Chestnut Ridge & woolly bears

A couple of weeks ago (yes, I'm seriously behind on posting!) the Bachsters and I went to Chestnut Ridge Metro Park, just outside of Columbus, Ohio, to take some pictures of the Commit to be Fit hike taking place there.  It was a warm Fall afternoon, the kind where you don't really need your jacket.  And the kind that brings out the woolly bears, much to our delight!

Last Fall, we had found a woolly bear, kept him in our mesh butterfly house and watched him hibernate all winter.  Sadly, he never came out of hibernation in the Spring, so we placed him under our pine trees and hoped that he was just being extremely sleepy.  So, this year, I told the Bachsters that we would just hold any woolly bears that we might find, but not try to keep them long term.  I have a "brown thumb" when it comes to woolly bears, apparently!

Well, on our hike each Bachster found a woolly bear just for his or herself.  And our woolly bears hiked with us the entire time we were at the park.  When we let them go at the end of our walk, they just instinctively knew which direction to head.

 

Did you know that you are supposed to be able to predict the weather based on how thick the brown band on a woolly bear is?  According to the woolly bears we found, it's going to be a mild winter.  One can only hope!

-Cheryl

Book Nook - Skinny B**ch

Skinny B**ch, written by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin:



This book is like the Basic Training of the diet world.  You're going to be called all sorts of mean names, and you're going to suffer.  But in the end, you'll be nice and buff (or in this case, skinny). 

The tone of this book is really what sets it apart.  Seriously, you will be called some mean names by the authors, in their attempt to snap you out of your evil eating ways.  The tone starts right with the title, which as the authors explain, was chosen to get your attention and get you interested in reading this book over the billions of other dieting books out there.  Throughout the book, the authors use the tone of tough-love, relating to the reader on a very I'm your best friend & I'm gonna tell you like it really is level.

One criticism I've seen of this book is that it's a pro-vegan book in disguise.  I can see this reviewer's point of view.  There's really nothing about the title or idea behind the book to let you know that veganism is a much discussed topic here.  But that's not necessarily a bad thing, I think.  I believe that everyone should be well-informed about the food they eat.  Yes, the book touches on the positive aspects of being vegan (like being better for the environment, eating way less saturated fat, not to mention the issue of animal cruelty) and really pushes the vegan agenda.  If you are a meat eater, make sure to read the book all the way through.  Perhaps you'll learn something about being vegan (or, on the opposite end, you'll learn something negative about eating meat) that will nudge you to give vegan a try.

One warning: the section on animal cruelty is difficult to read.  The authors thankfully tell you that it's coming up and give you the option of skipping ahead, although they encourage you to read it.  The horrific stories of cruelty in the slaughterhouses of the meat industry and the egg and milk facilities of the dairy industry are heartbreaking.  And eye-opening.  And although I'm not a vegan (but am a vegetarian) I've been thinking about trying it just based what I've read in this book.  Actually, on a side note, I think it would be sort of neat to keep a few hens around for eggs.  That way, you can still have the ease and wholesomeness of eating and baking with eggs without buying into the cruelty of the egg industry.

Anyway, I think you're seeing where this book is heading.  To be a skinny b**ch, you just need to eat a plant-based diet.  Give up the sugar, the soda (the authors call it liquid satan).  Yes, even diet soda (did you realize that a bi-product of aspartame is formaldehyde).  Give up the junk food.  Give up the meat & the dairy.  Give up the coffee.  (See, I told you it's the equivalent of Basic Training!)  The authors encourage you to eat organic fruit and vegetables, whole grains and soy products.  Personally, I'm not so sold on all the soy products out there - some of them are very processed, and you know what they say about processed foods.  But the point is that there are options out there, and many better options than the vast amount of fast food, junk food and sugary sweets Americans consume on a daily basis.  I really loved all the research that the authors mention.  There is a lot of good, factual information here to give you the motivation to stop eating all this bad stuff - and get the body you want in return.

Usually, I love reading my books on CD, but this one, I think would be better in book form, simply because the latter section involves lists of current organic, vegan products the authors recommend (listening to a product list is kind of boring, and I think I actually fell asleep during that part).  There's also a list of common ingredients in processed foods and what the ingredient actually is.  This is good to have and maybe even take with you to the grocery store, but it's not the most intriguing thing to listen to on CD.  Plus, there's lots of bad language and you definitely don't want your kids to overhear it!  So, I'd say get this one in book form, not on CD.

I've been eating lots of junk lately & feeling like I need some motivation to get healthy.  This book provides a large dose of facts to motivate you to eat healthy and get the body you want, all without making sacrifices.  Sounds pretty good to me!

