Best of the best//5//

(Top to bottom, left to right)

1.  I started up an embroidery sampler this week!  I plan to put this one in the living room.  The only thing I'm having a hard time with is dealing with the dumb embroidery floss.  What is it about that stuff that seems to live simply to antagonize you?

2.  It's been decided that I'm a champion dish stacker.  I believe this comes from having hand washed dishes from the time I was 8 years old.

3.  We headed out to CPK last night for a fun Saturday night celebration.  These are crispy mac and cheese nugget things.  It sounds weird, but it was delicious!

4.  On Friday, we headed down to Koko Marina and it was so pretty!

5.  I had never seen "The Terminator"--until Friday!  (photo via Wikipedia)

6.  Hiking at the Ka'ena Point Trail.  Really dry on one side, beautiful ocean on the other.  We left super dusty but it was a great hike.  It was also nice to just get out of the house and do something after being sick for a week.

7.  WE'RE GETTING AN ESPRESSO MACHINE!! (photo via Amazon)

8.  After our hike, we stopped for slurpees.  I can't remember the last time I had one, but it was delicious :).

9.  Along with our mac and cheese bits and a mushroom pizza, we had a beer.  You cannot have pizza without beer.

10.  This was what the coffee table looked like from last Thursday until this Friday--covered in tissue, cough drops, super duper hot toddies (recipe to come), etc.  I'm so glad I could put all that stuff away before the weekend got here.

11.  Euro Cup time!  When the World Cup was going on two years ago, we were spending the summer with Erik's family so he could work an internship and we spent that summer watching a whole lot of soccer--and I discovered that I actually liked watching it!  So it's exciting to have a new tournament to watch.  So far, Germany hasn't let us down :).

I hope you all had as awesome a week as I did!  

Good day, sunshine

Dress: Forever 21

Belt: Forever 21

Necklace: Shy of Perfect

Ring: Shy of Perfect

I found this dress over last weekend while we were out and about (when I should have been resting).  It was love at first sight, and then I tried it on and it couldn't have been more perfect.  The back is one of my favorite parts of it, as it provides a little air conditioning and a touch of sexy without going completely overboard.  It's also incredibly comfortable and I've worn it twice this week--something that never happens.  Sundresses are just the best.

My jewelry is a prize from a giveaway!  Shy of Perfect is a delightful Etsy store with a plethora of jewelry in all shapes and colors.  I don't usually wear rings other than my wedding and engagement pieces, but I love this one.  

Enjoy your weekend!

Beach time reading

While everyone is compiling their summer reading lists, I feel a like this is a little out of place for me to be doing.  It's always summer here (even if there are some storms and drizzles) and I'm continuing with summer courses, creating a lack of the usual school break.  So I decided I needed a list of beach reads, as those can be classified under any season here on the island, and thought I could share :).  Because maybe you're going to be hanging out a lot on the beach, too!


*summaries and photos taken from goodreads.com*

The French Girl

The heartwarming story of a young French girl, Etoile, who is raised in a world of prejudice and despair who becomes orphaned and is sent to live with her distant cousin, Giselle, and Giselle's partner, Jean. Embraced by Giselle, Jean, and their community of friends, Etoile discovers the true meaning of family, but their strength is put to the test when the state threathens to take her away

Signs of Life: A Memoir

“I know. I know. No one says it but I know…” —from Signs of Life
 
Twenty-four-year-old Natalie Taylor was leading a charmed life. At the age of twenty four, she had a fulfilling job as a high school English teacher, a wonderful husband, a new house and a baby on the way.  Then, while visiting her sister, she gets the news that Josh has died in a freak accident.  Four months before the birth of her son, Natalie is leveled by loss.

