future??

This is my vision board. Although I can see and feel "my life as I've known it" falling apart and I'm losing so much of what I had..losing love, losing a sweet relationship, losing a house, a property, losing income, etc. It is still the time to assess and set goals. The orange parts are categories I've chosen. I notice that time paramaters have changed: short term is this year, middle goals tend to be 3-5 years and long range up to 15 years. It's too weird!! I feel like I've been unemployed forever, because I had the summer "off". I've really been unemployed for 3 months, and at least I have the sub job with the schools here. Since I am in charge of ME I also decided to soften the terms by using "now", "soon" and "near future".

Under the JOB category I have "FIND ONE" and listed possibilities and benefits that I need. FITNESS is usually a given in January and there my graphic says, "walk off 30" and a list of physical activities I'd like to engage in, besides the fruit and vegies "EAT GOOD STUFF".  I know it means smaller portions, whole grains, less meat, etc. I should add mental fitness meaning counseling, meditation and relaxation--chiropractor and massage! FINANCIAL brings to mind "budgeting, saving, live debt free and retirement savings, etc." Under EDUCATION I list training I need and things I still would like to learn (better at guitar, foreign language, etc.). In the SPIRITUAL one I list the scriptures, prayer, journal for daily; magnify my callings, Family Home Evening, temple attendance; and for the near future there is geneology and a couple of other things.

For HOME (and family) I've listed my housing options and the dream of my own place...right now I have "my own space" and that is okay. I need a CREATIVITY category and list only 2 ongoing projects at a time (for my sanity) but I get to choose from "paint at will, make a quilt, sew a shirt, build a ukulele". Under WANTS (the "frivolous but full of stuff" category) I have listed my "material girl" things--wants but not NEEDS like a small digital point and shoot, vacation trips, new electric toothbrush etc. and I added a WHEELS AND GEARS section with car and bike goals, one is "keep them in good running order". The final section I titled RELATIONSHIP with hearts surrounding..but that one is veiled in generalities.." and at the forefront of my mind, "aloha no ua ho'omanawanui, aloha no ua lokomaika'i"..."love is patient, love is kind".

COLLECTIONS

I like cookies...baking, decorating, and giving them away...I like cookie jars...not all cookie jars..but I do like this one, a Christmas gift from my eldest son and his wife and daughter..hey! Kawika, Thelesa and Trishana...thanks for thinking of me and for this gorgeous gift. Through the past 15 years they have been able to find some really awesome jars and I am still on the hunt for a surfing woody!

Today we will go to Seattle and maybe I'll find something to add to another collection of mine...Kokeshi dolls. What kind of a collector am I? I don't have hundreds of things all over the place or a particular shrine area to what I collect..I may have 10 really meaningful things in my Kokeshi collection and my cookie jars.

If ever I am wealthier than now, I'd collect kimono, Japanese dolls for Girls Day and Ni'ihau shell jewelry.

Hawaiian crossword game

Well, if you have difficulty with English crosswords, it will be even more difficult in Hawaiian. Noe found this game on the Kamehameha Schools website!

100 dozen and counting...

I can't believe I didn't take pictures of the cookies before this! Here we have a single popcorn ball, some biscotti (anise seeds and flavor), oatmeal raisin, gingersnaps, lemon and tea cookies, decorated sugar cookies and fudge (orange, mint, rocky road, chocolate and macadamia nuts and butterscotch). Missing from the picture: nutmeg logs, shortbread and hershey kisses, and my ever loving favorite...the tollhouse chocolate chip cookies with pecans!

Let the feasting begin..

Everything was perfect...the angus premium prime rib ..you know the kind, several hundred degrees for 45 minutes and let rest for an hour....Noe was brilliant! She cut the 14 pounder in half to get 4 END CUTS!! That cut down the cooking time and I still had a great medium rare bloody piece!!! Caesar salad and some spiced red potatoes, rolls and some great wassail and punch (Hall family secret, tastes a bit like wine!) rounded out the meal...oh, and because of massive amounts of cookies and fudge, who needed dessert! Jenny brought a huge apple pie! Some years we sit down to dinner service, but paper plates and plastic cups made for lighter cleanup and I'm sure the mommies are glad for less work and more enjoyment of the celebration!

Cookie Party??

the BLUE tree

If you can imagine..I couldn't decide how to wrap and place gifts under both trees so we wrapped the kid gifts in blues and white, and the adult gifts in red and green.

Second Shirt

It's wrinkled cuz I wore it for Christmas but you can see the result of my recent efforts.. how can it be better? AHHM...I need to study the how to of piecing this together and work on a better fit in that crossover...the first shirt was cut on the crossgrain (bias) and this one on the straight...making for some interesting stretching across the front when I sewed on the dark green piping... My next shirt will be simpler, I'm thinking, and after I get that under my belt of experience, I will try this one yet again!!

