I have new (actually old and used from Re-Use Hawaii) kitchen cabinets and put off filling them because of the dreaded task of lining the shelves and drawers. I bought plastic liner rolls from Home Depot that were 20″ wide and they sat and sat.

One ambitious day, I decided to line those bare cabinet drawers. I took measurements and cut a sheet to fit with an exacto blade and straight edge. It was slightly ragged and a bit too big on one side, and too short on another. Aaargh! I used a good pair of scissors to cut the ill fitting sheet, perhaps making it worse with nicks and waves and placed it in the drawer – where it looked terrible.

Tadaaa!

Then I remembered my rotary cutter and mat that I use to cut fabric for quilt pieces. The mat is already gridded and the acrylic ruler held the sheet down and ensured straight perfect cuts. On the first try I was slightly bigger on one side by 1/8″, which I easily cut off with the mat, ruler, and cutter. SO EASY!!

In a matter of minutes, all my drawers were lined, shelves were lined with perfect fits, and I was a very happy camper.

I am still slowly putting utensils, kitchen ware, and all those miscellaneous things in the drawers, but the hardest part is done. I just need to get over my procrastination – which is my middle name.

I am super busy in moving my things from upstairs to downstairs and in between. I know I need to do a post on making jook, and continuing the Korean Natural Farming techniques but even my plants and soil are on hold.

A quick note about coffee grounds: I would save my coffee grounds every morning after making my cup of coffee (and adding a teaspoon of MCT oil for brain and body health). Then, after I have an ample quantity, I would sprinkle it around the mango tree, on the grass, and occasionally on potted plants such as roses, bougainvillea, etc. I also started sprinkling it on my bed of struggling asparagus.

Lately, I lost 2 wonderful plants in large pots. One was a small tree with willow like branches and flowers with large white petals – my West Indian pea plant. Another was a rather large spreading bush/tree with glorious purple sprays of flowers like wisteria – Golden dewdrop. I couldn’t figure out what was happening because these were strong healthy plants for years.

Then it hit me – it was the coffee grounds which I was getting more generous in these pots because I thought it was good for them. They could handle a little boost but not chunks of used up coffee grounds. The rose bushes were fine but other more delicate plants such as asparagus could not tolerate it. Even my bougainvillea struggled a bit, but they are such hardy plants that I have turned into bonsai-like trees in restrictive pots, they would lose all their leaves and then get new foliage. Ginger plants started dying. Heliconias shriveled up and disappeared.

So, lesson learned the hard way – I don’t save my coffee grounds anymore. I just toss them in the trash and NOT in the disposal (which I USED to think was good for the disposal).

Do you use coffee grounds successfully? I sure haven’t, poor plants.

An aside:

One of my favorite Seattle blog sites that I visit is Linda’s Letters, who is a wonder in the kitchen and her garden is show worthy. She does wonderful flower arrangements around her house with vintage vases which she picks from her garden planted with species that we can’t have here, such as her canopy of Wisteria that is glorious in bloom. Our common plants here in Hawaii need protection from the cold up there. Linda seems to like tropical plants a lot and takes photos of them whenever she visits plant nurseries in the Pacific Northwest.

I end this quickie post with a lovely centerpiece that I won at our latest HSFAG (Hawaii Stitchery and Fibre Arts Guild) party that past president Aileen Kaneshiro made for all the tables. It is really lovely and made with common plants we have here and probably growing in her back yard. Mahalo, Aileen, for letting me show off a beautiful arrangement of our Hawaii bounty. I wish I could say I did it, but not today.

I found this Tik Tok video and it took me a few tries because they make it look easier than it is – but I love it! (More KNF posts soon to come. Aunty is taking a little break of busyness.)

WARNING: the music in the video is really LOUD. I don’t know how to mute it…

My absolute favorite ice cream is Dave’s Green Tea in the cardboard like tub. Creamy, flavorful, and green with just the right taste of tea. I still remember a dessert from the Wisteria Restaurant – that iconic wonderful Japanese American restaurant with the best nishime, chicken with eggplant and almost everything else they served. The dessert I loved there was a scoop of green tea ice cream topped with lime shaved ice. Super delish!!! However, it is so sad that they packed it all up and closed several years ago.

But I digress. The reason I wrote this post was to share Aunty’s tip on serving ice cream from the freezer. I used to have the kids be in charge of scooping out the ice cream from the containers because it would be so cold – rock hard and very difficult to scoop out – even with the best scoops and dipping it in hot water, etc. They struggled and struggled, and succeeded because their desire to eat ice cream surpassed the effort and muscle they had to put in.

One day, without any kids to help, I wanted to have just a bit of wonderful green tea ice cream. I stuck our best scooper in the tub and couldn’t even make a dent because it was rock hard cold. Hmmm. I could wait but then I might forget it and it the whole thing would melt. I could put it in the refrigerator and return in about an hour but I wanted it right then and there.

So, I stuck the container in the microwave and heated it for 10 seconds. And by golly, the ice cream soften up enough to easily scoop it into my bowl and was perfect!

Why 10 seconds? I dunno. Maybe 8 will work, maybe 12 will work. In any case, because of that I am eating more than I should. However, somehow, life is even more wonderful when eating something as delicious and refreshing as a scoop of ice cream. That must count for something, right?

Quite a tongue twister, but that is what Aunty has been up to.  Our Hawaii Stitchery and Fibre Arts Guild President – Aileen Kaneshiro – has been busy keeping us up to date with members tips and updates.  Some of the masks that I tried out were from her, some from blogging pal Kay of Musings.

