The Guinness Book Of World Records: Angels Stadium Snuggie

Did you know that Thomas and I are in the Guinness Book of World Records? Well, we are. Kind of.

In April 2010, our friends Greg and Meghann invited us to Snuggie night at Angels' Stadium. Thomas likes baseball, so he was in. I had always secretly wanted a Snuggie, so I was in.

This was an Angel Game like most others, until the halfway mark when we were instructed to "put on our fleece blankets" (I was already wearing mine). We were told to leave them on for 5 minutes so that the judges could look around and get a good estimate of the number of people wearing a Snuggie to see if we broke the previous record of 17,000 fleece blanket wearers. We did, all 43,510 of us demolished the old record.

As Angel fans pulled their blankets on, the stadium turned into a sea of red and it was a crazy sight to see. The game was still going on, but for a full 5 minutes, no one paid attention to anything but the Snuggies. People were taking pictures, jumping around, doing the wave and yelling about just how awesome their Snuggie was.

The night was silly, yet a lot of fun, and now we have two Snuggies at home! Pro tip: They are quite handy for working on the computer in the cold months!

Bonus Pic! Thomas doing the Magician/Dad photo pose with his Snuggie.

Budgeting: How To Create A Monthly Budget

Now that you know how much income you are bringing in each month, the next step is figuring out where that income should go. There are unlimited possibilities on how to spend your money, and listing them all would take forever, so I will explain the ones Thomas and I use for an example.

First, we looked at what we needed to spend money on each month. The obvious necessities were rent, food, utilities and fuel. Then, we looked through old bank statements to see where else our money went in previous months. We found additional things like eating out, Target trips for household supplies, music purchases, cash withdrawals, etc. We had to decide where to put those types of things, or if they needed a category of their own. We decided to put them together in a new category we call "Extra Stuff/Cash."

Once we established the categories, we had to assign a dollar amount to each of them. Rent was easy, as that never changes month to month. Utilities were basically the same way, as they barely fluctuate, so we just looked at how much we spent in previous months and used that dollar amount. We did the same thing with fuel, since our commutes rarely differ month to month. The food budget and the Extra Stuff/Cash budget were the harder ones to figure out. Our food budget includes grocery store trips, so we looked at previous months grocery spending and then tracked our grocery spending for a few months before we settled on a dollar amount we found to be reasonable.

Remember, your total monthly budget needs to be less than your total monthly income, so now that you have an idea of how much you need to spend on the necessities (rent, food, fuel, utilities), check to make sure it adds up to less than the money you are bringing in. Our Extra Stuff/Cash budget is based on what is left over of our income after all the important bills are paid.

If your monthly budget is higher than your monthly income, then you need to look at each piece of your budget to see where you can cut back a little. When Thomas was first laid off, we discovered that our new income did not cover all of our budget, so we slowly started to work at lowering our costs. We moved to a less expensive apartment, we lowered our cell phone plan, we canceled cable TV, etc. It can be hard to give up things you enjoy, but when you stay out of debt, it is worth the sacrifice.

Next Time: Anticipating Random Expenses

Questions or Comments? Post them below!

Photography For Beginners, Composition

Composition is the word photographers use when they explain how a shot is set up. We're not talking about setting the aperture, shutter speed, or ISO. Composition refers only to where you point the camera and what ends up in the viewfinder.

On a point-and-shoot you get a big and beautiful LCD display of what your photo will look like before you even press the button. On a DSLR, you don't. Why don't you get this feature on a camera that costs way more than your point and shoot? Well, with a DSLR the preferred method of shooting is by looking through the viewfinder. The viewfinder displays different pieces of information to help you take your picture whereas your point and shoot won't. With either camera type, the concepts of composition are the same. The following are some quick tips to setting up your photographs.

LEGO Project: Solar Snooper

The LEGO Project series is a look through the Second Snack collection of LEGO sets from Thomas’ childhood as well as some modern sets. For years these LEGO bricks and pieces have been laying dormant in plastic bins but with the pooled resources of the Internet, reassembling sets is now a reality.

The Solar Snooper, released in 1992, was one of the larger sets in the revamped Space Police series. LEGO seems to have a fascination with law enforcement and they brought it into space as well. The galaxy's eternal bad guys, Blacktron, were apparently always up to no good. The Solar Snooper was one of my favorite sets.

In this post's main picture, you'll see two space police officers driving the main tank with prison cell held on its back. In the distance, you'll see the trailer which carries the flying vehicle that can also carry the prison cell. Pictured below, a prisoner smiling away inside of his cell.

Question or comments? Post them below!

Work Out Resolution: My Progress So Far

So two weeks into my resolution, I am doing better than I expected or hoped. While I am not doing any sort of hardcore work outs (like I normally push myself with and then fail to ever repeat), I am still making myself be more active.

I decided a realistic goal for myself was to shoot for 2-3 work outs a week (thanks to Alek's advice). The first week of the year, I managed 4 days of work outs. The second week, I managed 5. The fact that I am not trying to make myself do 5 or 6 every week is giving me the freedom to be lazy for a day, and strangely enough, that freedom is making me want to work out even more.

Another thing that is very helpful is that I am starting slowly on the intensity of the work outs so I don't burn myself out. I have spent the majority of the last year doing nothing exercise-like, so I knew that riding miles on a bike or jogging for 30 minutes would make me shun working out altogether. Instead, I have been consistently doing a strength training DVD in my living room and supplementing that with long walks in the evenings with Thomas. I am finding myself excited to move around, which is new to me, and I'm thrilled its happening.

Along with trying to be more active, I have also been taking a smarter approach to what I eat. I won't say I am on a diet, but I have tried to incorporate more fruit and veggies into my daily meals, drink more water and I am trying to pay better attention to portion sizes. This has left my body feeling amazing, and it motivates me to keep it going.

My one major problem at the moment: I am craving carbs like no other! Not good carbs either; I want to eat an entire box of Goldfish, a bag of Doritos, or a full box of Mac & Cheese. None of those are healthy options and so far, I have not fallen off the wagon and had any of those things. I find that these cravings are stress related, and I am not sure what to do at the moment, other than suffer through them.

In two weeks, I plan to up my work out intensity and add a hardcore session into my weekly mix. I'll let you know how that goes.

For now, does anyone know a trick to make your body stop craving carbs, or will it eventually go away with enough time? Do you have a good, fun suggestion on a higher intensity work out that I can do starting in February that I might not hate and boycott?

Meme Monday: Friendly Shark

Meme Monday brings you a weekly Internet Meme that we have found. Internet Memes are described as something that catches on like wildfire with Internet communities with no outside source of promotion. They exist purely for enjoyment and laughs.

How To Comment On A Post

Last night Sarah and I hung out with a great group of friends and Second Snack came up. We were extremely flattered to hear about the posts people found fun, helpful, or interesting. We love the feedback and take all of it into account.

One issue that was brought up is the commenting feature. We run this site on the Blogger/Blogspot platform and they are owned by Google. If you've got an account with any of the Google products, such as Gmail, you can log in to it to post comments on our blog.

The other methods of logging in to post a comment on our blog are pictured above. Just use the pull down menu and decide how you want to log in. If you REALLY love us, start up a Google account and follow our blog (link on the right side panel of our page). You can also use this account to follow other blogs.

If you don't want to use any of those logins, that's cool too. Just use the "Name/URL" option and you'll be able to fill in your name and your website address if you want to.

Just as with every post we make, we invite you to post a comment below! Try out your preferred method of logging in and see how it goes.