What follows is an incredibly powerful emotional journey, as Natalie calls upon resources she didn’t even know she had in order to re-imagine and re-build a life for her and her son. In vivid and immediate detail, Natalie documents her life from the day of Josh’s death through the birth their son, Kai, as she struggles in her role as a new mother where everyone is watching her for signs of impending collapse.  With honesty, raw pain, and most surprising, a wicked sense of humor, Natalie recounts the agonies and unexpected joys of her new life.  There is the frustration of holidays, navigating the relationship with her in-laws, the comfort she finds and unlikely friendship she forges in support groups and the utterly breathtaking, but often overwhelming new motherhood.   When she returns to the classroom, she finds that little is more healing than the honesty and egocentricity of teenagers.

Drawing on lessons from beloved books like The Color Purple and The Catcher in the Rye and the talk shows she suddenly can’t get enough of, from the strength of her family and friends, and from a rich fantasy life—including a saucy fairy godmother who guides her grieving—Natalie embarks on the ultimate journey of self-discovery and realizes you can sometimes find the best in yourself during the worst life has to offer.  And she delivers these lessons, in way that feels like she’s right beside you in her bathrobe and with a glass of wine--the cool, funny girlfriend you love to stay up all night with.

Unforgettable and utterly absorbing, Signs of Life features a powerful, wholly original debut voice that will have you crying and laughing to the very last page.

A Great and Terrible Beauty

A Victorian boarding school story, a Gothic mansion mystery, a gossipy romp about a clique of girlfriends, and a dark other-worldly fantasy--jumble them all together and you have this complicated and unusual first novel.

Sixteen-year-old Gemma has had an unconventional upbringing in India, until the day she foresees her mother's death in a black, swirling vision that turns out to be true. Sent back to England, she is enrolled at Spence, a girls' academy with a mysterious burned-out East Wing. There Gemma is snubbed by powerful Felicity, beautiful Pippa, and even her own dumpy roommate Ann, until she blackmails herself and Ann into the treacherous clique. Gemma is distressed to find that she has been followed from India by Kartik, a beautiful young man who warns her to fight off the visions. Nevertheless, they continue, and one night she is led by a child-spirit to find a diary that reveals the secrets of a mystical Order. The clique soon finds a way to accompany Gemma to the other-world realms of her visions "for a bit of fun" and to taste the power they will never have as Victorian wives, but they discover that the delights of the realms are overwhelmed by a menace they cannot control. Gemma is left with the knowledge that her role as the link between worlds leaves her with a mission to seek out the "others" and rebuild the Order. A Great and Terrible Beauty is an impressive first book in what should prove to be a fascinating trilogy.

Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut

As Beirut exploded with the bombs and violence of a ruthless civil war in the ’80s, a nine-year-old Salma Abdelnour and her family fled Lebanon to start a new life in the States. Ever since then— even as she built a thriving career as a food and travel writer in New York City—Salma has had a hunch that Beirut was still her home.  She kept dreaming of moving back—and finally decided to do it.

But could she resume her life in Beirut, so many years after her family moved away? Could she, or anyone for that matter, ever really go home again?

Jasmine and Fire is Salma’s poignant and humorous journey of try-ing to resettle in Beirut and fumbling through the new realities of life in one of the world’s most complex, legendary, ever-vibrant, ever- troubled cities. What’s more, in a year of roiling changes around the Middle East and the rise of the Arab Spring, Salma found herself in the midst of the turmoil, experiencing it all up close.

As she comes to grips with all the changes in her life—a love left behind in New York and new relationships blossoming in Beirut—Salma takes comfort in some of Lebanon’s enduring traditions, particularly its extraordinary food culture. Through the sights, sounds, and flavors of a city full of beauty, tragedy, despair, and hope, Salma slowly begins to reconnect with the place she’s longed for her entire life

The Tao of Pooh

Is there such thing as a Western Taoist? Benjamin Hoff says there is, and this Taoist's favorite food is honey. Through brilliant and witty dialogue with the beloved Pooh-bear and his companions, the author of this smash bestseller explains with ease and aplomb that rather than being a distant and mysterious concept, Taoism is as near and practical to us as our morning breakfast bowl. Romp through the enchanting world of Winnie-the-Pooh while soaking up invaluable lessons on simplicity and natural living.