The first masks I made (top row) were from a modified pattern of the Olson mask.  It is rather labor intensive with a lot of cutting, interfacing fusing, topstitching and turning.  It was a bit too small on my son-in-law and a bit too wide on my daughter, but it fit me fine.  Elastic tie fitting was the most difficult part of the process and I tried ponytail rings as well as tied elastic straps and cords.

I kept searching and saw a Vietnamese mask that looked easy and reminded me of origami.  Thoan makes it look easy but she also has a power sewing machine that can barrel over thick spots.  I tried it but my Janome machine couldn’t handle the second to the last step making the casing for the elastic to go through so I busted out my old Bernina for the job.

Now it is like a production line of speed cutting the rectangle pattern, marking sewing lines, sewing straight, turning, ironing, and defining the shapes with simple folds – just like origami.  The problem again becomes elastic ties and fit.

“Best Fit Face Mask Tutorial” by Brittany Bailey was full of great tips to solve many of my elastic problems.  Her pattern is more structural and must have a wire for the nose bridge.  I haven’t tried to make this one because I am currently enamored with the simpler origami mask pattern.  However, Brittany’s suggestions for using coffee bag ties or making your own with electrical wire and tape for the nose clip is ingenious.  Her alternate suggestion for elastic ties include 1″ wide strips of tshirt or legging material on the horizontal or using paracord or shoestrings with a craft bead is super useful.  The craft bead acts as a sizing agent to make the elastic loop smaller or bigger, depending on the wearer’s preference.  Brilliant!

Getting elastic has been a problem.  Orders on Amazon are delayed for weeks because of an overload of requests.  Aunty has found that ebay.com has faster shipping times, though the prices are quite high and many sellers are selling in 10 yard lengths.

It is now back to the sewing room for me.  This corona virus quarantine and mask imperative has actually been good for Aunty.  It made me clear out a sewing space in my messy messy craft room and help me to use up fabric and feel useful.  Days blend together without any commitments or schedules other than rubbish days.

I hope you all are doing well.  This is a most unusual and momentous time in everyone’s life.  It is both good and bad, a blessing or a curse.  It is also temporary – and the world will have more masks than it knows what to do with when it is all over.

When Hawaii had the recent threat of Hurricane Lane looming and imminent, we made sure that we had cases of water as well as filling up buckets and tubs with water in case of disaster shortages.

It was also time to secure anything that could potentially blow around in the high winds and cause damage.  This sounds easy enough to do – until you find that you really don’t have enough rope.

A trip to the hardware store was already out of the question so Aunty cut an old tshirt up, going crosswise, using fabric scissors.  Each strip was about 2″ wide and tied to another strip until the length was long enough for the task at hand.

The resulting fabric rope was very pliable and stretchy, making it easy to tie wire shelves to benches, planks of wood to tree trunks, and securing chicken houses (one of these days Aunty will have live chickens to lay eggs) down to the ground and to the fence.

One long tshirt yielded several yards of rope, enough for everything in the yard.  Unused strips and rope can then be easily stored in a ziplock bag and saved for another day.

Hopefully this is a tip that will be useful to Aunty’s readers, as we seem to have more and more storms and hurricanes aiming for our islands.  So far we have been lucky, but that is no reason not to be prepared and ready for safety’s sake.

Aunty loves to collect empty glass bottles and keep their lids. However, most labels that come with those bottles are too branded so Aunty likes to remove their identity by removing labels.

Goop Off or lighter fluid was the solution of choice. However, the toxic fumes and the danger of ignition bothered Aunty’s sense of environmental goodness. Searching on wonderful Google, Aunty found Cheryl at ThatsWhatCheSaid, and her super simple, cheapo and effective way to remove the sticky residue that some labels leave after the paper or plastic is peeled off.

Super simple:

Equal parts of baking soda and vegetable oil. Mix to a paste, apply to the bottle, wait a few minutes, then scrape and wipe off.

It works wonderfully well!

Aunty uses a short plastic fork in a disposable cup to mix, then uses the same fork to apply and also to scrape after sitting time. A paper towel then wipes up the gunk. Sometimes a 2nd application may be needed. Then, wash the bottle and Voila! A naked wonderful bottle.

It doesn’t seem to work with the non sticky type of glue. But that’s okay. Aunty will use the toxic stuff for that – later.

Thank you Cheryl, for your great tip!

Amy Lynn Andrews is a blogging guru that Aunty follows.  Sometimes she has excellent non-blogging tips.

Recently, she shared Shareably.net’s article about picking the perfect watermelon.  This was great for Aunty who usually doesn’t buy watermelons because of the risk of getting a lemon – a non sweet or juicy bulky green globe that nobody wants or eats.

The 5 key factors to picking, according to Shareably, are:

• a yellow rather than a white field spot (where the watermelon lay on the ground).  Field spot?  Aunty never heard or looked for that.
• lots of webbing – the ugly looking brown lines that indicate how many times a bee pollinates the flower.  Ugly lines are good?  Aunty used to think they were junk.
• boy melons are longer and watery,  girl melons are rounder and sweeter.  Ahem, well, we all knew that, right?
• not too big, and not too small, but juuuussst right.  Sounds like Aunty Marialani from Rap Replinger’s video.
• brown tail means it was on the vine longer, thus riper.  Green tail means it was picked too early.  Aunty has never seen a tail on a watermelon – but now shall check them out.

MAYBE Aunty will buy a watermelon again.  Or did she miss the season already?