Happy Easter 2013!

Success! Got the bags for egg collecting made this morning. All ready for the boys to find these Lego-filled eggs in the yard today. Just had the idea to do this late last week. I love a good excuse to stock up with miscellaneous pieces from the Brick Wall at the Lego store. Sad that I think I need an excuse, but oh so fun to splurge. Have a great day all!

Easter crafting time

I've had this fabric in my stash before I had kids, so my boys will have to forgive me for these pastels I'm going to use for their egg bags. But aren't they great? What's not great—I have over 12 hours to make `em but I would also like to get about eight hours of sleep and I haven't started yet. Time to get out the sewing machine

Happy Valentine's Day 2013

Received this from Robbie earlier in the week. He received a conversation heart from a classmate and he wanted to give it to me. He wrapped it (thoughtfully albeit not quite carefully) in a piece of binder paper and pulled it out of his backpack after I picked him up from school. I'm a big fan of the conversation hearts and rarely pause before consuming handfuls, but as many hands and who knows what else had been on it, I felt this one should be photographed and not eaten. Enjoy whatever gifts and sentiments come your way today.

Ouch!

I snapped this at KoOlina on another walk. (Yay! February has rolled around and I'm still kind of sticking to healthy habits!) The sky was really orange; the post-processing added the texture and deepened the color variation. It hurts to look at it too long, or at least for me when I was flipping through my camera roll. Not as much sting as the 49ers loss, of course. That was hard. So close.

Take a walk!

NFL Pro Bowl week is winding down. Didn't go to the game and opted instead to watch a few minutes on TV. Looks like the game ended without a lot of rain, but they sure timed it right. A few showers passed in the afternoon followed by a few grey but dry hours at sunset. As I write this evening after dinner it has poured outside my window for most of the last hour. I've got to face the music and walk Cal one last time before we call it a night.
A much different scene from a little over 24 hours ago. I snapped this as I walked around KoOlina. A few weeks into the New Year but now working on those resolutions - trying to get an hour of walking in 3-4 times a week. With this backyard, it is easy once you step out the door.

Honor & Remember

Back in October I spent a week in Virginia for work meetings. During free time I went to the Mall and wandered as much as I could. Top on my to-see list was the Martin Luther King Jr. monument at the Tidal Basin. It was a beautiful, quiet fall day and very early in the morning when I walked around. A much different day in many ways from the weather and activity today, but it was on my mind as I watched some of the inauguration coverage. Took more pictures but will limit this post to just one. Of the multiple panels and inspiring quotes, I will share this: "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." (1968)

12 Days of Christmas: The Return of the Charlie Brown Tree

The lights on my fiber optic tree no longer flicker. I'm a bit scared to turn it on these days so to make it festive, Robbie helped me wrap a somewhat traditional string of lights up and down and all around. The tree is decorated with train ornaments and a crafted ornament Robbie made in class by tracing his hand. He wanted to get the hole punch out and create a hole to hang it. I almost punched the wrong side. That would have been quite disastrous. Lucky for me I caught on just in time. Oh! It's a reindeer. Just with spots.

12 Days of Christmas: Gingerbread Village 2012

We crossed another Christmas tradition of our to-do list last weekend - the annual gingerbread village in Waikiki. This year they amazed again, making the village a global village to include the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, Washington Monument, and a Japanese pagoda in addition to the Hawaiian buildings. We arrived early enough in the season that the smell of fresh gingerbread was still in the air.

12 Days of Christmas: I'm back!

All aboard! It's that time of year again. The holidays! We kicked the month of December off in grand style today with two fabulous and train-filled activities. First up - the Candy Cane Train. Technically not a train, but hey, it's Christmas. Not a time to get too technical about things, eh?

Mango season

They're here! One of my favorite treats - local, right-from-the-tree mangoes. Yum yum yum. During today's soccer game, another mom shared with us her yard bounty. Did not know when we signed up for soccer that this would be one of the benefits.

Newspaper print facility tour

Late last week we took a tour of the Honolulu Star Advertiser printing facility on the Leeward side. All was quiet as they were in-between jobs, but as we were with young Cub Scouts, that was probably for the best. Walked away with an insider's look at the paper printing process plus rolls of blank, unprinted paper they could no longer use. Great for drawing and painting and map making and all kinds of things you need to cover your kitchen table for. Here's a quick collage I made of the pictures I snapped on the tour. I just discovered one of my photo apps has a collage maker. You'll be seeing more of these! Fair warning.

