First Big Snow of Winter 2013

These bushes are past knee high.
They had close to a foot of snow on top of them.

The first week of December brought a massive ice & snow storm to our area. I don’t think I've ever seen so much snow in my whole life! It was crazy. I’m from Oklahoma so the ice everywhere wasn't exactly a new thing (and actually made me not miss OK so much) but all the snow everywhere was crazy!

Most of our back yard was knee deep and the drifts were past that in a few areas. Over a week after the storm hit we still have most of the snow on the ground. It’s all white and pretty!

Our car does not love this weather. It got stuck the first three days hubby had to go out for work. The day of the storm he was able to get the car out of the driveway without too much trouble, but when he got home from his shift it got stuck really bad at the road end of our driveway. We attempted to dig it out, but 30 minutes in we were still getting nowhere. If the guy in the big truck hadn't come and yanked us out it probably would've taken a few hours to dig it out. Thank God for him!!

All bundled up and ready to dig the car out!

Hubby is not used to so much snow. He’s from the deep south and there really isn't snow there… ever. We are both quite tired of it though. Since the original snow storm it’s snowed two times and we had rain/sleet another day. More snow is expected in the next few days. Fortunately the highway right outside our house is a main snow route so it gets plowed regular which is a good thing. I’m just hoping this baby decides to come on a day when the roads are clear! I cannot imagine going all the way to the hospital (over an hour away) on icy roads!

Bucket Listed | Tiramisu, Family Vacation & Snowmen!

Today on Bucket Listed I'd like to share with you three more goals which I've posted previously, but want to expand on. The 'bucket list' photos were saved off my original post: 55 Life Goals Achieved Thus Far. Here I'm sharing just a little more about these items.

Number Fifty-Two: Try Tiramisu.

I don't know about you, but I really love Italian food! And when it comes to dessert Tiramisu is my favorite! In fact, I love it so much that I made it and served it at our rehearsal dinner for our wedding!

Unfortunately I'm unable to share the recipe with you because I promised my Italian Restaurant Owning Friend I wouldn't. :) I'll tell you that it's very tasty and quite easy to make though!

Number Eighteen: Go On A Family Vacation.

At the time of the original post where this goal was shared I was back from a family vacation to Missouri. Now I live here! :) Going on a family vacation with my 'new family' (Autry & baby on the way) was something that happened much sooner than we thought it would!

May 2013. Autry & I went to Mississippi to visit his family. While we were there we discovered that I was pregnant with baby #1! Here we are visiting Red Bluff, Mississippi...a beautiful though scary place if you don't like heights!

Number Four: Build a Snowman.

No matter how old I get I don't think I'll ever get tired of building snowmen! And living in Missouri we have PERFECT snow for building...most of the time...whereas in Oklahoma it was usually too dry or just plain ice and not actually snow!

This is me working on a (very) miniature snowman. You can barely see it right behind the red cup...There wasn't a lot of snow to work with and scraping it together proved harder than you'd think. I did eventually finish it though I froze my bum off in the process!

Have you tried Tiramisu?

Gone on a Family Vacation? Built a Snowman?

This Is Me | Challenge Accepted?

I don't know about you when you were a young & reckless driver, but as for myself...every time I saw a yellow light it meant only one thing: speed up and get through that light! Every time! I'm not really sure what I was thinking at the time...maybe I wasn't, but now when I see a yellow light I question whether it's worth stepping on the gas.

{photo via pophangover}

My driving style has changed a LOT since The Car Wreck. I'm a lot more cautious, most of the time, and less likely to do something stupid like push a yellow light. Of course when I was in Oklahoma we only had one red-light in our town so I would usually take a side road around it so I never had to stop at it...and even in the next town over there were ways around the stop lights, even here in Missouri I avoid stop lights as much as possible, but I usually don't push the yellow like I used to do.

Buying Fresh, Buying Local

The past few months I've been visiting a little local store in town that sells fresh vegetables & fruits, many of which are organic grown and are super tasty! Not only that but just a few weeks ago I started going to the local Farmer's Market and shopping at the many stands there as well. I've found a lot of great tasting vegetables this way and I've really enjoyed it (Autry doesn't really like fresh vegetables like I do...I like cucumbers, he doesn't..etc).

In more recent weeks I've been reading different things about eating "Real Food" and that has really inspired me to work harder on eating healthier...now that doesn't mean I eat right or good all the time, but I think I've improved a lot from where I/we were when we first moved in together. I hope to keep working towards the eating Real Food goal, but I know it will take time.

