ALOHA 'OE

Well... we're off! The container came this morning, was loaded in a mere 2 hours and is now on it's way to meet up with us in Maui. It goes by rail to LA and and leaves there by ship on March 3rd. Arriving in Honolulu then on to Maui on March 13th. And get this, without any planning at all, it should arrive the exact same day we do! Fingers and toes! More soon.

All lined up in the hallway.
We really lucked out with a prime parking spot right in front of the service entrance to the building... and no ticket!
The conatiner and a look back up at the apartment.
Packed to Pussy's Bow. With room to spare. And we were worried that what we had it edited down to would not fit. NICE!
And this is how it will look sailing across the Pacific. Hopefully we will not suffer a peril at sea... i.e. the container jumping ship.

GNOME-ORE COLD WEATHER

Thursday was the last day of work for John and I. We both had hysterical going away gatherings at Waikiki Wally's on the Lower East Side. Friday we rented a U-haul and unloaded the storage unit in Chelsea which was more of a nightmare than we expected. It was freezing and snow was piled everywhere. The drive from the apartment to the unit took 45 minutes each way in horrible traffic and we made 3 trip across town. In all we thought we would spend 3 hours and we ended up taking 6...YES 6 HOURS!!!! If we would of had to do that drive everyday we would killed ourselves long ago! Yeah... we made 3 trips up the freight elevator and it just goes back out on Thursday. Well we asked for it.

As I was packing today I looked out the terrace door and saw our little Garden Gnome peeking out of the snow beneath the Japanese Maple...That is how we felt yesterday... except we were buried in storage crap. What was I thinking...keeping that storage unit? I got rid of about half of what was in there. Word to the wise... if you are thinking of putting stuff in a storage unit, I say forget it. It will just be out of sight and out of mind.

The countdown is on...6 days left in NYC.

STAMP OUT CANCER

As you may be aware, the US Postal Service recently released its new "Fund the Fight. Find a Cure" stamp to help fund breast cancer research. It is important that we take a stand against this disease that affects so many of our Mothers, Sisters and Friends. Instead of the normal 39 cents for a stamp, this one costs 45 cents The additional 6 cents will go to breast cancer research A "normal" book costs $7.80. This one is only $9.00. It takes a few minutes in line at the Post Office and means so much. If all stamps are sold, it will raise an additional $35,000,000 for this vital research. Just as important as the money is our support. What a statement it would make if the stamp outsold the lottery this week. What a statement it would make that we care. I urge you to do two things TODAY:
1. Go out and purchase some of these stamps.
2. E-mail your friends to do the same.
Many of us know women and their families whose lives are turned upside-down by breast cancer. It takes so little to do so much in this drive. We can all afford the extra $1.20.

ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES

Well it appears as though the fire that swept across 2,291 acres in the Kula Forest Reserve was indeed caused by a cigarette. With pockets of unburned terrain within the 16-mile fire perimeter, the area actually burned is estimated at 1,700 acres. According to the Maui News, investigators narrowed the origin of the fire to an area “the size of a desktop" then they got down on their hands and knees to look for the source. The cigarette butt “was very, very obvious,” “Everything was black and the butt was burned on one end but still white.” “Everything was black and the butt was burned on one end but still white,” he said. The cigarette butt was found on the upper Waiohuli trail about 150 feet from the access road.

THIS END UP

WOW! I cannot believe that it is February 4th already. We are in full on packing mode at the moment. ONLY 18 DAYS LEFT UNTIL THE MOVERS ARRIVE! We are trying our best to use only recycled boxes and packing materials and so far the only thing we have had to buy is tape. There are 3 motives behind our madness for this and they are as follows.

1. This is a VERY expensive move and we are trying to save money. So far so good.

2. We really think it is a shame when boxes that are in perfectly good condition just end up on the curb.

3. We are moving to a remote island... we need to be conscious of our waste from now on. The island is only so big and we need to add as little as possible to the land fill.

We are only using recycled plastic bubble wrap for only the most delicate of objects. It's important to take the least amount of non-biodegradable materials with us. Otherwise we are using paper for all of our packing. We bought a paper shredder and that makes for graet cushioning around those fragile pieces.

FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

Since last Tuesday John and I have been following this tragic fire that has broken out on the slopes of Haleakala... of our new island home. Our house is on the other side of the mountain and is in no danger. The fire is in POLIPOLI SPRING STATE RECREATION AREA, a forrest of giant redwoods and eucalyptus and many more tree and plants. This is the first place we went hiking on our very first trip to Maui in 2001. Now in its eigth day, the fire on state forest reserve land increased to 2,291 acres in perimeter. The cause of the fire is still undetermined. DLNR officials suspect an illegal campfire at the upper Waiohuli trail may have ignited the forest fire. SO SAD.

