Congratulations to the Winner

Thank you all for entering my give-away. It was very fun reading all of your comments.

The winner of the give-away is Emily over at Art & Sewl who wrote, "Oh man - I want to win like nobody's business!! It is all so cute and I need it all. Please enter me. I never win these giveaways so fingers crossed my luck changes!!" Congratulations, Emily...email me your mailing address and I'll send your prize off to you.

For those of you who voiced your interest in the tote bag and crayon roll, go to this site for the tutorials. I think you will find more fun and easy things you can create too. As for those of you on this island...all THREE of you, yes, you three, you know who you are, we can get together and have a fun day making these two items, aight?

Ok..thanks again ladies for entering.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Aloha all,

I don't want to let this day pass me by without expressing my gratitude. There are so many things I am grateful for so I'm just going to list a few:

1. My Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ
2. My family...my hub and kids
3. Friends
4. Good Health
5. Living in a Free Country
6. A Home-roof over my head
7. Food and all the other modern convenience of life that sometimes I take for granted
8. Extended family (parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and in-laws)
9. This beautiful world I live in
10. Living on a beautiful island where it's pretty much warm all year right
11. The Troops who're out there fighting for my freedom(thank you guys so much for all you're doing)
12. I am grateful that I am teachable enough to learn new skills and able to share it with anyone
13. This last one...I am really thankful for all you bloggy friends out there and all those who read this blog and comment on it...it means a great deal to me

And so many more....

Anyways, I found this video and I liked it so I thought I'd share with you all. So, have a great Thanksgiving and may you stuff yourself to overflowing..LOL. Enjoy!



♥ and G0d bless!!

Picture Taking at the Beach

Christmas is right around the corner and that's all I can think about these days. In fact, everything I do or think about has something Christmas thought to it...I don't know why that is but seems like I'm more excited about Christmas this year than I was any other Christmas. And not because I'm getting loads of presents or anything like that...heck, I haven't even started shopping for my kids yet. It's just the feeling about Christmas and I can feel it in the air. And I kind of feel a little guilty that I am not even thinking about Thanksgiving at all...don't get me wrong, I will have my Thanksgiving get-together and I have loads of things I'm grateful for.

Like everyone else around the holidays...family picture becomes a must on my list. But to cut down on the cost, I take our family pictures(have a friend do it or whoever was available at the time we needed the picture taken) instead of going to a photo studio to have it done. I'd rather spend the money on something else than have it spend on pictures...of course, if I have a professional photographer as a friend, I would pay her to take my family photos. And since I make my own Christmas cards, I think it only fitting that the pictures that go with it be also made(taken) by me.

Anyways, for every year since we started doing this and the kids were old enough to actually cooperate with a smile on their faces, we've been going over the Laie Temple (for those non-Mormon readers, this is the Mormon Temple) to have our pictures taken there. The Temple itself is beautiful and the landscape is absolutely breathtaking. Unfortunately this year, we are unable to do that because the temple is closed for renovation. So, I decided that we will have our pictures taken at the beach. I love the idea of sending our Christmas cards to our family on the mainland with a picture of us at the beach(a kind of a joke strategy my hub and I have started to share to torture our family on the mainland to get them to come visit us..naughty uh? LOL).

So yesterday, after weeks of planning, color outfit to match, I made a deal with a friend of mine to bring her family and we can each take each other's family pictures. Everything worked out pretty smoothly until we got to the beach. Trying to control the little kids to stay away from the water long enough to take pictures was a bit of a struggle. I have to keep explaining to them that it's still Sunday and we still need to keep the Sabbath day holy and that we weren't there to swim which was really something else. We took tons of pictures since everytime most of the family is ready with a pose, one of the kids would move or blink. And I want to say that my hubby and my friend's hubby were real troopers, they didn't complain once and went along with both of our whims. When we say, stand a certain way or look a certain way...they did, which helped because when the kids see how patient the dads were to the mom, they couldn't help but follow suit. I am happy to report that I got what I needed out of our little photo session and didn't lose anyone to the temptation of those beautiful rolling waves. Oh but how the kids were so tempted to jump in the water full suit.

