all hallow's eve...

source

We so love Halloween in this house.  The expectantly knock-knock-knocking on neighbor's door.  The wandering about in the dark with friends and other trick or treaters who are somehow instant friends as we share the black asphalt and the dark night together.  And finally the counting and sorting and savoring of treats before the "aww mom" teeth brushing and bed.

We've toyed with the idea of hitting up one of those neighborhoods where people drive from all around to visit, we'd be some of those "drive-in" trick or treaters, because the candy is of the best quality and the houses sit in the neatest of little rows and are so very ripe for the picking.  All things a nine year old boy must take into consideration when making his plan of attack.  Do you have older little ones?  Will you be driving to any sort of anywhere tonight?

Sean has been in bed with a fever all day, and I've so willingly tucked myself in right next to him.  It may be our job this year to stay home to hand out candy, we'll see.  The funny thing with these two little brothers here is that Tyty will likely come home from school, see his sick little Sean, and snuggle in right next to him.  They are just sweet that way.  

Perhaps it'll be a night for spooky(ish) movies and popcorn and snuggling.  Perhaps.

live sweet, 

n

to the sea...

I've been looking out at you, nervously.  Wondering, as an almost wounded lover will.  Endeavoring to know if you might once again be trusted with the things I love so very much.  Should I let the boys walk lazily along your shores or plunge bravely back into your salt soaked arms?

These thoughts I pose... to the sea. 

live sweet, 

n

Join me if you please for a sweet link up with friends.

thank heaven for the mountains...

A little bit about that tsunami warning Saturday.

We filled a misfit collection of water holding vessels late Saturday night with what must have amounted to a small swimming pool's worth of water.  We checked batteries for life and pantries for food.  We listened on our hand cranked radio, until we realized we hadn't actually been hit with a tsunami yet and so turned on the ipod, (we may have panicked a bit, just a little), for updates.  We looked nervously at each other as sirens wailed in the dark stillness and loudspeakers shouted out the command:  

Move to higher ground.

A tsunami had been generated after the earth shook itself awake.  As if someone stood on one corner of the earth, Canada to be exact, and shook that great sheet of a sea, sending it billowing, a newly hoisted sail filled with an inspired wind. 

The thing with tsunamis is they are no storm at all, really.  

The ocean is quiet and still and deceptively calm and beautiful...

And then, It isn't.  

And, when the ocean threatens to rise up and swallow you whole in one swift gulp, well, thank heaven for the mountains.

They are stoic sentries, those mountains, and we take them, too regularly, for granted here.  Driving right past them without a glance, except, perhaps, for the occasional nod of a hike along their weathered trails, as we make our way to the beach, the lover in whose arms we'd rather be.  

But they are also so very forgiving, those mountains.  A patient companion who knows too well the fickle affection of the sea to be moved.  

They are our higher ground.

live sweet, 

n

Oh and also, can we maybe thank heaven for this guy here, you know, just for good measure.  I'm pretty sure we're gonna be wanting him on our side in any sort of a tussle, right?

These photos were taken during a family run through the valley near our little beach town.  

We are all of course fine.  Although our hand cranked radio is wondering what all the "cranking" was about and may be slightly traumatized.  

All of our aloha filled thoughts are turning to the East Coast today.  
Stay safe.  Stay dry.

and...

Happy Weekend.

Charlie and the boys and I were up oh so late last night wandering along the warehouse laden streets of that part of downtown Honolulu.  It was all so very down town.  
And I was in heaven.  

We thought we'd finally go to ART and Flea, an orgy of a shopping experience where vintage and handmade are consecrated in a sort of themed gathering of sweet artistic souls that stretches from a loft space to a cafe to a parking lot.  I was in my own sort of holy space there, where for just a minute I felt the beating pulse of a part of me that longs to create and be.  Do you ever sometimes catch glimpses of parts of you and realize just how very much you've missed them?

If you'd like you can enter our funk{e} giveaway here.  

There's this too, a sort of a long beautiful walk along Abbey Road.

And...
 Happy Weekend to you and your beautiful soul.

live sweet, 

n

a holiday heart check...

