Working in a Winter Wonderland

One of my co-workers said, "it feels like we work in a Hallmark movie" and I hate most Hallmark movies but I appreciated the sentiment! 

I got to work on the tree lot a few times this season!  I loved the smell of the pines, how happy everyone was, and that it thankfully wasn't cold!  I really think we needed cute string lights, a photo display area, and some hot cocoa though!  Haha. 

This fills my cup

I love everything the potted desk girls do!

Hot Cocoa Bar

We all love Cocoa Mojo and warm drinks in the winter.  Cocoa Mojo is a little lower glycemic than regular cocoa and has medicinal mushrooms.  We add collagen protein.  So the actual macros are about like a protein drink, but with cleaner ingredients!

Ingredients: Organic Peruvian Cocoa, Organic Coconut Palm Sugar, and a blend of Organic Extracts of: Cordyceps, Coriolus Versicolor (Turkey Tail), Maitake, Agaricus Blazei, Reishi, Shitake

Jared met the owners of Enerhealth at a trade show at least a decade ago.  And since then we have been hooked!  We just get it on Amazon.

I bought these cute mugs from Anthro and the electric tea kettle from Amazon.  I have loved having all my stuff for tea ready to go so easily.  Considering it was an unused space before and a junk drawer, I'm very happy!

Christmas Card looking different this year

So I have a regret.  For years now I've said I wish we took a professional family photo every year.  We mostly have but we missed a few, especially early on.  

This year I figured we couldn't do them cause Miles is in Brazil.  But then I realized that people still do them!  It's okay if everyone can't be in it.  I wish I'd done something with the rest of us.  

We did do a quick iPhone picture for Christmas cards up at Tibble.  Elise said she'd take a quick one of the four of us still at home.  We were planning to meet up at Tibble and then on the way we ran over a sharp rock and blew out a tire.  AND no service in the canyon.  So I hopped out and hoped they were not already there.  Thankfully after just a few seconds I was able to flag them down.  We all piled in their tiny Subaru.  Soleil was very amused to see the clown car!  We took a couple quick pics.  Then headed back home to get the truck and figure out the tire.

Then we realized when we sold our last car we accidentally gave the new owners the snow tires for our current car!  No!  So we didn't have a spare.  But Jared had it towed to the tire place and we just got new ones put on the next day.

We had a separate photo of each of the grown kids that are married and one of Miles on the back. 

Its different and feels a little weird!  But next year we will be altogether again!

And it was a good opportunity to take some new ones of Soleil.  She's much bigger than in April!

Festive

 I love all the garlands, trimmings and arrangements for Christmas.  It's been fun to play around with some things.

We are using my grandmas china more and it's been fun to play around with how colors look with the blue plates.  I love the colorful Couleur Nature table linens.  Mixed this with the anthro 12 days of Christmas stuff.  Not sure if it really pulls off the look I was going for but we will keep playing around!

Made some porch pots!  This was fun to forage in my yard a bit!  I wanted the tree top, not just cuttings.  So I bought a porch pot from Costco and used the greens in it to make 3 separate porch pots.  I also used Ilex berry branches and sugar pine cones from work.  And added the birch and red dogwood branches from work and my ornamental kale from the fall pots.  I think it's cute!  We put it together really fast and it's not perfect, but I like it!

I lost my Felco hand pruners for a couple days and had to use some others.  Wow.  Forgot how much better the Felcos are.  

Always have an amaryllis for grandma!  I bought some waxed bulb amaryllis at Costco.  They were cute!  Bloomed early!  Wish I'd bought more.

Next up is an orange garland!  It's such a trend but also super cute.

Christmas Fun

Soleil loves her little table that used to be in Sorens room!

The Live Nativity in Alpine is always so fun and so beautiful!  My kids love animals more than your average kids and so a chance to see a camel up close is exciting.  They loved the sheep, horses, Highland Cow, donkey, chickens, peacocks, kangaroos, etc.  Soleil loved the animals too.  Live music and hot cocoa at the end.  We love this tradition!

Soleil is enjoying the nativity set.  We all are very impressed that she said "Jesus" when she saw the baby in the manger.  She also says "Jesus" when she sees the picture Elise painted in the basement.  We don't know how she learned that the Little people baby in the manger was also Jesus.   He obviously doesn't look like the painting.  

when Elise was on her mission I framed this painting she had copied from a famous one.  She was embarrassed I put it up because it wasn't done yet.  But I think it looks great and it is perfect to me.

And I collected some cute German/scandinavian looking ornaments from work and made the tree with all the kids cute picture ornaments from over the years look cute.  Its small but I love it!

 

Aquarium Lights

This year the Aquarium did a really cool light display.  My kids all love the Aquarium and we decided to go.  Soleil kept saying "wow" so it was worth it to see her cute reaction.  It includes admission to the aquarium and it was fun to see sharks and the rays, etc.  Penguins were all asleep since it was night.  But that was cute to see as well.  It only took 15 minutes or so to walk through the light display.  We may have spent longer at all the fun things but two of my kids forgot coats (or I forgot to tell them it was partly outside) so we had to hustle a bit.  Still so fun!

 

I Love my Job!

 Last Friday I ran 3 miles and then went to work for 7.5 hours.  23,000 steps!

Today I ran 4.5 miles and ran errands, walked a half mile.  And only 13,000 steps.  

Just one more reason why I love my job!

I love working outside.  I love working with plants.  The people I work with are so nice.  

I get lots of steps in!  And I get to see all the cute Christmas stuff.

Also somedays I just get tired of doing all the things I've done for 25 years in my own home and it's fun to go somewhere else and do chores.  However, I only wish I could listen to a podcast or audiobook at work, but I can't.  I have only one ear that works and I need it for my radio.