ORNAMENTS, a few of my favorite things...

The best of Christmas?? On a recent trip to Hawai'i I discovered that decorating for Christmas must be something we learned from our mom. I know now that we didn't have much money while growing up. My dad worked 2 jobs to afford us the house on Kaliko Dr. and a private school education for most of us kids. My mom...she would be gearing up way before the holidays and although she wasn't one for the big show of outside lights, etc. she really put a lot of intense work towards Christmas...especially in the baking and tree decorating. Some years there would be a theme..I remember braiding colored tissue paper to make into circles that she laid on the branches. Sometimes the tree was a hodgepodge of things gotten through the years...red feather canary birds, 50's style glass ornaments, kid art and little framed school pictures; walnut ornaments from cub scouts, and some years everything was draped in the dreaded tinsel. The largest THEME I learned from her was "something from little or nothing".

And so, while I was in Hawaii around Thanksgiving time, I noticed my brother's preparations for the great holiday interior ambience! Dave builds shelving and other flat surfaces to use for the trees and topiaries and manger scene. The living room is on the small side but he manages to set everything up without that tacky, and "overcrowded with too much stuff" look that the holidays can bring on!

My Christmas this year has been as a tagalong...watching and helping in other people's holiday plans. My shopping has been limited and simple. But yesterday I came into my own when I stopped by the Clear Creek Nursery. I will call these newest additions to my ornament collecting "Simply Veronica". Veronica runs the nursery with her husband, and his family, the Olmsteds have been around for years providing Christmas trees in several lots around town. Now there is a huge nursery with a gift shop and landscape materials besides plants, shrubs, flowers and trees.

Yesterday I stopped in to find what's left from the Christmas ornaments Veronica brought in. They were 50% off and although many things are gone, there was still a lot of nice things there...I added to my chartreuse theme, my glass and white theme, and my blue period theme! I was thrilled to have some new FINDS!

OH TANNENBAUM

This is the RED TREE. For awhile I had been on a quest for a taller than 6 ft. tree. I searched both on foot and let my fingers do the walkin' through the internet and finally one year I found an online ad for Kmart and Wes and I headed out for the nearest store...the ad was for 80 or 89 dollars but the cashier insisted that we pay 60! We set it up last year in our Federal Way place. This year it found residence in Brandon and Noe's place here in Bremerton. It's pretty awesome in this window..especially from the outside...the lights cascade around the windows and the short hedge outdoors is lit in whites also.

FINALLY..Wesquilt

And what else would it be besides motorcycles??!...I began collecting and piecing things in my mind....and found a green fabric with black gears, masculine enough, I thought. Then came the black fabric with engineering type drawings of trains in white....and I thought since he rides and drives a Harley, and frequents the dealerships, I added the orange...couldn't find the actual racing orange, but, close enough. Some smaller pieces are from an outfit I made for a hula competition where I chanted (it looks like burnt wood, ash and rock), and then some other Hawaiian print in coordinating colors. When pieced together you can't see the Hawaiian...it is virtually hidden, kinda like me!! The green fabric that reminds me of oil spills and how oil and water don't mix, and then the freaky yellowish olive green with more circles...another black with small gray circles and dots...and I went through several striped fabrics before settling on the black and white for the border.

I practiced my machine quilting...wow...I need a lot more practice...but the quilting looks like roads that meander, some with dead ends, some that go on seemingly forever.

What did I learn? What can I improve upon? I'd like to work a quilt top that stays flat and is cleanly pressed before adding the batting and backing. I wished I had another couple of rows of circles and that the quilt was a foot longer--to envelope the user in warmth from neck to toe. At this size, it's a lap quilt.

windmills of your mind

Circles...why? "Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel never ending or beginning in an ever-spinning reel...like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind"...it's a song from the 60's...maybe a theme from a James Bond movie, whatever it was, I remember...... and related it to: Wheels, tracks, motorcycles, gears, tools, trains, Hawaii....they are all included in this quilt. When I first saw circles in quilts I didn't think about how against the grain of things I'd be going. I blogged my first efforts and then felt so discouraged that I put the project aside as sewing quarter circles and squares stretched and deformed. Then one day, months later, I saw something that made better sense...sew a large circle onto a larger square and then cut that in fourths...it's rocket science, I tell you, and the lightbult glowed bright in my brain! In another vein of mindlessness I was at a birthday party and saw a quilt on the couch...circles...bullseyes!! I picked Barb's brain and she shared her experience of a group of her friends, a couple of them are avid and experienced quilters and they worked on this quilt together. Hmmmm...

