12 Days of Christmas: Cookie swap

I think it’s about time I took a lesson in baking in low altitude, high humidity environments, or at least invest a few minutes of my time doing some Internet research in the area. I’ve tried to make cookies at least three times now that were supposed to “crackle” like the magazine picture on the left and it didn't work. I even used the shortening the recipes called for and didn’t replace it with butter (I read that this was really the only way to get a good “crackle” a few years back). Still, although these tasted fine, they clearly didn’t get the look I was going for (see my cookies on the right).
Robbie’s Cub Scout group held a small Christmas party for the boys and we were asked to bring cookies for a cookie swap. That sounded like fun to me, so when I saw this chocolate cookie recipe in a magazine I thought they looked festive and swap-worthy. I baked a batch yesterday morning but was disappointed. I vowed to do a few of things differently next time – one thing being dusting the cookies after they were baked and cooled. These cookies were rolled in powdered sugar before baking and it yellowed the sugar coating. Fail.

12 Days of Christmas: Snow globe ornaments

Early last month I braved Macy's holiday department with the boys. I say braved because it stresses me out; they like to pull and tug on the displays and it drives me nuts and makes me nervous. Pre-coaching about store etiquette and then in-store scolding does little good as they get so excited for the lights and all, so I try to make it a quick tour and exit. I was looking for snow globe tree ornaments and I struck gold!
In the 90s I started collecting holiday snow globes – the big, mantel showcase size. Sometime shortly after our move to Maryland I realized that although I still loved them, having a collection of fragile, bulky, and heavy items just wasn’t practical. I switched then to snow globe ornaments. Family had gifted me some over the years knowing I was collecting all snow globe sizes. I quickly realized how much easier they were to unpack, display, and pack up again. So a new collection was born.
Back to Macy’s last month – I went purposely to see if they had any snow globe ornaments. Hallmark has had a few nice ones over the years as part of their Keepsake collections, but this year I struck out with them. At Macy’s I found three! And better yet, they were already 40% off. (In November? I don’t get retail sometimes.) I noticed one had an on/off switch on the bottom, which I assumed was a switch for a music player. Just last week I pulled them out and went to take a picture. I turned the switch and to my surprise and absolute delight it lit up. And not in a simple, classy way, but a tacky, crap-tacular fiber optic rotating light display way. Merry Christmas to me!

12 Days of Christmas: Advent calendar

I'm back! I thought about starting my Christmas posts in October (if the stores can roll out the red and green, why can't I?). I was just kidding myself, it wasn't going to happen. But inspiration struck this week in the form of a gift from my sister: advent calendars for the boys. Arrived in the mail yesterday just in time to open door one. Beautiful!

Happy Thanksgiving

New find

How excited I am? This past weekend a Westside mushroom grower (I know, who knew?) was at my local farmers market. It was perfect timing as I was planning my holiday side dishes and needed some. The vendor was almost out and I took everything she had left. Only enough for one dish. Would it be the green beans or the stuffing? Well, I think they're too good to be paired with mushy bread as much as I like my version of mushy bread, so they will be with the green beans. The mushroom growers show up at the market depending on whether or not they have product to sell. Let's hope that is more often than not.

Happy Halloween

I'm heading to the Apple store later this evening. A new iPhone is reserved for me! So I decided to do a quick dump of pictures from the last month or so before I migrate to my new device. Here's a palm-sized pumpkin from the Farmers Market. No pumpkin patch for us this year. Luckily, a couple of these little ones filled in just fine.

Someone had a birthday...

Cub turned 4 at the beginning of the month. Robbie wanted Cal to wear a party hat but being a dog and all, he refused. Robbie improvised and snapped this picture. Cal ruptured the ACL in his other knee and had surgery this week to repair it (same surgery he had in May for the first busted knee). Broke my heart to take him to the vet clinic the night before and leave him in their kennel for the procedure the next morning. I don't think there was any doubt he knew what was going on and he wouldn't be home for a few days.
It was a bit rough the first 12 hours home, but it is now nearly 48 hours home and he's doing fine. I want to give him a new nickname but I don't know what to call him...RoboDog? What do you call a mid-size Beagle with two surgically repaired knees?