For now I thought I'd share a few photos of the different things I've bought over the past month or so from either the local organic food stores, farmers market, or straight from the farm!

This was one of my trips to the local Health Food Store. I found a lot of great things there that day. My favorite were the yogurt covered pretzels (pictured below). Other things I picked up that day: Almond Oil, Date Pieces in Oat Flour, Banana Chips, and Almond Slivers.

Date pieces from the Health Food Store. They were TASTY!! I would buy them again.

Yogurt Covered Pretzels. These were really good...even hubby liked them!

This 8oz. bottle of Almond Oil was on sale for like $6. I was thrilled! It's so hard to find almond oil...

Fresh Picked Blueberries from a local Blueberry Farm! I picked them myself and BOY are they delicious! You can't really tell in this photo but they're actually really big berries... I have a post in the works of picking berries on the farm. I bought quite a few of the 'jelly berries' to make Blueberry Jelly. When I make it I'll be taking lots of photos so I can blog how that experience goes!

Pancakes with Fresh Blueberries & Bananas for breakfast! I have two different pancake recipes which are both really tasty: Oatmeal Pancakes and/or Fluffy Pancakes.

These tomatoes are vine ripened and were picked up at my favorite local organic foods store. I've stopped by to pick these up twice now in the past few weeks they are that good!

My favorite way to eat them is sliced and a nice bit of salt on them! They are SO juicy!!

These nice big cucumbers were bought at the farmers market. I haven't tired them yet, but I'm sure they're delicious! My favorite way to eat cucumbers is with a little salt and a lot of ranch dressing! (See here.)

Fresh Farm Eggs! Nothing beats them!! These were purchased at the farmers market as well. I've gone back to get them more than once, they're really good!

Finally we have fresh peaches...but these are no ordinary peaches, they were FREE! Why? Because they were considered 'bad' and the lady wasn't able to sell them...so she gave me a bushel and a half... I made it all up into Peach Butter (a lot like apple butter!). I probably could've saved some of them and put into baggies to freeze for peach cobbler, or other baked goods, but I didn't.

Here's how our peach butter turned out. Doesn't it look tasty?? Recipe & directions for making this coming soon!

I've purchased other things from the farmers market and local stores such as Strawberries, Onions, Potatoes...but I don't have photos of them because I wasn't thinking about writing a post about them until recently.

Do you shop at the Farmer's Market?

The Survivalist Post #2 | States to Secede, A Week Long Study

Happy Monday everyone!! For those who may be new to my blog, this is a once a week series in which I share my thoughts on politics, survivalist things, and prepping! I only post about these things on Monday so as not to put a damper on the other fun things I love to blog about throughout the week! :)

Just last Monday I was reading through my email and I saw where The Survivalist Blog had shared an interesting tidbit on the post Monday Miscellany. The White House website now has secession petitions from 20 states. Before last Monday I knew nothing about all of the other states. I knew about Texas, but was quite surprised by some of the others...not saying that this is a bad thing though. I think it is a great thing that these people do realize that things are not right and need to be taken care of.



(photo via Politico, editing by me)
The map I created on November 12, 2012

Day 1: November 12th. I decided to create a map to compare the difference between the election results and the petitions to secede and what states they were coming from. As of this point I was only aware of 22 states with petitions (some with multiple petitions turned in, see below).

All the additions...by November 13th 2012! Wow, just in one day practical all of the states had turned in a petition, and every RED state for sure had a petition in!

Day 2: November 13th. As you can see, in just one day HUGE difference in the two maps above. Now there is a total of 40 states who have turned on petitions to seceded. Over half of the current petitions from yesterday have tripled in numbers of signatures. 5 have reached the goal of 25,000 signatures (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas). Many new petitions were added, some states now have multiple petitions running now where they didn't before.

Day 3: November 14th. Finally! A petition to Impeach Obama has been created...actually the date says it was created on November 11th, but I just ran across it today...I honestly feel this would be a lot easier on everyone than states seceding from the United States. It currently has 9,185 signatures. States added to the Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington. The completed petitions (they reached the goal of 25,000 signatures or more) now have a minimum of 2,000-7,000 more signatures depending on which one I looked at. I checked all the other petitions and the number jumps were HUGE! Anywhere from 1,000-10,000 signatures or more on most of them! States to reach goal today: North Carolina, Tennessee.

