Ballas' Game 8

Green on Defense. With my lady captain taking the lead.

Green vs. Blue: 8-9

This was a miserable game. For both teams actually. The blue team, ranked 9th, beat us by 1 point. What?! Our captain in the end attributed the last 3 losses to his poor handling decisions. He sent an email about it and apologized about hucking too many times, which led to several turnovers.

Captain Cheese Huck!

This game was not only miserable, we all tired out on the field turn after turn for up to 5-10 minutes per point. Both teams kept making terrible mistakes. Miscues. Hucks. Blue didn't handle and catch well. While we made poor decisions. And as usual, we didn't cut well. Our best players were tired from a weekend tournament prior, so it showed in the game that rest of the team just didn't do enough to win.

A Vertical Stack....Kind of.

There were a couple times I could've caught it to score, but the handler would throw it to someone closer. That someone wouldn't know it was for them because both of us booked to the end zone. I should always look back when "Up!" is yelled in case it was meant for me. I always assume that no one will throw to me midfield, because the times I did during the first half of the season I would throw at the wrong time. So, I'd safely expect that they won't trust to throw to me midfield and so I choose to run to the end zone to score. However, I learned in this game to also make sure that my teammate nearby knows to receive. If not, I have to catch the disc.

If there is no rain tonight, we play 5th ranked team, light blue. One game tonight to advance and compete Red or White Again on Saturday. We have to win 3 games in a row to win the tournament. Can we do it? We have the teammates to do it, but if we continue like we did last 3 games... hmmm. No me gusto. I'll have a fan club tonight, the kids, hubby, auntie, nephew, niece, and family friends. Hopefully, our team morale can stay intact.

Saturday Brunch at the Holly's

Sporting an apron I made in Home Ec during 8th grade. Yes, I did sew it.

That morning, I took an early practice drive session with the hubby's car. I say practice because I never really drove a stick shift well enough until this week. Too many discouraging stall episodes during high school. Plus, my parents lent me automatics all the time. But, now that I get the hang of it, gotta say it was soooo much fun. Then, after taking a quick one-hour workout at the gym I arrived at my house, screaming kids in the background, to pop my blueberry french toast into the oven. While that baked, I cooked all my favorite meats on my electric stove top. Oh, gas stove tops how I miss thee. It's quite tricky to get the right temp for electric.

I hate posting pics and vids of myself, but I guess it comes with blog territory. I just have to share this part of my life, which I often forget...that I love to cook. I say I forget because it's become a chore, when I have to do it every single week. But, if it's something I love to cook, then I love cooking. Especially huge brunches. I love to feed people I care about, especially with delicious food. The big hit for the morning was, as always, the overnight blueberry french toast. A church friend of mine, back in Long Beach, had us over quite often. One morning before a day trip to hike Mt. Baldey, she fed us this. It was love at first bite. I have to make this again.

Fresh from the oven. Overnight Blueberry French Toast via allrecipes.com

The best part is the homemade syrup recipe that goes with it. I've made it plenty of times and it hasn't failed. You can't go wrong w/ cream cheese bits, blueberries, crispy toast soaked with syrupy egg and milk batter. No siree. While that baked in the oven, my stove top was free to cook all the lovely meats below.

Polska Kielbasa by Hillshire Farms.

Country Sausage (Left) and Bacon cut in half for the kiddos (Right)

The only thing we didn't feature photo wise, was my hubby's perfect scrambled eggs. Bummer. And a bowl of strawberries. Juices galore. I must have my Dole Pineapple combo w/ meat.

Filipino Brunch

During my Daly City/junior high years, my parents took in my Lolo Tony, two uncles, aunt, and four cousins into our humble abode. Somehow all thirteen of us managed to survive in a tiny urban home without killing each other. I cherish those Saturday mornings, when my mother, uncle & aunt spent the time to cook us a huge brunch. Fried eggs in bacon grease. Hillshire sausage w/ a side of white rice. Toast. Longanisa (filipino sausage). Tocino or sweetened pork strips. Tapas (freshly fried beef jerky) w/ diced tomatoes & green onions. Fried saba banana sprinkled w/ sugar. Pancakes. Maybe once in a while something healthy like fresh fruit.