This one makes me a little sad

Here's a drawing from late last month. Robbie drew our new normal - without Brady. We lost her on September 1, about a week later than the vets thought we would. We're sad but adjusting. I do love the detail Robbie put into Cal. He drew the classic Beagle tri-colors plus added a little grey that Cal now has. :)

Late afternoon at the beach

Another side of paradise

Enjoying a relaxed Friday evening with the boys riding their bikes in the driveway. After work today I picked them up from their respective after school programs and headed straight home. Unlike traffic earlier this week (as shown in the satellite picture - that red line is my bumper-to-bumper commute) traffic wasn't so bad today for a Friday. And for that I thank ESPN for the national broadcast of the UH Warrior football game this afternoon. With a 3 o'clock local start time, many folks started their pau hana activities a little earlier than usual. I know my office emptied out! Looking forward to a few more televised games this year.

Parking lot with a view

Here's the view from my parking spot as I pulled into work one morning this week. I got a good look at it as I drove the last mile or so, too. A full, arching rainbow over the area. Now that made me smile. It was fading by the time I was able to shoot this, and my camera couldn't capture the entire length.
Happy to report busy here...and happily employed. :)

Come sail away

Whew! Busy days here. Back to work for me, the usual school days for the boys, and lots of homework for our first grader at night. Add a couple of field trips and a lost baby tooth (literally lost on the school bus!) and I'm happy it's the weekend over here.
Robbie is officially a Tiger Cub (Boy Scout) and we attended the annual Raingutter Regatta for his pack earlier this week. The boys made their own boats out of supplied kits and raced them. One creative mom also made matching cupcakes for post-race snacks. I was impressed! Also concerned. She sets the bar pretty high for the rest of us with a designated snack day is still to come.

Proof!

Well, thanks to the fine journalists here on Oahu, we now have the near-complete White Plains shark bite story. Vindication for the paddler...no longer an "alleged" event! Still a little troublesome is the time gap from when the attack happened and when they actually closed the beach, but I'll let that go. And I guess we will just have to laugh off the initial report that the shark took off with the board. (Are we a human telephone experiment over here or what?)
Here is the scoop from Monday's Star Advertiser:
Federal lifeguards reopened Nimitz Beach this morning after a shark attack damaged a surfer's board on Sunday. The incident happened about noon Sunday as a surfer was paddling on a 10-foot board about 50 yards from shore, according to Ocean Safety personnel.
The shark, of an unreported size and type, bit the rear of the board, missing the man's foot, an Ocean Safety employee said. The man on the surfboard paddled back to shore unhurt. A second unconfirmed sighting was reported about 2:40 p.m. Sunday.
State and federal officials put up warning signs and closed the beach Sunday.
Here's a link to a picture of the board plus the story of what happened in the surfer's own words (local news video).

Weekend water wrap-up

It is a very sad holiday weekend around Hawaiian waters, with a little strange thrown in the mix as well. It started Saturday with reports of two Schofield soldiers drowning after being swept up in currents around Chinaman's Hat. Next a diver drowned off the Waianae coast, plus a freak accident during an organized Maui to Lanai swim left a swimmer critically injured. None of this I would have even been aware of had we not attempted to go to White Plains yesterday afternoon.
We arrived around 4:20 to the sight of a lot of people leaving. It was late in the day and it wasn’t particularly too hot nor too sunny, so seeing families and surfers packing it up in the parking lot and heading home didn’t seem unusual. We pulled in next to one such family pulling out. As we opened the doors and started to unbuckle the kids, they told us the beach was closed due to a shark warning. Whhaaat? Tell us more! Well, they tried and were very kind as we peppered them with questions they didn’t quite know the answers to either. What we gathered was at some point earlier in the day a shark had taken a bite out of a surfer’s board. No known injuries to the surfer, but they hadn’t seen the board either. Not sure why it took lifeguards so long to close the beach, but they finally made the call and asked everyone to get out of the water sometime around 4:00 PM. When we listened, we could hear the sirens wailing, sending the “get out” sign. So we got back in the car and drove off to KoOlina instead. When we got there…jelly fish warning! A first on Leeward beaches for us. Sure, they are regular occurrences in Waikiki, but KoOlina? Well, Lagoon 4 was packed so clearly no one was too worried. Noel and the boys got in and had fun in the water and no one saw a thing.
After KoOlina we hosed everyone off and headed to dinner. While waiting for our meals, we checked out various local news outlets for the shark story and stumbled on all the other bad news from around the island. It was interesting about the shark event - every web story used either “alleged” or “apparent” to describe the shark attack. Seems it was a paddle boarder who was attacked, and it was reported that the shark became entangled in the board’s leash and swam off with the board attached. So the paddle boarder had no physical proof of the attack and is left with a story of an “apparent” attack. Escaped injury, yes, but no trophy for the man cave either. Because you know if you are a boarder and a shark takes a big bite out of your board that is going up on display in the garage!

