Happy Halloween! Our girls’ costumes this year are nigiri sushi: Mio is salmon, and Mirei is shrimp! They are just so cute that I could gobble them up…
This was my first time making their costumes and while it was a long and challenging process because I don’t have a sewing machine and had to hand-sew everything, it helped that Mio was really excited about the idea of being sushi for Halloween and kept excitedly exclaiming “Mio going to be SAH-MON SUSHI!!!” during the weeks leading up to Halloween. She was definitely my cheerleader and motivator to get the costumes completed and not give up! I’m pretty pleased with the final result, and the girls (well… Mio at least) seem to really like it! I don’t know if I’ll attempt to make another costume on my own again, though, until I have a sewing machine… I kept getting frustrated towards the end that it would have been faster and cleaner-looking if I had one! For those who want to know, I followed this awesome tutorial (note: it’s in Hebrew, so you’ll need the help of Google Translate!) that I found via Pinterest, and added some customizations of my own (I sewed the “rice” body from some white chenille fabric, and added green felt “baran”/grass to the headband, behind the wasabi and ginger). The costumes have definitely been a hit at the Halloween parties and events we’ve gone to this year, and it was a welcome departure from the typical princesses and fairies that we dressed Mio in the past couple years.
Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween weekend!
Mio had such a great time going to Trunk-or-Treat around town last year, so we definitely wanted to take her and Mirei again this year. Mio has been looking forward to Halloween for a while now, and had been carrying her pumpkin bucket around practicing shouting “trick-or-treat!” I’m pretty certain that Halloween is her favorite time of year. 😉 We went to both Vienna Baptist Church and Emmanuel Lutheran Church again this year. Here are some photos of all the trick-or-treating fun!
Mio and her friend Junna at Vienna Baptist Church.
Mio ready to trick or treat as a salmon nigiri!
Playing games at the Fall Festival at VBC.
Playing with an owl finger puppet toy she won.
Playing the fishing game again. (We remember this from last year!)
Mio getting her face painted.
Showing off Mirei’s shrimp costume!
Mio was a salmon, and Mirei was a shrimp!
Let the Trunk-or-Treat begin!
Some of the trunk decorations were very well done! Here’s one with a huge spider.
We loved this Lion King-themed trunk!
Mio carefully depositing her candy.
Sorry you can’t have any yet, Mirei!
Our little shrimp in Daddy’s arms.
Mio playing the playground of Emmanuel Lutheran, where she goes to preschool.
Mio had such a great time at Trunk-or-Treat, and she’s been admiring her candy loot in the days since! She likes to dump all of it out on the floor, carefully examine, comment, and count each one, and then put it all back and select a couple to eat every day. She’s surprisingly been pretty good about not trying to eat all of them at once, and has been exercising admirable restraint for a 3-year-old in listening to us when we tell her she can only have one or two treats a day. And the best part of it is that she’s willing to share, much to our delight! 😉
Last Saturday, we were invited to a pumpkin carving party with the Lee family! There were lots of Halloween-themed treats and games for the little kids, and our whole family had a great time taking part in the festivities with friends. Stephanie and Chwan were wonderful hosts and really threw an awesome Halloween party full of fun for all ages!
A decorate-your-own-cupcake station! Such a great idea.
Delicious Halloween treats!
Mio checking out the cupcake spider.
Mimi holding Mirei 🙂
Mio sharing a pizza with Daddy
Mirei loved exploring in the new environment!
Mio’s decorated cupcake
Mio with her cupcake that she decorated!
There were lots of cool Halloween games that Stephanie set up for the kids.
Dan with our nigiri girls
Our girls dressed as sushi! We’ll have to post better photos of the costumes later.
Mio loved playing with Danny’s hammer toy
Mio decorated her pumpkin with these cat face foam stickers.
The carved pumpkins! Everyone did such a great job carving!
Dan carved the raven one (in the very back). Good job, hubby!
The famous Berkeley Bowl is nothing short of a foodie mecca, garnering national coverage and regularly gracing the pages of newspapers like The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. We live only about a half mile away from its location on Oregon Street, and it is definitely one of the biggest perks of living in Berkeley. Some people travel several miles to do their grocery shopping here, because it seems to carry just about everything, including obscure international ingredients. I was psyched when I found that I could buy mostly everything for my Japanese cooking needs instead of having to make the hour-long trek down to Mitsuwa in San Jose. While the produce is the freshest in the area and the selection is unmatched, the shopping experience there is a whole different story and was the only thing keeping us from coming back every weekend. As the SF Gate reported, “The parking lot is a gridlocked swamp of road rage, a demolition derby of Priuses and rusty old Volvos vying for parking spots… The produce section is often described as the ‘Cairo of shopping carts,’ as dozens of very focused and aggressive gourmands fight over the purple potatoes and fresh water chestnuts. The checkout lines can be staggering, like something out of East Berlin.” The zoo that is Berkeley Bowl provides you with the most exhausting — although rewarding — shopping experience ever.
Berkeley Bowl was in desperate need of expansion with the shortage of parking spots and cramped aisles, and our prayers were answered with the opening of Berkeley Bowl West in early June of this year. Located near the intersection of San Pablo and Ashby Avenues, right off the freeway, it features a parking garage and double the number of parking spaces of the Oregon Street store, more checkout lanes, and significantly larger aisles and produce sections to accommodate the swarming crowds of shoppers. It also boasts a cafe, expanded kitchen, and community room where people can take a seat and immediately enjoy any prepared food they purchase.
Dan and I took a trip out to the new Berkeley Bowl West early last month when it had just opened, and we were super impressed! We’ll let the photos do the talking:
I commend you if you have gotten this far in this photo dump of a blog entry, and I hope you enjoyed our dorktastic photo tour. All hail Berkeley Bowl West, the new foodie paradise! We’re sure we will be seeing much more of you.
