Cheese and Jellybeans

and of course, more vinyl ;)

Okay, so I’m a week late, but we hit the ground running after last weekend was over so no time for blogging.

So anyway, last weekend we went to the Jelly Belly warehouse in Pleasant Prairie, WI. (I know, what a name, right?) It was totally goofy. They give free tours every 15 minutes or so and you ride a little train around the warehouse and make stops to watch videos about the company and how they make jelly beans. It was pretty fun, but we were in the first car, and we could totally see out “conductor” reading off his script ;) But we had a good time. At the end of the ride, we got a free bag of jelly beans and perused the jelly belly store, where they had free samples! ;)

We also saw these awesome jelly bean art pieces. All made of jelly bellys!
Did you know that when Ronald Reagan started to make jelly bellys super popular (he did get them to the White House) Jelly Belly developed the blueberry flavored jelly bean so that they could make a red white and blue mix?

I saw one of my favorite things there before we even got inside! :)
We met up with one of John’s old mission companions and his family there too, as they live just outside of Milwaukee. It was really fun for John to see him again and it was cool to meet him and his family. This is his companion and one of his little boys :)

After Jelly Belly, we stopped for dinner with them at a place called Mars Cheese Castle. What is Mars Cheese Castle? Well, let me just show you ;)

With a freeway sign like this, what would you think?Ta da! Ha ha ha, crazy huh? It’s basically a glorified grocery store…that has mostly cheese. But since it was Saturday, there were free samples! So we walked around and had cheese samples, I had my first ever cheese curd (aka squeaky cheese) and had some dinner at the little café they had in there. All in all…a kind of weird experience. ;)

On our way out, there was a tour bus parked in the parking lot…which is apparently owned and operated by teddy bears

An interesting night, to say the least ;)

On another random note, I’ve added more vinyl to the apartment!!!! LOVE. In the bedroom there was this blank wall space that I really wasn’t sure what to do with. I was thinking maybe a large picture that we have, but I was worried it would look too crowded with the frame sticking out and the dresser and the bookshelf right there. So, in a stroke of (what I would call) genius, I realized I could put a monogram there! I’m in love with monograms, by the way. I have an M monogram in the living room on a tile, but you can do first name monograms TOO. So I did an A and J! (I know, cute, right?) I’m getting quite handy at putting together large pieces by breaking them down into the limited cutting space I have, so here’s what I put together!
I love it! I think it totally brings that space together :)

AND by way of information, I only have FOUR weeks left of my internship! That also means Christmas is FIVE weeks away! We actually got a Christmas tree this year and we’re so decorating it this weekend after Thanksgiving! YAY!