I’m 3 for 3 Amanda!

Anyway, this page is of the first/second day that I was on the Island. I spent the first night there by myself as Melissa and Terri weren’t coming in until late the next day! I pretty much just hung out, found the Wal-Mart, found a Scrapbook Store (!!!) and headed the 1 block down to the Beach and got some great shots! My favorite part of this layout is the line of pictures on down the right side of the page! I really love how it turned out!

Enjoy!

Since I’m going to be posting more, I decided to play with my theme a bit. I don’t know if this is the “final” one for awhile, but I probably won’t play with it again until this weekend.

Here’s another Hawai’i scrapbook page. This is the Luau we went to at Paradise Cove. It was sooo worth it, and we had a BLAST! We spent several hours at the actual Cove, plus it included a bus ride there and back! Needless to say, we enjoyed ourselves, and the show was great. Enjoy!

PS – Amanda, I’m 2 for 2!

Well – I was forced to make a deal with the Devil today – for those of you who don’t know – that’s Amanda!

We finally talked her into going to the DJ’s Fall Retreat – in exchange, I’ve promised to post at least once a week to the good ole’ blog here!

So, some new things for me. I’m in the process of getting a new tattoo. Most of the outlining is done, but all the coloring and shading is left to go. It’s an addition to the sunflower I have on my right ankle already, and goes down onto my foot. I would highly recommend NEVER getting a foot tattoo, unless you have a really high tolerance for pain. I don’t, and about 5 minutes in was ready to give up – of course, now I don’t have that choice. Anyway, it looks really good so far, and I know it’ll look good when it’s done! We’re going to work on it again in a couple of weeks – maybe finish it. We can only hope anyway!

I turned 34 on June 28th. I started my own little Project 365 that day and will continue to take a picture a day until June 28th, 2010 – my 35th Birthday. I’m calling it my Journey to 35! I’m still playing with the layouts some, so once I have it more concrete I’ll post some of that too.

So for some art I figured I would start with some pages from my Hawai’i scrapbook. I’m surprisingly close to being done with that scrapbook and I’m quite happy with how it’s turning out to boot!

This was Melissa, Terri and I at the Pearl Factory booth at the International Market Place in Waikiki! Needless to say, we all walked out of there much poorer! But with some GORGEOUS jewelry!

Enjoy! (Click image to bigify)!

I know I haven’t posted in a few months. I’m going to try and get back to posting cards very soon!

But in the mean time, I saw this on CNN tonight and LOVED it. It’s the end of the day Friday April 24th. It’s about 4 hours and 20 minutes condensed into 2 minutes 16 seconds. The end, where you see the planes buzzing by (they look like shooting stars) is my favorite!

Enjoy!

I read this on a scrapbook Message Board this morning and was glad I wasn’t drinking anything because it surely would have come back through my nose!

“Some choose drugs, I choose scrapbooking!”

So, so true!

WOW – have I been neglectful or what?

I’m hoping with the New Year I might be a little more motivated to start posting more cards. I’ve actually recently gotten a bunch of new CTMH supplies from the newest catalog and they sure are cool! So, I’m looking forward to making some new cards and sharing!

My Mom does something really cool every year – she makes all the birthday cards she needs for the year in January! My goal this year is to sit down and figure out all the cards I need for the year and make them all ahead of time! I have 22 more days to get that done!

Anyway, I went to Cali and Ray’s Wedding Reception last Friday night! It was great fun and a lot of my “scrappin’ girls” were there!

This is the card I made. It was hard to get a really good picture, but I tried my best. I don’t know who to credit the original idea to … Mom sent me a copy of this card from someone’s blog months and months ago. I just remember seeing the card and loving it, so did my best to recreate it. And for those that wanted to know – I started with a 12 x 7 piece of white cardstock and scored 4 inches in from one end (the dress side) and scored 3 inches in from the opposite side (the tux side). At that point, I simply used a pencil and sketched in the rest of the lines and cut!

Enjoy!

Ahhh – how sad. I hate when vacations come to an end!

We spent the afternoon yesterday at the Pool baking in the sun as promised! We ended up having to wait a bit for the sun to move from behind a building, but once it did, we baked for a good hour and a half!

Last night we BBQ’ed hamburgers on the grills by the pool, and when night shopping! We didn’t know until the day before yesterday that all the shops stay open until Eleven PM. So, we went out after dinner, saw all the street acts, and went shopping! On our way home we stopped by Haggan Daaz for some sweet sweet ice cream.

This morning we got up early again and headed over to Pearl Harbor to visit the Arizona Memorial. That day in December 1941 didn’t directly effect my life (nor anyone’s in my immediate family that I know of) so it wasn’t quite as emotional for me as it was for the girls I was with (Terri’s Mom was here as a child that day with her parents, and Melissa’s grandfather had 2 friends die that day), but it was a very humbling experience to say the least.

They have you watch a 25 minute movie before you get on the shuttle boat over to the Memorial. Basically all of it is original footage from that time. A lot of it was actually footage from the Japanese of that day. It was so interesting, and shocking, like I said before, cause there just are not that many words to describe it, humbling.

Here are a couple of pictures.