Day 4: November 15th. Four days into this study. I'm getting ready to start looking at results of what all the petitions look like now. The petition for Obama to be impeached went from 9,185 to 25,647 signatures in ONE day! Wow! Texas' petition hit over 109,000 signatures! The other finished petitions added over 2,000 new signatures since yesterday. Most of the petitions which were not completed also added 2,000 or more signatures since yesterday. The petition with the least difference in signatures added today was North Dakota's. No new states petitions to pass the 25,000 signature mark today. I did find a few more petitions however: Connecticut, Maryland, Vermont

Day 5: November 16th. According to this article on The Blaze, the individual states no longer have a right to secede from the union. I don't know if this is true or not, but reading through this was interesting. On to today's count...I wonder what new things I will discover today. I think there's a possibility for 5 of the petitions to hit target or beyond at the rate signatures have been piling on. Let's see if I'm right. Well so far signatures are at a low of 50 and a high of 800 being a normal adding rate. Well I was surprised that none reached goal. It seems that signing petitions has slowed down quite a bit since yesterday. Now to look at those which have passed goal to see how much they've grown! The Texas petition went from 109,000+ to 112,000+ overnight! The others gained 1,000+ signatures each.

Day 6: November 17th. Just checking numbers today...I haven't seen anything interesting otherwise. Average adding signatures 120-300 signatures; much lower than even yesterday's signature rates. The only petition past 25,000 to add even more signatures than a small amount was the Texas petition; another thousand was added overnight; now it is over 113,000. The petition for Obama to be impeached gained over 2,000 signatures since yesterday. The petition to recount the election gained another thousand signatures since yesterday. I did find a petition which is Do NOT Reinstate the Federal "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994. It currently has almost 6,000 signatures on it. Petition requiring a government issued photo I.D. to Vote. 5,314 signatures so far.

Day 7: November 18th. Well, today is the last day I will be doing this update on a daily basis. I will be checking these numbers at least once a week and will be keeping them fairly up to date here on my blog so by each Monday (that's my plat at least). The Assault Weapons petition gained over 2,000 signatures since yesterday, that's a good sign. Both the Florida and Texas petitions added another 1,000 signatures since yesterday. They have already reached the goal of 25,000. The others had much smaller gains. As for the petitions not yet to reach goal, they gained anywhere from 50-300 new signatures since yesterday. Indian had the most gains today with over 400 signatures putting it at 21,000+ so it is getting close to reaching the mark! Arizona also gained over 400 signatures as well.

Before You Continue On, Please Read!
As I said in Day 7, I plan to keep up with these petitions I have listed below. I will try and update them at least by Monday of each week so that they are fairly current. I think it is really interesting and our country is for sure going through a difficult time. This is a full and complete list of the petitions to secede for the 50 states. That is as of 11/19/2012. There are more than 50 petitions however, so I've tried to link each one that I could find. I may find more or be informed of more after that and then I'll make sure to link them up as well. This was a study purely to pass time and see the results of other people's interest in the petitions and to see how popular they were/are. Please be respectful of my blog and my readers if you do leave me a comment. Thank you!

PETITIONS

Now...If you are like me and found this interesting and don't like the way things are you may want to sign the petition for your state. If so here are the links for the states which have submitted petitions thus far....but before you sign a petition for ANY state you should contact the state's representative or governor to be sure this is something that the state actually wants. According to this article Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, says that he never said anything about seceding from the US. He does say this though: "When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation, and one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again."

For each state listed the time to sign is by December 10, 2012.
Each petition needs 25,000 signatures.

Arizona. Has 24,053. Needs goal by December 10th.

Arkansas. Has 23,567. Needs goal by December 10th.
California. Has 15,238. Needs goal by December 11th.

Colorado. Has 22,786. Needs goal by December 10th.
Connecticut. Has 3,922. Needs goal by December 12th.
Delaware. Has 7,811. Needs goal by December 10th.
Hawaii. Has 4,281. Needs goal by December 12th.
Idaho. Has 6,458. Needs goal by December 11th.
Illinois. Has 5,457. Needs goal by December 11th.

Indiana. Has 21,990. Needs goal by December 10th
Iowa. Has 5,285. Needs goal by December 11th.
Kentucky. Has 19,396. Needs goal by December 10th.
Maine. Has 4,352. Needs goal by December 12th.
Maryland. Has 4,185. Needs goal by December 12th.
Massachusetts. Has 4,262. Needs goal by December 12th.

