Blake and Deborah in Hawaii: February 2014

Friday, February 28, 2014

A visit from home

Deborah Writes

Well, it has been two weeks since I last wrote. It has taken that long to have something new to say. There is really not much new. Mostly, we have been busy with getting a daily routine. Blake spends time working on the house plans and works on the property often. He did build a frame for our bed that arrived; it is so nice to sleep in a king size bed again. He also built an extension frame for the full size mattress that came with the Ohana. The new frame fits nicely over the built- in that was already here. Now we have a place for family or friends to sleep; those who want to come help with building the house . Everyone else will hopefully come to visit when the house is built.

We did some planting last week with large cuttings from our neighbor Alex's yard. We are both spending time just cleaning and pruning the pre-existing plants that came with our property. I started a pot garden on our deck with Cucumbers and Chard. I hope at some point to transplant and move to a garden plot in our new yard.

I did find a fantastic massage therapist who was referred to me. She in turn sent me to an excellent acupuncturist. Both woman are very competent at what they do. I also am building a friendship with each of them beyond our professional relationship. I believe they will be my first two girlfriends here.

We seem to take a weekly pilgrimage to Kona, its about an hours drive south from our place. This week I was smart and packed a picnic, so we could take a nice lunch break at a park or the beach. We shop at Costco, home depot, lowes, walmart, kmart etc. We are slowly also finding interesting local places to shop that are not the big box stores I mentioned. I went to the singer sewing center and was pleased to see an interesting selection of fabrics and sewing notions, affordable as well. That’s a bonus!

We had visitors from Olympia for the afternoon on Sunday. It was nice to see someone from home. It was one of my friends from the Olympia chorus that I sang with; Rita and her husband Mel. They come to Kona every year for vacation. Rita and Mel drove up to visit us and they took us out to lunch. Rita also brought me a card signed by some of the women in my chorus back home and she brought me a beautiful orchid . I sent Rita home with some homemade Lilikoi butter I made. We showed them our property, building plans and the Ohana we rent. We also took them on a tour of our neighbor Alex amazing yard. Next year when they come we will be able to host them overnight.

Now some pictures.

The pictures-above and below. the dump store and Keith who runs the dump store

Flowers and card from my chorus- brought by Rita

Rita and Mel from Washington

Above Deborah and Blake in Alex's garden

Below Rita and Deborah

Alex giving Mel the tour of his gardens

The new bed frames built by Blake-still need to be painted

The transplants from Alex's garden to ours

Some pictures of the area-places we walk to,

and the honor farm stands you can buy fresh grown produce.

gecko hanging out in the Lilikoi in the bowl on the table..... AKA passion fruit.

Hmm...proceed with caution

I guess the passion fruit worked!

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Valentines, Whales and Geckos again....

Deborah Writes

Blake and I had a terrific Valentines day yesterday. I hope you did too. It is really hard not to appreciate each day living in such a beautiful place. Everyday is pretty terrific.

After breakfast and our tradition of card giving and no gifts (although I did bake cookies) we decided to do something that felt more like a holiday. Life is funny because it is so easy to fall into the normal routines and forget to enjoy all that one is surrounded by.

We decided to go to a park for some whale watching. The whales are here for a few months every year. This is the season. We parked our truck and sat on the tailgate; the parking lot was right at the waters edge so it was a pleasant setting and perfect for sighting whales. We have one pair of binoculars that normally we share and that works for us. We got lucky and our neighbor Alex offered to loaned us his binoculars; that was great because we saw so much whale action yesterday. It was spectacular!!!! At first we were seeing the usual things, whale spouts, bits of whales surfacing. Then we saw whales bring up their tales, that was so wonderful.
AND then..... We saw whales jump completely out of the water, Straight up!! Wow! It happened at least 8 times. I just kept saying Wow! Wow!!! Wow!! it made me all teary eyed.. I could not help it. I would like to say we have pictures of it all, but they are only in our minds eye now. Who can take pictures with binoculars on their faces? We spent 3 hours contently watching.

After we went out to lunch in a nice restaurant down the road. We had coconut shrimp sandwiches, french fries cooked to perfection and a nice cold beer. For dessert we stopped at a place for shaved ice with ice cream, because I needed some. I had forgotten that Blake wanted to stop at the macadamia nut factory where you can sample all the different ways to have a macadamia nut,including Spam flavored ones. Hmmm??? Only in Hawaii!

The drive back to our house was long,only because we both were so tired from sunshine, excitement from whale watching and way too much food...So we took a nap the minute we came though our door. Another perfect day in paradise!

Cookie Monster- are these for me? Wow thanks!

Here I am doing my daily meditation. I really enjoy hanging the clothes on the line, it's so peaceful to me. There is also the benefit of how great they smell.

