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!!