Market bounty

I spent an unusually high amount at the Farmer's Market this morning but didn't really know why until I got home. The boys were with me and thus helped me shop. Without my noticing, Cub placed every variety of tomato available into our basket, and Robbie doubled my order of Japanese eggplant. I don't know who is responsible for the huge amounts of ginger (two large bags) but at least that freezes, too. Might spend the rest of this lazy Sunday roasting tomatoes and Googling eggplant recipes. No complaints from me.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

This should fall under the category of "Be careful what you wish for." Robbie's writing has reached another level: Signs! He taped this note to the Kleenex box after our dog Cal ate some tissue one afternoon. But my favorite is probably a sign he made just for me. One afternoon I was watching TV with the boys and I fell asleep on the couch. When he saw me nodding off, Robbie created a sign that said, "No sleeping."

Back to school night

We're three weeks into school and tonight was Open House. The family trooped down to school and - what is a record for us - we were early enough to hear the Principal's welcome address from the cafeteria. (In our defense, one year traffic was a nightmare and the normal 15-20 minute drive took an hour!!) Robbie has a great teacher known for bringing animals into the classroom. Robbie loves the guinea pigs and he was very excited for me to see them, too. I let him loose with my phone and he took about two dozen pictures. It wasn't easy shooting through the cage bars. I think he did really well! Kudos to Ms. B for adding carrots and a bright green bowl for very photogenic pops of color.

Hawaiian quilt class

Last Thursday we received very sad news about one of our two dogs. More on Brady's status in future posts, but we expect we will be saying goodbye to her this month. After her initial diagnosis, I left her at the vet clinic so they could conduct one more test. I drove away crying and began what I'm calling a 24-hour "fabric bender." I guess it really started earlier... after finishing the boys' curtains, I decided to sew something for my niece's birthday from some quilt scraps. I couldn't shake the sewing bug and I stumbled upon a website early last week with instructions to make a simple bag that I wanted to try. With that project in mind, I headed straight for the store on Thursday to get some fabric and thread.
On Friday morning I woke up and decided it would be the day to finally attend a Hawaiian quilt class I had read about but hadn't had the free time to attend during the summer. (Local quilt artist Nalani Goard now teaches traditional Hawaiian quilting every Friday at the Marriot Beach Club at KoOlina!) So for a little less than four hours, I stitched and talked story with other quilt enthusiasts overlooking the lagoon at the hotel. I picked the "Papaya" pattern in a bold orange-red. Hawaiian custom says that the first quilt you make you should keep for yourself. I'm torn...if it's for me, what will give me the push to finish it?

Winner, winner eggplant dinner

Another recent find at the Mililani farmer’s market: Globe eggplant. The long, skinny (and some say less bitter) variety of Japanese eggplant is a market staple, but I’d never seen the globe variety until a few weeks ago. It was from the same new vendor that had the yellow watermelon for sale. I’ll be stopping by their tables regularly from now on.
A fancier dish was probably in order for the eggplant, but I went with the not-so-exotic eggplant parmesan. When we eat at our local favorite Italian eatery I typically get one of their baked eggplant offerings, so I thought I’d take a chance and try to recreate it at home. Didn’t fail, but not quite a raging success either. Maybe I should re-think the “I can make this!” approach and just leave this dish a treat to enjoy when dining out.

Tuesday inspiration

This image was floating around the Internet and I stole it - I don't even know who to give credit to. But whoever put this simple collage of words together, thank you! I think a lot of us need to be reminded about daily time drains: "If you don't have enough time, stop watching TV."
One thing though that I probably would never be able to follow would be "If you don't like your job, quit." This would only be after something else was in the pipeline for me (and that's a big maybe) and a six month emergency fund tucked away to pay the bills. I'm just that way. But honestly, I would probably take any job right now!