Vida

Anyone else find it downright depressing to cook with tomatoes in the winter? no amount of filtering can perk those up I made lentil soup last night and looked at them in the pot...le sigh. That is all.

I'm hoping everyone received our Holiday cards by now ... :) This year I decided to go for a stamp (with a sponge).  Mike & I turned on Elf and planted ourselves on the floor to get started.  I planned to draw a bow on the wreathe and that would be the outside, but apparently drawing bows is not a skill of mine.  After doing a couple, I scrapped the bow idea. I looked at them all spread out on the floor and decided to add the word "peace."  With everything going on right now it seemed very appropriate. P.S. 2014

Last weekend, Mike & I took a long weekend to visit Palm Springs, California.  How/Why?  I've been wanting to visit Palm Springs and on a whim about a month ago I looked at flights.  There were flights from Chicago to LA for $200! We stayed in the town over to save some money.  If I had all the money I would stay at El Saguaro.   For sure!  It's nickname is the rainbow hotel.  We stayed at a Residence Inn with free breakfast. :) Budget travel...from hotwire. We tried to squeeze in a lot of activities in little time.  Relaxation through movement.  Here's a little recap if you'd like to see. Let's start with El Saguaro since I already mentioned it above.  It's nickname "the rainbow hotel" is no joke.  I loved it and would stay there in a heartbeat.  We ended up just walking around the lobby and having lunch at their restaurant. #vacation We walked around their downtown and then drove...

Monday evening we hosted our first cookie exchange!  With the fire crackling ( on the TV ), good company, and lots of cookies and treats it was a success! After I sent out the invite, I realized I should have a plan for said cookie exchange.  Aside from, as I wrote in my email invite, bring any treat to share and just have the recipe available in case anyone asks.   Then I started reading about intense cookie exchanges.  Whew, some cookie exchanges have A LOT of rules.  That's not our style though and we had a lovely time.   Everyone brought their treats which we laid out on the kitchen table and put a label by them with the name of the treat and who brought it. Once everyone was there we gathered in the kitchen and everyone "introduced" their treat and if there was a story, told a story.  It was fun! Then we all loaded up on treats to try. And everyone took lots home to enjoy there too. I was great to have everyone who c...

Does everyone remember their stockings growing up?  Maybe it's odd that I do.  We had adorable bear stockings growing up until we had a fire in middle school.  Then we got new stockings from Lands End (I think).  Every time we add a stocking it's hard to find a matching holder since Lands End doesn't make those to match anymore... At my grandma's we have everyone's stocking with their name stitched by my aunt.  I think they're going to run out of room very soon.  (I think there are two more, maybe three, since I took this picture in 2014.) As we put up our Christmas decorations, we realized Mike did not have a stocking. There was a bit of panic because I could NOT find my fabric.  And then I finally did after tearing apart our storage space.  Whew. And I whipped one together.  There are SO many fun stocking ideas out there! I went with the simple toe approach since my stocking is even simpler.   i believe i need to iro...