Approximately 2 quarts of oil/fuel leak from the Arizona daily. It comes up to the surface in black balls that they call black tears. It’s really pretty actually, but it does smell like gasoline.

We went down tonight to see the last sunset while we were here. Got a lot of surf watching in too! It’s one of the 100+ shots that I took while we were down there.

The rest of the night has been spent packing (UGH) and relaxing. I’ll talk to you again when I’m State-side! Aloha!

I missed a day of blogging!!!

But the fun really got started yesterday! For the most part, we mostly just hung out yesterday. We had to leave our hotel at 3:30 to walk over to a neighboring hotel 2 blocks a way to catch the bus out to Paradise Cove.

Captain Brad was our driver and Pomai (Po-May) was our Chaperone if you will. He was great fun on the way out there. Gave us all the information we needed to know about as well.

When we got there we were greeted with an Orchid Lei and a Mai Tae. YUMMY! We of course took the “leaded” version, and from there it was all down hill! They did several demonstrations of Hula, Skirt Tying, Pulling in the fish etc. Then we had the Royal Court and Pig Ceremony!

Here’s a picture of our lovely dinner (being carried by some very pretty boys!!):

After that we sat down to dinner and a show. The food was wonderful of course – anything that’s cooked in the ground all day long has to be though right?!??!

We had a wonderful fire show too … here’s just one picture to give you an idea of what we got to saw:

And just one more picture of pretty boys (and a couple of girls as well)!

This morning we got up early (and maybe a wee bit hung over) to go to Hanauma Bay to snorkel. The wind was actually a little too much for good snorkeling but it was fun to go there and hang out, and get a bit of snork’ing in. Here’s a picture of the Bay from the top!!

For the rest of the day, we’re going to head up to the pool and bake for awhile (it’s still only 1:30pm here people!!!!!!!) and then walk down to downtown tonight and do some night shopping!

Have a great one … I know I am!

That about sums up the day!

We walked down from our Condo today and shopped through the International Market Place and shopped. My main goal in shopping while I was there was to pick oysters and get pearls!

I’ve done this several times in the past, and I love The Pearl Factory.

I did spend a little bit more than I had intended to, but the funny thing is (at least to me) is that my girlfriends both spent MORE than me!!! HEHEHE I was quite lucky on Pearls as well! I got a Blue one, which is quite rare, and it was a great size as well. Then I got 3 other ones that were all about the same size (quite large again) and had a “green” tint to them!!! I was quite pleased with what I got!

Here’s my loot:

Excuse the tape still on them – they have to set for 24 hours! It’s all set in white gold, which I much prefer. It’ll be ready to wear just in time for the Luau we are going to tomorrow night at Paradise Cove.

One last picture of Melissa and Terri spending their $$$ on the Pearl Factory. Wayne and Grant were the ones helping us, and they were quite fun to deal with!

We found cheap groceries on the Island! Unfortunately, you have to have a military ID to get them!! Luckily, Terri’s husband is a Marine, so we went shopping today. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a commissary before – it was definitely an experience.

We also found a needlecraft store – Fiddlesticks – and were able to buy a few things there.

My favorite find of the day though was my new pair of thongs! I haven’t had a true pair of thongs in a long time, but these are so comfortable!

And finally – Melissa caught me driving without hands on the wheel! I don’t remember what was happening at this precise moment in time. I’m sure it was interesting and totally appropriate though!

Alright, well, I assume that most of my readers are well in bed by now, so I hope you have a great Tuesday!!! And I want to thank Mary (in Hawaii) for giving me some tips on some other scrapbook stores!!!

The condo we’re staying at is one block off Waikiki beach. Because of all the tall towers between here and there, you can’t see the sunset unless you go down there.

So, I made a point of looking up the sunset times and headed down in what I thought would be plenty of time. Well, little did I know, there was some low lying clouds on the horizon which made sunset about 15 minutes early tonight. But, I got a few pictures that turned out pretty good I think!

Here’s one specifically for Mom – she loves the cruise ships!

And here’s a few more of the sun setting behind the clouds!

And finally, even though the sun went down, the surfers kept surfing!

I’ve been tagged by my (not so) dear friend Amanda.

8 TV Shows I Watch:

The Office
Grey’s Anatomy
Private Practice
The Amazing Race
The Big Bang Theory
How I Met Your Mother
The Biggest Loser
Project Runway

8 Things that Happened Yesterday:

Got up early
Flew to Hawai’i
Checked into the Condo
Found Safeway and bought a few groceries
Scoped out the Scrapbook stores
Watched TV
Drove around the city trying to figure out where things were
Went to bed early

8 Favorite Places to Eat:

Red Robin
Bandito Burrito (Bellingham)
Port of Subs
Tijuana’s
Outback Steakhouse
Red Lobster
Arby’s
L&R Cafe (Quincy)

8 Things I am Looking Forward to:

Snorkeling
Touring Pearl Harbor
Relaxing at the beach
Relaxing at the pool
Going to a Luau
Spending the week with my friends
Seeing my dogs when I get home
My scrapbook Retreat in November

Now I’m supposed to Tag 8 people – but since I hate doing that – if you know me personally, consider yourself Tagged. No pressure though!