I was going to wait til closer to Christmas to show off the result our photo shoot but I am so excited about how these ones turned out. My friend took these and just emailed them to me so I thought I'd post them. We decided to do a walk on the beach and have her take different take on it. As you see the number of people in the pictures, you can give me virtual high five for tackling this task and managing to get away with everyone's cooperation. Enjoy.

(From left to right: Steph, Jon, Jen, Chris, Kat, me, Kev, Dan, & Joe)



Oh by the way...my give-away is still on...if interested, go here to enter. You still have til this Sunday.

Spiritual Sunday

We're having a Regional Conference and President Monson is going to be our main speaker today. I'm so excited to hear him speak today so I thought I'd share that with you all.

Response (Post), New Moon and Give-Away Reminder....

Ladies, it was really fun reading your comments on my give-away. Thank you for all the nice wishes, sure appreciate it. Some of your comments require responses from me so I decided to make it into a post, just keep my fingers busy..LOL.

Ter, I'm sorry you're not entering my give-away but I appreciate the wish nonetheless. Crash, I am not picking the winner til next week Sunday so easy girl...LOL. You do know you're my favorite dummy, right? You ROCK too!!
Jenna Z...making the box for the card was absolutely fun. Niecey, I'm not a seamstress, the only thing I can do on a sewing machine is sew a not-so-straight line..LOL..but I saw the tutorial on another blog and it looked simple enough so I figured I might take wack at it. I think if you are an artsy person, then you definitely qualify to in the crafty category. At least that's what I think. Anyone agree with me? Iwa...I was cracking about your suggestion for the extra entry from knowing my son Jonathan. About the totebag and crayon roll, I wrote a post about it before, you can go here to read where I got the tutorial for both items. Actually, I would love to see the ones you make (if you decide to make them) on your blog.

You guys are the best....you don't know that makes me feel to read you all admiring the home-made things I made. I am definitely sending you all my best and may the lucky one among you walk away with this loot...LOL.

Aight, enough about that...who's seen the movie New Moon yet? Anyone? I just got home from watching it with my daughters. We have been waiting a whole year to see this movie so we can have our girls night out and have been planning on it since the we watched Twilight. Living where we are, the closest theater that actually play new movies are 45 minutes away. So when I found out that the theater in the next town would playing the movie on opening night, I was bumped up about it. I now can go close to home and still be able to one of the first ones to see it. Unfortunately, tickets for the midnight show Thursday night was sold out so I got the next best thing...Friday morning show at 11.

I am having totally mixed feeling about the movie. As you all know, when a movie is produced based on a book, it's not as good. I mean those producers seem to always skip out on some specific detail that I thought shouldn't be left out so of course I go to the movie with that in mind. After today though, I'm tempted to make a promise to myself...and that is that I should never watch a movie based on a book that I've read. Maybe I should just do one or the other...either read the book and not watch the movie or just skip out on the book and watch the movie instead. I always set myself up to think the movie would actually do justice to the book and as always get myself disappointed.

"What the heck are you trying to say?" some of you may be thinking and asking me in your mind. All I'm saying is the movie is great and all, it's worth going to it. In fact, if any of you want to go, take your spouse with you unless of course your spouse is a Twilight cynic, in which case, leave him at home...LOL. My daughter Jen loves the movie and since she didn't read the book, the movie was exciting for her. Steph and I both read the book so we weren't as on cloud nine as Jen is...in fact, because we both read it, we were actually able to talk about what's missing in the movie that's written in the book. I do hope that all those people who've been on edge waiting for the movie for a whole year, who've actually made a celebration out of going will find the movie to their liking or that the movie live up to their expectation. I'm going to be honest and say that the New Moon movie didn't affect me as much as the Twilight movie did. (Oh don't get me wrong, Jacob is one hunk of a werewolf and Edward still rock my fantacy..yikes, that sounds so corny...and Bella is still Bella, clumsy as always but it just feels like something is missing, I don't know.) But it's to be expected, right? Hopefully by the time Eclipse or Breaking Dawn comes around in a movie, I would've forgotten all about what I read in the books.