Friday, February 14, 2014

The Exciting World of Insurance and Vehicle Registration

Blake writes:
Relocating to another state entails a fair bit of paperwork and administrative busywork. Old accounts must be closed, new ones opened. Dozens of change of address notices must be sent out. Vehicle registration, voter registration, bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, insurance, utilities – everything is affected. And when the state you're relocating to is thousands of miles away out in the middle of a large body of water the challenge of getting the changes made seems magnified.

Changing our health insurance plans was one of the most important tasks. Fortunately, despite the well-publicized botched rollout of Obamacare, the program is working for us. Hawaii has its own state-run health insurance exchange, which by some rankings was the worst in the nation back in October when this all started. Its Executive Director was forced to resign last December. But, like the national program, the glitches are slowly getting fixed and people are getting signed up. Here in Hawi there are even rural outreach kokuas (counselors/aids) who help folks sign up for health insurance and other community services. We were happy to take advantage of their help.

First we had to get denied for Hawaii's expanded Medicaid coverage, than reapply for coverage with partial financial assistance. (Why the two systems can't talk to each other I have no idea). The amount of financial assistance you qualify for is based on your projected income, which for us will be low this year as we concentrate on building the house. Next year, when I'm back to painting and Deborah has her skin care and vacation rental businesses up and running we'll be making more and therefore will have to pay more, which is fair. But for now we're delighted to cancel our crappy high deductible health insurance with Regence Blue Shield in Washington State, the premiums for which had been increasing steadily year after year until we were paying $800/month for something that hardly covered anything. Now we have significantly better coverage with Kaiser-Permanente in Hawaii and, thanks to the subsidies, we're only paying $100/month! Obviously, that's a huge savings.

Getting our vehicle over here was another big task. We bought a truck back in Washington just before Christmas to bring over here, which seems crazy except that trucks are priced at a premium in Hawaii and the selection is limited. It costs about $1100 to ship it over from Seattle and takes about 2 weeks to the Big Island. It gets shipped to Honolulu first, then gets barged to Kawaihae on our island, which is only 18 miles from Hawi, but we couldn't pick it up there. We had to wait for it to go overland to Hilo on the opposite side of the island (76 miles from Hawi) where we could pick it up. After dealing with insurance, inspections and registration we now have our excellent 2009 Nissan Frontier with Hawaii plates. Now we feel somewhat official. Next up: drivers licenses...

(Photo from the Kohala Mountain News.
ROSI stands for Rural Outreach Support Initiative; these ladies were great)

Hawaii plates!

Sunday, February 9, 2014

The F.....Word

Deborah Writes

The F word....I know it sounds naughty right? Well, we all know I can be naughty and nice; but actually today I am going to talk about my two F words...

And now for the letter F....Sesame street come to mind??? So call me corny...

Food and Furniture....

Hawaii is a wonderful place for food. There are farmers markets that can produce year round. We have one every Saturday in our town just a few feet away from our property, very convenient. In fact, you will find them in practically every town. I also learned that there is a girl who sells from the back of her pickup truck on Fridays at the hardware store in the next town over. Many people have gardens and grow their own food, some grow too much and sell it or give it away. Other people take the pilgrimage to Kona and go to Costo; even in Paradise we have a Costco.

I plan to grow my own garden. I purchased some seeds this week so I can get some plants started. I can also buy them already started at the hardware store. Blake planted a kafir lime tree last year and a 2 dwarf papayas. They have not produced yet; in time they will.

There are lots of places to get free food . For example on the way to the Dump; which is really just a transfer station for garbage, there is a home that has orange trees in their yard, lots of people do. They have a FREE fruit stand out front of their property, because the tree will just produce more fruit than one family could possible eat. The result too much fruit rotting on the ground attracting fruit fly’s. So people give it away. I am thrilled because we do not have any oranges on our property. So each time I go to take the trash I stop and get about 20 oranges; they are not the pretty ones you see in the stores;however there are so juicy and delicious. I bring them home and with the aid of a simple electric juicer in about 15 minutes I can make fresh squeezed juice for the week.

The "not so pretty"but delicious oranges

The Juicer

What is left from the juice I made just 2 days ago

My neighbor Alex gave me the biggest grapefruit I have ever seen. It is really not a grapefruit but some very old breed in the grapefruit family. It has a thick skin and the fruit is only slightly tart. Normally I am not a fan of the grapefruit but this one I like, its mild.

Notice the size of the orange

He also gave me some Lilikoi ( aka passion fruit) they are not very exciting alone since there are seedy and tart, but you can make a sugary concoction called Lilikoi butter; made with the fruits, butter , sugar and eggs; the consistency is a lot like thick honey when done. Its a fair bit of work and I can see why it is spendy to buy. Blake likes it and if I purchase it at the farmers market it is $7.50 for a pint size jar. I figure, what the heck I can make this. So I have have processed the fruit and frozen it for now and I hope to make it next week.

