Jan 6, 2019 | Lifestyle, Sustainable Living, Travel
The guys went out the night before New Year’s Eve and caught two coconut crabs for our NYE dinner.
I asked why they only caught two and they said it was because they wanted to hunt responsibly. Good point.
Coconut crabs are suuuuper delicious, and it’s true that there aren’t many crabs just roving the land these days. Even though there are a bunch of coconut crabs in Ofu – doesn’t mean that we should be taking more than we need.
We sat down to eat on New Year’s Eve with family and friends and shared yum food. We also ate baby rack ribs that Ian made but lo – we’re going to be cutting out red meat from our diet in 2019! So we’re making steps towards more sustainable eating habits.
Oct 29, 2018 | Create, Sustainable Living
I’ve never put much thought or care into how I’m supposed to clean and condition my wood cutting boards, bowls or utensils… but this super easy homemade wood butter is everything I need to get shiny buttery wood! Lollllllll
~
Ingredients:
Natural beeswax
Cold pressed coconut oil
Lemon
~
Mix 1 part beeswax with 3 parts coconut oil in a bowl. Heat in microwave for ~30 seconds until it’s all melted. Squeeze the juice of a lemon in the bowl and stir. Pour into a wide glass jar. Let it cool for a few hours, and voila! Apply a thin layer to condition your wood to give it a brand new sheen so it lasts longer and prevents mold. Plus it’s totally food safe!
Oct 28, 2018 | Lifestyle, Sustainable Living
Feast your eyes on this tropical zero waste party idea!
My best friend Gabby Faaiuaso hosted a sustainable baby shower party for her oldest sister Siumu (who works for the local Environmental Protection Agency), and I was so impressed with the ingenuity of it all! Also impressive is the fact that she planned it all within a week’s time and got everyone together to make it eco-friendly.
It was a beautiful setup, and the best part is – everything was sourced locally! Remember the elei cloth napkins I made in my previous blog post? I made it especially for this day. Gabby (also known as Alafaga on social media) herself, is an amazing creative, videographer, and photographer in American Samoa and always advocates for local talent. She banded some of us together to create special details that brought it all together.
Venue: Faletalimalo, Utulei Beach Park
Decorations & Styling: Alafaga
Pallet tables & center pieces: Alafaga
Tropical backdrops: Alafaga & Ammon Fepulea’i
Coconut bowls: Pua Tofaeono & Alafaga
Elei cloth napkins: Nerelle
Baskets & ma’ilo plates: TheMindofMo & Guests
Desserts: Koko Samoa Bliss & She Bakes Too
Papaya stem straws: Alafaga
Chairs: Skyview Rentals
Game prizes: ASCC Land Grant plant starters, Mailelani coconut soap bars, & coconut shell earrings from Samoa
Follow Alafaga on Facebook, Instagram, and check out her photos from the event on this gallery!
Oct 27, 2018 | Create, Sustainable Living
A couple of weeks ago, Gabby told me she was planning her sister Siumu’s surprise baby shower and she might need some help. She said she was inspired by what I’ve been doing to live a more sustainable life and decided on an eco-friendly tropical theme for the party. What?! How cool!! This made me very excited to hear her list out all the ways she was opting for a zero waste event. I immediately offered to provide cloth napkins (instead of paper towels), and before I knew it, Gabby came over to my house with a giant bundle of orange fabric. I just had to cut and hem. But it seemed too plain, and Gabby was already pulling all the stops, so I had to level up (yassss to Ciara + Parri$).
I finally had a good reason to use this elei stencil I bought in Samoa over New Year.
It took a looooong time but once I set up my workbench and did a couple of test prints, I found my groove. I cut the long fabric into pieces that could fit 4 napkins, taped the stencil down and placed two 2×4 blocks to keep the fabric from warping, poured and painted with a roller, took it out to the balcony to dry, and repeated this… about 15 more times! With less than 24 hours before the event, I couldn’t leave them out to dry, so thankfully Ian helped and ironed all the pieces to heat set the fabric paint. Then I cut out the 4 napkins from each strip, and took it to my sewing machine to do a raw hem edge.
Like I said, it took foreverrrr. I started on Friday afternoon and finished at 5am the next day, just a few hours before the surprise baby shower! Oh man, if it weren’t for Gabby, I don’t think I would have done any of this but I’m glad they turned out. I’ll be posting photos from the beautiful baby shower super soon!
Oct 21, 2018 | Moments, Sustainable Living
Crocheting a small jute scouring pad to try eliminating store bought sponges.
Bags to carry goods on errands.
A grocery haul.
Full dinner ingredients from local CSA bag by Superstar Produce.
Galoshes I thrifted for $7, perfect for this rainy weekend.
Our sun-bleached `ava bowl. The after photo, conditioned and buffed with homemade wood butter.
The view I’ll never stop appreciating. My body waking me up before 6am all weekend.
Officer Scruffles sleeping in. My morning is better spent journaling and sipping matcha.
Food prep station on the island we made years ago.
A cat and his cat daddy. Both cutie kitties.
