I wish I would have brought?

[katiem8]

im sure i could wear makeup if i needed to but i just hate the feeling of it on my face in the heat so i don't bother. and i find that my hair gets kinda gunky by the end of the day if i'm outside or running errands & i put a bunch of product in it. but i'm coming to terms with my natural hair lol long & straight seems to work here.

[OpenD]

The natural look is definitely "in" on the islands, and I for one appreciate it immensely.

[hotzcatz]

Originally Posted by Cloey_young

I was just thinking, and mabe this is more like a new thread, but...
I lived on oahu in laie for a summer over 10 years ago, and I remember the humidity not being too bad for hair and makeup; but is the weather totally different in Hilo/Puna areas?
What else is different between the two places...is it like night and day, or is it pretty similiar? I'm just trying to be as prepared as possible.
I know I have said this a bunch already, but THANK YOU to everyone that has commented and really helped me to sort some things out and get great ideas!!!

Hilo and most of the parts of Puna would be a lot wetter than Laie, especially during the winter. Probably less effective tradewinds if you are in one of the flat subdivisions which have a lot of tree cover such as Paradise Park, Nanawale, Leilani Estates, Orchidland, etc. Without the tradewinds, it can be a bit humid/sticky on warmer days. If you get some elevation, then it will be cooler such as up around Volcano area. I think the Big Island has just about a climate zone for everyone, you just have to find it. It takes awhile to find the right spot, too, so if you can rent somewhere for several weeks or a month and look around it's best. Even then, rent somewhere for six months or a year before finding a permanent spot is good.

The humidity might be bad for makeup, but it is great for skin. We were on vacation on the mainland and needed skin creme and all sorts of moisturizers to feel "normal". Once we got back home, most of the skin cremes haven't been used although there is one I still use occasionally because I like the way it smells.

I was wondering how LDS folks move when they are supposed to also have a year's supply of food and such. Do you get a whole new supply at your new place or does all that get moved from where you were? We have a new LDS neighbor and I'm not sure if I should mention our food co-op group to her or not. Is it a touchy sort of subject I shouldn't mention?

[Cloey_young]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Hilo and most of the parts of Puna would be a lot wetter than Laie, especially during the winter. Probably less effective tradewinds if you are in one of the flat subdivisions which have a lot of tree cover such as Paradise Park, Nanawale, Leilani Estates, Orchidland, etc. Without the tradewinds, it can be a bit humid/sticky on warmer days. If you get some elevation, then it will be cooler such as up around Volcano area. I think the Big Island has just about a climate zone for everyone, you just have to find it. It takes awhile to find the right spot, too, so if you can rent somewhere for several weeks or a month and look around it's best. Even then, rent somewhere for six months or a year before finding a permanent spot is good.

The humidity might be bad for makeup, but it is great for skin. We were on vacation on the mainland and needed skin creme and all sorts of moisturizers to feel "normal". Once we got back home, most of the skin cremes haven't been used although there is one I still use occasionally because I like the way it smells.

I was wondering how LDS folks move when they are supposed to also have a year's supply of food and such. Do you get a whole new supply at your new place or does all that get moved from where you were? We have a new LDS neighbor and I'm not sure if I should mention our food co-op group to her or not. Is it a touchy sort of subject I shouldn't mention?

Thank you for the helpful info. It is good to be more prepared for the heat and humidity. We are staying in a beach house in Paradise Park for the first 6 weeks until we can find a more permanent place(any suggestions?)I was thinking of just outside of Hilo on the south side? So hopefully that will work out well.

As for the years supply of food...
It is more of a recommendation, it is something we should always try to have in case of an emergency. As for me, I am far from perfect in this area. My food storage would only last for a few months maybe, but not a full year. I am always trying to get it together though. I will bring as much food as I can when we make the move (on the 10th of Aug!), and try to get it going again after that, but I have much higher priorities at the moment.
It is definitley not a touchy subject for me, as for another LDS member I would think it was wierd if it was touchy for them. You should be just fine talking about it If you have any other questions, I would be more than happy to answer them. I hope your new neighbor turns out to be nice

[dianer29]

I am sorry that I bought great quality furniture to the island as the humidity will ruin it! I had beautiful leather handbags and leather shoes ,in less than 2 years ruined. I use Damp aid and I use baking soda . It is a losing battle.I have since bought tropical furniture that I am decorating our home with and love it. There is a great place for such a great place in Hilo by the mall,you make a left instead of a right at light heading into Hilo from Keaau. The person that runs the place has ordered what I did not find on site. We are very pleased with him. Ask for Mike tell him Diane and Bob from Keaau sent you!So I guess I should of brought furniture money.....lol

[hotzcatz]

The furniture place is Teak & Bamboo or is it The Home Place? I think both of those are on that street. We got our bedroom set from Teak & Bamboo five or six years ago and they are still nice. Solid wood although it's not teak, some sort of other wood stained dark to mimic old European furniture.

Six weeks by the beach in Paradise Park sounds nice. Kind of a long drive to get places, though, I think from the low end of Paradise Park.

I'll mention our food co-op to the new LDS neighbor. So far her husband and son have been very friendly and she's been sorta standoffish. I dunno if that's her nature or if she's still sort of shell shocked from the relocation. Her husband mentioned the job he got over here was sort of sudden and they hadn't planned on moving so she may not have had time to get used to the idea.