And another bunny

Here's my other Easter finish this Spring. The free pattern was found on the Whispered by the Wind site. It's one of three bunnies in their free pattern pages. I think I'll print them now so I have them handy for more gifts.

More Easter stitching

I didn't get my homemade Christmas gifts finished in time this past December. Considering we don't exchange a lot of gifts in my family, I really blew it because I didn't have gifts to give. I vowed this year would be better so to get working on my goal, I've already started my gifts. I've stitched up a couple Christmas-themed items, but took a break from reds and greens when I found some cute (and free again!) Easter cross stitch patterns. I am happy to report that two Easter gifts were not only finished early but delivered framed and in time for an Easter display! Woo hoo! One project that didn't get done was this little set of three Easter eggs that I was going to turn into a card for a friend. Oh well. Given my history, I'm going to say two out of three ain't bad.

Happy Easter!

It's a very lazy day around here. No soccer practice or plans of much substance. I know I have a laundry list of things to do...starting with the laundry.
A few months back, inspired by blogs I found online, I started working on a number of small cross stitch projects. I found an adorable (and free) Peep-like bunny pattern on the DMC site. I made it for my sister's family and gave it to her on Kauai. And yes, I actually finished it! Framed and all. I forgot to take a picture when I was done so here's what I snapped nearly there.
The colors are looking a little more vibrant than the actual tones; they're a little more muted and pastel than they appear. I couldn't find all the recommended colors on the pattern, so I just stood at the craft store and picked what I liked.

Kauai photo parade!

How much do I love iPhone photography? A lot! Here are more pictures from Kauai in early March. The picture of the sugar mill remains I shot and edited with one hand while I enjoyed a gelato with the other hand. :)

Kauai for the day

It's not just the kids doing cool stuff these days - I get to get out once in a while, too. My sister and her family were on Kauai in early March and I went over for the day. We spent a few hours seeing a few things near their hotel in Poipu, including a stop at a coffee company where we did coffee tasting. Sounds fun but it was actually a little strange. I can't drink scalding coffee but I kind of forced myself to as I went around sampling. My brother-in-law and I both left with burnt taste buds. Great concept though - but even better to be with my sister and her family.

Cub Scout Pine Car Derby

Another cool Cub Scout activity - the Pine Car Derby, an annual event for all Scouts. Boys get a kit containing one wood block, two axels, four plastic wheels and are asked to make a race car. Of course you know some parents take this over, but I was really happy to be part of a group that instructed the little kids to just make a bus. That involved only a little sanding and as much or as little painting as you wanted. It's too bad we didn't get the memo.
Missed instructions aside, Noel did have fun working with Robbie to make a sporty, high-gloss red roadster based on a pattern found online. (It's in the back row of the picture, about three or four from the far end.) If Robbie continues to enjoy scouting and stays in, I'll look forward to this event every winter. I wonder how many years in a row Robbie will produce a red car? :)

Fire station tour!

Robbie and his Cub Scout den do some pretty cool stuff! Of course, a big mahalo to the parents who put it all together. This past January they went on a tour of a nearby fire station. Firefighters were great and spent a lot of time with the kids. They got to do all the "traditional" things like hold the water hose, watch the tall crane go up and down, and sit in the driver's seat of the big trucks. Plus we got to go in and out of their living and sleeping quarters - even their locker room. I haven't seen this crew at Costco lately, but when I do I hope I get a chance to thank them again.

No fooling

We're here, we are really still here. Been a busy time since the Christmas holiday but the real reason I haven't posted anything is because I was simply too lazy to download a blogging app on the new phone I got back in November. Sad but true. All my pictures worth sharing are on it, so I decided to remedy the situation recently and I'm now ready to roll. Here's a picture snapped in our front yard minutes before taking off for soccer practice one Sunday afternoon in March. Yes, I'm a soccer Mom. Robbie said he wanted to play so we signed him up. Definitely my kind of team - one practice a week and one game a week. Both on weekends! Woo-hoo. And a short two month season. OK, so maybe I'm a soccer Mom "lite."
More pictures to follow this week as I play catch-up. Along with a blogging app, I picked up a couple of fun photo processing apps. I tweaked the photo in this post to make it a little more vibrant but it is pretty close to what you see with the naked eye. Well, maybe if you have the magical ability to blur the background when you view the world. Or just need new glasses. I also used my all-time favorite photo editing technique - the crop! I'm a master of the crop!

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.