Japanese Spring Fling

Our church ladies recently had a fun event, complete with luncheon and speaker. Since our speaker and her husband had spent the last six years as missionaries to American and Japanese military in Misawa, Japan we went with a Japanese theme. 

I scoured Pinterest and the internet for Japanese party ideas and true to my OCD nature found way too many ideas to use. The ideas that made it through the budget filter and my frugality had to finally pass "my time allotted to get the job done" test. 

I couldn't find Oriental looking napkins so went with spring colors. 

The blue bottles and geraniums were already on the tables so we stuck cherry blossoms in there which surprisingly looked really nice. Christina made the tables look nice. 

Menu

(We're listening to special music.  Without planning, the speaker 
and I wore matching outfits. Only she's tall and classy and I'm short and lumpy) 

Japanese Curry and rice

Veggie Tray

Oriental Slaw

Asian Salad (recipe here)

Fruit skewers 

(which didn't look as nice as the idea I took it from - click here for source)

Mock Sushi

(Rice Krispy bars, Gummy Worms, Fruit by the Foot - Recipe here)

Funfetti Fudge 

(not Japanese but looked cute - recipe here)

Japanese Flag Sugar Cookies

(Not near as nice as the original but I ran out of time. They tasted good though. Source here)

Red Velvet Cupcakes with cute Japanese umbrellas

 Special Feature
"Letters From Bayfield"
Historical monologue

Speaker
Neat lady, touching and inspirational message

 Smiles

With cute babies around, who 
needs other entertainment? 

Sisters:
Lani

 Amy

 
Anna and Kiah

Christina

 

Lani looking like a pink Yoda

 

Even though it doesn't look like Spring around here, 

we thoroughly enjoyed our Spring Fling. 

A Blog Friend Up Close and Personal

I ran across Carla's blog a year ago after we both posted about skiing The Book Across the Bay (BATB) Cross-Country ski race here in Ashland. 

Turns she out lives two hours away, knows where Ashland is, and planned to return for this year's BATB. We have enjoyed our blog friendship this past year.

Two weeks ago we crossed over from being "Blog friends" to "In Real Life friends" when her family came over for dinner. 

We had a really nice time getting to know each other. Her two boys are wonderful, although they did comment to their parents afterwards that we sure had a lot of girls at our house. Thankfully we still have a good supply of Legos to entertain boys with.

On Saturday they successfully skied BATB again. (I'm a fair-weather skier so didn't participate this year.)

They visited our church Sunday morning and we took pictures and said good-bye with promises to meet up again if we were ever in each other's towns again. 

I invite you to check out Carla's blog (click here) and meet my fellow camping, hiking, skiing, state park loving Wisconsinite. 

I also invite any other blog friends who might happen to be up north to stop by if you're in the neighborhood. It's so fun to meet online friends in person.

Friday Quote

Quote by Martin Luther

Today I'm linking up with Lori at

 who is restarting Think Quotes, It's Friday. 

If you'd like to participate,  hop over to her blog by clicking here, 

pair up a favorite quote with a favorite picture, and link up.

Catan Cookies

Our kids go in spurts with games. 2010 saw countless Dutch Blitz games. 2011's game of choice was Ticket to Ride. 

So far in 2012, catching the wave a few years late, we've played lots of Settlers of Catan. Learning to play Settlers is confusing.  (At least it was for me.) Be prepared to be confused your first game. Then a light bulb goes off and you're addicted.

We celebrated Keith's birthday tonight and for dessert I made (I'm so proud) Catan Cookies. 

I found ideas on Pinterest and went from there. This picture only makes sense if you're familiar with the game. It is the cookie version of the game board. The game has 19 hexagon tiles - 3 brick, 3 ore, 4 lumber, 4 sheep, and 4 wheat. It also has 18 numbered small round disks.

First we made sugar cookie dough. Then I cut a hexagon out of a sheet of plastic from my scrapbook stuff. I laid that on the rolled dough (about 3/8 inch thick) and cut around it. 

We made four different colors of frosting - red, green, yellow, and white. The girls had a ball decorating cookies. 

The ore cookies (the black tiles in the above pictures) were eaten first so no individual picture. We frosted them white and sprinkled crumbled Oreo Knock-off cookies on top. 

For the lumber tiles we set a Christmas tree cookie cutter on top the cookie and carefully shook green sprinkles into it. I saw a picture on Pinterest where someone put pretzel sticks on lumber cookies to look like wood. 

The sheep tile is pretty self-explanatory - tinted green coconut. I had planned to stick yogurt covered raisin "sheep" in the "pasture" but forgot to buy them.

Anna had a hard time getting a brick color. I think she added a little green to the red to get this shade. 

Wheat tiles were the easiest. 