I could go on, but it was always a big feast. I just want to give a shout out to them. Thanks, you've taught me how to cook and eat well. I wish I could return the favor. Alas, we're on a different coast, so I'll have Tally friends over in the meantime.

 

Brunch for a Crowd @ 10:00

This is what I typically do, so here are a few tips on how to host a brunch for up to 12-15. Prep the night before, which takes me an hour. The morning of, I try to start gathering everything 2 hours prior to serving. Don't forget I have 3 kids, the youngest literally climbs the oven drawer to take a peak of the stove top. It depends on what it is, sometimes I'll overdo myself and spend more than 2 hours. Eeeek. The breakfast featured above took me an hour plus to get everything on the table. I wasn't quite on time but thankfully friends showed up at the right time. ;)

1) Overnight recipes are a must. Saves you time and stress cooking at the stove.

2) Pancakes - Prep dry ingredients in a separate bowl from wet ingredients night before. All you have to do that morning is mix and cook. Use electric skillets to cook pancakes and meats simultaneously on the stove top. Also, electric skillets can cook up to 8 pancakes per batch, which saves you uber minutes. I would cook these first while something bakes and then when the oven is free. Set the temp to warm setting (200 degrees) and keep pancakes in there.

3) Meat - Most meats are really quick, however it gets intense if you've got a lot of bacon left to fry and guests come knocking at your door. Most people are happy to eat that room temp, but if you do meats in your second to the last round of cooking you can always pop them in the warm oven.

4) Eggs - Last of all. I believe these dry easily so it's best to finish these last to serve warm and fresh. For scrambled, you can do 2 batches of a dozen eggs to serve just the right amount on the side. I just have to have eggs w/ any breakfast meat.

5) Fruit - Cut it up the night before. All you have to do that morning is set it out on the table. Or serve fresh fruit uncut. Strawberries. Blueberries. Bananas. Whatever is in season.

Hope that helps ya'll. I hope to host another brunch in the near future.

Scrapbook: First Child's Firsts

Before Tiz was born, I got this scrapbook as a baby shower gift and was excited to put one together. Moms, I know, for some of you, the idea of a first photo album of your first child's firsts weighs on you. Okay, maybe not. But at least for me it did. For a whole year it did. I finally finished it when she was about 2. I had to do some documentation of the hundreds of pics we took of our first child. Soooo sorry our third child doesn't have as many.

Okay, this was great. Had the stickers, the pages, the colors already picked out for you in this package. However, I went through a torturous ordeal to get the pics the sizes I wanted. In order to make them fit in the placeholders the pages had, I had to shrink the pics proportionately in Photoshop. Then after printing them on gloss stock. I finely cropped them, all 53 photos, w/ my xacto knife. Yes, this took hours to consider, measure, print, and cut. Ugggh, first and last custom scrapbook I'll do. But maybe one day, a larger one to put standard sizes in. I still have to do my college road trip to the Northwest. Arghh. Too many projects to hold on to, so little time.

First day she was born. Missing hair lock on the right, which I saved in a ziploc bag somewhere.

Bath time & little feet & hand pics

Daddy & Tiz

Her first adventures

I must say, it took FOREVER. Like, in Sandlot when the boy repeatedly says, "FORever...FORever...FORever..." It was worth it and now I can look back and appreciate, cry, reminisce those days when I thought it was hard to have one child. The adjustment to motherhood just keeps progressing.

Ballaas Lose 11-10 to Whites

I know. I know. I need to post pics and vids. Get too cheery in the sidelines.