We received this image and note from our realtor on Maui this morning.

Dear Friends, Both Local and Afar,

Much to my GREAT sadness, our beautiful mountain is under siege, with little hope for any immediate recovery unless we get some much need RAIN. It hasnʻt rained on Maui for well over two months now, and you can see by the blue sky below, we need a real miracle here. The helicopters were thwarted by cloud cover the first 3 days of the fire (which has been raging since Tuesday), and now their water buckets are like teeny thimbles, unable to be truly effective. The firefighters are exhausted, and feeling like the only thing they can do now is bulldoze some firebreaks in hopes of saving homes, because
the poor forest is largely demolished, at this point.

Some upper Kula homes have already been evacuated, and weʻre not sure what is going to happen next, because wind, weather and fire are all so unpredictable . Other than smoke and ash, Bill and I donʻt feel terribly impacted, but we have many close friends who live directly under the fireʻs current path. Please give a prayer for our beautiful jewel - the slopes of
Haleakala (and all it inhabitants including the precious wildlife and native fauna).

Maui residents: if you want current updates, go to:

CURRENT UPDATES FROM mauicounty.gov

Youʻll see a column on the right for civil defense matters, and the fire is the first link. They seem to update this page once or twice a day. They also offer a phone number for recorded information at the bottom of the fire link page.

FELT UP

For this month's ATC (Art Trading Card) I decided to try and use up some yarn scraps. The theme was color my wprld so iused all sorts of colored yarns to make a felt panel that I cut into the appropriate size. It's quite simple actually as documented below. I have documented the process with a very small portion since I did not think to document it until after I was finished with the large.

Materials: wool yarn scraps and a wire brush. These are small yarn scraps from a few different tye-dyed yars that i had but never really liked. What I do is run the wire brush over the small pieces on top of a cutting board until the yarn has been shredded apart. You can buy the wool already "carded" as it's called but this is a good way to use up scraps.

This is what you will end up with after the scraps have been brushed. In order to get a 1/4" thick panel, you will need to start out with a pile og carded wool about 4"high.

Next you place the wool into a tray or large baking dish and pour very hot water with about 1/4 teaspoon of dish washing liquid in it over the top. Then "work" the fibers of the wool together by pressing up and down on the wool creating bubbles. It is very important to work fast before the water cools. The hot water and the motion along with the bubbles force the fibers to meld together. Do not over work or you could end up with holes or thin spots. I still don't really understand how it works.

Once you have completed working the wool, roll it up and remove from tray and run it under cold water to shrink the fibers...almost like shocking the fibers. The hot water expands the fibers and the cold water shrinks them quickly. You can repeat the process of hot and cold several times depending upon how tight you want the panel. On the second round of hot water, just place itt back in the tray and pour hot water over without working it.

Next, place the panel on a towel and roll the water out of it. Here I am just pressing the water out for illustration's sake.

Allow to dry thoroughly before cutting or sewing. You can also press with a hot iron while wet to further the shrinking process.

The final ATC cards. Pretty cool that the entire process (excluding dry time) took about 2 hours. If you used carded wool, it would go much faster.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC COLORS MY WORLD

This is a close-up of December's ATC, Sound of Music is the theme. I sketched this kooky contraption in my sketch book a while back and i just thought that it visually represented an animated musical suite in my mind. I imagine that this machine runs with with some sort of fancy dancy syncopation. We created them by cutting out all the shapes from sticky Pantone color overlays using an xacto knife. Conn helped out.

These are the January ATC's that we just sent out. The theme is Color My World. At first I wanted to do a stylized map of green and blue textures. That wasn't successful. Then I turned to a box of Martha Stewart paint swatches. I always liked the striped color combinations and with my penchant for interior decor (Conn is laughing) coupled with a recent clip I'd seen of Martha extolling the virtues of versatile paint over permanent wallpaper I thought them a fitting example of coloring ones world. I also like the high-falutin' names they give these colors like, sandstone and beach glass, so I used the names as criteria in choosing which color swatches to use. Only those whose names referenced vaguely Hawaiian things made the cut. Throw some vellum in the printer and voilá!

REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE!

