BANAR DESIGNS

Thursday, July 9, 2009

The final week of "Great American Home Baking"

It's been almost a year since we started this project. It's finally done and we've learned so much. We had never done a cook book after more than 20 years of every kind of craft book that you could imagine. Food styling and food photography were new experiences- not to mention all the complications of cooking and recipes. Of course we had a very fine staff to help us. Four wonderful cooks, 5-6 recipe testers, 2 writers, and the best photographer in the world. I did the photo styling and Nancy did all the hard part of making sure the recipes were right. Some of them even had to be translated from foreign languages (including British English into American English) and European measurements into American measurements. I don't know why we don't all just use tried and true European measurements.

It's been a wonderful learning experience and I think we did a really good job. We started midway through the book and had to adapt our look to what came before. This was the hard part. (well one of them, anyway.) I couldn't always use the colors or props that I would have liked. But in the end it all worked out.

Nancy with Jodi (Cook extraordinaire).

Our wonderful photographer - Steve Whalen.

Our talented caption writer- Susan Borsch.

Jodi hosted a "wrap party" at the end of the project and served one of her recipes from the book . It was delicious (Chicken Piccata).
Her daughter, Rachel (one of the other cooks) made a beautiful trifle for dessert. (These are my bad photos not the photos from the book)

Here's the photo from the cook book for Jodi's Chicken Piccata Bake

Here's some other photos from the book:

Fallbrook 4th of July 2009

Another nice 4th of July celebration at the beautiful "Grand Tradition".

Nancy and her fellow volunteers check in other volunteers. We've been doing this for the last 3 years and it is kind of fun. This year I was checking in the V.I.P.s. This includes the people and companies who had bought tables on the veranda with dinner and wine. The proceeds of the event goes to Fallbrook Beautification.

The Fallbrook High Swim team raced against the Fallbrook Rotary and won. Of course, they were much younger and probably more fit but then the next race was with Major Market. I guess the guys were tired after their last race. Their fitness didn't help even though the Major Market team was about as old as the Rotarians- the young guys lost.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

MEGAN VISITS, BOOK ARTS CLASS, ENCAUSTIC, ART BY THE INCH SALE, ETC- busy week !

Last day of our Book Art class. We all brought snacks. Nancy made cupcakes for me which I

decorated with miniature versions of one of the books that we made in the class.

Here's some of the things we made in class:

My encaustic journal pieces. The cover and spine.

My playing card book- The theme was birds- I chose peacocks.
This is a real feather from one of the birds at my Tumble Creek house.
The hardest part about this book was the spine. Maybe I'll explain how to make it in my next post. ( if anyone is interested.)

Inside the peacock book.

The house to hold the theme book- "Eyes".

Some of the pages:

Diane's house, made to house her book with a moon and stars theme.

Diane's playing card book with interesting spine.

Collaged pages of a playing card book- in process. (Made by Linda Jenerette)

Pieces of an encaustic journal- cover, back and spines.( I think this was by Beverly Halsey).

The last day of the Art By The Inch sale at the Brandon Gallery:

A customer chooses her piece of the mural.

Some of the artists.
Notice all the taped off sections in the background that have been sold.
It was a wonderful fundraiser for The Brandon Gallery-Fallbrook's artist cooperative.
(See more of the mural in previous post)

Megan (my niece) is here for a (too short) visit from New York. She's really enjoying our wonderful weather. New york is having terrible weather. It's making her think about moving back to the west coast. Maybe Los Angeles or Portland. Of course Nancy and I are hoping for L.A. because she'd be closer and we could see her more. She makes great super eight wedding

films (see her link at the right- Love Bird Films.- She recently changed the name to "Hello Super Eight"-( I'd better change it.) If you know anyone getting married check it out.
Here she is on our daily lunchtime walks with Tootie.

Tootie after a swim. She's usually such a cute dog ! She really didn't like the swim.

A rose growing on one of our avocado trees. Not really ! It's growing beneath it and it didn't get pruned. Suddenly there it was . Notice the tiny baby avocado just beneath it.

Monday, June 22, 2009

NEWS CLIPPINGS- HEALTH CARE, etc.

I'm always cutting things out of the newspaper and then I never know what to do with it. So usually I just lose it among the mess on my desk. Then when I'm trying to make a point about something and want to reference an article I can't find it. Hey, why don't I put it on my blog then I'll know just where it is.

I don't know if this will be readable but I thought it had some good reasons for a single payer system. Of course there are many more good reasons.
( if you're interested you can click on it to blow it up.)

Yep !!

And on another subject.....

I've always had an aversion to modern dance. This is why !! And they're a bunch of professional choreographers !!!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

My brother Bob's birthday

My brother "Bob the Barber" recently retired from barbering in North Hollywood and moved here to Fallbrook. He's living in the house that we inherited from our mother. He had lived in North Hollywood for almost 40 years and had a lot of friends and tennis buddies. Nancy and I were very worried about him adjusting to this whole new life. He doesn't drive and has almost no interests except tennis which he plays every day. We needn't have worried. Tennis saved the day ! He has a whole new group of tennis friends. Yesterday was his 68th birthday. Nancy made tennis ball- decorated cupcakes and we took them to the tennis court for a little birthday party.

Google ads

Have you noticed that since I posted the story of the peahen and her eggs I've now got ads for egg donors and fertility clinics on the side of my blog ! I also previously had ads for peacock taxidermy. I assure you it's not what I intended. What next ?