To the ocean.

I love this quote. I got home late again today...but I didn't knock out when I got home this time. When I got out of my car, it was already 9:30PM...and it was dark. I am so blessed to be living where I am living, because no matter how dark it gets, all I have to do is look up and the stars are almost always shining super bright, and so that is what I did when I got home. I looked up and saw how amazing the stars were that I decided to walk to the beach to just sit there for a few minutes and relax in...life.

Working three jobs is nothing new to most people of this world...but I am still trying to time management after picking up this last job. I do know that it makes me so tired at the end of the day and as I am driving home from my last job of the day sometimes I wonder...is it all worth it? Sometimes I get in those modes where I wonder what is the meaning of my life...is all this work worth it all. And all I have to do is walk to the ocean to know my answer. Yes, it's all worth it.

There is something about the beach at night. Just me, nature, God, and my thoughts. I love watching nature documentaries on Netflix (which is constantly playing in my house since I hate the silence of living alone.)...and I tend to watch more ocean documentaries...and wow, the ocean is an amazing thing...it holds so many secrets, so much life, and so much mass. And where I live, I can see the Mokes in the distance and then forever after that...it goes on and on...until it touches the sky and makes you look up to the stars! To bad I'm not good a photographer and my phone camera can not capture the amazing moment of the rising of the moon over the water...and the endless shine of the stars looking down at me. It's an awe-inspiriting moment when I can't help be thankful to God that he made all this for me.

I still get in those moments where I want to give up...but I don't. I don't because life is such an amazing thing and even though for a moment darkness seizes me, I push through because I have found somewhere that I can go to heal once again. The ocean.

Wouldn't it be amazing if I were a mermaid?! :)

Well, I just got back from processing another billion flowers...flowers that smelled so amazing and were so beautiful that I can never get tired of flowers.





My work space all cleaned up after the processing of all the flowers that came in! (Don't you love my hydro flask?! Gotta keep hydrated...and my amazing friend and TA gave it to me...).



We had to make make-shift shelves in the studio for all the flowers that we processed!




 Every space possible was covered in the studio! We had to leave the table clear just so that we had room to design the next day! The white roses are called Escimo Roses...they are one of my favorite roses...they open so beautiful, and the smell like candy!



The walk-in freezer in the studio was also packed full of gorgeous flowers! Don't you love the white hydrangea arrangements?! They look like miniature balls of clouds! :)










The hallway directly outside the studio was also used in placing the flowers we had...

 
 

Even the hallway leading up to the extra studio beside our studio...as you can see, we had to make make-shift shelves here as well!

 
  
  

And the extra studio itself was also full of flowers! Flower heaven...smells so amazing and they look amazing! I am excited for all who ordered flowers for Valentine's Day and the two huge weddings that we will be having! It will be all so beautiful!

 
 

"The earth laughs in flowers." 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Birthday, Kuya Neal!

Today is my amazing brother-in-law's birthday! On Wednesday, I had talked to Amanda about what we were going to do for him...and this is what we decided. Since him and my sister are always SO giving with their time and they are always thinking of others that they sometimes forget to spoil themselves, we had decided to give them time. Meaning to say, since Amanda had taken today and yesterday off, she was going to go to their house and watch the kids for them to be able to get away for a few hours. Since today I had only a half day since we had our preschool graduation, I told her that I would go with her. So, that is what we did. We gave them time.

My morning started out very good, thank you very much!

I took my sister's advise and cut two thick slices of her amazing Honey Oat Wheat bread and toasted it. I like my toast crunchy, but not burnt. So that's what I did, then I smeared on a good amount of butter, but not too much and wow! That totally made my day all happy! I ended up cutting two more thick slices and toasting and buttering them and bringing them to school to share some with Mrs. A. She is the teacher that I join with in the morning to watch the early morning kids. :)

Mrs. A had already had breakfast so she ate one [she was SO happy to have ordered one cinnamon bread loaf for her family after tasting this one!] and we shared the other one with two other children that were there and wanted a taste of the wonderful smelling bread. :)

It was pretty chaotic short day at school. I am so proud of our graduates! They are on their way up to kindergarten...and this is one of the reason I LOVE LOVE my job! In these early stages of life, the children learn SO much and SO fast! And they are all smart cookies that I know will go far in life!

