Monday, June 29, 2009

Link to 1st puppet video

Here's the link for puppet video that was made.

http://www.youtube.com/californiaysa

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Making Puppets

This week one of my friends called me and said she needed some help with a project for the young single adult conference. She had been asked to make some sock puppets for a video they are making about the conference. She didn't wasn't able to make the puppets they needed before she headed off to Hawaii for a couple of weeks and so needed someone to finish them. So of course I said yes, because let's face it when do I ever say no to things, and started brain storming for the puppets.

So a little background on the conference is probably needed to make this all make sense. This summer all the young single adults in the state of California are participating in a statewide YSA Conference with a theme surrounding the temple. As part of this conference we have been asked to make videos and other things to promote and document what's going on as we lead up to the conference this summer. So a couple of people in the Santa Monica ward got together to make a movie and needed puppets representing people from each of the temple districts in the state. There are 7 temples: Sacramento, Fresno, Oakland, Los Angeles, Redlands, Newport Beach, and San Diego. So I made puppets for each one and then an announcer puppet for the movie they are doing. Acknowledgment needs to go to Jessica as well because she helped design/decorate the puppets as well. They're filming today so I'm not sure what it's gonna be like, but we'll see what happens. Here are some pictures of the puppets.


The announcer (Chet) with his microphone and slicked back hair

San Diego: sunburned surfer dude

Sacramento: Arnold style with muscles you may or may not be able to see in this picture

Redlands: The Inland Emperor

Oakland: Hippie recycle girl (yes the very shiny pendant is a recycling sign)

Newport Beach: Matching bag, sunglasses, and eye shadow

Los Angeles: Film maker (wish you could see the beret better but it's hiding in the dark background)

Fresno: Not sure what to call her, but she'll be excited to come too

I'm sure they'll put the video up on a website somewhere so when I get the link for that I'll post it so you can check out how it all came together. I must admit it was rather fun to take my creative side out for a little while. That side gets neglected I'm afraid. So even though it was a daunting task at first I had a great time making these.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

25th Birthday

This week marked the 2 year mark in Los Angeles and the 25 year mark on earth. So in order to fully celebrate we kind of made a three day celebration of it. Wednesday was my actual birthday and ironically the longest day I've spent at work this summer. But when I got home there was a small group that took me out to dinner at this Pan Asian place called Rock Sugar. The food was good, the restaurant it's self was really cute. And to top it all off we got put in the special dining area with it's own balcony off it and everything because they didn't have room for us anywhere else. I had the most wonderful banana cake with a custard topping. I think I need to figure out how to add the custard topping to my banana cake in the future. When we got out of dinner I had a message on my phone from my family who had sung happy birthday to me. It was so cute.


Thursday night I came home from the temple and was looking for a snack when Jessica said "There's something in my fridge you should eat." She had bought pies for us to eat since we were talking about pie at dinner on Wednesday. Cherry pie and Lemon Cream Cheese were both hits. Day two of birthday celebration was a success.

Final day of birthday celebration happened on Friday. Sara spent the afternoon making not one, but three delectible chocolate cakes. The cake was amazing and the decoration was beautiful too. I came home from work and the house was all cleaned up and balloons were up. Sara, Jessica and Amanda had decorated for the birthday party portion of the celebration. At one point during the night Jessica counted and there were over 50 people here so I guess it was a success. I had fun talking with people and am even glad that Sara made me go and take pictures with a bunch of people through out the night. I'll only put some of the better ones on here as to not bore you to death. Thanks to all who made my birthday week a great week.

Camping in Big Bear


Last year Shana and I decided to branch out and go on a camping trip with the Glendale ward. For the past two years they have been doing a camp clean up/camping trip at a Boyscout camp up in Big Bear. Well a couple of weeks ago we got an e-mail inviting everyone who went last year to come on out again this year. So we decided, what the heck, we'll take a nice break from LA and head up to the beautiful Big Bear mountains. Both of us had to work Friday and we didn't get to leave until about 7:30 which wasn't too bad, but it meant that we didn't get there until 10:30. The only blessing was that traffic on the 10 wasn't bad at all. It had been fairly cloudy all week here and by the time we got to the mountainous windy road the fog was setting in. It was actually kinda creepy to not be able to see anything but the lines on the road in front of you. About half way up the mountain the fog cleared and the beauty of the night sky was unveiled. The stars were absolutely amazing. I miss being able to see the stars in the city. We made it up to camp just in time to partake of the trout roasting in the fire. It had been caught that afternoon and was so good. I think my taste buds are growing up as my affinity for fish has increased over the past few years. Shana and I decided to go to bed right when the silly get to know you games started coming out. We got all bundled up and hoped it wouldn't be too cold in our little canvas boy scout tents.



The next morning I woke up bright and early. Surprisingly I was not cold during the night. Because I was a group leader for the service project we had a meeting before breakfast to get our assignments. My group go to repaint and carpet the cooks quarters. Sounded like a pretty cool job. But then we saw the paint. The color on the can said Melon but it was almost a bright pink. The pictures do not do it justice. And it gets even better, the carpet we were supposed to put in was maroon. Talk about classy. I guess the cooks won't really care. But in the future if anyone gets depressed send them to the cooks quarters for a nice bright wake-up. It was so much fun. We painted two rooms and then it turned out we only had enough carpet to carpet one of the rooms. So we put the carpet in and called it good. I think the fumes may have been getting to us after a while because the giggles were coming out.


You can't really tell that the carpet was maroon, but it looked rather interesting all together.



After lunch we finished putting the rooms back together and headed off to the barn for some horseback riding. I hadn't ridden in several years, but I had a blast. I was quite saddle sore the next day, but it was worth it. It was just so nice to get out in the forest and away from the city for a weekend. Camping plus a service project made for a fun time.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Garden


My Los Angeles style garden has again been started with hopefully more success than last summer. (All the plant died from lack of sun, or at least that's what I'm telling myself.) When parents came out for graduation my mom and I went to the nursery and got some plants. I had been wanting to try my gardening skills again but just hadn't had time. But now with graduation behind me I have lots of spare time. Here are some pictures of the plants when I first planted them vs. a couple of weeks later.


cucumber

Little cucumber blossoms


tomato
You can even see the blossoms on the second one


My baby tomatoes with blossoms (sorry it's a little blurry)


zucchini
Can't wait for this one



green pepper, basil, oregano
I even got to use the herbs in spaghetti sauce on Sunday




left over flower seeds from Jessica's Relief Society lesson

I think the plants like a deck that actually gets sun because they've grown quite a bit since I planted them. My camera is kind of on the blink so I don't have as many pictures as I would like.

My tomato plants even have a couple of small green tomatoes on them. Hooray! Now if only the bugs on my cucumber plant would go away. I tried soapy water, hopefully that'll work. Any other suggestions?

Stay tuned for more pictures and hopefully more vegetables!