Winners All Around! Mandarin Festival Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving Week! 

We all have so much to be thankful for, even if things are not necessarily going our way. This weekend was the Mountain Mandarin Festival and to say I was busy would be the understatement of the century! I personally made 350 jars of assorted flavors of mandarin marmalade, set up, decorated and tore down our booth, helped to organize and manage 63 volunteers, manned the booth to sell said marmalades, and made 3 recipes to enter in the recipe contest. Dave and Mason both worked their butts off, too. Dave entered two recipes in the contest while Mason entered one. Dave won 2nd place in both the main dish and side dish categories with his Mandarin Chicken Curry and his Mandarin Cider Slammer cocktail, Mason won third place in the main dish category with his Mandarin Jerk Chicken and I finally won the Snow's Citrus Court award with my Mandarin Breakfast Sausage! Whoo-Hoo! Cash prizes for all!

We didn't make as much money with our marmalade sales as we had rain most of the day on Saturday, but I am still hopeful that once all the accounting is in, we can be close to $2,000 in sales. We still have plenty left if you want to buy some for the coming holiday parties and gifts. It is really an awesome artisan product and I don't think it will be available next year. It's $9.00 a jar and all proceeds benefit Mason's school kitchen project. We have 1/2 pints of (they are all mandarin) pepper (120), peach (9), cranberry (26), lime (8), pineapple (19), pineapple-cranberry (7), mango (8), mango-pepper (5), raspberry, (9) and blackberry (3). We also have 4 jars left of a deliciously tart strawberry/cranberry/plum jam (no mandarin) and 32 full pints of no sugar apple sauce - made with only local apples and cinnamon $12.00.

I hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving and take some time off, relax and enjoy your company - let people help you and if they are not helping, ask them to! Lots of love to you and yours! XOXO

It's a Fox 40 Kind of Morning!

Mason is gearing up for his last cooking demos of the year at the Mandarin Festival this coming weekend. I am also very hopeful that with our school manning the gates and mandarin marmalade sales we will push Mason's fundraising for his kitchen over the top. Fingers crossed as it looks like we will have cooler and possibly even wet weather. If you want to see Mason doing his thing on Fox 40 click here, oh, and he has a fun giveaway up on his website, all you have to do is share how you like to cook with or eat mandarins. Go to www.masonpartak.com and leave a comment, you can't win if you don't play!

Fall in Apple Hill!

This hillside at Apple Hill looked just like candy corn!

This has been an eventful week and weekend, school and work is dominating my time but I love them both. Dave has had a break from school but is traveling for work, the work travel will become more frequent and school starts back up for him next week so it's going to get busier before things settle down. Add the holidays into the mix and holy cow, it will be 2015 before we know it. 

This week Mason found himself in a predicament in which he made a really poor choice. I don't want to put the details on my blog, but suffice it to say it was bad enough that he did not get to go trick or treating for Halloween. For those of you who know Dave and Mason, you know that Halloween is a BIG deal! Additionally, he does not have his iPad until 12/1 and he has to write a paper about why what he did was so, so wrong. I sure hope he learned this lesson as it will be far worse when he's not just dealing with the law of Dave and me.

We made time to get to Apple Hill and it was gorgeous! The fall colors were exquisite and we got to ride in a Wells Fargo Stagecoach in Placerville. All in all, we had such a great fall family day. We didn't buy apples but we did get some preserves and little pumpkins for our Saturday Thanksgiving table (we hollow them out and serve Dave's butternut squash soup in them). I just love, love, love this time of year, it just excites me!

Now I am back to work and loving it. I will be closing an escrow on the 18th of November and another on on the 4th of December - this is good news but keep in mind, I have been working on both of these deals since June of 2013! Seriously, talk about sticking with it. Laughing! Have a wonderful week and take in all Mother Nature has to offer, it just doesn't get any prettier.