One of the best things about living in Kailua is travelling back to Kailua from Honolulu, driving over the Pali in an amazing tropical rain that clots in the mountains. As you move out of Nuuanu and the rain is coming down in a certain way, you know there will be waterfalls. Everyone has favorite waterfalls of course. Brook's and her twins' favorite waterfall is just outside the second tunnel.My favorite waterfalls are on the Honolulu side of the tunnel, probably because they mostly happen with this certain kind of rain and then they disappear. These particular waterfalls are long pulls of white taffy cascading down jagged mountains that look higher than they really are. Usually at least three on either side, a total of six, flank the highway. They are just big enough to look impressive, and there are enough of them to know why the mountains are so green.Hawai`i shows her magnificence in charming and ephemoral ways. Lately we have seen enormous, thick rainbows in rich roygbiv. Living here is so amazing. It's good that things likerainbows and waterfalls that come and go are here to remind us.
We have been walking on Kailua Beach this week, and Brook spent Saturday there babysitting her grandnephews.
There has been a neap tide, so it has been unnecessary to check the tides --- beach is much better for walking at low tide. (in case you didn't know it, a neap tide is a tide that occurs when the difference between high and low tide is least; the lowest level of high tide. Neap tide comes twice a month, in the first and third quarters of the moon.)
The beach is as beautiful as ever, busy on weekends, but pretty much wide open during the week. With the hot, humid weather we have been having, a walk on the beach guarantees at least an hour with the ocean breezes -- as cooling and miraculous as ever.
Want to know how hot it has been? A year ago, our friends at SunTechHawaii installed 14 photovoltaic panels on our roof so that our swimming pool would be warm in the "winter". Okay, we know that mainland folks are LOL. We forgot to turn the unit off, and on Sunday, our pool was 105 degrees. Plenty of sunshine = giant outdoor bathtub.
Kailua is becoming more and more of a walking town, and more and more visitors are discovering us. This is good news for Lanikai Bath and Body and all of the other local retailers (and the nationals as well -- Kailua Town Center has the only ASAP by California Pizza Kitchen in Hawaii -- some kind of first, we guess).
We're all set for a great summer, and hoping the tradewinds return to favor us most of the time.
P.S. News on tv says the Atlantic Hurricane season is going to be bad, and the Pacific Hurricane season is going to be less active than usual. Hope they're wrong on the first count, and right on the second.
According to one website we recently looked at "salt" is what people used to get paid in, and it is the basis for the word "salary". Wikipedia in fact says that the etymology of the word Salary derives from the Middle English salaire, from the Latin word salarium, a payment made in salt (sal) or for salt, from salarius meaning pertaining to salt. So it true. Hence the phrases "worth your salt" and "salt of the earth." Any way you look at it, salt is and always has been important.
After a long day, a nice long soak in a hot bath is just the ticket. If you add bath salts to the experience, so much the better! Adding a little salt to your water can actually help improve circulation and reduce tenderness.
Lanikai Bath and Body bath salts come in a variety of soothing fragrances, using only Hawaiian salt as their principal ingredient. Our Mineral Bath Salt combines Hawaiian Sea Salts and Hawaiian Ogo Seaweed to relax you and soften your skin while bathing. Rich in minerals including magnesium, calcium, sodium and potassium, our bath salts soothe your body with a warm bath, easing muscle tension while softening your skin. The Mineral Bath Salts of Lanikai Bath & Body. Made in Hawaii. Naturally. Our ingredients speak for themselves. (definitely worth their salt!).
The sense of smell, we all know, is the most powerful of the five senses. People recall smells with a 65% accuracy after a year, while the visual recall of photos sinks to about 50% after only three months. According to www.senseofsmell.org "Our odor memories frequently have strong emotional qualities and are associated with the good or bad experiences in which they occurred. Olfaction is handled by the same part of the brain (the limbic system) that handles memories and emotions.
We can immediately recognize and respond to smells from childhood such as the smell of clean sheets, cookies baking in the oven, the smell of new books or a musty room in Grandma’s house." One of the most famous moments in literature records Proust's immediate recollection of his childhood with the smell of petit madelines at the bakery.
At Lanikai Bath and Body, we know how important the sense of smell is -- and we know that it shouldn't be overwhelming. We've carefully developed our scents with an expert in horticulture, resulting in products that are light and remarkably true to original flowers and fruits. Even so, they are long lasting and as pleasing as our lotions are light.
Our Mango Coconut recalls a lazy day at the beach. Our Plumeria is the stuff of dreams of stepping off the plane in Hawaii.
We love the scents of our beautiful islands ~ we've translated them in special lotions, butters, salts, scrubs, shampoos and gels so you can enjoy them every day. BTW, the wonderful scents of Lanikai Bath and Body come with only good memories!
Mother's Day is this Sunday, and if our Mothers were still alive, we would be looking for a way to butter them up.
For me, this would be an easy thing, because as early as I can remember, my Mother was a fan of what we used to call hand cream. It was everywhere in our house, and she was forever lathering herself in hand creams -- usually by Jergens, because she read somewhere that Elizabeth Taylor said that was how she kept her skin beautiful.
Because my mother was a fan of hand cream, so am I. Far sooner than my skin needed rehydration, I was rehydrating like crazy. These days, hand creams are called lotions, usually hand and body lotions. And we have them in more than 18 different scents in our store Lanikai Bath and Body -- located in Kailua, on Oahu, and in outer space at www.lanikaibathandbody.com.
My business partner, Brook, whose Mother is also gone, loves our body butters. I am pretty sure when our mothers were alive there was no such thing as body butter -- there was hand cream and there was Nivea... the gooey greasy version of hand cream that could be a butter.
When my mother grew older and bored of sitting around during the cold Connecticut winters, she would lather up and stick her hands out -- so her dog Rion (named Orion after the consellation) could lick it off. As it turns out, Rion loved hand cream too.
Our body butters are light and lovely, creamy and smelling terrific. If my Mother were alive today, I would send her body butters ... in Hawaiian scents that she loved so much when she came to visit me in Hawaii: plumeria, first and foremost, anything with coconut (we have mango coconut, coconut lime verbena and pineapple coconut) and tahitian gardenia. Gardenia was my Mother's favorite flower.
Brook's mother, who was lucky enough to live in Hawaii, also loved gardenia. She would take fresh flowers and tuck them into her bra ... wafting her way in and out of everybody's day -- beautiful Hawaii.
So this Sunday, if our mothers were alive, we would butter them up. If you are lucky enough to still have your mother, we suggest you do the same.
Lanikai Bath and Body products are hand made in upcountry Kula on the island of Maui. We use only the finest natural ingredients from Hawai`i. Lotions, butters, scrubs, salts, oils and shampoos are made in small amounts so that they are always fresh and of course our ingredients, always natural. No methyl paraben, no chemicals or detergents or other fillers.
Our products were created with veteran horticulturist Denise Diamond on Maui who has been formulating body care and spa products for more than 25 years. She co-founded one of the first natural body care companies in California in the 1970s and in 1989 moved to the Hawaiian islands with her husband.
One of the best things about living in Kailua is travelling back to Kailua from Honolulu, driving over the Pali in an amazing tropical rain that clots in the mountains. As you move out of Nuuanu and the rain is coming down in a certain way, you know there will be waterfalls. Everyone has favorite waterfalls of course. Brook's and her twins' favorite waterfall is just outside the second tunnel.