-Cheryl   

Homemade apple goodies

Did you see this post from a few weeks back about our trip to the apple orchard?  We only have one apple left from our half bushel (20 lbs) that we picked that day.  I couldn't resist baking up some of my favorite apple recipes with all those apples!

The first thing I made was an apple pie.  The recipe is from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Best Recipe.  I think it's a must with vanilla ice cream (Little Dude actually ate only the ice cream, so I ended up eating his, too):

Next, I made one of my absolute favorites, apple crisp (one of the best recipes I've found is from marthastewart.com).  Vanilla ice cream is also a must with this recipe.  I should have made a double batch - it was gone in no time!

We also treated ourselves to apple slices with store-bought caramel dip.  Quick, easy and yummy!

The Bachsters love muffins, so I tried the chunky apple muffins from marthastewart.com.  I added an extra apple to the recipe, since we had so many.  DH said he thought these were really good, and snatched the last one up before I could get to it!

I think I'm going to slice up that last, lonely apple and eat it with peanut butter - what a yummy snack on a beautiful Fall afternoon!

-Cheryl

Our Halloween

The Bach family has been busy all weekend, through Trick-or-Treat night, getting ready for Halloween.  We had our first ever Halloween party on Sunday for the Bachsters and a bunch of their friends.  I'm happy to say that the party was a big success!  We planned several games and activities for all the little "monsters" - one of the best games we had was a doughnut game, in which you tie a doughnut to a branch of a tree and the person has to try to eat it without using their hands.  It's definitely easier said than done, and all the kids had a blast:

We also had a "spooky relay race" in which the kids had to race across the lawn holding an egg on a spoon (and all the eggs were painted like Jack-'o-lanterns.  This was also a lot of fun and helped the kids burn off some energy from the monster pinata candy:

 
We also had a bean bag toss game, and we painted pumpkins for our crafty activity:

We ended our party with pizza & cupcakes by the bonfire.  It was so much fun - I can see this turning into an annual affair for us!

The next night was Trick-or-Treat.  The Bachsters dressed up as Bumblebee (from the Transformers), Darth Vader (that's my tomboy girl!) and glam-witch.  Ranger was a punk rocker.  Here's a shot of the crew before leaving:

It was such a fun Halloween - with lots of sweets & treats & time with friends!

-Cheryl
Edited To Add: I can't believe I completely forgot to mention that we also made the neatest Haunted Forest!  Well, it was all my DH's idea & execution and he did a great job.  The kids walked on wooden planks through the trees and bushes in our back yard, and spooky Halloween ghosts and spiders lined the path.  The kids all loved it, and we even kept it up so that the Bachsters can enjoy it for the next few days!

Book Nook - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children written by Ransom Riggs:



This is a creepy novel in which you, the reader, will encounter monsters, a deserted house with a scary basement and dead people that can tell you the identity of their murderer.  Perfect Halloween reading!

I really liked this book a lot, and devoured it in a day or so.  This is the story of Jacob Portman, a well-to-do teenager with only one friend and a Grandpa who tells him ghost stories.  One day Grandpa Portman calls Jacob in a panic - where is the key to the gun cabinet?  How could they all leave me so defenseless?  And don't, whatever you do, come to check up on me because you will be in mortal danger!

So, of course Jacob goes to Grandpa's to check on him, and there he learns that the stories that he has been told all his life were not fictitious.  Grandpa's dying words are a puzzle to Jacob, until he is given a book for his birthday that unlocks the mystery and shows him the path he should take.  This path leads to an island off the coast of Wales, and Jacob goes there to search for the peculiar children of Grandpa's youth and their headmistress, Miss Peregrine.....although, shouldn't these "children" all be in their eighties, at least?

The plot in the story moves along at a perfect pace.  Nothing feels stagnant here, and the reader is given just enough information to keep interested and curious without spoiling any of the many surprises in the story.  I really liked the characters too - the children from a bygone era all seemed very real, and Jacob is a very easy to relate to.  The character of Jacob's father changes a great deal on their journey, but I don't think it was too much of a stretch.

The visual images from this story are wonderful.  I can absolutely picture myself in that old dilapidated house, cringing that I must head to the basement to retrieve the chest that just fell through the worn-out floor.  I can see  Jacob's trip through the bog, and the ancient cairn, and experience the stormy weather on one side, and the bright streaming sun on the other.  But the author does more than just provide a rich visual experience through words: there are also quirky, real vintage photos in which he has written the story around.  These vintage photos are supposed to depict the peculiar children and their many talents.  This is a really unique way of presenting a story (at least to adults) and I can't help but admire the author's creativity and means of coming up with his work.  One of the pictures, for instance, is a silhouette of a woman smoking a pipe.  In the story, we are told that this is Miss Peregrine (but, of course, it's a real-life picture of someone smoking a pipe).  Some of these vintage pictures are very creepy, like the clown kids pulling ribbons out of their mouths.  And some are not creepy in any way, but are used to that effect (like the picture of a little girl with an adult shadow, and we are told in the story that the shadow is a monster about to get her).