This is one of the individual squares where pictures of motorcycle racers were transferred onto an piece of fabric via iron-on stuff...That was a feat within itself. How I latched on to that idea, I don't know. I googled "motorcycle racing" and then clicked on "images" and chose about 20 or so people that I know by name from watching the races with Wes. I tried to size them to something usable for my purposes and I saved them all in a works file. Kanoe happened to have the iron transferable "paper". She was up to the task of getting the images transferred by working on her laptop and I sent the file to her. She had to reverse the images so when I ironed them they wouldn't be backwards. The pictures were in color and I wanted black and white.

Knot balls...

So this is a close up of a shirt I'm working on. The fabric strip at the left is what I used to make the contrasting trim piping and the frog closures. This is at the final stage..I've got to re-do the knots and place one more at the center of the collar in front where you see the shiny pin that marks the spot. Though Mismas is closing in fast, I want to finish this before some other projects I'm working on.

Today I baked chocolate chip cookies and prepped the fruitcake stuff. The sugar cookie dough would be refrigerated and ready to go except we've run out of flour. Tonight is GAME NIGHT. I'll be IGOR in the workshop upstairs while the fun young crowd has fondue. Each couple is bringing a game. Each game will be played for 20 minutes. The gang will critique the games. What fun!

My plan is to have Chinese movie night in the workshop and think about chow mein noodles and manapua while I complete my sketches of clothing. Crouching Tiger has the best costumes - from peasant country folk, to the ruling Manchurians and everything in between!

I'm so eggcited..Pointer Sisters

I don't guess it looks like much this way, but this shirt has been in my mind for at least a few years. Good things come to those who wait. It has taken me awhile to start and I am bound and determined to complete it. After sewing it for the first time I decided it needed trim. So I had to make my own piping with contrast fabric. Then I took the collar apart to put the trim on. The closures are called "frogs". I dunno why. In the meantime I searched my book of knots and found one I wanted to use. After making the knots I've decided I was a tad overzealous and they should be about half that size.

I'm having an identity crisis...I've been Hawaiian, Japanese and Caucasian all of my life. But at times I've been referred to as "part Oriental". Now I guess I'm part Hawaiian or part Asian. Go figure. I researched on-line and looked at many costumes. It really bugged me that the kapoe haole pattern companies wrap the shirts right over left...that is just NOT CORRECT...at least, I had that feeling..remembering my kimono in dance class. So I had to reverse the pattern pieces and my brain has a hard enough time just following directions!

Now I know why I love to watch Japanese and Chinese movies. The kids go crazy when I pause the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon movie to sketch out clothes. So there you are...I'm working on a short sleeved green one for Christmas, and have of course, already found the earrings to go with! I so love homespun looking fabrics and hope to find some linen and silks.

machine quilting

So, I've had this system that was designed by a retired engineer turned quilter for a month or so.....In theory it works really spiffy, especially since I sent my 30+ year old Bernina out to be serviced. I slid the DVD into the slot and set things up as directed and for the life of me, I'm so scared that this has been sitting for a couple of weeks at least. I'm getting my courage up to finish quilting this using my new system. I suppose it beats the other options out...most systems cost upwards of a few thousand dollars and you really need an entire room dedicated to quilting! I've already done a quilt using the Bernina and my own 2 little hands without this type of setup so it should be easy squeezy. I've gotta get this done by Christmas for my grandson. Carpe diem, I think is what they say..Sieze the Day!

December Happenings

Things have really been scaled down in my life. I elected not to participate in a Christmas choir. I feel like being a homebody instead of traipsing around the county in the freezing cold or dreary rain. As far as music of the season goes, I'm teaching it to the little children in Primary at church and landed a duet at a Christmas party for the women and a trio piece for Christmas Sunday. I've gone to a book club meeting and cookie exchange (I only read the introduction!), I've worked very slowly and meticulously on doing a nice job on small projects instead of getting stressed over trying to complete too many things and burning the midnight oil too much.

Nissy and I braved the cold on the ferry and got to the annual motorcycle show and the two of us had great fun...hoping to make this a tradition, as she seems to like driving a quad and will be dirt biking soon. We saw and sat on some really cool bikes! Alas, no pictures to show for it...they are in the cell phones trying to break out! That helped me to decide to ask Santa for a small point and shoot camera. I'll be able to download some video and learn how to put stuff on YOU TUBE. The larger camera doesn't enjoy being out in the cold and needs to get it's computer checked out. Happy Holidays to all...mismas is coming soon!

gingerbread kids

Wow!! It was REALLY MESSY!! ...but exceptional fun. I think these kids ate more candy than what they "glued" onto their houses!
Left to right in the group picture are Trishana, Lehua, Anisa behind her, Kawailani in front, Jack behind her and Oscar hanging off the right end. As they grow older and have different activities, it's harder for all of the kids to have an activity. Missing from the photo are Hayden, Marcus, and Noah. Their parents are so organized and got their g-bread houses done earlier in the month! We missed them!

my patu

I've been really interested in bone...for years, actually. I collected some beef leg bone and copied some pages of a bone carving book...if you've followed me you might vaguely remember my description of the smell of working with bone--like what you may have experienced in the dentist chair when he was drilling your teeth....

