In this episode, Olive, Ralph, and Betty make hand cookies with Grandma. Yummy!
Don’t know if you have tried them before, but Hand Cookies are always a hit. Always. It has something to do with either: the sugar cookie, the frosting, the custom shapes, or the simplicity of it all. And, of course, hand cookies with grandma are better.
Huge thanks to Grandma McEvoy (who starred in this episode!) and Grandpa McEvoy who hosted us and provided many nourishing meals in addition to lots and lots of hand cookies.
Thanks also to Audrey Moore who made everything run smoothly.
And of course, hats off to Tiger in a Jar, who can make the simplest of activities beautiful.
There is a quick reference to the recipe on the video, but here it is for your convenience:
Cut Out Hand Cookies:
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cup Butter or Shortening
1 1/2 cup Suger
2 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk or juice
4 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. baking powder
By Ben Blair
The Blairs visit Horseshoe Mountain Pottery, and get a pottery lesson from Master Potter, Joe Bennion. One of the questions we ask when we are brainstorming ideas for an Olive Us episode is: “What activities/processes are the most beautiful to watch?” The correct answer is, of course, pottery. So when we prepared for the shoot in Utah, we brainstormed what would be the ideal pottery episode.
Gabrielle brought up Joe Bennion—the documentary about him, The Potter’s Meal, was legendary in design school, and wouldn’t it be so amazing if the kids could interact with him? We nearly threw out the idea as too much of a long shot. But, thank the heavens above, we reached out, and to everyone’s thrill, Joe was up for it (well, the kids didn’t know what to expect, so you can watch their thrill literally unfold in the video).
Joe was so much more than an amazing potter. One of the pities of the video is that it doesn’t include all the great stories Joe told as he worked his pots, or guided the kids as they worked theirs. He posted pictures of the kids’ finished pots after he fired them. You can see them on his blog.
Here are some more behind the scenes photos from the shoot:
The walls of Joe’s handiwork welcomes you.
Joe gently guides as Oscar molds his pot.
Joe guides Olive as Matt from Tiger in a Jar gets an overhead shot of Olive working on a dog bowl for a mouse…
We hope you love Pottery Lesson!
Olive, Maude and Ralph get a lesson in rock-climbing and scramble their way to the top of the cliff. Betty is apprehensive about the next destination–and with good reason–who would want to visit a town full of ghosts?! But her brothers and sisters show her what’s to love about a Ghost Town. Filmed in real-life ghost town, Grafton, Utah, near Zion national park. Maude isn’t in the mood to help wash the car, but when she works together with her brothers and sisters, everyone is proud of the result. This was one of the quickest shoots ever. Tiger in a Jar basically just followed the Blair kids on a picnic in the mountains near their Grandparents home in Mendon, Utah. The direction was basically: Have fun on the mountain trail! They did. We hope you love it! A big thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Mac for finding the perfect location. A big thanks to the Kotter Family for letting us film on their beautiful trail. And a big thanks to Audrey Moore for helping out on the set. With all that help, no wonder it was such a smooth shoot! We think the illustrations for the Study Space episode turned out so great, we thought we share them here so you can see all the details. Merrilee Liddiard illustrated 6 different topics, but we only ended up using 5. Can you recognize which one got left out? In this episode, Olive searches out and sets up the perfect spot for her studies. This was a fun episode to put together. Filmed in Mendon, Utah, at Grandma and Grandpa McEvoy’s home. It’s a shame you don’t get to see Mendon, Utah in this episode. But she will be the gorgeous guest star in another episode this season… Special thanks to Audrey Moore. Audrey held the troops together and gave brilliant insights at all the right times. As usual, Tiger in a Jar had a fantastic vision for this episode. Illustrations by Merillee Liddiard of Mer Mag–this was our first collaboration with Merillee, and we’re so delighted with the illustrations–see if you can spot them (actually, they’re really hard to miss because they’re genius!) Check out the trailer for Season 2!07 November 2012, written by admin
Ep.12 Rock Climb
24 October 2012, written by admin
Ep.11 Ghost Town
18 October 2012, written by admin
Ep.10 Carwash
26 September 2012, written by admin
Ep.9 Pique-nique
12 September 2012, written by admin
Study Space Illustrations
12 September 2012, written by admin
Ep.8 How to Set up a Study Space
29 August 2012, written by admin
Season 2 Trailer
06 August 2012, written by admin
Season 2 Teaser: Olympics