After school, I went home. I have a friend that we send a least a picture a day to. We miss each other so much...and I know that she is lonely at the moment since her husband went abroad for a month for school. And so, I decided to wear a flower in my hair for her...so I sent her the picture of the flower I wore...the background you can see the wonderful front yard that I am blessed to have. :)

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I am so blessed to have this place that I'm living at. It's a beautiful place and my landlady is amazing wonderful as well! She is so sweet and I know that I am safe here. :)

Since it was my brother-in-laws birthday, I got him a birthday balloon to go with the present that I got him.

It's always fun to have balloons for your birthday, at least I think that it is. :) So, I had driven over to Amanda's house and we went together to my sister's house so that she can take her husband out for his birthday. They ended up seeing the new Avenger's movie. I wanted to see it...so hopefully I'll be able to go and see it, if not, hopefully it gets on Netflix so I can watch it when it comes out! :)

But before Amanda and I got to the house we stopped at our favorite Boba tea place.

Taste Tea is so yummy! My favorite order is: Winter Melon with Lemonade, 70% sweetened, Less Ice, and Big Boba! It's so yummy! My sister and Amanda usually get the same. Milk Tea...but I like my Winter Melon. :)

When we got to my sister's house, they had just left and my parents just waiting for Amanda and I so that they can leave to go meet their friends. I knew that my sister was already going to be gone...but I'm bummed that we missed them by just a few minutes, so we just put her Iced Tea in the refrigerator and Amanda and I enjoyed our tea while we were waiting for my lil' DollGirl (2 years old) to wake up from her afternoon nap. Lil' KaiBoy (3 months old) was also sleeping...but he woke up when we got there so we got to play with his little cuteness for a bit before sister woke up and demanded our attention to play with her.

Amanada stayed with KaiBoy in the house while I went outside to play with DollGirl.

She loves cars...just like her daddy! :) While I was taking her picture, she told me that she wanted to take pictures to...so I let her take a picture...and I had a million pictures of the garden that her and her grandpa (my daddy) had made for her mom.

She loves to garden! She is going to have a green thumb just like her grandpa! I love watching them together! My dad is an out-doorsy person...and so is DollGirl...she loves going outside! She loves running...for what seems like NO REASON...but she LOVES LOVES to be outside!

Well, I am getting tired now, but before I end this post, I wanted to post up some of the pictures that I got from the wedding that we did today! My brother-in-law was able to go with Passion Roots to help put up those ridiculously heavy chandeliers! And wow! I so admire and him and Amber (my co-worker)...they had to do some quick thinking with how to put them up!

My other co-worker and friend, Ivy, sent me these pictures earlier today...and I couldn't be more proud of my Passion Roots team! They look amazing! Ivy said that they had a lot of people come up to them to compliment the arrangements and The Modern were amazed by them as well! Yay for Passion Roots! We rock! I love working with them and being part of the team. :)

"Happy birthday, Kuya Neal! I hope you had an amazing day! I love you!"

Unexpected Happenings.

Today was pretty unexpected, to say the least! Not a bad thing...sometimes it's good to be spontaneous and just go with the flow. I use to be like that. When I look back in my life, I realized that I was pretty spontaneous...and I need to learn how to do that again. Today was one of those days. Although, it wasn't SUPER spontaneous, it was unexpected.

I just got home. Well, I take that back. I just showered and so like about 30 minutes I just got home. I had my evening all planned out when I got a text that gave me a decision whether or not I wanted to continue my evening plans to deviate a little from what I had wanted to do. I decided to change plans. Let me [sort of] start from the beginning.

So, starting last week I have been having MAJOR car problems. Like my-car-stopping-and shutting-off-randomly kind of car problems. Because that was the case, I had asked my sister to lessen my work load at Passion Roots to a minimum unless I can get a ride out there. My point...if I did take a bus out there after my preschool work, it would talk a little bit more than 2 hours to get there because of all the traffic. If they really needed me, I would figure out ways to get there...tonight, I wasn't even on schedule, so I wasn't worried.