On second thought, the desert tile was pretty easy too. The girls swirled yellow and brick for a marbled look. This tile looked much better before someone set another cookie on top of it.

We used Rainbow twizzlers for roads and gum drops for settlements and only placed the first two settlements and roads for four colors. The robber was made of two stacked gum drops. The number disks were too small to put probability dots on them.

My only complaint is it took us two hours to make something that only took five minutes to eat.

Application to Date My Daughter

Found this on Pinterest today and had a good chuckle.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Dear Erica and Anna,
While I don't endorse taking your coat off in winter to take pictures

or walking in less than stable places

or wearing holey (sp?) jeans and flimsy footwear

I do endorse being outside

and getting exercise

and fresh air

and seeing beauty

in unexpected places

and having cheap fun

and seizing the day

spending time with those you love,

making memories

and being smart enough to bring a camera to record them. 

Thanks for the pictures, Erica

Signed, 
Your you wouldn't catch me walking on thin ice Mother.

Excuses, Excuses

I've wrestled with weight ever since fifth grade when I first noticed there was more skin around my knees than there used to be. It didn't help to have parents who always made us clean our plates. (Excuse #1)

Just in case you didn't know, I had seven children. (Excuse #2)

I never got morning sickness so never lost my appetite. (Excuse #3)

We can't afford a gym membership. (Excuse #4)

If only I didn't have to cook for my family everyday. That's like asking an alcoholic to work in a bar. (Excuse #5)

Dern menopause slows down metabolism. All the research says so. Makes it difficult for ladies to keep their weight down. (Excuse #6)

I had many more excuses. Those are just the first that came to mind. Weight had slowly been taking up residence in my poor defenseless body. My knees and elbows ached. The knees made sense but why would being overweight affect your elbows?

I hated it. Hated seeing pictures of myself. Buttons strained. Clothes wouldn't fit. 

It's no fun to buy clothes because you've outgrown your old ones. Kiah went shopping with me last summer to buy new shorts. After trying on 10 pairs, none of which looked good, Kiah kindly suggested we try again another time. 

It just wasn't fair. I'm a sensible person. I don't like junk food except for Doritos and Captain Crunch. I don't like pop except for an occasional Root Beer. I don't like Fast Food except for Taco Bell. I have reasonable self-control except when it comes to waffles.

Frustrated, discouraged, and resigned to be a pudgy Pastor's wife, I almost gave up. 

Last year an overweight friend, my same age and also menopausal,  joined Weight Watchers. By the time I started paying attention she had lost 75 pounds!! When she first started she couldn't even walk from the front of her house to the back without resting. She couldn't even exercise and here she was dropping pounds left and right.

I'd always resisted Weight Watchers because of the cost. Seems a person should be able to lose weight without having to pay $40 a month. But it worked for her so I decided to give it a try.

I joined last July, not really thrilled about letting someone see how much I weigh. I lost 5 pounds the first week and three pounds the second. Oh boy, I was pleased. Easy breezy. Nothing to it. At that rate I could reach my goal by the end of November. 

Silly me. Apparently those first pounds are the easiest. The rest have been a struggle, but little by little it's going away, hopefully for good.

As of this week's weigh in, I've lost 27 pounds with 13 more to go. Last night I looked at my weight graph and sighed. It took 7 weeks to lose 2 pounds. I was minus 25 pounds on Dec. 15, then managed to gain three pounds over the holidays so had to relose those. At $40 a month, that's almost $40 a pound. Sigh!

The best thing about Weight Watchers is accountability. The weekly weigh in is a huge motivator to behave. The scale is just an objective bystander. It takes no excuses. Doesn't matter if it's a holiday or birthday or a rough week, the scale matter-of-factly monitors my progress. 

Yes, it's harder to lose weight after menopause but not impossible. My friend has now lost 125 pounds. I'm now friends with another sixty-five-year-old lady who's lost 135. When I see the obstacles my friends have overcome I realize I really have no excuse. Even though I didn't eat a lot of junk food, I was eating too much. Too much of a good thing was simply too much. 

I now weigh two pounds less than my Driver's License says. My knees and elbows stopped hurting. I feel better. I don't have that bursting at the seams feeling anymore. I can tuck my shirt in again. I can zip my coat. I have hope again now that I understand I'm not at the mercy of hormones and unfortunate circumstances. 

My friends and I had an epiphany. My single friend said maybe it would be easier to lose weight if she had more people to cook for. It was hard to be motivated to just cook for one person. I laughed as I always thought it would be easier if I didn't have so many people to cook for.

My friend who originally inspired me to join WW said she thought it would be easier if she didn't like to cook. My other friend who doesn't like to cook laughed and said she always thought it would be easier if she did like to cook.

We all had excuses and none of them were very good. Here's hoping it doesn't take another seven weeks to lose two pounds.