Then again who cares? I got to hang out with my daughters today, just my girls and have a bit of a bonding moment with them since they are both moving on to other aspects of their lives. I mean they actually set aside three hours today to hang with their ole mom to watch New Moon with even though I know they would much rather hang with their friends. So, you moms or even grandmoms out there, grab your daughters or granddaughters and take them to see New Moon, or any other movies you want. It's a great way to squeeze in a little teaching moment or even see them drool over a puff werewolf and if you're a vampire fan, you guys can have a little debate on who's hotter, a 100 year old vampire or a 16 year old werewolf...ahahahah.

Before you do that, enter my give-away if you haven't already and if you have, share the love, let your friends know. Again...go here, or scroll down or look above this post to see how to get to my give-away. Have fun and oh....Aloha!!!

Blogoversary and First Give-Away

Ok, I just realized that yesterday was my Blogoversary and I was too busy running around trying to meet family obligations that I never got the chance to throw myself a virtual party here yesterday. So I decided today, I'm going to do just that. Not that there is anything to really celebrate since I hardly ever post much on here but hey, just the thought that I actually started a blog and kept it for a year, that in itself is something, no? So for that, I'm going to celebrate like every blogger does, I'm going to give something away to one of you wonderful people out there who either reads this blog or stumbles upon from time to time...my first EVER Give-Away...how exciting is that!!

So, here's what I'm giving away today...the items I have are basically what sums ME up (or who I am). Here we go:

Let me break this down so you'll can see what you're getting

These first items would be the perfect description of who I am first and foremost...I am an islander so therefore I'd like to share a little of the island girl with you and of course since I live on an island, what better way to share than to send you a little island scent your way.

Enclosed here are two bottles of Body Lotion, Bath & Body Gel, a packet of Bath Crystals and Perfume, all in Passion Pineapple scent. Wouldn't you just love to make yourself smell like something totally delicious and edible? LOL And of course, here's a box of Chocolate Covered Macadamia Nuts..every woman's addiction (chocolate), per say. If someone from the mainland win this stuff, she can put this on or while taking some hot bath with this aroma whipping around her, she can imagine staying on a tropical island where it's warm while enjoying the melt of the chocolate in her mouth...hmmmm, yum!


This next one is a box of hand-made(made by yours truly, of course) Christmas card, a set of twelve. I made the box so when the user finished with the cards, she can still find some other use for the box.

The image and sentiments on the front of the card is in gold, in other words, I embossed them in gold so it gives it the perfect shine to go with the season. Inside of the card is left blank except for a "Merry Christmas" saying so the owner of the cards can personalize them and it's FREE so therefore she doesn't need to buy any...unless of course she has more than a dozen people to send Christmas cards to in which case she then has to buy the rest.

This is what I do as a hobby and I guess you can say this is a passion of mine or the little talent I can actually say I have and I truly like sharing this part of me with you.

This is what the card looks like out of the box...you can click on it to see the details.


Here it is again with its envelope...even the envelope is designed to coordinate with the card. Say that you want this and it's yours, seriously.



Now this last one is something I picked up from blogging. I did a post about this one, you can see it here. My little Katie is the reason I venture out to try something like this and of course since she's soooo into Princess, I have to use the Disney Princesses as the theme for these two items.

These are the reversible tote bag and the crayon roll. Hubby was sooo happy that I was actually using the sewing machine he bought me two Christmases ago, he was actually happy to shell out the money to buy any materials I want..how sweet...LOL.

Anyways, this part of the give-away you can say is the little mommy in me, the side who wants to create things her hands for her little ones especially if the little recipient is very excited to get the items her mom made even if it's sometimes not the best, know what I mean.

Here they are again...

That's what the other side of the bag looks like and this is what the crayon roll looks like rolled out.

