A day in the life of Banar Designs

Abbie checks the day's schedule.

Jeri brings in the " hockey-puck" cake. The recipes from England don't always work out. Must be something in the translation!

Jeri redid the recipe and made this beautiful cake.

Nancy walks Tootie and the neighbor's dog, Crispie after lunch. An everyday ritual. Tootie starts barking right after we put the last bite of lunch in our mouths to tell us it's time for her walk.

Jodi improves the look of the green tomato pie in the photo studio.

One of the photographs. Helen's Tropical Custard.

The beautiful end of the day.

Tuesday is a full day of photography. The cooks bring their food in. I get the settings ready.
Steve sets up the lights. Each of the four food shots take about 2 hours of primping the food and taking lots of different shots. Then the cooks have to have their hands photographed doing one of the steps of the preparation of the food.

Before photography day, I do a layout which has to be approved by the client and props and color schemes are chosen. The cooks have all presented three variations of a recipe to have one of them chosen by the client. These cooks are called "developers". They do an amazing job of making the food taste good and look good. They're Jodi, Vickie, and Helen. Rachel is going to be joining them. ( She's Jodi's daughter and has learned a lot from her mother.)

Nancy has to write up all the recipes according to the specifications of the client, make them fit the templates, make sure all the measurements have been converted from the foreign ones and much much more. Also lots of proofreading which I help with. There are 12 recipes per week.

Susan, the copywriter, writes the very creative captions that go with the cover photos.

Steve does all the beautiful photography and all the complicated computer work. He's a genius.

There are also several " tester" cooks who cook all the foreign recipes to make sure that they work. They also do measurement converting and have to type the recipe into a template. No easy job. They do it wonderfully. They're Jennifer, Jeri, Judy, Nicki, Sarah and Rachel.

There's lots more to be added later.

The cattery

I started out with two kittens who had been abandoned at a restaurant near our office. There had been five but I found homes for the other three. The first one is Zoe peering out from her cat tree. The next is Chloe, Zoe's sister. They used to be best friends but now they can't stand each other. Well, actually, they tolerate each other. They're about 12 yrs old now.



Then Abbie, a neighbors cat, had 5 kittens at my house. They never came to pick them up and then moved away. I found homes for all of the kittens but one . So now I had 4 cats. Abbie and her kitten Sassie. Of course Chloe and Zoe weren't happy so I took Abbie and Sassie to the office. Everybody needs office cats.




A little while later a black cat came walking by my house trailed by 5 little kittens. She tucked them away behind my house. I had a hard time capturing them all. The hardest to capture was the only boy, who managed to find his way into the roof area of my garage. He's retained the attributes of a ferral cat and has never been quite tamed. He sometimes lets me pet and brush him but is a real scaredy cat. I found more homes for all these kittens but the boy was returned.
They must have known how difficult he was going to be. So now I had the mother cat and her son. My friend, Jeri named them Mollie and Linus but I still call them Mama Kitty and Baby Kitty. With these last two and Chloe, Zoe, Abbie, and Sassie there are now 6.


I now have a house with room enough for all of them and to separate the ones who don't like each other. Chloe and Zoe have a room of their own with a screened in patio. Abbie and Sassie have the run of the house and the office. Mama Kitty usually joins them while keeping her distance. Baby Kitty has his own screened in patio. He's often joined by his mother and Abbie and Sassie.
They all have to be indoor cats because this is coyote country and several live in our avocado grove. They were here first so we tolerate them, but we're very careful with our pets.

We won!

For the first time in many years, I'm so proud of my country. I didn't do as much as I should have but I did a little phone calling and contributed money. I'm glad to have had at least a small part in this historic occasion. I haven't felt this excited since my very first vote for John Kennedy-so many years ago!
This is Nancy, Obama and I at the opening of the Fallbrook Democratic Club Headquarters.

Twins-Nancy and Tootie

Our amusing pets

She has a lot of comfortable places to sleep but lately this is her favorite. Could it be any more uncomfortable looking?

Tootie likes to choose her own programs.

Megan's adventures- Mumbai, Mexico City, London

Check out my niece, Megan's latest adventure. See the link at the right-"Pantyraiders".
They went to India, Mexico and London and asked people how they would vote in the American election. Very interesting results! And entertaining. Don't ask me why they're called Pantyraiders!