We have been packing and tossing stuff for a few weeks now and this past Sunday we dropped our old computers and electronics off at the Union Square Electronic Waste Recycling Drop-Off Event by Lower East Side Ecology Center. It was sort of sad to see the old iMac go, but it had been in storage for 3 years. It is just insane to me that these machines become obsolete after a few short years considering how much they cost.

But we felt good in dropping them off to be recycled, because discarded computers and electronics are toxic hazardous waste! In addition to being the most toxic components of the waste stream, e-waste is also the fastest growing one. It is estimated that by the end of 2006, some 163,420 computers and T.V.'s became obsolete in the US... EVERYDAY!
It is estimated that 315 million computers will become obsolete in the United States and that they contain a total of more than 1.2 billion pounds of lead. About 40% of the heavy metals in landfills - including lead, mercury and cadmium - come from discarded electronic equipment. The negative health effects of lead are well known, but also consider this: just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury can contaminate 20 acres of a lake, making the fish unfit to eat.

Please drop all your electronics off to be recycled...you get a tax deduction to boot!

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou

HAPPY NEW YEAR... AND WHAT A YEAR IT WILL BE!
As John alluded in his previous post, we have some REALLY BIG NEWS to share with you all. Some of you already know, but for those who don't... CUCKOO FOR COCONUTS will be relocating. Yes, we have decided that it is time to leave New York City for the warm tropical breezes of Maui! We bought a house on Maui late summer of 2006 and look to be moving sometime in the next few months. Are we crazy? NO! What are we going to do when we get there? TAKE IT ONE DAY AT A TIME! Eat fresh fruit from our yard... coconut (of course), banana, guava, papaya, orange, mango, tangerine, starfruit and many more. Our first goal will be to get the garden planted.

Here is a sneak peek at our 2.1 acres of PARADISE. Stay tuned and check back often for all the details of our journey. Oh yeah, we hope to see many of our friends in our new home so make your reservations early! We are actually getting bookings already.

The view from the drive down our road. The cluster of cook island pine trees in the center of the image is our yard.

John taking a stroll through the front yard.

The view of Haleakala from the back of the house.
In the morning's and evenings you can see to the 10,023 foot summit of the dormant volcanic crater.

The view from the back of the house to the vegtable garden and back yard.

The view from the far corner of the backyard looking toward the house through the palms and banana grove.

LIGHT MY FIRE!

Christmas time is here...so Merry Christmas and all that jazz.
Keep an eye on our blog for some big news next year.
- John and Conn

HELLO KITTY!!!!!

A few weeks ago, our good friend Lauren sent me an e-mail with a recipe for a "Kitty Litter" cake that she got from her mom.
So I then sent it on to several friends, who then sent it on to several friends... you get the picture.
Well today I get an e-mail from Parnell (the Orchid Painter) with this picture attached. His co-worker Lyndsay actually made this cake for her uncle's birthday!!!!
I don't know where this recipe originated, but here is the recipe.
HAPPY BAKING!!!

1 spice or German chocolate cake mix
1 white cake mix
2 large pkg vanilla instant pudding mix, prepared
1 large pkg vanilla sandwich cookies
green food coloring
12 small Tootsie Rolls(r)

1 new kitty litter pan
1 new plastic kitty litter pan liner
1 new pooper scooper

Prepare cake mixes and bake according to directions (any size pans).

Prepare pudding mix and chill until ready to assemble.

Crumble white sandwich cookies in small batches in food processor or
put in sandwich baggies and crush with tolling pin. Set aside all but
about 1/4 cup. To the 1/4 cup cookie crumbs, add a few drops green
food coloring and mix until completely colored.

When cakes are cooled to room temperature, crumble into a large bowl.
Toss with half the remaining white cookie crumbs and the chilled
pudding. Important: mix in just enough of the pudding to moisten it.
You don't want it too soggy. Combine gently.

Line a NEW, clean kitty litter box. Put the cake/pudding/cookie
mixture into the litter box.

Put three unwrapped Tootsie rolls in a microwave safe dish and heat
until soft and pliable. Shape ends so they are no longer blunt,
curving slightly. Repeat with 3 more Tootsie rolls bury them in the
mixture. Sprinkle the other half of cookie crumbs over top. Scatter
the green cookie crumbs lightly on top of everything -- this is
supposed to look like the chlorophyll in kitty litter.

Heat 3 Tootsie Rolls in the microwave until almost melted. Scrape them
on top of the cake; sprinkle with cookie crumbs. Spread remaining
Tootsie Rolls over the top; take one and heat until pliable, hang it
over the side of the kitty litter box, sprinkling it lightly with
cookie crumbs. Place the box on a newspaper and sprinkle a few of the
cookie crumbs around for a truly disgusting effect!

