Jenn and Joe’s first time on Hawaiian soil was fun and memorable. We had an amazing time – from a road trip to Hana, to snorkeling with two turtles and kayaking with whales…we all gained experiences that we will never forget. Oh, and here’s a little video made from short snorkeling video and Jenn and Joe’s Canon underwater camera. :)

Can’t wait to see them again here on Maui!

A L O H A

Jenn + Joe + Hawaii from Darlene on Vimeo.

Dario Campanile, the artist I work for (campanilefineart.com) had a New Year’s Eve party at his house. This is the same house I get to go to every day that I work! Although newly vegetarian, we were convinced by Carl Weathers that we must try his chicken. It was quite  a unique evening.

We decided to opt for a fun craft project for our Christmas tree instead of buying a live tree this year. We collected driftwood on various hikes all over Maui and arranged them according to size. We then drilled a hole down the center of all of them and stacked them up on a metal rod. We love the outcome. It looks very beachy and the colored lights bounce off the light wood. I hope we are able to build a six footer one day!

Going up to The Kula Lodge is a nice way to feel like you are in fall or winter weather. Temperatures are in the 50s-60s most of the time, dipping even cooler at night and cooler, still, when you get to higher elevations. At the top of Haleakala, many times it snows in the winter. It’s pretty amazing that you can see snow and 80 degree weather on a beach in the same day. Usually we take the harley up to the Kula Lodge and share hot chocolate in front of the fire place.

For Christmas Eve, we went to our friends Carolina and Rodrigo’s house. We played games and had a fantastic meal. It is a pretty good feeling to have found friends that feel like family, especially when you are so far away from those you love.

Toys for Tots on Maui riding a Harley. What could be better than that?

Kent is skateboarding again. After a short, 15 year hiatus, Kent is taking it to the streets!

These delicious and unique cut-out cookies have a way of bringing back wonderful Christmas memories for Kent. We both love traditions, so our first Christmas tradition was born. Rita was kind enough to type and email the recipe to me and also gave me some pointers for making them. It’s a bit tricky to handle the cookies, as the recipe calls for the dough to be rolled out very thinly, but chilling the dough (and keeping it chilled while you are rolling the batches) really helps keep the right texture. These crisp, but not crunchy cookies are topped off with colored sugar and rainbow ball sprinkles. The nutmeg scent develops nicely when the finished product is dunked into a glass of milk. Yay for traditions and Christmas!

We had ourselves a great little Thanksgiving this year. Darlene cooked a feast and we kept the party going open house style because so many of our friends had to work on Thanksgiving. People showed up when they could and usually did so with drinks and food in hand, so the feast grew throughout the night. I was a lazy photographer and did not get pictures of everyone as the night went on. We had many things to be thankful for this year!

Oh, and we took 100 photos of Miso.