There are eight weeks until Christmas Day, just eight, I know, I counted every one of them, twice.  

And I'm in need of a heart check here.  

It's not any sort of a big thing, really.  Just a kind of feeling down deep for the pulse at the center of it all as the holidays approach.  It's funny how fall so quickly turns to winter and Halloween to Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving to Christmas and then it's done, this year in our short lives.  

I know this heart check won't help to get packages mailed on time, regretfully so, or costumes measured and cut and sewn, or turkeys roasted more plump and less dry... at least I'm pretty sure it won't.  But it will infuse the days with just a bit of the joy filled moments that are oxygen to my soul and that will allow me to breathe beauty more deeply into the living here.

Join me, if you please, as I count them down, those weeks, one by one, each Thursday 'til Christmas, with a sweet holiday heart check.  A sharing of one simple thing to remind myself of my little heart, and of the sweet things that keep it beating, with love.  Because, regretfully, while I am a giver, it's just the kind of soul I've been dealt, and so willingly love this season of gathering and giving, I too easily forget to give to myself, you know?  

Each week you'll find an easy heart check thing I'll be doing, just a little something good for body mind or soul, and a collection of sweet uplifting links, if you'd like you can add your own links to beautiful things you'd like to share. 

And, mostly, you'll find here, a girl, who in the midst of a time of beautiful holidays is reaching to find her own heart, in some small way.  

 _________________________

Week Eight

Drink eight glasses of water

live sweet, 

n

Jump to the next heart check here.

does this count as a recipe...

With a two year old and a nine year old under the same little roof here in paradise, well, I'm always on the look out for a kinda sorta healthy treat.  You know, one that lives up to the "cornsyrupy" sweet standards of an elementary age palate and still stays true to my desire to not have my littlest little believing that grape flavored Jelly Bellys are indeed real grapes.  

I'm definitely losing this one pretty badly but here goes one of my more triumphant attempts. 

Halloween Dipped Pretzels

A ton of mini pretzels in fun Halloween shapes

( I got about a hundred outta each package of Candi Quick)

1 package of Candi Quick

(if you'd like to use white chocolate chips they are a wonderful substitute but will require more care in tempering.)

A large cookie sheet lined with wax paper

Chocolate sprinkles or other embellishments

Heat chocolate as directed.  Dip pretzels in white chocolate and lay on cookie sheet.  When the cookie sheet is full of pretzels sprinkle each with chocolate sprinkles.  Place in freezer for a few minutes to set.  Remove from freezer and store in an airtight container.  If you're in Hawaii you'll want to keep these in the fridge for obvious tropical paradise humidity related reasons.

Oh I do so love yogurt covered pretzels and these are so way better than the store bought variety and you do get to control the pretzel to chocolate ratio and such and so, yeah... yay.

(Tyty takes these by the bagful to school to munch on and little Sean is so tickled to have a treat that's the exact same as his big brother's.)

Oh and could we, maybe, call this a "real" recipe, you know just between you and me, even though it so clearly isn't?  

live sweet, 

n

P.S. To all the amazing teachers of these Buckingham Boys... There's a mason jar full of these little treats with your sweet name on it.

this fight...

is so worth fighting.

Please forgive me I'm using this little space we're creating here to let my soul breathe deep, heart felt, breaths and, well, you can breathe with me too, if you want to...

We've got this campaign with our funk{e} line of earth-friendly accessories called:  

We Are The Makers of Pearls:  A Celebration of Strong Women.  

It's a sort of honoring of women who take the sometimes painful circumstances life gives them and shapes them into a beautiful sort of living.  

For every scarf sold from our little shop here another will be given to a woman bravely fighting a battle with cancer through The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu.

You don't have to buy a scarf to join us in this campaign.  Really, truly, just by entering our little facebook giveaway here and staying up to date on our latest bits of shared news on fb, well, you can help to spread the word and that is such an incredibly beautiful thing.  

Guess what our newest We Are The Makers of Pearls item is.  It's folded into that sweet little gem of a package up there, and for every guess you make, by commenting here, you will be entered to win one of your very own.

live sweet, 

n

Join me if you please, for the very sweetest of link ups with friends.

we are the makers of pearls...