Of course, Ransom Riggs' intelligent descriptive language is to thank for a lot of the story's visual imagery.  When Jacob and his new friends run into a lean-to, the author writes, "...its walls made from rough-cut planks, rain weeping through where they had shivered apart like bad teeth." (pg 284).  I realized as I approached the end of the book that the story was not going to get wrapped up in time......and the ending is very open, as Jacob and the peculiar children set off on a new journey.  If there is a sequel, I'm definitely interested in reading it.

Ransom Riggs uses a lot of tricks (interesting characters, intriguing plot, visual imagery through descriptions and vintage photos) to come up with this treat of a novel!  Happy Halloween!

-Cheryl

Annual Metro Parks photo contest

I'm happy to announce that my DD, age 6, won 3rd place in the children's category in the annual Columbus Metro Parks photo contest!  Her shot was of Queen Anne's lace, taken at my SIL's pond.  I was at the judging, and the judges commented that her shot was very sharp, a fact that she has been repeating to anyone who will listen.  She's very proud of her achievement, as are we all in the Bach family.  I think we have a budding photographer on our hands (yay - a good excuse for more equipment)!

Here she is, proudly gazing at her ribbon:

For the record, she took the picture all by herself - no help from her photog-loving Mama!  I threw the camera into auto, but she selected the subject, crop, etc. all on her own.  In fact, I was off at another spot by the pond, so she really did make all the decisions about the shot.  I'm so proud of her!

I also entered the contest and got a 2nd place ribbon in the black & white category:

My shot is of a trio of spiderwebs, taken one morning after the spiders had been busy.  In fact, my DD looked out her window that morning and exclaimed that is was a spider family reunion!

All the entries in the contest (232 total) will be on display this weekend at Highbanks Metro Park, and then also the following weekend at Blacklick Woods.  If you live in the Columbus area, check it out (here's the link to their website for directions and information about the parks).

Yes, I foresee many more requests to borrow my camera at this point!

-Cheryl

Book Nook - The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret written and illustrated by Brian Selznick:



When The Invention of Hugo Cabret was announced as the winner of the Caldecott Award in 2008, I remember there being a lot of buzz about it, because this book is so very different from the picture books that usually win the award.  The book is huge, ending at page 525 and is a complex novel as well as pictures that help move the story along.  So, yes, very different from a picture book, but just as worthy of its accolades.

To summarize the story, Hugo is a young boy, orphaned and living in a train station in Paris in the early 1930s.  His father was a clockmaker who tragically died in a fire.  Hugo's alcoholic uncle brings him to live in the train station with him, as his clock-worker apprentice.  But then one day, the uncle never returns home and Hugo must maintain the station clocks by himself for fear of being discovered and sent to an orphanage (which, really, might not be a bad solution to his problem).  The plot is very complex for the age level the book is geared towards (9-12 year-olds), but I think readers of any age will appreciate that it moves quickly.   In the story, we meet the toy shop keeper and his daughter, a man with a patch over his eye, and an automaton, a machine that looks like a man, that Hugo's father, before his death, was trying to fix in order to discover what message it would write.

For me, the highlight of the book is the artwork.  The drawings were done in pencil on watercolor paper.  It's amazing how much depth and detail the author/illustrator is able to achieve with such limited tools.  And considering the number of illustrations in the story, this was no small feat.  I really love the beginning of the book, in which there is a picture of the moon.  Then the moon gets smaller.  Then smaller.  As the moon gets smaller, we get more detail: the Parisian skyline.  The farther away we get, the more detail we get......what a great concept!   While I enjoyed the story, I think the real strength of the novel are the illustrations.  It's really a pleasure just to flip through the book, without even reading the story, and just enjoy the beautiful artwork.

I know it's a minor point, but the title strikes me as being off.  Hugo doesn't actually invent anything.  He fixes the automaton, but that's different than inventing.  Unless I missed that detail somewhere in the story, I think a different title would have better served the book.

I read the book on CD, but if you do that, make sure you also have a hard copy of the book on hand so that you can look through all the illustrations along with the story.  It would be a shame to miss out on the visual aspect of this novel....that's the real star of this show.

-Cheryl