Woo Springbreak

Winter Cupcake Class

jon.mcclay — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:51:31 +0000

For Christmas, Amanda bought me a cupcake class at the Sur La Table in Kirkland WA which is a short drive from Seattle. It was a wonderful class taught by Michelle Mrkota. She taught us the basics of batter and four groups were assigned a different kind of cupcake and a different kind of frosting. My team’s cupcake was a coconut cupcake with 7 minute frosting and shaved coconut on top. We also learned about working with fondant and made snowmen and snowflakes! This class also happened to be during a snowstorm which made driving challenging…

Snow Day 1 | Toys Alive

jon.mcclay — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:25:58 +0000

There was a blizzard today and I shot these photos!
Beware of the Penguin!!!

Zombie Attack | Toys Alive

jon.mcclay — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:21:33 +0000

AGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!

Happy New Year | Toys Alive 2012

jon.mcclay — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:14:27 +0000

I’ve got a good feeling about this year.

Nerf Guns @ Christmas Time

jon.mcclay — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:17:39 +0000

This Christmas I was hoping to get a Nerf Praxis from their new Vortex line. I was curious about how the discs would work since darts tend to get ruined if you step on them…or do anything to them really. It’s never that much fun to have just one gun…so I thought it would be a good idea to paint one for Amanda. After finishing hers, I decided mine needed some work too. Krylon Flat Black is my favorite can to work with.

The gallery will show you the gun I painted for Amanda, my Nerf Praxis and Vigilon. Enjoy!

Cookie Thieves | Toys Alive

jon.mcclay — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:42:21 +0000

NOOOOOooooo

Acoustic Guitar | Toys Alive

jon.mcclay — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:59:02 +0000

Turn A decided to put on a little show today with his new Takamine Acoustic Guitar. We share an affection for cutaways. Too bad the pirates tried to run off with his blaster…they’re always getting into trouble.

Thanksgiving 2011

jon.mcclay — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 07:02:53 +0000

This year Amanda flew from Greensboro NC to Seattle WA to celebrate Thanksgiving with me! We had 3 different Thanksgivings this year. The first was a dinner I was invited to by a complete stranger to pedaled beside me at near freezing temperatures around 12:30am the week before. He asked me about my small bike and we chatted about life briefly. He told me how to get in touch with him and said I should come to his dinner. Amanda and I showed up at his house to see his small farm (complete with veggies, goats and chickens) and then we journeyed off to the large house his girlfriend shares with four or five other women. We had a fantastic time interacting with people who were passionate about loving the community around them. It was very refreshing!

Our second Thanksgiving was at New Horizons drop-in center which is downtown. Amanda got to see first hand what I do with my Wednesday evenings. I haven’t posted about it so I might as well explain now. Seattle has a lot of homeless youth that are local here and traveling across the county. NH is a center where kids between the ages of 14 and 24 can get free meals, clothes, showers and a safe place during different times of the week. The 22nd was their Thanksgiving party and I got to sit with some of the kids I know and introduce them to Amanda and we got to share memories of other Thanksgivings. It was a wonderful time!

One stop before our meal was the Experience Music Project! Amanda and I have been before (it’s a must if you are traveling to Seattle), but they just opened a exhibit on scary movies. We love scary movies so it was necessary for us to attend! They had all kinds of videos talking about the history of horror films, clips of experts discussing why people love scary movies, and props from all kinds of classic films. You can see a few pictures from the exhibit in the gallery. Also, make sure you see the jacket of Michael Jackson’s that is on display! The jacket he wore when he debuted the Moonwalk on television is there!!! They also have one of his sequenced gloves!

Thanksgiving Day was spent on Bainbridge Island where my parents have a home. I’m a bit of a recovering fast-food addict and I am trying to eat better. This year we bought a organic turkey from Whole Foods which had information on the farm our turkey was from as well as info on its diet. If you are like me and saw Food Inc, then you feel good buying a bird that got to run around and enjoy being an animal! We had organic green bean casserole and a organic, homemade chocolate pie! My good friend Josh Flynn joined us and we had a fantastic meal! Afterwards we watched Scream 3!

This was possibly my favorite Thanksgiving yet!

Experiment #3 | Love for the Homeless

jon.mcclay — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:56:26 +0000

If you visit Seattle, it won’t be long before you are flooded with requests for spare change.There are a lot of homeless people in Seattle, and they are more then ready to help you by taking all of your heavy change from you. If you spend time here you will also find that there is a giant population of homeless youth. If you pay attention you will notice that a lot of people struggling talking to themselves. I wonder how many of them actually struggle with mental health issues or is it a symptom of loneliness. If no one looked at me and there wasn’t anyone to talk to, I would 100% make up friends to hang out with.

For me, I try to look them in the face and sometimes I feel compelled to share my money or change, and other times I feel restraint. For my second experiment I took some advice from Jeff Lilley, President of Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and made some bags with useful items to give away. Wave 1 of my bags are packed with a fruit roll-up, hand sanitizer, string cheese and some homemade cookies that my Mom baked in NC and mailed all the way here for me to enjoy (she did an amazing job so I know these fellow family members will love them)! Sometimes I don’t have change, sometimes I might have a use for the change I have, but it doesn’t mean I can’t share my resources with others who may have destructive tendencies through relational conversation. It’s important to stop, listen, make eye contact and chat like you would anyone else. That is what I see Jesus doing through the stories that have survived time.

On my next list of purchases: winter gloves, hats and hand warmers!

Experiments #1 & #2

jon.mcclay — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 02:33:28 +0000

Experiment #1 Recently I have been working on living a somewhat silly experiment in simplicity. I saw an ad for a type of underwear that said you could travel the globe for 6 months with one pair…I wanted to know about this. My experiment? Spend 2 weeks living with 2 changes of clothes. 2 pairs of Pants, 2 pairs of Socks, 2 Pairs of Undies, 2 shirts and 2 jackets (it’s getting cold in Seattle!). The motivation came from Mark’s book and the stories from Matthew 10 and Luke 10 (check out youversion.com).

The way to have clean clothing each day is to wash your clothes by hand in a sink each night (or every other night). This uses less electricity then a laundry machine and wastes less water! The trick to drying your clothing overnight is to lay your wet clothes on top of a towel, roll it up into a burrito and then walk over it to get the extra water out. Then hang your clothes on a clothesline! For soap I have a bar of laundry soap. It’s been a interesting process and it’s nice to not worry about what I am going to wear each day.

Experiment #2 includes working towards developing a faith community here in Seattle. If you know me then you know I have asked a lot of difficult questions about how we practice the ways of Jesus here in the US primarily in regards to the institutions (and mega institutions) across this land. Now that I have spent a significant time studying Jesus and the early Church (not to say that I know anything…) I’m interested in developing these ideas into something and leaving the land of “thoughts”. Luckily I have found a few others in Seattle experiencing those ideas who haven’t found a gathering yet, and we have begun sharing meals together. I’m very excited about the future…