These little hands of mine seem so painfully small sometimes.  

And when I think of cancer and of the women and men and children who so bravely stare down that terrible disease, well, it becomes so plainly clear that these little hands, well, they must be put to good use doing something, anything...  

And so on October eleventh "We Are The Makers of Pearls":  A Campaign Celebrating The Strength of Women was launched.   For every scarf purchased from our little shop here, from October eleventh to November eleventh, a cowl neck scarf featuring a freshwater pearl dangle will be given to a woman who battles cancer at The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu.  

It's not much, I know.  
It's nothing really at all.  But together maybe our hands, yours and mine, well, just maybe they can mean the difference between another lonely day in the midst of a painfully long battle and the sense that in some small way a woman, (a mother, daughter, sister, friend...), fighting cancer does not stand alone before that fearsome foe.

You don't have to buy a scarf to be a part of this campaign.  

You can support us and stay up to date on our facebook page here.  You can enter our contests both here and on fb and help spread the word.  You can offer up a prayer or send good energy in our direction as we journey through the days of this campaign.

Thank you for being on this journey with me.  
And please know that all of this means the big huge world to me and to those whose lives will be touched.

live sweet, 

n

For free shipping during this campaign please enter WE2012 at checkout

once upon a weekend in paradise...

Charlie took the day off on Friday so we could attend a friend's wedding in Waikiki.  Boy oh boy do I love love.  And, is there a greater celebration of love than when all are gathered and "I do's" and "I do too's" are exchanged?  It was the sweetest of days for a wedding complete with Waikiki sunsets and dancing and fireworks filling the beautiful Hawaiian night sky.  

Prepare yourself.  A montage laden with family photos featuring tropical sunsets and such to follow-- you may wanna put on an aloha shirt and grab a "mini umbrella donning" Maitai.  

Cue the tropical breezes and lazy palm trees...  

The boys were surprisingly good sports when it came time to switch out their "surfah slippahs" for more acceptable footwear.  It turns out if socks are involved little Seanzy is down for pretty much anything.  The boy loves his socks.

  

This introspective moment here, which really looks quite sad and pitiful, was just a quiet prelude to hours of incessant rug cutting.  
Who knew Gangnam Style was his thing?

 

I so can't wait to hear all about what you were up to this weekend past and what you'll be up to this week ahead.  And, also, you must tell me when you'll be booking your trip to paradise so we can watch sunsets and dream dreams in the most beautiful of tropical hues together...

Cheers to Love.

live sweet, 

n

this life for sale...

We had a yard sale last weekend.  

Selling bits of our lives, and things that we had so easily convinced ourselves were important, for a penny or two.

  

It was odd, the putting your life out on the driveway in little piles labeled "25cents" and such.  It was odd too to allow, even encourage and beg, complete strangers to go through and feel them and touch them and judge them, those things that once made up our living.  

Eventually, I left Charlie to run the sale, turns out he has a knack for charming little old ladies out of their pennies and convincing them that they will in fact enjoy having our collection of cd's in the corners of their home keeping their dust bunnies company, and also very mellow, in a Dave Matthew's sort of a way.  I, it turns out have a knack for saying "oh you should just have that, you know, if you'll enjoy it, just take it-- it's yours".  It is a "knacky" part of myself that I am actually quite proud of, but, which did quickly earn me the job of cleaning out the closets and stocking the sale and busying myself in the background with the making of sandwiches for lunch.  

We are not having a yard sale this weekend.  We just aren't.  

The remainders have all been donated, the signs are now piled in our fire pit awaiting what will likely be a symbolic burning, and  a great roasting of marshmallows in the embers.  
(Do you think the whole thing might have been just an elaborate scheme to amass cardboard for our marshmallow roasting, hmm... it certainly is possible.)
  
And perhaps, we will be out living a little better because of that cleansing and purging we put ourselves and our little beach cottage through last weekend, perhaps.  Why does it clear such vast and beautiful spaces in the mind that "de-cluttering" of things in the real world?  I suppose I don't really need to know, I'm just gonna go with it... Besides, having gotten rid of my slightly used and never used and "why did I ever use" items from OUR house means that I can now go find that perfect "vintage something" from some one else's. 

