Turkey Time

If you weren't following the blog this time last year you missed the sad post about my Thanksgiving feast failure. Don't worry, you can read all about it here. 

Good news is- this year Thanksgiving went off without a hitch, and without tears! Tami and Eric joined us for an orphan thanksgiving. We spent the day baking and cooking, playing cards and wii. It was the perfect mix of relaxing and keeping busy- so we didn't dwell on missing Thanksgiving with our families. We successfully roasted a turkey and made the stuffing from scratch. It felt really good to be able to pull off a legit dinner together, made us feel like real adults.

We even snuck Pax in so he could enjoy the day with all of us.

 (Our building is strictly against pets)

The recipes for the things John and I made are all from my festivities Pinterest board.

I definitely recommend the stuffing recipe. It knocked the socks off of Stove-Top.

381 Days

Oops! We kind of let a little thing like our 1-year Island Anniversary slip by without mentioning it. Halloween marked our official 1-year on Oahu. It's really amazing how fast the time has gone. I accredit that to the lack of seasons. The months seem to pass without notice because new months don't bring a lot of change around here. We sort of have a winter but even then the only difference is that we get more rain. 

(which we love!)

So much has happened for John and I these last 12 months-

• John had his first exposure to the Pacific- he wasn't too excited about the ocean when we first found out we were moving here. When we arrived he fell in love, almost drowned, learned to respect and fear the ocean, and even caught a wave or twenty on the body board.

• We've experienced many beautiful sunsets this year and one amazing sunrise from the top of the mountain range.

• We learned that no matter where we are, as long as we're together things will be alright.

• Moving 1/4 way around the world sounds really appealing and adventurous (and believe me it is) but it can also be lonely at times.

• We learned to rely solely on each other. Sharing a car and not knowing more than a handful of other people here has made us more considerate and patient with each other.

• I learned to knit. Obviously very appropriate for life in a tropical climate :)

 We feel really blessed to have this opportunity, to both be pursuing careers that we love in a place that not everyone gets to visit in their life, much less live.

 

Way-finding

[Via]

 This image inspires me to continually search for creative approaches to even the mundane parts of design, like way-finding.

Pinterest Projects

If you read the blog from the URL or through bloglovin you can see the new layout I'm finishing up. I've enjoyed the way the look of the blog has progressed in the last year and I'm happy to say that although I do use premade layouts I do quite a bit of tweeking to the html myself. Over on the sidebar I've added a new little tab called pinterest projects. 

Like so many others, I'm addicted to pinterest. It sure beats saving all the pictures to inspiration folders on my computer because, with pinterest, you can link back to the tutorials and give appropriate credit when you use someone else's photograph or idea. It's also a lot of fun to see what all my friends are pinning.

I've challenged myself to not just pin a bunch of good ideas, but to actually make the crafts and try the recipes for the things I pin.

Without further ado- here's our most recent 'pinterest project'

The perfect way to serve corn salsa for our little Halloween double-feature movie night

*Unfortunately even the pin for this idea is to a dead link, but at least I'm trying!!

Working on the Weekends

I've been feeling pretty crummy lately and experienced my first bad migraine yesterday. We decided to take another easy weekend at home as I prepare for a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy on Monday (ugh, not looking forward to it)

All this time in the apartment has us working away on several projects and focusing our efforts towards my future etsy shop. Fortunately, this kind of work doesn't feel like work at all.

Here's a few pictures of what all we've been up to lately around our little apartment.

Paint Swatch Calendar

I found the idea for this little project on pinterest and made my own version to send to my sister back when school started. Ya know- because 4th graders have big agendas and they need a calendar to keep it all straight.

Supplies:

Paint swatches

Scissors or craft paper trimmer

glue or tape

Picture frame

Sharpie

I started by cutting the paint swatches down to 1.5" x 1.5" squares and arranged them on some white craft paper that I had cut to fit the inside of the frame. 

Once I was happy with the layout I glued them all in place.

Next, I used a sharpie to draw circles to write the date in and a few decorations around some of the boxes (I did this step on the back side of the glass)

I wrote her name and the day of the week in by holding the glass from the frame up to the computer screen. I typed out all of the days and her name and reversed the text. I then traced it onto the backside of the glass that way she wouldn't have to worry about it getting wiped away accidently.

I was really pleased with the finished product and wrapped it up with a few other things I had to send to my family and shipped it across the big pond, crossed my fingers and hoped it'd make it safely to my sister in Texas.

 

A few days later I got a text my from sister with a picture of a pile of broken glass :( 

It didn't fare so well on the long trip from Hawaii. They were able to salvage the paint swatch paper and are going to find a new frame and redo it soon. 

Hopefully if you give this little craft a try you'll have more luck in keeping in one piece!

Endless Summer

A few weekends ago John and I tried stand-up paddle boarding for the first time. It's really relaxing and not nearly as challenging to balance as you might think.

Made for each other

While I was walking home the other day I passed an area that is typically filled with cast-off furniture waiting to be sent to the landfill and spotted a chair with some sleek, danish style legs. Something was broken where one of the arms met the back of the chair but I thought it might be worth a closer look. I brought it up to our apartment and started to cut away the damaged vinyl on the back of the chair when I saw that there was some significant damage to the part where the arm connected. Rather than add another project to my ever-growing list I took it down next to our dumpster and went on my way. The next morning John took out the trash on our way to work, I noticed it was taking him a particularly long time to come back and I realized what had happened.... He'd seen the chair. A few seconds later he calls my name to come take a look. I told him I knew what I was coming for because I was the one that put it there. He gave it a good look and said the profile was just too charming to not try to fix it, so fix it we shall. We just can't help ourselves when it comes to furniture.

Yes, we are pathetic... yes, we are obsessed with chairs... yes, we are made for each other.

Here's the before, we're playing around with a few ideas and can't wait to get started on it this weekend!

Molokai, Part 1

This past weekend we took our first flight in 10 months. 

(It's not that we'd normally fly really often, we are just beginning to get island fever on Oahu.) 

We traveled with Tami and Eric to Molokai for our first inter-island trip. 

Going from a population of nearly 1 million to the equivalent of a small farm town (the entire Island's population is around 7400) was quite a relaxing experience in itself. 

Molokai is known to be the 'Most Hawaiian Island'

We camped for 2 nights on Papohaku beach and spent our days swimming, napping and exploring the vastly different topography of the island. 

We arrived early Saturday morning and went 'to town' for some fruit from the market and to stock up for the weekend. We came upon some extremely friendly people, it felt just like visiting a small town in the midwest. It was obvious to anyone we came upon that we weren't from the island and so many people started up conversations to find out how we were enjoying our time on Molokai and offered up several suggestions of things to not miss during our visit. There is said to be a hostility between native Hawaiians and people who move to the island, we've noticed it some on Oahu, but not at all in our time on Molokai.

We spent just as much time relaxing and taking the island in as we did documenting our trip so be looking forward to a Molokai video and plenty more pictures to come!