Another great song

This guy's version of Pachelbel's Canon comes on my Pandora station and I just love it. 

I thought hey I'll embed it so that people can listen to it while they read the older posts :)

Manoa Falls

Manoa Falls! 

Last time we tried the Manoa Falls Trail, it was closed because it was raining. I'm so glad we tried again! 

Being us, we spent far more time getting distracted along the trail then at the destination.

There isn't a spot to park at the trail head, so you have to park somewhere in the residential area nearby. We only had to walk about a block through the neighborhood, but still we found things to be distracted by.

We found this beautiful Brown Anole guarding his rock wall.

And this perfect specimen of  male gold dust day gecko.

When we started the trail we were greeted by this MASSIVE  vine covered snag.

The camera didn't do this shot justice! Those plants at the bottom of the valley are HUGE! 

The broad leafed plant in the middle (the one that looks almost like a pumpkin/cucumber leaf shape) I would guess it's leaves were almost 3 feet across!

Such a pretty trail. It reminded me a little of the coastal redwood hikes in California.

Here is some of the creek.

Richard with a big ol leaf

 
a great little collection of tiny mushrooms:

Oops did I say little? I mean a HUGE collection of tiny mushrooms:

Natural archway:

Hey look at that! We actually made it to the destination this hike!

Manoa Falls, All 150 feet of its glory:

The trail follows the creek up to the falls so we decided to hike in the creek back down part of the way.

Richard caught this little Red Swamp Crawfish in a pool.

Then we found the king of the crawfish:

Here is a nice shot looking down the creek

I really liked these delicate ferns:

I love the biodiversity in this valley there are at least 3 different types of fern in this shot, then you start trying to count all the plants and ....

Soo pretty!!!

 Oh! Well hello there Mr Leopard Slug:
(these guys can get up to 8 inches!)

And another fun fungi ;)

Ok so you know fiddle heads... baby fern leaves? You can eat them and they normally are about this size, (though I often find them a lot smaller):



Not in Manoa Valley though, they are HUGE!!! Science Fiction sized!
Here is a fiddle head and my hand!

Here is another one... it's about as tall as me. Can you find Richard in the background.

I want to come back with my fairy costume someday because you could take some seriously believable shots with the plants here.

 Here is Richard with one of the fronds:

I really loved this tree too:

Look at this amazing flower!!!

I have never seen anything like it, and have no idea what it is, but I'm in love!
I especially like how the blossom looks nothing like the bud.. totally different colors!

That was the end... this is a shot overlooking the neighborhood. Can you imagine having this view in the middle of a suburb!

A little bit of everything.

So be warned this is one of those scattered, no nice transitions between subjects, probably some grammatical errors, sort of posts. Read at your own risk:

We found this great product on Amazon:

 

and for less than $20 Richard could finally have an underwater camera! It fits my camera perfectly and we had no fogging at all :)

You cant use the zoom or look at the pictures or change any of the settings really. You can switch between picture and video though. We have a lot to learn about under water photography but here are the first attempts:

Richard accidentally left the video on for 10 mins so thre is so really cool fottage but I've had some troubles converting and editing it so it will be awhile before I post that.
Here is a shorter video that he also took:

It is in the shallow part so it isn't as clear as the rest of the cove.

I spent over half the time on the shelves because I was just too darn cold.. silly right?
I may end up needing one of those surf shirts :)



Ronnow Drafting and Design:
I completed my very first bid and sent out the invoice!
I'm so happy :)
Any day now I will be cashing the very first check earned by my education!!
This project has really helped push my rendering skills up a notch.
This is the final bathroom design that the client chose and whether you like the style or not aside, you have to admit the quality of the rendering (how realistic the picture looks) is WAY better than my old stuff :)

(for some reason they are showing up a bit 'blown-out', if you can ,tilt your screen back and it looks better)

Also I got my website made :)
Still playing around on the style of the resume part but it is up so go check it out:
Ronnow Drafting and Design
(thanks for the editing help Mama!)

I made a super yummy dinner for us centered around a fun little Italian pasta called a Borsetti

It means little purse in Italian :)

I did a sale /coupon combo happiness to get a fresh pack of these for about 2 bucks!!!



To go with it I used my 5 mins a day bread and 'upgraded' it.
I took a chunk out of the fridge minced up some of my home grown Basil, Parsley, and Garlic Chives and needed them in to the dough with some shredded cheese, olive oil, and garlic salt. Rose and baked it as usual and it turned out FANTASTIC!

I served the Borsetti with homemade Alfredo sauce, the bread, and steamed broccoli Yummy!


so yep that's the end of this odd post
bye
:)

Paper Flower

So I decided to try out these paper flowers I found instructions for.

It worked really well, even on my first try!

I thought I'd be fancy so I found Victorian love letters and printed them out double sided. Then I stained them with sleepy time tea and followed the rest of the instructions on her blog.

TaDa:

The tea stain doesn't show up very well in these pictures so just imagine them yellower.

:)

Steampunkery

Well we have finally settled in enough to craft. 

Here are two new items we just made and added to the etsy shop. 

Richard's goggles get better and better with each pair he makes. I may let him sell my old pair so he can make me some new ones :)

Here is the set he just made:

And these are my contribution to the shop. 

They are very simple but I think they are cute.

I may even make myself a pair.