The Chaperone

A captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip. She has no idea what she's in for: Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous blunt bangs and black bob, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will change their lives forever. For Cora, New York holds the promise of discovery that might prove an answer to the question at the center of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in a strange and bustling city, she embarks on her own mission. And while what she finds isn't what she anticipated, it liberates her in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of the summer, Cora's eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Winner of the prestigious Whitbread Prize for best first novel and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best writer under 35, this modern classic has sold 100,000 copies in the United States. The novel chronicles the life of a bright and rebellious orphan who is adopted into an Evangelical household in the dour, industrial Midlands. Her insistence on listening to the truths of her own heart and mind makes for an unforgettable chronicle of an eccentric, moving rite of passage into adulthood.

A Good American

It is 1904. When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute, they take one destined for New Orleans instead ("What's the difference? They're both new"), and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together.
Beatrice is populated with unforgettable characters: a jazz trumpeter from the Big Easy who cooks a mean gumbo, a teenage boy trapped in the body of a giant, a pretty schoolteacher who helps the young men in town learn about a lot more than just music, a minister who believes he has witnessed the Second Coming of Christ, and a malevolent, bicycle-riding dwarf.
A Good American is narrated by Frederick and Jette's grandson, James, who, in telling his ancestors' story, comes to realize he doesn't know his own story at all. From bare-knuckle prizefighting and Prohibition to sweet barbershop harmonies, the Kennedy assassination, and beyond, James's family is caught up in the sweep of history. Each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American. And, in the process, Frederick and Jette's progeny sometimes discover more about themselves than they had bargained for.
Poignant, funny, and heartbreaking, A Good American is a novel about being an outsider-in your country, in your hometown, and sometimes even in your own family. It is a universal story about our search for home

Seven reasons why being sick isn't so bad

I caught some annoying bug on Thursday and just can't seem to shake it.  It's not terribly debilitating, but it certainly doesn't make me want to do much.  

As I was moping around, I started thinking of all the nice bits of being a little under the weather.

1.  There's actually an excuse to watch TV/movies.  All.  Day.  Long.  Usually if I were to do this, I would feel quite terrible about myself and immediately head to the kitchen to do some dishes.

2.  Tea.  Lots and lots of tea.

3.  Sweaters.  Even in Hawaii, I'll find as many reasons as possible to pull out the bundling clothes.

4.  Naps.  Because who doesn't like a good nap?

5.  All that reading you've been putting off.

6.  No housework.  It may pile up, but you have a good reason to let it.  Sorry, but "I have to go feed the feral cats, I can't do the laundry today" just doesn't cut it.

7.  Free back rubs.  Being sickly and mopey does earn some added attention.

//Best of the best//4

I haven't been doing a good job of taking pictures these days, but I'm trying!  Here are some of the bits and pieces from the last week (or two).

(left to right, top to bottom)


1.  Ever since the month of spending every single day in Starbucks for internet access, Erik and I haven't really gone in a long time.  But since it was his birthday last week and he had a free drink, I stepped foot into one and didn't mind--too much.


2.  Remember strawberry jam being on my list of to-dos?  Here it is, cooking away.  It turned out very good, if I do say so myself.


3.  I told myself "once we run out of butter, I'm making some."  So I did.  I found the recipe here and it turned out pretty well!  I think I'll let the cream sit with the yogurt a little longer next time, to give it a bit more flavor.  Also, I ended up with buttermilk, which made some excellent waffles for the next morning :).


4.  My entirely homemade breakfast--yogurt that I made last week along with the jam.


5.  We're slowly starting to gather items for a backpacking trip.  Here's my new backpack!


6.  Darn slugs.


7.  After losing my phone, I realized there wasn't a very good way of identifying it.  Can't really miss this phone now, can you?


Happy Sunday!