Snow in Hawaii

My dad took my cousin Jessie and the kids to Mauna Loa yesterday. We have snow in Hawaii too. The nice thing is you can come down from the mountain and leave the snow behind.

Keeping it simple...

I love this artist. His work reminds me that the most simple things can be completely beautiful. We are keeping it simple this holiday season, and simple can be better.

Ponys with a ocean view

We got to see two lovely animals on Sunday. One is a just a pasture mate because he is lame. You can see our friend inspecting his legs. He is a Hawaiian pony. The other is a beautiful Welsh mare,7 years old, and trained to let children ride her. She is also trained, and loves to pull a cart. They live in a beautiful pasture overlooking the ocean. My camera did not pick up the ocean in the distance. You will have to use your imagination.

Free music

Thanks Jen for telling me about this, I like the samples, he sounds really good.

Me and the tiny baby boy

Flash back 12 years ago.

As I type this my 12 year old son is in the pool swimming with a friend.What a contrast. When I look at my giant child it is hard to imaging him wearing a fuzzy teddy bear bunting.

Christmas Music

Here is Kealani, performing Sunday at the East Hawaii Cultural Center for her Christmas Concert. Was a busy weekend.

Doing a little morning reading

This is how I found her early one morning.....reading the dictionary.

Fancy new wallpaper, and I am not referring to computer screens.

I adore this wallpaper.

This would look great in my kitchen, instead of the lavender paint I painted there last year.

How can you make banana bread better?

Add chocolate chips.

Flax cracker Friday

These are the Organic Wheat Free Sourdough Flax Crackers I make for the my family and the farmer's market.

I make them with rye sourdough,oat flour,rye flour,flax seeds,extra virgin olive oil, and a touch of sea salt.

Thanksgiving in Hawaii

Laupahoehoe Point

I am so thankful for the 4,303 shoe boxes we collected for Operation Christmas Child!
Mahalo Big Island!!

I am thankful for my family,friends, and health. I am thankful for my bed and pillow,hot showers,and sunflowers.
a Bible
a comforter
mangos
pie
free range turkey
sweet potatoes
gravy
cranberries
Kealani's smile, exuberance, and excitement
Isaiah's laughter,thoughtfulness, and humor
music
tomatoes
the sight and sound of the ocean
the stars at night
fresh air
drums
photos
art
a garden
vanilla
cardamon rose soap(filthy farm girl)
coffee
toast with butter
hikes
good shoes
singing
trees
grass
zinnias
books
magazines
chickens
avocados
What are you thankful for?

Guitar String Jewlery

Jen Woodruff

Jen is the leader of the worship team at Grassroots Church. It is a really sweet time when we practice, and when we play on Sunday mornings.We are there every Sunday, 10am at the Akebono Theater in Pahoa.
Jen is a talented singer,musician, song writer, and jewelry maker.
She is seen here, selling her unique guitar string earrings, at the farmer's market in Seaview.

So did the chicken win?

Yes.

Goompy always wins.

Hand made beeswax tea candles

Here are some candles I made last year for Christmas presents.

I am thinking of making more this year.Trying to get inspired. Christmas is my favorite holiday. I was actually dreaming this morning about putting pretty candles in my Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. I have never heard of anyone putting candles in their shoe box before. I am making 3 teenage girl boxes so maybe a teenage girl would like or need a candle?I probably won't include matches, although they would probably be useful to a child in desperate need.

This is national collection week for Operation Christmas Child, so if you forgot, this is your friendly reminder to get your shoebox ready and take it down to the collection site in your area.

Here in Hilo, if you don't have your shipping fee, Big Island Toyota will pay it for you if you drop your box off there!Thank you Toyota!