I figure everyone has a little princess out there, either a daughter, granddaughter, niece, little sister or even a god-daughter who they would move mountains to make happy. This will be just the perfect gift for this season, don't you think?

So there you have it folks, my little something that I want to give away as a way to celebrate my Blogoversary.

And look, everything fits perfectly into the bag...how clever is that!Alright, I've dragged this on long enough...all this goes to ONE LUCKY WINNER. You only have to do two things....first entry, leave a comment and tell me how clever you think these handmade creations are excluding the scenty items.

Second entry, blog, tweet or facebook this give-away and then leave me a comment about your entry with your link. (Shoot, I'm soo in a giving mood, you don't even have a be a follower to enter.)

I will use the random picker to choose the winner and you have til Sunday, the 29th at six p.m. my time (Hawaii time) to see who the winner is. Aight, let the game begin!!

It Is Good to be a Woman

This was sent to me this morning by one of my friends so I thought I'd share it today.

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says~~

"Oh Crap, She's up!"

Sister Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Love the ones who don't just because you can. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands. If it changes your life, let it. Kiss slowly.. Forgive quickly. God never said life would be easy. He just promised it would be worth it. Today is sister's day, send this to all your sisters, Mothers, daughters, girlfriends even me if I am like one. If you get back 7, You are loved. Happy Sister's Day! I LOVE YA SISTA'!!! :-) Girlfriend and Sister's Week I am only as strong as the chocolate I eat, The hair spray I use and The friends I have. To the cool women that have Touched my life.. Here's to you! National Girlfriends Day What would most of us do without our sisters, confidants and shopping, lunching, and traveling girls? Let's celebrate each other for each other's sake! TO MY GIRLFRIENDS! Be Happy! PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ALL OF YOUR GIRLFRIENDS It is good be a woman.

Happy blogging and God bless!!

Spiritual Sunday

Just a little something to think about on this beautiful Sabbath day.

Enjoy.

Haddassah (One Night with the King)

This is the most recent book I read for our book club. The review on the back of the book:

"A gripping action-adventure story, full of political intrigue and suspense, with a brand-new perspective on a historical figure you may think you already know!"

BOTH A PALACE THRILLER AND A JEWISH WOMAN'S MEMOIR, Haddassah brings the age-old story of Esther to life. This historical accurate novel layered with insights provides a fascinating twist on a pivotal time in religious history, and readers will find it bursting with page-turning drama.

How true that review is...The moment I picked up the book, I couldn't put it down. Of all the stories in the Bible that I grew up hearing my mother reading to me as bedtime stories, the story of Esther was by far my favorite. I was always soooo fascinated by this story of a Jewish young girl who witnessed the death of parents and then raised by her cousin in a strange land where everything was so much different from her way of life, who yet despite all odds, was chosen to be queen of a nation. And then her courage and great faith in her God has lead her to do something that could have caused her life to save her people from annihilation in a time and place where women did not really have a voice to speak of (per se). Even the way it was written in the Bible, so precise and to the point, I still find it a wonderful story to read over and over when I was old enough to read on my own.

Tommy Tenny, the author of this book, has totally captured my attention as I'm sure he would yours when you read the book with his great knowledge of the events in the history of the book and add her own seductive flowery words used to enhanced that book's character {Haddassah} and made me more able to relate to this Jewish girl (not that I would ever get anywhere near her lever...I doubt I will ever be as strong as her to stand up against protocal to save my life let alone a whole race of people). But I just love the fact that because the author was soo good at describing this woman in every aspect of her life makes the character seem more real to me. {She went to puberty and hormonal changes and moods just like every girls did...she has her moments of rebelling against those in authority, and all the other little things that we woman went through as teenagers and later as young adults.} Although a lot of the things written in the book may be fictional, there are a lot of factual historical events that makes the book even all the more fun and enjoyable to read.

I would totally recommend this book to anyone interested to read it. You will not be disappointed.

