Protip - Kauai Causual Dining.

From a recent vacation to the Poipu area on Hawaii's island of Kauai, I have a few tips for casual dining:

• Keoki's Paradise is always delicious. If you don't have have the time or budget for the main dining room, you can ask for bar / cafe seating where they have a simpler menu in the $15 range. If you bring your receipt back on a second visit, you'll get a free Hula Pie dessert - yum!
• Merriman's Fishhouse, in the Kukui'ula shopping and dining plaza, has a Downstairs Cafe which is a more casual and cheaper version of the upstairs restaurant. The Downstairs Cafe has a happy hour with $5 mai tais and $3 draft beer.
• Brennecke's Beach Broiler has fabulous open air seating right across from Poipu Beach park. The full menu is rather expensive for what you get, but you can use the happy hour (3-5pm) menu for some relaxation after an afternoon at the beach.

To Dos.

There are a lot of useful tips in Lifehacker's article about how to make your to-do list do-able. Here are the best tips:

• You're the boss of you. Put yourself into "think" mode and figure out what you've gotta do.
• Break it down. You can't do a whole project (like "buy house") all at once, but you can do "find open houses for Sunday" and "schedule appointment with bank".

Intro to Fused Glass.

This summer, I took an "Intro to Glass Fusing" class at Aquila Glass School in Portland. Instructor Scott Curn showed off several finished fused pieces and explained how we could get the same effect as the demo piece. Then we made our own fused glass plates, and a few pendants which are not shown here. The class was a great introduction to both glass fusing and Aquila's studio. My only complaint is that the class didn't teach us how to cut large pieces of glass, but the staff is willing to teach that if you come in for open studio time.

This small nut bowl was the result of Scott's challenge to take a boring grey square and "make it art". For "art", I decided that pink was in order. I'm really in love with the result - particularly the slightly pulled-in sides of the dish.

This was the "go crazy" plate, where each student got full access to the scrap drawer to build on their clear glass rectangle. There was a reasonable selection of large pieces from the blue bin, so I grabbed some nice ones and made this patchwork pattern. This plate is great for servicing fancy truffles, or crackers and cheese.

I was surprised at how easy glass fusing is; compared to glass blowing. Fusing is pretty much about cutting glass, stacking it, and then melting it. While fusing isn't quite as fun as blowing glass, but it is much easier to do in hot weather.

If you want to learn about glass fusing, check out Bullseye Glass' online video kilnforming lessons. They have a few videos available for free!

As always, thanks to the husband for the photography.