Waipio Valley

The hike down the valley road on Tuesday was very hard on my legs, but the beautiful scenery made up for it. The kids had fun playing in the river,in the waves, and digging in the sand. The beach is a black sand beach. Because of the volcanic rock on our island we have quite a few of these. I sat in the sand next to one of the many streams that flow through the valley. The sand has green sparkling olivine in it that you might not notice unless you were as tired as I was. I sat staring at the green glittering sand, the silver stream, and a dark cherry colored wild horse eating water hyacinths on the edge of the water.His mane and tail were dark black, and he had a white star on his forehead. He slowly sauntered down the river until he was about 20 feet from me, and then he slipped into the water, and gracefully swam across to the other side. I guess the hyacinths were greener there? The boys carefully crossed the river, and ran down the deserted side of the beach to swim in the waves there. The hike back up was so easy for the kids. It was a little more difficult for me hmmm, and felt like I was hiking straight up a wall at times. I was glad we had a good breeze, and the clouds shading us overhead while we hiked. We had Kealani and Arah pushing us up the hills too:-)Thank you Sarah and Y.B. for the photos!

Wrapping party

You can have a wrapping party too. Here are some friends and family happily wrapping shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. Apparently Andreas is a excellent shoe box wrapper. I think he should do all the Christmas presents this year.

Another sunflower in my garden

This sunflower is bigger than my house.The bees are having fun today.Can you see them?

slack key guitar and cows in the mist

We went to Waimea today to see the legendary Cyril Pahinui (son of Gabby Pahinui) and Peter Moon Jr. and friends. The slack key guitar institute is this weekend at the Kahilu Theatre. The guitar and ukulele playing was stellar, the bass player had a seven string bass! He played like he was Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Farmer's Market in Seaview,Hawaii

I am still selling organic bread,fruit,vegetables,crackers,pies, and other assorted preserves and desserts in season. I wonder if it would be ok to call myself the "Farm Girl Realtor"? Hmmm....Green Girl Realtor?Proverbs 31 Realtor? Any suggestions?

Our farmer's market in Seaview has live,tribal, Aboriginal,Hawaiian,rap/folk music?, as you see here, and fresh wheat grass shots. Silky(seen here with her wheat grass) also serves fresh lemonade,passion fruit juice,miracle berries,and homemade sauerkraut.

You can come to the market and listen to lovely tribal music,while you get your hair cut,or a massage, and pedicure.Leisurely eat coconut lime truffles, while sipping some passion fruit juice, or carrot ginger juice. Maybe you just want to have a nice bowl of curry and pick up some fresh bread and your weekly fruits and veggies?
Stop and pick some noni fruit on your way home, and maybe hike to the volcano? Snorkel with rainbow colored fish. Forrage for guavas.Stare at the azure sky.Sleep on the beach.

The beautiful girl has a violin now

She can play the ukulele, the piano, and now she is the proud owner of a 1/2 size violin. She is learning with Cathy Young who is a Suzuki style music teacher.

Did you?

I just sit around doing nothing all day

I think I have a catering business now. This is a Alice Waters chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream frosting. It was for a woman I met at the farmer's market. I made another one for my family because we had to test it to make sure it would be good enough.

Pumpkin

So, I did not take pictures of the carved pumpkins, but they did carve them. My frugal farmer idea was to steam the pumpkin, store it in the refrigerator to make pumpkin soup,and pumpkin muffins. Well, I was still steaming and storing pumpkin till 10:30 last night. I will have enough pumpkin to make pumpkin soup, pumpkin muffins,pumpkin fondue,more pumpkin muffins, and Goompy, and Speckle had pumpkin for breakfast this morning.Oh, and the skins went to the compost, and the seeds I roasted slightly and salted lightly.

Bananas and chocolate

Tis another before and after photo blog. Before is a box of apple bananas that are on the verge of being too ripe, and no good for anything except chicken food and compost.
I saved the day by peeling and trimming them all, dipping them in fresh lemon juice,and dehydrating them. Then I did what seemed the most reasonable thing to do, I dipped them in chocolate. Semi-sweet chocolate. I like them, but I think next time I will dip them in dark chocolate.

Oregano

Now I have two kinds of oregano. I have the small leaf variety, and got some clippings of the large variety, and rooted them in a glass of water. It rooted very easily, and I just transplanted it to pots as you can see. This fresh oregano was so very good on the homemade pizza I made last week.

before and after photos

So, I never got around to weeding,tilling,adding compost, and manure to my garden until August. (That is the before photo.) The after photos are the sunflowers,papayas,tomatoes, and tomatillos 3 months later. Thank you Ko family for the papayas!
Maybe I will make papaya salsa.