Michigan. Has 20,033. Needs goal by December 10th.
Minnesota. Has 5,823. Needs goal by December 11th.
Mississippi. Has 18,908. Needs goal by December 9th.
Montana. Has 13,778. Needs goal by December 10th.
Nebraska. Has 7,400. Needs goal by December 12th.
Nevada. Has 10,715. Needs goal by December 10th.
New Hampshire. Has 5,647. Needs goal by December 11th.
New Jersey. Has 14,496. Needs goal by December 10th.
New Mexico. Has 5,371. Needs goal by December 12th.
New York. Has 15,409. Needs goal by December 10th.
North Dakota. Has 11,752. Needs goal by December 10th.
Oregon. Has 15,039. Needs goal by December 10th.
Pennsylvania. Has 9,285. Needs goal by December 11th.
Rhode Island. Has 4,834. Needs goal by December 11th.
South Dakota. Has 6,722. Needs goal by December 11th.
Vermont. Has 2,663. Needs goal by December 13th.

Washington. Has 4,609. Needs goal by December 13th.
West Virginia. Has 8,094. Needs goal by December 11th.
Wisconsin. Has 7,397. Needs goal by December 11th.
Wyoming. Has 9,350. Needs goal by December 12th.

 A few States have more than one Petition:
For some reason these states have more than one petition running.

Alaska
First Petition. Has 8,107. Needs goal by December 11th.
Second Petition. Has 4,573. Needs goal by December 10th.

Georgia
First Petition. Over 32,300 signatures!
Second Petition. Has 12,476. Needs goal by December 10th.
Third Petition. Has 8,373. Needs goal by December 11th.

Kansas
First Petition. Has 8,862. Needs goal by December 11th.
Second Petition. Has 4,219. Needs goal by December 11th.

Missouri
First Petition. Has 13,867. Needs goal by December 10th.
Second Petition. Has 20,619. Needs goal by December 10th.

Ohio
First Petition. Has 8,683. Needs goal by December 12th.
Second Petition. Has 4,796. Needs goal by December 12th.

Oklahoma
First Petition. Has 18,374. Needs goal by December 10th.
Second Petition. Has 9,627. Needs goal by December 11th.

South Carolina
 First Petition. Has 15,346. Needs goal by December 10th.
Second Petition. Over 25,000 signatures!

Utah
First Petition. Has 8,453. Needs goal by December 11th.
Second Petition. Needs. Has 6,955. Needs goal by December 11th.

Virginia
First Petition. Needs. Has 9,133. Needs goal by December 11th.
Second Petition. Needs. Has 5,208. Needs goal by December 11th.
Third Petition. Needs. Has 5,609. Needs goal by December 11th.


Goal Reached!
Alabama. Over 30,500 signatures! Exp. December 9th.
Florida. Over 35,100 signatures!
Louisiana. Over 37,100 signatures! Exp. December 7th.
North Carolina. Over 30,500 signatures! Exp. December 9th.
Tennessee. Over 31,400 signatures!
Texas. Over 119,100 signatures! Exp. December 9th.



Of course a LOT of states are not listed yet, I don't know anything about creating a petition, but maybe you do or someone you know does...all I know is that this link was provided on The White House website if you were interested in creating your own petition.

I had to search for the Texas petition since it was already completed and in that search I found the website United State of Texas. This link takes you to a petition for the state of Texas to secede from the United States and "from a more perfect union" which would be called The Republic of Texas. Eligible petitioners are voters in the United States who desire to become citizens of the Republic of Texas and voters who are Citizens of the State of Texas.

Petitions To Stay In The US

North Carolina. Has 2,422. Needs goal by December 13th.

Other Interesting Petitions
~Obama to be Impeached Over 39,700.
~Recount the Election! Over 64,800.
~Do NOT Reinstate the Federal "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994. Has 12,325. Needs goal by December 13th.
~Implement Voter I.D. into Federal Law, requiring all voters to present a government issued photo I.D. to vote. Has 8,891. Needs goal by December 12th.

Authors Note
~If you know of any other petitions I should add to the list please leave me the link and I'll check it out! Thank you!
~Also, please leave nice comments...I did this as a fun study just for curiosity. I'm Republican and proud to be so. I am not here to stomp on anyone else's beliefs.

The Survivalist Post: #1 November 12, 2012: Introduction To This Series, #2 November 19, 2012: States to Secede, A Week Long Study, #3 November 26, 2012: 5 Things You Can Do To Prep For Winter, #4 December 3, 2012: What I Did This Week & Updates.