On the cool evening, we started off really well. Despite the soaked, drenched field, both teams played pretty well. Not great on our end. We have probably one of the best rosters out there but we can't seem to click together as a team, which is hurting us. We scored the first point and then they scored. Then we kept scoring leading by 3 points in the first half, until they broke us even by the end of the first half. The white team was ranked #1 after our first loss last week. Somehow we dropped from #1 to #4?! http://www.tallahasseeultimate.com/summer12.html

We made a lot of mistakes the last couple of weeks, which cost us. Our captain admittedly said that our key players kept making turns and had a lot of miscues with the receivers. We didn't have as strong of a defense trying to learn Zone and kept pockets open for them to keep up with our offense. On a positive note, he said in the end that we need to make mistakes now so we can play better in the playoffs. I'm soooo looking forward to playing red and white again. We have yellow, maroon, and navy blue left to play. Not sure how playoffs are determined in the end. Hopefully, we'll keep our rank up there so we can play in the finals.

I had a lot of fun even though my stomache gave me issues. I definitely caught the stomache bug from the kids, but wasn't sure I did until the middle of the night. Boy, did that remind me why I don't want to be pregnant again for a long time. I just don't want to face the toilet for a while again. Poor kiddos were sick over the weekend, but all better now except for me. Hopefully, none of my teammates caught it from me. :/

the Aftermath

Back to the game, it was pretty even throughout. Both teams kept taking back the lead by 1 point. But, in the end the last two were critical. The horn blew, signaling 10 minutes left of the 90 minute game. We were in the lead 10-9. White was O (offense) and we all marked our opponents. I was put w/ this girl who came to the back of the vert stack. Of course, we should've known they were going to send it deep. So she cut deep and I kept up with her. My captain backed me up and he tapped it in the end zone. His tap wasn't enough, which I thought he was going to catch. The girl layed out to catch, and my teammate dove behind me to make an awesome layout d. Next time, I'm just going to run through and be there to catch or block a 2nd time. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle. ;)

Unfortunately, my captain didn't see it clearly so it looked like the guy stripped it from her. He and I contested our own captains call. Haha. But, out of good sportsmanship he gave them a point making it 10-10. Our captain called the best line to go out, and so they did. Not sure how we made a turn in the next point but white ended up scoring the last point to win the game.

If ya'll are wondering how I did. I scored 2 points and of course I didn't get any passes mid-field. They probably didn't want to risk turns. hehe. One terribly missed opp, the disc flew right by me when I could've clearly blocked it. I saw it a little late and jumped to barely tap it. I should've just caught it, but I hesitate catching on defense to avoid throwing errors. I throw confidently in practice but don't want to try in the game. Gotta get over that. Anyway, I felt pretty great despite the random knots in my stomache. It also felt great, to endure one round long enough when both teams made at least 4 turns until one scored, which means lots of running. The girl I was covering didn't want to run anymore either. Hmmm. Maybe I should bank on that next time.

Multiple Page Formatting

Besides market research, concepting, drawing, and designing, I have formatted multiple page documents with InDesign. One of them, a black & white, 150 page training folder for a non-profit organization. Style sheets are a must and please do not lose all your hair by formatting in Word! I practically lose a few even with Style sheets because of how tedious this gets.

J's Dream
It would be a dream to work on a style manual, or an annual report. I just love the variety you can do with a multiple page document. I've done plenty of small favors, like wedding programs and memorial programs for friends. Unfortunately, I would receive requests practically the week of or content decisions would be finalized very late, so I could only put out as much quality as the time given. So I've done plenty of work but not willing to showcase them. I don't know if artists or designers are ever completely proud of their work. If we were given as much time we wanted, would we really pull through with the best of the best? That's another topic in itself. My A.D.D is kicking in, so I'll stop here.

My Vote for Layout Grab

I bumped into a post on Skyd Magazine, featuring "The Five Sickest Layout Grabs Caught on Video." They wanted to get votes on what was the best grab, so since I'm late in turning in my vote, I posted my vote above. A Junior girl flies into the end zone making an awesome grab. The rest were impressive but gotta hand it to the young ladies. SkyD's article here: http://skydmagazine.com/2011/04/sickest-layouts-time/#.