I do drive my car though, with a lot of prayer. I have made it a habit to text my sister whenever I drive with a simple, "I'm about to drive! Please pray!" I like that I can do that...coz I know that she will send up prayers for me. I usually just drive from my preschool job to home or to the store...as long as it stays in Kailua...I'm usually okay...because I know that if my car does stop and I can't get it to start again, I can always just walk home if I can't get a hold of anyone at the moment.

When I got home, my sister calls me and asks me if I could meet her at the shopping center in Enchanted Lakes [still part of Kailua]. She has started to slowly start her baking business. And I couldn't be more proud of her! She calls her kitchen "The Lab" because she is just finalizing her different recipes and so she sells her baked goods at a discounted price. I know she will do GREAT in this...her goodies are known all over. :) So I had gotten orders for her from my preschool co-workers and so I went and picked up our orders.

Oh my goodness, the bread smelled AMAZING! As always. Since I was at the shopping center anyways, I decided to go grocery shopping, so I did. And picked up some groceries while I was at it.

I really like how my sister's bread, she makes them as healthy as she can, yet they stay really moist and so onolicious! So wish this Honey Oat Wheat bread, you can order it in several ways. You can get it just as a loaf OR in 12 "Largeish Dinner Rolls" OR 18 Smeedium Dinner Rolls." My favorite is if you get in a "Big Ol' Loaf" you can add a "cinnamony swirl" and oh my! That is my favorite! It is SO yummy!

My sister's extra tag for this special swirl of hers just cracks me up! She is so ON POINT!

This Rosemary Garlic bread though. Oh mandope! What can I say that doesn't sound like I'm making something up?! I don't even know...! Well, lets just say that I was planning on having lettuce wraps this evening...BUT I took one smell of this bread and I knew that I wanted it. So, I ended up cutting two slices from the middle of it...

...because I wanted two of the longer pieces of it...and then I toasted the two pieces in my little toaster oven.

And let me tell you! The smell of this bread while it was toasting was unbelievable! It smelled SO amazing! When it was done, I made myself a sandwich!

Since I'm trying to be a bit more healthier and more conscious about what I put in my body, I used Edamame Hummus as "mayo" and I put turkey and cheese on it...then I sat down and took a picture of it to send to my sister [just to let her know her bread was VERY much appreciated!]

However, as soon as I took the picture, I knew something was missing...and I knew right away what it was...so I added:

some lettuce! Sorry for the blurry picture! As you can tell, I was in a rush to eat this yummy sandwich! And yummy it was! :)

Commercial Break! *laughs*

Please follow my sister on Instagram and Facebook! Spread the word as well! She loves baking for others and filling your belly with YUMMY YUMMY baked goods! Support her! Pray for her! And just encourage her...starting your own business isn't easy, but I know that she can do it!

Instagram: TheFlouredCounterLab
Facebook: The Floured Counter: Lab

And trust, I'll also be posting up her yummy goodies as they come my way. :)

*End of commercial break!* :)

Anyway, as I said in the beginning of this post, things don't always go as planned...at least my day didn't! As I took a bit of my heavenly just made sandwich, I get this text. Thinking that it was my sister responding to my text of my ingenious idea of using her amazing Rosemary Garlic bread as a sandwich, I check the text.

"We need you. I'm picking you up! Just two hours, I promise!" It was already like 9:PM and I was like WHAT!? I know that my Passion Roots boss would not text me AND offer to come and get me if they didn't need me, so I packed up the rest of my sandwich, packed half of my left over bread to share with my amazing Passion Roots co-workers and walked outside just as she pulled up into my driveway. And off we went.

She told me sort of what was going on at work and why they needed me. And so when I walk in I was too surprised to see these giant wooden hexagon shaped pieces with crosses in the middle chicken wired tight with flower oasis. Our bride wanted these HUGE (think at LEAST 5 1/2 feet across) chandeliers. Not one but THREE!

I wish I thought to take pictures of when we first started...but I didn't. Since it was already late, I wanted to work as fast as we could to get these finished. I have preschool work at 7:am tomorrow, but these lovely ladies had to be at The Modern at 6:45am! Plus they still needed to load all our work in the vans before being there...so that was even earlier! Here is Evy adding some foliage to this chandelier.