LOVE THAT TREE!

Our friend John Roberts has provided us with the definitive life cycle of the suburban Christmas Tree as seen through the eyes of a very enthusiastic devotee.

HARD COOKIE CHRISTMAS

I guess about 8 years ago, my friend Chrystine organized a Gingerbread House party. Well, more like a small workshop. Ok, there were only three of us including our host. Though we were a small group, we managed to churn out 7 houses that day. And had an insanely fun time doing it. I was surrounded by candy, how could I not have fun. We used ice cream cones for trees and we melted hard candy for stained glass windows. And because I had to see the effect to it's fullest, I cut out holes in the cardbpard bases so we could put lights inside and see the colored windows alight. The last image is of Chrystine as a very cooperative teenager. She unenthusiastically dressed as a Christmas Tree for her Granny and this picture cracks me up because you can see the teen angst in her expression. "If i remain perfectly still, no one will notice me in this ridiculous costume"

SWATCH IT

THE SACHETS
DIFFERENT TEXTURES

Here are some swatches from ALL of the weavings I have been doing. At 4" x 6" I decided to make some cedar and lavender sachets. I stopped at 4. I might connect 8 or more together for a pillow... we'll see. For now I'm content with just making and making and making different weves. I just made up all of these textures without patterns. The cool thing is that when you take the piece off the loom it looks totally different - it actually comes too life. Until the next round...

YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP!

What to say? This was at my Grandparents house setting up to play Battleship on Christmas morning. It was in Indiana somewhere around 1976. Also notice the Six Million Dollar Man doll and the instamatic camera with the flash bulb extender. We also got really cool boots that year, which you can see in the background... I LOVED THOSE BOOTS. My brother is his ever charming self with the tounge out. I seem to be wearing my Miami Dolphins PJ's... odd that I loved them so much and hate sports. Truth be told it was all about the color combo of turquoise and orange that I was attracted to. The presents were from mom... the money cards on the tree were from grandma... who NEVER SHOPPED!. It was just easier to give us money. As for the tree, I think we had that one for about 10 years. I remember that each branch had a different colored dot on the stem so you knew which layer it went on. And the red satin balls!!!! They NEVER changed. That's tradition I guess.

TIME FOR A TRIM

Here are a few of my favorite Christmas decorations this year.
MUSHROOM ORNAMENT TRIO AT THE CURIOSITY SHOPPE

SMITH AND HAWKIN HEDGEHOG ORNAMENT

URBAN OUTFITTERS SKULL AND CROSS BONES ORNAMENT

CHARLIE BROWN PATHETIC CHRISTMAS TREE


URBAN OUTFITTERS CHARLIE BROWN PATHETIC TREE

'TIS THE SEASON

Well the Holiday sesaon is upon us and 'tis time for shopping.
Remember to head over to THE CURIOSITY SHOPPE
for some really great gifts. Hurry because things are flying off the site. I just sent out some mushroom ornaments and necklaces so keep an eye out for those. The acorn necklaces have sold out 3 times and we cannot keep them stocked. This weekend I will be making more to keep them going through the holidays. John has sold all of his keychains and the re-order was gone before they even hit the shoppe. John is also gearing up for a weekend of keychain making.
Here is a sneak peek at the ornaments which are sold in sets of 3 and necklaces.

IT"S A COTTON-CANDY WORLD

The Pleiades Gallery is having a show featuring the work of Ellen Bradshaw one of which you see here. It's called Winter Trees, Southbridge Towers, 20x16" oil on canvas. I was completely drawn in by her winter cityscapes. Part of it is the quick and colorful style that is in essence what John Sloan and his contemporaries did in order to capture the ever changing scenes of New York City. Though their work doesn't resonate with me as much as Bradshaws. Part of it is the way these scenes are snap shots of that magical but all too short period of time when the snow covers the city in pure white-uniting all the disparate surfaces under one clean layer. As most New Yorkers know, that doesn't last very long. But since they are not photographic snapshots, they strike me more as mental snapshots that mirror what I see when I conjur up memories of this time in New York. And there are times when the streets were as quiet as they seem in the paintings...when no one had ventured out into the snow and the streets were blissfully void of people. And since those moments are fleeting at best, it nice to find an artist that so wholly captures them.
Thanks to Manhattan Users Guide.

SEEING RED

DECEMBER 1, 2006 -WORLD AIDS DAY.