Happy Holidays!

Earlier this week, Faith and I went to the downtown library and I stumbled across an old favorite of mine, How Are You Peeling? Foods With Moods by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann. And, thus, I suppose that is what inspired today's frenzy of food carving.

Above, I believe they were discussing physics.

Here is shot of our first creation with the book that inspired such childish behavior as playing with food (gasp!):

I **love** those bright page colors! As you can see above on the plate, we used cloves for the pupils in this first orange and in the poor apple that was nearby:

When Faith was asked by her Great Aunt Karen later that day why the apple was sad, she replied "Because it lost it's mommy and daddy," which is very sad indeed! Where does my kid come up with this stuff??? Hopefully, it is not wishful thinking on her part. I know she gets tired of me, but really...

So, to move on with the excessive photo sharing, below you will see the happy orange trying to cheer up poor, sad apple. Faith added a clove sideways to the orange's mouth, which I rather liked! It looks like it has lost a tooth.

It was really funny to me that just by changing their arrangements, their expressions seemed to change as well. I guess that is part of the art of the book!

So, after two rather grand successes, if I do say so myself, thankyouverymuch, I was desperate to try my hand at more sophisticated, subtle emotions. But, ALAS, there was no more fruit in the house (I know, get thyself to a store, woman!). After much fretting, I *finally* (I'm slow, have I mentioned that?) realized that I could carve two more faces in the opposing ends of the two pieces of fruit I had already whittled. So, with no further ado (I *know* you are on pins and needles!), here they are:

Bored, maybe miffed or whistling Apple, and REALLY SUPER HAPPY cross-eyed Orange! And again, just changing their positions, changed their whole attitudes (well, maybe just Apple's):

Above, Orange is still REALLY SUPER HAPPY, but Apple now looks just a little worried rather than aloof. Ahh, the subtle moods of food...

You might have noticed that I used dry black-eyed peas for the eyes this round, instead of cloves, which allowed for much more expressiveness, I thought. And the large, bulbous nose on Orange is a grape attached with a toothpick, in case you were wondering.

Later, I realized that I could switch them up and introduce set #1 to set #2! So, below is Sad Apple #1 peared up with Super Happy Orange #2 (and yes, that was a very intentional pun!):

Enter Granny Smith, who had been hiding out in the fridge, forgotten until late in the game:

Above, I was going for a Lucille Ball wailing expression. Below, I was encouraged by Hubby to use a red kidney bean for the mouth. Honestly, I don't really care for how that one turned out (sorry honey!).

I suppose this is Gagged Granny Smith!

Later, all this carving up fruit made my little girl hungry, so I let her "have at" one of the apples. Here is the result:

As if Sad Orphaned Apple didn't have enough on his plate, now HE is on the plate!

At least Super Happy Orange was spared! And that makes for one VERY happy ending!