Since the LDS folks go by "wards" around here (I think that's the term they used) and those seem pretty set geographically, you may want to visit the church for each ward before you choose where to live. You may prefer the church in one ward over the church in the other. I'm not sure how big each district is, though, perhaps the one for Paradise Park includes Hilo.

We try to keep at least several months worth of food on hand just because we are a remote island 2,500 miles away from the major supply center. If the barges stop for whatever reason (last time it was a dock worker strike) then the islands run out of things very quickly. A big earthquake in California which destroyed the docks would put more hurt on Hawaii than a huge tsunami. Etc., etc.

[Calico Salsa]

I know it's not ideal menu-wise, but we just bought that bucket of emergency food from Costco. Square white bucket, and it contains "200 adult servings" and has a 20 year shelf life. The meals all require water, they are mostly soups and that kind of thing. For a real emergency, you would need a water filter too, which we have. Having it next to the emergency/camping supplies gives us a bit more peace of mind, but we'd go to it last after exhausting our canned food supplies, or maybe as a way to supplement them.

The ward for this area has a canning machine, so the church members can can their own items. They had one time when they were making an emergency can for each family member - it contained things like a candle, waterproof matches, some kind of energy bar... just enough for one person to get by for a few days, canned in a big tall can. For those that didn't can, they also suggested taking the same items and putting them in a waxed container like a milk or POG carton, then taping the top shut and sealing it with melted candle wax to make it waterproof.

hotzcatz, how do you store your emergency foods?

[hotzcatz]

It depends on the "emergency" food. A lot of it is in the garden and perennial landscaping - moringa, sweet potatoes, coconuts, edible hibiscus, etc. Some of it is running around the yard, chickens, rabbits, wild pigs, etc. We try to keep a continual supply of some sort of edibles coming in all year around. It isn't enough to live on continuously but it really helps supplement. Ask your Filipino neighbors, many of them have a lot of these plants and many of them aren't depending on the grocery store for all their food, either. One of my neighbors just set up a modest hydroponic lettuce growing setup in her backyard. We get lettuce delivered (boys on bicycles work well for lettuce delivery) twice a week now.

As things are on sale at the grocery store we stock up on canned goods and dry items. Those are kept on shelves and we put the new stuff in the back. We also home can extra to save it for later. Earlier this year was twenty quarts of green beans, six pints of bamboo shoots, yesterday it was four and a half pints of pork (feral pig) and beans (dried white navy beans). I'd cooked up a batch of beans and made pork and bean soup which mutated into pork and beans after adding tomato paste, ginger and molasses and then I was tired of eating it so it got canned for later. I'm working on a new storage cabinet for home canned goods since the price of food has gotten expensive at the grocery lately so we are doing a lot more home canning.

In the freezer is usually a bunch of frozen bananas for smoothies, fifty pounds of flour, assorted bits of frozen pig, guacamole, frozen milk, and some beef and lamb from our neighbors, etc. The house runs on a solar system so we aren't concerned about the power going out. When Thanksgiving turkeys are on sale in mid-November, I stock up on those although my DH just sold my turkey supply to someone else last week. They needed them for a party and couldn't afford to pay the current price of turkey. So no more turkey for us until November again. I'm running low on frozen chickens, too, guess I should hatch out a few more. All we have left are five hens who lay really well so I don't want to eat them. I can swap some eggs from my hens with my neighbor who has a rooster with her hens so the eggs will hatch, then eat the roosters as they start to crow. The hens are usually kept or sold.

We also belong to a food co-op which brings in food from Azure Standard. It is shipped over by barge so volume costs more than weight. Generally we order things like honey (at least until I get some bees going), molasses, dried beans, whole grains (for grinding into flours), raisins (a 30# box lasts a long time), assorted oils and oatmeal from them. A twenty pound bag of rolled oats is really inexpensive. Add cinnamon, molasses, some honey, raisins and hot water and it's really good oatmeal. Rolled oats are added to bread, made into granola, etc.

Actually, this isn't really "emergency" food, this is what we eat most of the time. If it is something from the store or something annual that doesn't show up in the yard all year around, we try to save a year's worth somehow. If it is something we can always get from the yard like coconuts, we don't have any stored.

We also mostly store ingredients instead of food. Flour gets made into bread twice a week, assorted vegetables and greens are made into salad about three times a week, (having a pre-made container of green salad in the refrigerator means we eat a lot more greens than we did before), salad dressing is made about weekly now, mayonnaise about once every other week, etc. Guava jam is an every other year event, etc.

This whole method of eating has sort of evolved and we seem to be shopping at the grocery less and less which saves quite a bit of money and also means we aren't eating weird chemical laden foods.

I suppose if I were moving over from the mainland and bringing things (getting more or less back to the original topic), I'd bring over food handling things such as a big pressure cooker/canner, kitchen aid mixer with meat grinder, etc., food dehydrator, grain grinder, gambrel and hoist, etc. Things for processing food in it's more original state since we don't have many stores where you can buy a lot of this sort of stuff.

[kaileio]

Bump!
I would love to hear more!!!