Punkin Patch Photos

Cypress School's Costume Parade 2011

One of the first characters in the parade was this crazy looking teacher who looks very much like the Johnny Depp Mad Hatter. I couldn't resist getting a picture!

Chandler's Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Jacob's No-Armed Man.

And Lilly and Ginny Brown as LaVerne, the sock monkey and Super Woman, respectively!

Trunk-or-Treat!

The first thing we did when we got there was to go on the hayride.

There was a balloon archway to fun and games with face painting, a fish pond, a beanbag toss and a whole lot more that I could hardly get to for all the characters in attendance! These were the activities for the first hour.

The cupcake walk was pretty fun. It was a musical chairs game and when the music ended and you sat down, they called a number. If you sat on the chair with the winning number, you got the cupcake!

Popcorn anyone?

The second hour was for Trick-or-Treating trunk-to-trunk.

We decorated Suzanne's trunk and passed out bags of popcorn. But our 87 bags were gone in no time! We probably should have done 3 times that much!!

Alice's Mad Hatter and Red Queen are none other than the Adkins!

Wow! Brother Harper is quite the chick magnet!

And this elf looks just like... Sister Harper!

Kamryn is the pumpkin, Adam is Harry Potter and Jacob is the clown.

Chandler, or rather, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, is posing here with Sister Quinonez.

This sweet flower is our own Little Miss Lydi!

Ginny Brown is Super Woman and her sister Lilly is a real live version of her sock puppet, LaVerne.

And this is Irisa Fox as the Wicked Witch of the West!

5 + 8 = -18.5

Well, after 5 days at the beginning of October and now 8 days more of juicing only, I have lost 18 and a half pounds. David and I are enjoying trips to local farmer's markets for fresh organic produce. This last Saturday after shopping for fruits and veggies we found ourselves in a department store buying David some smaller clothes! This combined with what he was doing before has added up to some great changes for him, too! Good things are happening here at our house. Hope they are at yours, too.
Have a happy, healthy day!!

A Healthier Way

At our house we've been juicing. I personally went on a 5-day juice fast at the beginning of October, and now I'm doing another one, only this time David and Suzanne are on board. We're going to go for a total of 14 days and today is day #4. I feel great and have lost 14 pounds, all of which I had lost before and/or after our car accident. My goal is to get back to where I was when I came home from the hospital, and then, to keep right on going.
In between juice fasts my diet is going to be primarily plant-based. I've spent some time now going over recipes both old and new, and methods of adding flavor to foods (thanks to, Jamie Oliver, and my hippie cook book from "The Farm"!)
They say that if you want to have permanent results then you must make permanent changes, so I'm in! And, here is a little gadget I made to make menu planning and presenting a little more fun (another thanks goes to Super Saturday for the idea)!

Relief Society Super Saturday With Celeste

The items on this table were door prizes. Two names were drawn out of the pail every hour.
Muffins and fruit were served for those who wanted breakfast and soups, breads and cookies were for lunch.

This was the 25 cent table.

Here are the other projects.
Celeste made a decorated clip board for each of her girls. Very cute!

This is the 13th Article of Faith which we both made.

I made one of these pumpkin centerpieces.

And here are the other items!

Japanese Cookies

Yes, these little cookies can be found pretty easily around here at stores like Winco and RN Market. Oh yes! I actually saw some at Walmart in Northern California. They are authentic, too. We bought some while we were in Japan and found them to be fun, tasty and easy to portion control. They also make a nice little dessert after a Japanese Curry dinner!

Japanese Culture Night

I figure, you don't go to a fascinating foreign and exotic country, stay for 4 weeks, and then come home and not share with the people you love the wonderful things you learned and experienced, so I presented a Culture Night for our Relief Society. For a touch of decoration and color I used these three paper lanterns and matching table cloths.

The display on this table features a few items with Japanese writing, Kokeshe Dolls, Shisha Dogs, a couple of fans, some pictures, and tools used in making Bento box lunches with a cookbook for ideas.

For me, a trip to an island surrounded by water and beaches truly is paradise! I only went to the beach 4 times but each time I came away with sand. We also gathered shells, coral, bamboo and two bottles filled with water from the East China Sea. After I got home, I found a large jar at Target and layered and labeled the sand, coral and shells inside it so that I could remember which beaches they came from. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the water yet but I'll think of something. I just don't want it to evaporate away!

While the rice was soaking in the kitchen, the sisters visited and did origami. There were paper doll kits and easy instructions for flowers and animals. Between the dolls, origami and food there was plenty to do and lots of yummy things to sample. I bought some purple yams in San Francisco and made them into potato salad. (These yams are grown on Okinawa). I also made brown sugar shortbread cookies. Okinawan brown sugar is unique in it's processing and has more a flavor like grade B maple syrup which is strong and rich. I bought some pure maple sugar to try to imitate the cookies we got on the island. And a local store just down the street from us is owned and run by a Japanese family and they feature an isle of authentic Asian foods so I was able to get some snack cookies and little "jello jigglers" like Isabel had for dessert at Coco's.