Ilan’s celebrations

Just wanted to share some photos of Ilan’s birthday celebration at gan as well as last month at home. But before that I want to share some great creativity from Liora over the years as she has made Ilan’s birthday cakes (lets see if you can catch the similarities :).

From Blogger Pictures

From Ilan 3rd b'day

From Ilan Bday

And now some of Ilan’s pictures from this year’s celebrations.

Stay tuned as I will soon write about our wonderful Yom Haatzmaut (Israeli independence day).

Chag Haatzmaut Sameach!

Sabra Album – Danger! No Passage!

If you have been following the blog you are familiar with my Sabra Album. For all the rest, my Sabra Album is a delightful collection of pictures that talk about how Israel is such a special and interesting place. These pictures are so unique to Israel that I’m calling them “Sabra Album” (Click here for definition of Sabra). (You can also visit Sabra Album Take 1 , Take 2 , Take 3, Take 4, Take 5 and Machane Yehuda Edition if you missed them).

This time I just want to share one image I took from our last visit to Ein Guedi. The sign below reads “DANGER! NO PASSAGE!”

A picture is worth a thousand words…

From Sabra Album

What do you mean Danger? A real Sabra does not fear anything nor does he follow any rules he does not believe in. A real Sabra has gone through so much danger before that he is not going to be told what is dangerous and what is not.

Are you a real Sabra?

Happy 110th blog post!

You might ask yourself, why is 110 so significant? Why not 100, or maybe 120? The truth is that I completely missed the 100th so lets celebrate the 110.

Thanks for your following, I have enjoyed sharing with you our experiences here in Israel. Please keep on posting comments at least I know someone is at the other side of the screen.

Some numbers to celebrate:

7,264 Visits

10,888 Page visits

2,347 Visitors from 67 countries

Thank you.

Now with the post…

During my last post I talked about misspells on packaging. It’s funny but the day after at work we had some urgent packaging/care instructions translation needed from English to Spanish, so there I was thinking of my blog post and now I need to make sure it all makes sense and there are no misspells, I read it several times to make sure it was 100% :)

We had a wonderful Pesach, we were 18 (9 adults and 9 kids) at the Seder night with 2 other Mexican families which all contributed with food. We finished all at 12:30am by which most of the children were still awake, participating and singing. It was a very joyous holiday.

We did many things during the holiday, here are some pictures of all that we did the week of Pesach including: Visit park Canada (forest 15 away from home), Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea, the new Modiin Park, seeing the Harley Davidson ROI (Raiders of Israel), a day at the pool with our friends, and a visit to Mrs. Greenberg.

Why is this packaging different from all other packedging?

I hope you all had a wonderful Pesach, for my readers outside of Israel, I guess you are still doing the matzah thing? I ate a delicious Shwarma on a big warm laffa today. :)
Pesach apart from being one of my favorite holidays because of the family interaction, food and all the different symbols it has, it brings with it a great opportunity to get to know new products. When all the big brands are eaten and get all the market share during the year it’s time for those little ones that have their Kasher for Pesach, Lelo chashash kydniot niche (a topic I would not dare to explain or discuss). And Pesach is exactly their time to shine.
Here are some pictures to expose some great Packaging examples from these great quality niche products:
1. ChocoNit
The #1 instant chocolate milk powder brand in Israel is called ChocoLit (by Strauss-Elite), this Kasher Le Pesach knock off is called ChocoNit. Read closely the product description and you will find what makes this product worth of a mention on this blog.

From Sabra Album

Instent Cocoa Drink?
But still it was enjoyebl :)

From Sabra Album

2. Matzah meal
One of our home’s favorite dish (after pasta) is Matzah Balls. And this time Liora made them from scratch by using some real Matzah meal (grinded Matzah), eggs and carbonated water (which we happen to have unlimited supply). I really hope I don’t have too many misspells/typos on my blog but at least I know that the word Ibgredients will be automatically detected by any spell-check on any language (unless you write it in all Caps). See below.

From Sabra Album

By the way the matzah balls came out better than the prepared powder they sell
3. Mimrach Tmarim (Dates spread)
One of the greatest discoveries I had this Pesach was how good Matzah tastes with a good Mimrach Tmarim, it even competes against Matzah with avocado and salt. I need to give credit to this product since it tasted sooooo good, but it’s just funny how they explain some of its uses in the back.

From Sabra Album

English is complicated, if it sounds like “Y” why do you have to write “IE”, but then again a simple spell check would have discovered Cooky, but wait, all caps once more. Conclusion, either get someone to read through your packaging translations or do not write in all caps. :)
(*Note: After posting this I received a comment -see comments- that "Cooky" is actually a legitimate spelling, and I checked, she is right. Why is English so complicated?, thanks "mother in Israel")
But you should not judge a book by its cover, below a front shot of the product, I really recommend it.

From Sabra Album

If you are about to make Aliyah and are reading this blog, here is a great job opportunity: Check for this relatively small companies and offer your English proofreading consulting work, they really need your help, especially for text in all caps :)
If you enjoyed this pseudo-marketing blog post make sure you read:
Sabra Album Take 6 – Marketing Edition
Captive (and hungry) audience