A song.  A smile.  
A laugh (beware, the edginess... it is what it is).  

And...

Happy Weekend.

live sweet, 

n 

an essay...

The study of a man.

Bear with me, if you will, I'm about to wax poetic for just a few, and I can only promise it'll be all kinds of cheese...

Sometimes it's easy to look out at our lives and see how it just made sense that they melded into one long string of moments that were better because the joys were multiplied and shared by the taking of them from the basket of fishes and loaves and by the passing of them around.  And when the sorrows came, and came and came, well, it meant the world that sometimes without my even realizing it he had already reached over and lifted my burden of the yoke loosening its hold, freeing me to move and steady myself and breathe, again.

I've started sketching again, I was finding it so very hard to hear my own voice, and so one day when I should have been buying milk or bread or other more practical forms of sustenance I found wedged in my cart a sketch book and a thought that maybe when the milk and bread that I knew I'd eventually be sure to pick up, well, maybe when they were safely tucked into their rightful places I'd pull out a bit of graphite and with the gentlest of strokes draw out that little part of me that seems so very closest to my soul.

And I drew him, of all the busy things that my hands could have found to scratch and smudge and etch on to that blank page.  I found his eyes looking back at me and I thought, my goodness, how many long "kids in the bed cuddling" nights and days and years has it been since I'd studied that face.  Since I'd looked at it like an old master searching for shape and meaning and lines, those boldly beautiful lines, that fill a coldly barren canvas of a life, with emotion and depth and something of worth.

I sat down with old tools in my hands, they haven't changed much, the artist's implements, since we first ran our weary human fingers along the rock walls, surrounding ancient fires, with a yearning to create and express and bear witness.  I sat with a longing for a sort of finding of me in the hurried minutes of our lives.  

And, I unearthed an awareness of the gently curving lines of his face and saw for the first time the living we have done together nobly written there in strokes and grooves and smudges I had not before slowed long enough to see.

I can't explain the sweet stillness of form that joy takes when it alights upon your heart, filling you with the knowing that the thing you want most in this world is already yours, stained deeply upon your living, and that you, too, are so very much smudged upon his. 

live sweet, 

n 

And this song, that makes no sense, at all, 
but feels sort of like that joy landing gently upon a heart.

reduce, reuse...

Upcycle.

Believe it or not we've had tree branches falling in our little yard in paradise and, well geesh, I don't think anyone has ever been so very excited to have a Fall like mess of a yard to clean, but the fallen tree branches along with a warm pumpkin spice latte, well, they make the pretending it isn't so darn humid, and not very fall"ish" at all, all the more easy to do and, yeah, I'm a happy girl.  

So, well, here ya go an earth friendly and I dare say so myself, an oh so lovely treat bag for Halloween party favors, fall gifts and such.

Supplies

brown paper lunch bags

Twine or other natural string

1 large stick, 

The more twisted and knotted the better.

(The size really depends on how witchy you're feelin')

Simply fill the bag with treats and, perhaps, a trick or two.  

Wedge that witch of a stick between the candies and toad legs and eye of newts and such, I don't judge, so that it sits firmly in the center.  

Using twine, wrap the bag tightly closed around the stick. 

 Embellish as you please, I glued one of the sparkly spiders we made here on to just the simplest of cards.  And...

Voila! 

If the broom fits, well... ride on.

live sweet, 

n 

Oh, and hey, remember that one week in October when Monday felt like Wednesday and so I posted Wordless Wednesday's post two days early, good times.  

If you'd like, please find that post here and join me for the sweetest link up with friends.

wherever you go...

There you are.

This is the bus stop at the beach down the street from our house.  Not the most elaborate of designs, obvs., but shouldn't every sitting spot come with a little note of "Aloha" and wouldn't your toosh just feel so much the more grateful because of it.  

Every once in a while I'll walk by this ode to the public transportation of lives and I'll think, usually out loud to whomever will indulge me, I'm not so very good at that thinking to myself business, you know, although I suspect Charlie would like it if it were a skill I'd develop, but what fun would that be, really?...  
And, so I'll loudly think, "I'd quite like to catch a ride to wherever that 'Aloha The Bus' might be going".  