A colorful dinner plate with django salsa Dusty and Mai made. But having the space to only eat the carbs and save the salad for lunch tomorrow.
Sep 15, 2018 | Culture, Lifestyle, Sustainable Living
Happy World Cleanup Day everyone!
That’s today (September 15) in case you didn’t already know, and I don’t blame you because I literally just learned about it on Thursday morning! I emailed the 2 contact folks for World Cleanup Day in the USA to see how I could get involved, and after a flurry of emails, I had unknowingly signed up to be Team Leader for American Samoa’s participation in World Cleanup Day!
What is World Cleanup Day?
Essentially, World Cleanup Day is one day of clean up efforts around the world. It started in Estonia 10 years ago when just 4% of the country’s population made one major mission: to clean up the whole country in 1 day… yes, that’s 24 hours!!! This sparked World Cleanup Day as a recognized civic holiday, now in its 2nd year, and with support worldwide! From Fiji to New Zealand, to India, to the UAE, Argentina, USA, and now American Samoa. Millions of people around the world took a pledge to do their part, big and small, on this particular day to address the issue of trash and waste in our environments.
On top of these initiatives, there is a huge media movement that follows cleanups from 150+ participating countries. A live feed was broadcasted online, tracking the cleanup progress around the world on September 15 at the start of the International Date line in New Zealand… and because of my outreach, American Samoa was officially dubbed the final destination for the 2018 World Cleanup Day! WOOHOO! You can find a screencap of the Live video broadcast here.
Cool! Now what?
I was actually really excited to get such great feedback from Jim Sharman and Steve Jewett, the representatives for Let’s Do It! World and National Cleanup Day. But because I had just found out about the whole movement only 12 hours before it was to begin on the other side of the International Dateline, I really only had a day to make plans.
*Warning: Long Post ahead!*
Bluesky Cleanup / Laufou Shopping Center
I was doing all of this — sending emails back and forth, gathering information on World Cleanup Day, and telling my friends about the Coconut Point beach clean up — all during an off-site video shoot for work, and when I told my coworker Lauren, she suggested I ask our company to get involved. That was a great idea! I emailed my HR and Marketing managers and they said that if I could arrange it outside of working hours on such short notice, the company would sponsor trash bags, gloves, and a light breakfast. I was stoked! Soon after, I sent out the email asking for volunteers to show up an hour before work the next morning so we could clean up around our building. I knew not a lot of people could make it because it was outside of work hours, and a few of the departments were extra busy. But thankfully, we got a good group together and collected 100 gallons of trash; mostly cigarette butts, small plastics, and styrofoam.
Photos from our Friday, September 14 / Laufou Shopping Center cleanup at 7:30am
Capstone Cleanup / Lion’s Park
This incredible group of citizen scientists are members of Capstone AOG church. They already do monthly cleanups (working with the AS Coral Reef Advisory Group as volunteers to collect waste and extract data from what they gather), but when they learned about #WorldCleanupDay just 2 days ago (I told Ian, Ian told his coworker, and his coworker told her church group), they decided to do an extra one this month at the Lion’s Park!! We joined them this morning at 7am this morning and found a LOT of soda cans, water bottles, styrofoam cups and plates, plastic cutlery, chip bags—you name it!—just littered everywhere, ESPECIALLY on the shoreline! But I just wanna shout out this awesome group who made it fun, and made a big impact in just a couple of hours! Big thanks to Pa’i from the NPS Green Team for setting this up, and to Bluesky American Samoa for providing trash bags and gloves!
Photos from Saturday, September 15 / Lion’s Park cleanup at 7:00am
A Live Intermission
With an hour between the 7am cleanup at Lion’s Park and our 9:30am Coconut Point beach cleanup, I got a call from Jim Sharman, the Let’s Do It! World coordinator. He wanted to share information about American Samoa on the international live broadcast, and officially dub us the final destination for the 2018 World Cleanup Day! I was soooo excited to see them raise our flag, set it on the map, and then see the producer run in and write out ‘AMERICAN SAMOA’ next to our speck of an island, because people were getting us confused with our sister island, the independent country of Samoa. It was awesome, and it honestly felt so good to know that I played the part in making that happen.
Beach Cleanup / Coconut Point
Now THIS is the beach that I call home! This community is diverse, changing, and impactful. As soon as I learned about WCD, I immediately started a group chat about a beach cleanup, and everyone jumped on it! This morning, we started at 9:30am and in just a short amount of time, collected a lot of single use plastic and styrofoam, cans and water bottles, electrical wires, and old clothes that probably got left behind on the beach. It was a great feeling to see our beautiful beach for what it is, without the rubbish, and an even better feeling to be surrounded by a rad group of friends!
Photos from Saturday, September 15 / Coconut Point beach cleanup at 9:30am
From what I’ve learned in the last few days, it’s that people are interested and want to take part in effecting change. It’s just a matter of reaching out and getting stoked! And every bit of effort counts! Of course, this was only possible because of everyone who participated. Ya’ll are amazing! If you’re still reading, WOW. And fa’afetai tele lava from American Samoa, your final destination of the 2018 World Cleanup Day!