We have a huge avocado tree on our property. We had to have it seriously pruned to make room for our house. It was a painful decision to do this. We had so many avocados!! hundreds of them. We gave away as many as we could and still had huge amounts. In hindsight, I am glad we had to prune it for now. I had a hard time finding people to take them from me. Next year I will build my own FREE fruit stand; assuming I have more than I can use or give away.

I took about 30 of my avocados and I pureed them. Then I turned it into ice cream. Its amazing! Tastes like a fudge bar. I created my own recipe based on ones I saw on the internet. I used baking cocoa powder, some cane sugar and some coconut milk beverage. Pureed all this together and froze it. Later after it was frozen; I cut it into squares. This same recipe, not frozen tastes and looks like chocolate pudding. It takes much of the guilt out of eating a treat..

Tree-Before pruning

abandoned bird nest in tree

The tree after the pruning

Pureed Avocado

Avocado chocolate pudding

Avocado chocolate pudding-sooner to be frozen into fudge bars. Yum!

Furniture- I am just going to show some of the furniture to you that you have not seen yet. Now that our Ohana is comfortable I will slow down looking for stuff; unless I find great things at the dump that I can redo. Here are some pieces you have not seen yet.

Getting the free chair from the dump was easy; persuading Blake to stuff it the trunk of the car was another story.

Purchased a new cushion for the chair and now it is terrific;but not so free but worth it.

Bookcase in Ohana- Before

A bit of fabric and it becomes a functional room divider.

$4.99 at the goodwill

Gecko enjoying the fresh apple I just peeled.

Now he wants Coffee!

Monday, February 3, 2014

Only $5.00 could that be right????

DEBORAH WRITES

Shopping...... its seems that is all I talk about to you right now..so sorry...but wow! It just gets better all the time! I have been on the mad search for useful items to make our Ohana feel more like a home,our home; and also be more comfortable. The postal service has been kind enough to manage to deliver so far; 21 of the 60 boxes we have mailed to ourselves and that sure helps.

This place had very little furniture which was fine with us because I wanted and need to start the process of collecting furniture and other useful pretty things for the house for when it is finished at the end of this year. That takes time if you are doing it mostly second hand. I do have plans to buy some things new; like mattresses, the sofa for the living room, linens and things like that. But the rest, second hand is perfect. This way I won't feel bad when I paint it or make slipcovers; lets me be an artist of sorts. Most of my adult life at least 3/4 of the things I owned were second hand anyway; its what I know. And what I realize is for sure what I really like..

I want to decorate in an affordable way and yet still have things we love to use and look at. I am not one of those people who likes everything to match perfectly; I just like my things to have a good visual relationship with each other. I like that look of the house looking as though I have been collecting over time. That says home to me...I do however like a certain comfortable elegance to be achieved when possible. My sister and best friend Jan always call me Martha. That is the best compliment I can be given.

Hawaii has the reputation of being a very expensive place to live and that is true for many things;we live on the big island of Hawaii ,where is it more affordable and also rural on much of the island. Thanks to places like Costco, Target, Ross, Walmart, Kmart, Macys - they are all on the big island now - there are many options that are fair prices, if you want new and affordable. I also really like all small/local businesses too. They have unique, albeit more expensive items but worth the cost . Homes and things one may need for décor fall under the category of costly for sure; unless you are clever; if you have handy skills and have good visionary ability, it can be done in a fairly affordable manor. And it's fun!

Craigs list as we all know is a good source for finding things you need or want. I was looking at crags list because I want to find a rattan sofa for my future lanai; better know as a porch to most of us. I always hear about people buying used furniture from hotels and wondered how you find out about it. Well, I found an ad about a sale on craigs list; 2 sales to be precise;one on Friday and one on Saturday. So I went.....It was fabulous! I spent $77.00 on Friday, I got 15 pieces of furniture and 2 lamps: every item was $5.00 each. I purchased 4 chairs; I would describe them as oversized rattan Club chairs. I got a round rattan glass table and 4 chairs with cushions to go with it; I purchased 4 more of the same chairs. I got 2 deck chairs with cushions for sunbathing in the yard and 2 brass floor lamps with really nice linen shades (the lamps were only $1.00 and I will paint them ) The Saturday sale was disappointing in comparison only because the prices were higher and they did not have anything I liked or needed. I did get 2 Mr. Coffee machines there for $2.50 each.

We went to Kona on Friday for the other sale and I always stop at the Goodwill when we are there. I have been looking for a table or a desk to place in our office area here in the Ohana. I only wanted to get something that we will use again. I found a modern glass topped small computer desk that fits perfect in the area we need to put it. It is not my taste in furniture but it made great sense for our current use. It was $20.00 so that made it a great choice. When we got home I realized it will make a great craft/sewing deck for me to put in the loft of the new house in my studio space; it has wheels so I can move it around easily. I got a beautiful never used tablecloth $4.99, 2 nice decorative pillows $3.00 each and a cute like 12 inch square storage ottoman $4.99. And now for some pictures.