My Little Creative Week

As the busiest time of the year approaches, life has gotten more hectic lately. Of course when things get hectic, life can be pretty much stressful for anyone. So you can pretty much guess that I am actually in a state of stress right now..LOL..but there's actually a good thing that comes from my stress, I tend to want to create. And what better thing to create than doing what I love doing which is making home-made greeting cards. And my favorite kind of seasonal card is Christmas card, there's just something about Christmas card that just hard to resist. So that is what I spent my week doing.

Our card group is meeting again in a couple of week and the theme is Christmas. I am the demo for this month so I set out on the great virtual world of the Internet to see what other creative people are making for the season to come. And I found just the cards that I love. For the demo in a couple of week, I will be making the card below. It's a Mosaic technique...found this on Dawn's site..she is one creative lady.

I used Real Red (a SU brand) for the main card. Then using sticky sheet, I cut out a 2" strip and then cut up some little strips of designer papers, also from Stampin'Up in different triangular sizes and randomly paste them all over the sticky paper...the little sticky exposed that are no covered by the designer paper, I cover it with gold embossing powder and then heat it with an embossing tool to give it that golden look, to give it that mosaic look. And then to keep up with the Christmas theme, I stamped a tree image with green ink and mount it on green paper and tied a gold cord through it. Very simple and still cute...something the ladies in my group will definitely enjoying making for sure.

This next card is what I will be making for the exchange. It's called a Slider card. There's a tag on the left side of the card that when pulled, the truck moves forward. As you can see, that man in the car is obviously been looking for a Christmas tree for his family (I assume he has a family, LOL) and has found just the perfect tree so he's now making his way back home. Looks like he happened upon the perfect forest to get the right tree. (I had to take four pictures of this card just to show how it works...isn't it just the cutest card?)



Next card is a diorama card/box. The way this card was made, it looks as though those polar bears can just jump out at ya. There are three layers on this card and each layer has a different bear...on the very last layer, at the very back, I stamped the image of the trees on glossy white paper and then sponged the top portion of the white paper with some blue ink and then attached the bear using dimensional. Because of the glossy paper, it looked like the bear was actually sliding on ice. You have to click it to make it big to see what I'm talking about. If interested in making this box, go here.This is the view you get when looking down into the box. See the baby bear trying to get a picky-back ride from momma-bear..LOL..so darling!!Here's the same kind of card, using a different Christmas stamp. This is the nativity scene. Look how each group of visitors are making their way to see baby Jesus.

Here's a wiper card. This is what it looks like flat. The polar bear image is an old SU set that I bought a while back. It is actually one of my favorite stamp and I used it for Christmas a lot. Click on the picture to see it enlarge and you'll notice that the bears actually has furs on them. Ok, so it wasn't actually fur but the stuff I used actually make the bears to have furs.This is what pop-up part. When you hold both ends on either sides of the card and pull, you will get that little image pop up at the top left hand corner. I also used designer papers on this card too and I went a bit further and added a rhinestone brad with two silver brads so it looks like the bears were looking up at the brads.


This last one, is my favorite. It's called a Step card. The fact that a picture can be attached to this card, I just love it. I am always looking for way to make Christmas card to send to family and friends where our family picture is attached to it and I finally found this. I totally ♥ this card so much, this is going to be my family's Christmas card this year. {Baby picture is of my daughter Stephanie, I was going to use Kaitlin's picture but all of her pictures are on disk or my computer and when I went to develop one yesterday at the grocery store here on this side of the island, the darn thing is broken so I have to settle with this old picture. It's still cute though, don't you think?}
So there you have it..my little creativity for the week. Stay tuned for more, I'll be posting the cards the lady in my group make for our swap. Hope you like this little bit of creation. Happy blogging and God bless!!

A NON-Post

I am way too lazy to post anything today. I am totally sleep deprived so I'm going to try and catch up on sleep today. But if any of you are interested to read anything from me, go to
and read my post. While you're at it, check out the other posts from the other bloggers on there. It's always a treat to read other great bloggers...oh and check out the daddy bloggers on that site. A real treat!!

Aight, happy blogging y'all and have a super duper day!!