Transition & Change

It has been quite awhile since we posted to our blog. And quite awhile since we moved back to Maui.  We are finally settling into our lives here in Hawaii and although we lived here for many years prior to coming back, the transition still proved to be challenging.

One of the most unsettling aspects of living here (and the same was true the last time I lived here) is that you make friends and then they move away. I guess you can say that about any place. But, it’s more pronounced here.

We made a decision to stay in the original home we bought and not move to the larger home we intended to purchase. The first home we bought is much easier to take care of, leaving more free time to enjoy our surroundings. We also made a decision to get off the career treadmill and work part-time. Kathy settled at The Maui Brewing Company as an Administrative Assistant 3 days a week, I went to work with

Maui Brewing Company

State Farm Insurance as a Representative from which I retired on March 15, 2019. I have since returned to my passion of being a Hana Tour Guide. I connected with Temptation Tours and conduct Hana tours 3-4 days a week.

Upper Waikani Falls
Luxury Limo Vans

 

 

 

 

We also retired the Pua Mele Art & Design website and our products are now offered  exclusively on  Etsy.  Give us a visit!

The weather on Maui this last year has been very wet. In fact it has been one of the wettest and coldest ( yes, we even had snow as low as 6,200 feet) years on record. Maui also had a very rare hurricane. Fortunately, the area where we live is protected by some large mountains and what we experienced was not much more than a very rainy and windy day.

Peace, love and happiness in 2019!

In This Month’s Issue

Visit our online store at: 

 www.etsy.com

Contact us at: [email protected]

 

 

 

 

Henry Kapono & Friends

One of the many draws to the Hawaiian Islands for us has always been the beautiful and inspirational music. Hawaii’s unique and varied sounds embody the aloha spirit

So of course, we jumped at the chance to see in person an array of Hawaii’s greatest musicians at the concert titled “Henry Kapono & Friends” held at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center.

These concerts are part of Henry’s passion to perpetuate his love of local music and musicians. In addition to the Island-wide concerts, Henry has established the Henry Kapono Foundation to support music programs for keiki (children), and provide career guidance and performance opportunities for emerging musicians, as he states on his site.

Visit our online store at: www.etsy.com

Contact us at: [email protected]

<Back  Next> 

 

 

 

Moscow Mule

I’ve been working at Maui Brewing Company in Kihei now for almost a year. If you’ve checked it out online, or if you’ve ever been to the brewery, you know that there is also a wonderful restaurant at the site. Not only do I get to work with some amazing brewery employees, I also rub shoulders with the tireless restaurant folks on a daily basis.

One day one of the restaurant employees walked by our desks carrying a huge box filled with beautiful copper mugs. “Anyone want a copper mug?” I guess these were extras, or no longer used. Needless to say, looking at all the shiny copper, I piped up “Sure – over here!!!”

Which got me thinking about the cocktails I’ve had in the past in similar copper mugs – Moscow Mules.

Moscow mule is a cocktail made with vodka, spicy ginger beer, and lime juice garnished with a slice or wedge of lime and mint leaves.

Maui Brewing Company 4-pack of Ginger Beer
Maui Brewing Company Ginger Beer

Moscow mules are typically served in copper mugs. Copper is an excellent conductor, meaning that cold or heat spreads rapidly through the material. While the copper material of your mug doesn’t actually make the drink colder, it makes it seem colder than it would if you were drinking it out of a regular glass or mug.

If you’re shopping for copper mugs, be sure to buy food-safe mugs that are not copper on the inside. Copper leaches into acidic foods and poses health risks, yikes!

Ingredients

  • 2 ounces Vodka
  • 4-6 ounces Maui Brewing Ginger Beer
  • 2-3 mint sprigs, plus more for garnish
  • 1 lime for juice, plus more for garnish

Directions

  1. Muddle mint sprigs in the bottom of your copper mug
  2. Add the juice of 1 lime.
  3. Fill mug with ice.
  4. Pour in vodka and ginger beer.
  5. Add garnishes.
  6. Stir and enjoy!

Why are Moscow Mules typically served in copper mugs?

According to Michael Cervin, in an August 2007 article on the Copper Development Association Inc. website:

“Most cocktails require specific glassware for their drinks—the highball and the martini glass, for example—however, the copper mug for the Moscow Mule is a must. If the old stories about the genesis of the drink are correct (they are mostly unanimous with a few variations) then it goes like this. In the early 1940s, John Martin was the president of G.F. Heublein & Brothers, an East Coast food and spirits importer best known for introducing A-1 Steak Sauce to America. Sometime in the 1930s, Martin, in an effort to market the next cocktail craze, purchased a small vodka distillery called Smirnoff for $14,000.

Yes, that Smirnoff. Back then, very few people drank vodka because most had never heard of it, let alone tasted it.

One day, while Martin was visiting his friend Jack Morgan who owned the Cock ‘n Bull pub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, he bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t sell his vodka. Morgan complained he couldn’t sell his ginger beer, a side passion of his that saw cases of it sitting in his restaurant’s basement. And a third person (never identified in any of the stories) lamented that she had copper mugs that she either didn’t want or need. Enter the brainstorm. Could all three benefit from combining their losses? The vodka and ginger beer were mixed with a dash of lime juice and served in copper mugs, imprinted with a kicking mule.”

Who knew?

You really need to try it. It’s delicious.