Nowadays, I realize my "attraction" to this is because bone is "'iwi" and represents the ancestors. It also happens that I'm influenced by my brother Dave, who is a master carver in the Maori or New Zealand art form. I think the Polynesians have such a connection to each other and who knows who came first to Hawai'i...or travelled up and down the warmer part of the Pacific Ocean!

Bone starts out as white...and as you wear it, it takes on your body oil and begins to be ivory in color (hence why I'm wearing it so much just now). Patu is a hand held war club. As my life is filled with challenges I sometimes feel like a Hawaiian Zena-type warrior (did I say PRINCESS?...eeeuw yukh!)..not a Disney or Barbie princess type, I assure you.

Nope, I did NOT make this....if I could, that would be a new career for me! I found a Tongan artist and with the help of Terry, my sister-in-law, and a few well-placed Tongan phrases I was able to purchase this patu at an excellent price.

Wedding cake

Thanksgiving wasn't cooking enough, daughter Kanoe had taken on a wedding cake. This thing...top and bottom layer of chocolate with chocolate/orange ganache, middle layer was lemon cake with raspberry filling and all 3 layers were covered in fondant. MMF or marshmellow fondant is the most magical thing to work with. We had fun, but the timeline made me just a tad bit nervous! I didn't stay till cake cutting but I heard it tasted good. A couple of years ago we experimented with a sheet of fondant bought at a store--cool to work with and shape and model but it tasted TERRIBLE! This marshmellow stuff was good!

Quilt inspiration...

The girls, like most everyone in the family, have artistic talent. Lehua draws models and designs clothing with Asian/Hawaiian influence. Kawailani dabbles...and these are her turkeys. One is a turkey family. I've been gathering materials and ideas for a fall quilt (obviously not for THIS FALL SEASON) and I'd like to incorporate these drawings into the quilt. She inspires me to practice drawing. I gave this up a long time ago cuz my stuff tends to be cluttered and I learn simplicity from her.

How we celebrate..

I'm glad it wasn't just one day....Turkey with family was good, but my heart was missing a few people...here's what we did besides eat ourselves silly. I was trying (again) to master pie making and this year fell short by not getting to the pecan pie and pumpkin parfait. I also wanted to compare sweet potato vs. yam pie. As to the rest? 2 pumpkin from a sweet pumpkin I got at the produce section, 2 custard (one I forgot the sugar and added it after pouring the mix into the shell in the oven), an apple from honeycrisp and fuji combination and 2 sweet potato pies. I did a small turkey, the stuffing was awesome, and gravy. Noe was in the kitchen too and I helped with the chocolate squares and banana squares, noting the changes she incorporates to make this her own....while I was in Hawaii I ran into someone who said they still make MY chocolate squares.....I didn't know!!

So dinner was fab...other people brought meat stuffing (to die for and oddly with similar ingredients to our bread stuffing), waldorf salad, green bean casserole, rolls from scratch, and, of course, MORE PIE! Oh, and the grape punch from Thelesa's family---very close to wine!!

We don't have cable so there was no sports viewing. Noe had sent out a list of stuff so we could help another family and the kids covered some paper with kid art for the delivery box. After the delivery (ring the doorbell and run away, leaving the box of food and gifts) the gang was altogether again at the house. The kids headed to the toy/my attic space and there was some fort building and movie watching, some fell asleep! The adults played some games.

Next day (Black Friday) some people hadn't slept but found some good deals (I'm sorry, I don't think I want anything badly enough that I'd go stand in line at 3:30 a.m.!!) and we headed with our leftovers to play v-ball at the church. Kids had movies, and toys and general running around the gym!!

Stuff to paint

hanabata days

Hanabata days means back when I was a snotty-nosed kid....this is Anahulu Bridge in Hale'iwa on the northshore of O'ahu. We used to spend a lot of time at grandma's and she'd send us out of the house during the day. The kids would gather things and we built an outrigger canoe from scrap wood and corregated/corrugated iron roofing. We'd paddle our "boat" under this bridge and upstream. When my mom found out I got good lickens/lickings (beatings/spankings). I didn't know how to swim! I'd like to do a painting of the bridge, minus the wires and the truck in the foreground!