So, these particular floral chandeliers were to be filled with various foliage and on site they were going to add Eskimo Roses...VERY few Eskimo Roses. This is the underside of the chandeliers...and I post up pictures as I get them of the actual site when these babies are up. I can't wait! I think that it's going to look AMAZING!

After we were done with these as much as could, we preloaded them into the vans and I went upstairs to the studio (we did these pieces downstairs because there was NO WAY were going to bring these pieces downstairs...they were at LEAST 80 pounds EACH! And it was late and we were all so tired already.) I helped Shihi with some of the bouquets of the other weddings that we were also having tomorrow...

The left bouquet goes with the chandelier wedding...and the other  bouquet on the right is going to another wedding. They are SO gorgeous!

I love roses! And peonies are just so gorgeous! Look what pretty gems I found in the refrigerator I saw that we are saving for the following wedding!

How can you not look at these and just be happy! They are SO gorgeous! A beautiful color and so beautiful to look at! Lucky bride! :)

But now that I am FINALLY home...I can now sleep! So goodnight, world!

Classroom Talk.

During nap-time for my "darlings" today, my boss asked me to go through different school catalogs and make one wish list for each 5 classrooms in our school. She told me to never mind the price, but just make an estimated guess on the "wish" classroom if we were to start from scratch. I am SO proud of my keikis and their parents-current and former, causerie we have been doing so well with our fundraisers that we have a good amount tucked away ready to be used. So my boss and I have decided that we will work to beautify our school.

It warms my heart when I hear parents talk about our school with such positive words. It always gets back to me about how wonderful our teachers are! And I couldn't agree more! I am SO blessed to be working where I am I think that its extremely hard to find a place where EVERYONE gets along and EVERYONE is always willing to go the extra mile...and this is the first time where I've worked in a place where everyone genuinely LOVE what they do. It shows through their work, through the keikis, through their parents and it's such a pleasant place to work at. There is SO much respect here and I cna 100% honestly say that they can feel the benefits of us teachers who love their job and its a place where I really do feel taken care of.

That being said, one of the first things that I noticed about our school is that it looks a bit runned down. This is a very good school...and so I am excited to start this make-over for my school.We are trying to get the school board "on board" with this new change that we want. We are also trying to open another classroom for the older kids. So I was given the job to remake every classroom and write a wishlist for them all.

We are trying to have the new classroom ready for the coming up school year in August...so we are really push it as much as we can. And I really am excited for all the change. I really feel blessed that I was able to land such an amazing job. :)

Before I end this post, I'll share a few snapshots that I have of my classroom. My classroom is always a work in progress. I like an organized room that is welcome. I also like color and my favorite "decor" for my room are the own artwork of the children. Yes, I love "showing off" the arts & crafts the children do. :)

The keiki themselves asked me if I can put the planets up. Oh, our subject for this month is the Solar System....and I love how interested they are in the vast amazingness that lays in the outskirts of our planet! But I have a book that shows the plants and different things you can find in the great Solar System. I don't usually do bulletin boards because I like to put the kids artwork up...but since they really wanted the planets up, I went to the store and bought this amazing bulletin set of the Solar System. My "darlings" love it...and they can name all the planets! I'm so proud of them!

Here are the suns that we made the other day. They loved this activity! I like keeping track of the art projects that we do that they like, that way I can make sure we do it more than once. My keikis are into color mixing at the moment. They say that its magic. :)

I like sitting on the ground with my keikis when I do my circle time. I have been in preschool classes where the teacher is on a chair, and that is fine. I tried it, but I didn't quite like it. My keikis LOVE doing the calender each day! They get a kick out of turning the number around...and like guessing what the design of the number is going to be. A few of them are starting to get that it's a pattern! *laughs*

This is one DIY thing that I did for myself...and I love how it turned out! So, when I started working at this job there was this old spice rack that nobody was using. The spices that were in each container barely smelled any longer to be useful...so with the spices and herbs that still had a slight smell to them, I used it for various artworks and activities, the rest I just tossed it. I then washed out the little bottles...laminated and super glued tops decorative tops on the caps and just placed miscellaneous things in the jars that I use. PomPom balls, googly eyes, sequins, mini star stickers, paperclips, staples, push pins, ects...it's very useful. Very easy to make, very accessible when I need to grab something...and yes. I like it. :)