And, I don't think I'd care much where it went or who the fellow travelers might be, I think I'd just be grateful for the going, ya know?

live sweet, 

n 

Join me, if you please, for a sweet link up with friends.

when kilauea erupts...

And the vog rolls in.

We walked the beach this morning, just Sean and I, after the morning rush of breakfast and teeth brushing and school drop off for Tyty and we took in the world as seen through the hazy lens of a vog filled morning.  

It changes things, you know, that vog, when it rolls in.  

It can be such a pain for those who already struggle to catch their breath, with asthma and such, and even I will sometimes find myself whining of some, probably elegantly fabricated, vog induced malady.

But it does something to the light, changing, and slowing, the world as if a behemoth filter were placed on the lens of our days.  

And I just love that sort of hazy stillness that only comes when the earth groans and shifts and creates itself anew, you know,  

when Kilauea erupts... and the vog rolls in.

 live sweet, 

n 

sometimes God says...

yep.

yep.  This is where you are meant to be.

yep.  Life is good.

yep.  You can so do this.

yep.  I will send help in the most unexpected of ways.

And, also...

yep. You should make your plans, I am in need of a good laugh.

That God, ever the comedian.

live sweet, 

n 

Join me for a sweet link up, with friends.

i want to eat your...

chocolate bwains.  

And other reasons I am falling madly deeply in love with having a chalkboard this fall.  

We started decorating for Fall and one of the first things we did was to finish painting the large outdoor chalkboard and play center for the kids.  It is now, like, half done, which is a whole lot more than the "half done" state it was in for the first half of this year and I'm thinking we might actually have it totally done someday soon, so long as I don't get hit with any other wonderful projects to "half start", ya know?  So, enough with my well demonstrated flakiness, I own that, and on to the chalkboard love...

Reason 1:

With the stroke of a chalk wielding hand you can integrate your chalkboard into your seasonal decor.

Reason 2:

It's a chalkboard!

As a child of the eighties and nineties I can attest that there is nothing sweeter than a board on which chalk writes and from which dust flies.  In fact I spent a good deal of my school days, between the ages of seven and way older than I should have been, relentlessly raising and waving my arm hoping for a chance to "write the answer on the board"-- and God forbid physical fatigue should set in, well, I had mastered the "use one arm to prop up the other" stance, 'cause defeat, bah, defeat was not an option when writing on the classroom chalkboard was at stake.

(As an aside, the nine year old does not so much appreciate the sweet vintage feel of a dusty chalky board and would have had a dry erase just the same.  Dry erase,  pshh, kids these days.)

Reason 3:

When the neighborhood kiddos come over to play and you say "let's decorate for Halloween and they hear "let's reenact a zombie apocalypse" and fill the board with terror inspiring statements like, "I want to eat your chocolate bwains", well, you can giggle and smile and know that you won't have to suffer long through even the very cutest of threats 'cause you are just one good dusting away from a clean slate.  

Reason Most Important:

Hangman, on a chalkboard, is there any better way to play that morbid classroom fave of letters and body parts?

live sweet,

n 

We loved this dustless chalk, although we paid half that price.

those big blue...

"I need you" eyes.

Tyty is nine and sometimes that's hard.  

He is a sweet, sweet boy who is a beautiful big brother to little Sean and who is so very eager to please that sometimes I think I might count on him a bit too much, you know?  To be the mellow even keeled kiddo who doesn't need much at all really.  And then, every once in a while he looks at me and, I just know that it's time to slow down and hear those eyes speak the words he'd never allow himself to say... 

"I need you".

So that list of things that required getting done this weekend was set aside, at least as much as things that require getting  done will allow.  And we kinda sorta just felt our way through the hours, you know, with our hearts.  

live sweet, 

n 

Did your heart lead you this weekend?  Do you ever just look into your little's eyes and know it's time to slow down, 'cause that life it all goes by just too darn fast?  Do you think these boys are trying to break my heart on purpose, you know, with all this growing up they've been doing?