Ballaas Game 7: First Green Loss

Our first loss. Although it frustrates me, we know they didn't kill us. The reds won with 2 points ahead ending the game at 12-10. At first, we trailed on an off the first half by 3 to 4 points. Then 2nd half our game improved and we had better defensive moves. It took us a while to get in gear and get on the same page, which cost us 3 points in the beginning. The other thing is it seemed their roster was double to ours. We had less guys and missing a few key women players, which also played a factor. That means I got to play more and I did make some mistakes. I totally get confused w/ the transitions from vert stack to zone defense, or zone offense to zone defense. I prefer man defense (one-on-one) because it's simple and I can keep up with whomever I'm covering.

We rarely practice together as a team so we barely know how to work together. Except our strength is that we've got a lot of strong individual players. However, our game loss was due to a lot reasons. Too many turns, their strong defensive moves (their quick guys covering our girl receivers), and we were slower. At one point, I was confused about my position on the field so I stayed mid-field. A guy trusted me enough to pass to me, which I caught. However, their defense cracked down quickly and covered me with a tight cup and I couldn't even dump it back. So after 6 stall counts, I made a bet on my flick to shoot a little higher but of course it was blocked. Thankfully, one of our guys saved it but then he got stuck into a tight cup and then made a turn, which resulted into a score. They just knew how to do zone way better than us.  There were a lot of ifs, ands, buts, but it was a fun game for the most part.

Philip brought the kids to watch the game and the kids did well. Except, my sweet dear husband somehow missed the fact that one of our sons would go straight to an ant hill to get at least 10 bites on his bare feet. Poor thing.

Although we lost, we still played our best to the end and if we started off the same way we did in the 2nd half it wouldn't have ended the same way. I think I did the most yelling and screaming that game since the beginning of the season. For positive reasons of course. Screaming out of excitement that one of our girls made an awesome layout d (defense) to block a pass at the end zone, as well as another of our girls with layout d blocking a pass mid-field. One of our guys made a significant sky d at the end zone but it bounced up giving the offensive player a chance to catch again, but our guy blocked it a second time. Thrilling! Hopefully my yelling doesn't annoy my teammates, but I care about team morale. I think my main role on this team is to cheer. ;) And catch a few easy lobs when I cut deep or in this game I was poached right in front of the handler in the end zone and scored a point.

At the end, our captain gathered us and he told us now that we know how their team plays we still have the rest of the season to make adjustments. That's right, red! We'll be ready.

Barksdale's Ballaas: Game 6 Cancelled

July 3rd was Game Day, so similar forecast on 4th of July. Except weather turned out Ultimate friendly on Independence day.

Cancelled?! The night I was so ready and pumped to play. A huge thunderstorm comes to ruin the night. The game was scheduled at Tom Brown Park, which was right outside the cloud of hail and lightning. Of course, we had a few sparks of lightning around the field. Yes, I still went.

My husband wanted to check out the field anyway, so we loaded our van with the 3 kids hoping to toss for a little. Despite finding the "game cancelled" post on the facebook group page, we headed over with hopes that they'd revert to "Game on." haha. Instead, we find a few players walking back towards their cars. Man, I was so ready to get that game done with. We'll be more ready next week.

Corporate Identity: Zeshan

While working as a designer for Bibles for America (BfA) I had the privilege to design on the side. This was before motherhood days. Thanks to the director of Zeshan Foundation for giving me the opportunity to work with him, who is extremely talented with visual arts. He conceptualized the idea of taking Chinese characters and making it a watermark.

Whenever I begin brainstorming with a client, I like to get an idea of what they envision. So, I ask them for a few adjectives to help me narrow down the inspiration that's out there. Or, show images and styles they'd like to incorporate in their brand. Then, after presenting several fonts and layouts I tighten up the tweaks in the final round. This project was a huge learning experience for me. I thought, sure a corporate stationery is simple. But, the second language definitely put a quirk in my usual process. Plus, I had to ship internationally.

It was hard work, but I still consider this to be one of my favorite pieces to showcase. Images have been blurred to keep certain information private.