to be ready. We are going to be getting the initial run of our line back from the printers soon and we wanted to share it with you. We also wanted to document the whole story of our experience starting our own company and going out on a limb for our dreams. So we decided to start a new blog.

You can go to it here: mostlyhappenchance.blogspot.com

We are going to be posting on this blog every day before the Stationery Show to tell you what we're doing and show you all of the different aspects of our preparation. We hope you'll tune in with us and follow along. It should be interesting at the very least. We are also going to try to use the blog to help generate awareness of our company before the show, so if you want to tell your friends about it, we would love the support. If you have any suggestions, we welcome those as well.

Here goes nothing!


Kristin and Amy

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I love this guy.

Monday, April 13, 2009 by Amy





Lots of fun pictures from our various Easter-weekend festivities are soon to come. But I wanted to take a second to throw this one up of Jon and Norah (the adorable baby of our friends Sarah Jane and Nathan) because it's a perfect example of why I love Jon so much. He just has a cute face.

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