Visit our online store at: www.etsy.com

Contact us at: [email protected]

<Back  Next>

<Home>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mindfulness

My Journey with Mindfulness

Ever since we moved from Oahu to Arizona in 1996, we’ve tried to keep the Aloha spirit alive, at least within ourselves, as a guide for how to live a better life. There’s no question that we all live in an over-stimulated and hectic world, trying our best to stay afloat, pay the bills and get’er done. We take on a lot of duties and responsibility, and lately, we’ve found ourselves in the midst of some overwhelming negativity and divisiveness.

It’s easy to become consumed by the anxiety all of this activity produces, and then easily lose sight of the things that truly nurture us and allow us to find a modicum of peace. We had always cherished our dream of returning to the islands, which did provide us with a focal point as we moved along. But dreaming wasn’t calming enough.

When I was feeling such intense anxiety a few years ago that I actually experienced heart palpitations on my way to work, I knew it was time to PAY ATTENTION. Notice I didn’t finish that sentence with   “. . .and DO something!” That is the key. I needed to stop DOING and start BEING.

I started to learn more about being MINDFUL.

Greater Good Magazine,  a publication from The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, defines mindfulness as:

“ maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.

This lens helps us to pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.”

Piece of cake, right? I can do that!

We are such creatures of habit, caught up in the aforementioned goal-oriented chaos, it’s not all that easy to find the quiet.

Baby steps.

Taking baby steps works best for me to avoid becoming overwhelmed with something new. It’s actually helped me for years as an instructional designer, developing training solutions for performance issues in the workplace. Although it wasn’t referred to as baby steps; we called it “an instructional design methodology.” Instead of seeing an overwhelming training need and not knowing which of many options to use to develop a solution, I needed to break it down into. . . .steps. One of numerous versions of these steps in instructional design is called ADDIE – Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation – five suggested steps to follow do delve through a training issue. This approach served me well in the corporate world to avoid outright panic.

Same approach holds for learning mindfulness. Baby steps.

My first step was to learn what mindfulness was and how it could help me.

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

My first exercise was to train my focus on a single thing, a single activity, a single sensation. Sometimes a breathing exercise helps here. Focus on your breathing. Don’t think about the meeting you have this afternoon, what you’re going to say to the new boss, how you’re going to find the report you need for tomorrow, etc.

Draw your attention to your breath. Breathe in and breathe out. Baby steps. Focus on your breath. Nothing more. Notice where it comes from in your body – how does it feel to breathe deeply – where does that breath go when you exhale – does it come through your nose? Your mouth? Does your stomach move? Your chest?

Focusing on ONE thing has a calming effect.

I have to chuckle at what my first exercise was. I was frantically trying to get ready for work, washing and drying my hair, putting on makeup, deciding on what I was going to wear, being aware that I was running late, realizing that meant I was probably going to get stuck in traffic, making it impossible for me to get a parking spot near the entrance, forcing me to park far away and having to take even more time walking, fretting that the shoes I was planning to wear hurt when I had to walk too far, being late when I knew there was an important meeting this morning was not going to be seen positively by my coworkers or my boss, adding to the minor conflict I had with my boss yesterday, probably resulting in some kind of confrontation today, perhaps even putting my job in jeopardy, etc., etc. How am I going to get through this, to get’er done without screwing up?

Got to calm down.

Hair is dry. Got to put in some curlers. I looked at my basket of purple bristly velcro curlers. Here we go. I slowly reached for one purple curler, looked at it, noticed how pretty the purple was, and how scratchy the bristles were, grabbed a hank of hair, slowly rolled the hair around the curler, watching the process in the mirror, reached for a clip to secure the curler, secured it, looked at the masterpiece in the mirror, and then watched in the mirror as I gently grabbed another hank of hair, directed my eyes down to the basket to find the next curler, and deliberately and purposefully continued the procedure, mindfully noticing the purple of the curler, the scratchy feel of the bristles as I picked it up, the smoothness of the hair that I had in my other fingers as I rolled the hair onto the curler, the way I had to hold the curler so the hair would not slip out as I wound it up to my scalp, the feel of the clip as I slipped it into the side of the curler to secure it to my head.

Had to slow waaaaaaay down to do all that focusing, one curler at a time. But it was my start at understanding how to keep the anxiety at bay; to be mindful.

I realize mindfulness is so much more than focusing on one thing at a time, but this is how I helped myself re-direct my hysteria and random energy from ALL OUT THERE to JUST IN HERE.

Then, on my drive to work, I felt those annoying palpitations again. . . .what the heck??? I’m going to be late, going to never find a parking spot, the traffic ahead looks like it’s slowing down, something must be going on, now I’ll really be late.

Need to calm down. Need to focus, but still need to drive safely. I focused on my right hand on the steering wheel toward the top, my left hand on the steering wheel close to 10 o’clock, the distance between my car and the one in front of me, “I’m carefully driving to work right now. That’s all I’m doing.” Right hand, left hand, car in front of me. Driving. It actually made me giggle.

The palpitations actually stopped. OK, I’m onto something here. There’s something about this mindfulness stuff.

All of this is my way of showing how non-threatening or complicated it is to ease your way into becoming more open to the idea of mindfulness. Tip of the iceberg. Teeny, tiny tip of the iceberg. I have so much more to explore and learn, and look forward to the ongoing practice of trying to pay attention and not get lost in the cacophony.

In my next few posts I’ll include links to some fun and easy exercises to help you on your journey.

Visit our online store at: www.etsy.com

Contact us at: [email protected]

<Back 

<Home>