Weekend Coffee share is a time for us to take a break out of our busy lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)! Please grab a cup of coffee or tea and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? any weekend plans?
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays for those of you that celebrate this holiday season differently. No matter how you celebrate whether its for the birth of Jesus or other traditions it is celebrated all over the world one way or another and for me it means family time. I long for these days with my family so I am so excited about the next 2 weeks!!
Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea? I am drinking a decaf coffee as I need to head to bed as soon as I am done sharing this post. I worked last night and work tonight so I need to get my Z’s in and REALLY wanted to share one last coffee share before Christmas. I will be busy and so here I am wishing you all a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY! I hope your wishes are granted and your dreams come true! Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Or sappy, I think it sounds wonderful, but some of my wishes are harder to grant ~ suffice it to say I wish for world peace and happiness. My hippie mind at work! ❤ ❤ ❤
My endeavors this weekend before Christmas. I baked 6 different kinds of sweets to give away as gifts! Pictured are 4, next are the other 2.Homemade from scratch brownies! A cup of chocolate chips added to make them extra chocolaty! A great recipe I found for Chocolate Chip Pecan cookies. Scrumptious!
I have been busy baking which I just love. I had lofty goals and met most of them. Pictured are Magic cookie bars (aka 7 layer bars), Sandies, White Chocolate cherry shortbread cookies, ginger molasses cookies, homemade brownies and chocolate chip pecans. I was going to make coconut lime shortbread cookies but ran out of time. I may make them one day next week as I bought limes and have all the ingredients. I have never made them before and am always wanting to try new recipes. 😀 😀 😀
The white chocolate cherry shortbread cookies are a first for me. They have almond extract so they have an almond cherry buttery taste, pretty darn tasty if I do say so myself!! It is really fun to give and super fun to bake! What do you do during the holidays? I use to bake much earlier and then mail to all my sister’s/brother but our family’s have grown and time just slips by so I continue to bake but just give to my employees, coworkers and friends. Maybe I will plan better and once again mail to my family, we will see!
Enjoying the trails in between baking! Haha, I can’t ignore my ponies. And yes, these are new photos. I just can’t help myself – I take a lot of photos! Chloe, Zack and I out on the trails. I am ponying Zack and he is such a good boy!
You know I just have to share more photos of my weekend as I was able to fit in a few rides. I hope you enjoyed your coffee or tea with me as I totally enjoyed our visit! I have to get this finished. I hope you all have a great holiday. Most everyone I know are in a good place right now in their lives and so cheers to all! And for those of you who struggle through the holidays, stay strong, keep smiling, try and find the good during these weeks. I know sometimes its hard, especially if you miss a loved one or two. (I’m smiling up at my parents today.) LOVE TO ALL! ❤
What makes you smile? This is my weekly smile hosted by my blogging friend Trent! I just love to share!
I just have to smile and share this cute Kitty named Wolfie. He is staying at my house until we make an exchange with my son and his kitties. I talked about this kitty exchange in my last weekend coffee share. I just wanted to post some fun photos of this beautiful cat that will have great fun being back with his brother in just about a week. 😀
He fell asleep, he loves his bungalow!Hard to catch him sitting still sometimes! He is so sweet!He has knocked a few ornaments off the tree as expected! Haha! He’s so intrigued. He has been up the tree a bit too, but mostly leaves it alone.
I have enjoyed sharing my weekly smile this week. I am trying hard to not feel stressed about the holidays. I need to still shop (whether online or in a store) as I’ve become a last minute shopper. When the kids were little we would plan better and often shop early and hide presents. Those were the days. Now it’s usually a bit frantic as we near Christmas. We are sharing presents during New Year’s this year so it gives us some extra days. I am really happy about that!
Now on to baking. I absolutely LOVE to bake and every year try and bake as many cookies as I can and I often try new recipes. I will have to let you know how it goes as baking starts tomorrow! I will put together gift bags with baked goods and a small gift to all my employees. And if I bake enough I will share with other friends and co-workers. I’m so happy that the kitty situation is moving along and all will be in their new homes by the end of the year! 😀
He loves to curl up on my lap. Love him! ❤
Thank you for visiting my smile. I hope you had a lot to smile about this week. It is a busy time for many, and I am sure I am not the only one feeling a little stress through these holidays. Have a wonderful week!
Weekend Coffee share is a time for us to take a break out of our busy lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)! Please grab a cup of coffee or tea and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? any weekend plans?
I am here up North about 3 hours from my house visiting my daughter. My son came along to see her new apartment and I always LOVE our little trips as we usually visit some local cool places. We ate dinner in Solvang which isn’t too far away. It was a wonderful dinner and the evening was brisk as we walked around before our reservations. We went to a book store there, one of my daughter’s favorite stores. It is mine too, I love books of all kinds and usually my daughter and I end up in the cooking section perusing through cookbooks trying to figure out which one to buy! We both have quite a collection of cookbooks, haha, but neither one of us have time to cook like we would like! We both will be trying to cook more, as it is probably cheaper and a healthier way to sustain ourselves! Dang, I forgot to ask you would you like coffee or tea? my apologies, as I ramble on here I have cold ice tea as well. I try very hard to not drink soft drinks, I think I lost a pound or two removing them from my diet, hehe, I try where I can!
All decorated for Christmas in Solvang!To the right is a park and they were playing live music. Love this little town!Goofy photo of the three of us! Haha, I only took this one and decided to share!Dinner, sea bass with rice and veggie. Delicious and thank you my sweet daughter! ❤
While visiting my son and I have been helping my daughter build some furniture she ordered. One of the bigger items was a couch frame. She just loves the 60’s look, it is called boho (bohemian) and I love her spirit and eclectic artistic style! She had bought these big long cushions that are for a couch frame but she just had them on the floor. After a few months living with these on the floor with a bunch of pillows she realized that having it raised would be more comfortable. It was fun to build the couch frame and it is really comfortable now and the small coffee table she bought from Ikea is now the right height near the couch! She will be hanging some tapestry, I can’t wait to see it hung up on the wall! It will look really COOL! But we can’t hang it while Wolfie the kitty is here as he will tear it down, or try too… How is your coffee or tea? Need a refill? I just refilled mine and am eating some homemade cookies we got from the Christmas party last night. We went to my daughter’s work party, what FUN and it was cowboy themed! Yeehaw, my kind of party! I wish I brought my cowboy hat, but I had boots on and a flannel cowboy shirt and jeans. Fun times!
I didn’t take a photo of the couch, but I also put together 2 stools from Ikea! They were really fun to put together. They are very sturdy and will be an addition to her kitchen table with 2 chairs. Eclectic all the way, I just LOVE IT!
On to cats, we just LOVE cats but cats can be a handful and a 6 month old kitten who is very mischievous living in a small apartment who’s mom is very busy working very long hours is difficult and since my dear sweet kitty has gone to heaven, I am catless. I just made up that word but it makes sense to me. But the cat story gets a bit convoluted and crazy because we are going to do musical cats! You see my son has the brother to the cat my daughter has and when they took home this brother kitten 6 months ago, it made the total cat number in their house 4 and it seems with this number things have gone awry, and one of their cats is spraying or marking (because of stress, most likely) and they had never done this before. My son and family realize now that 4 cats overall is just too much, so here is the plan.
My son and family have 2 cats that are sister’s and these litter mates will come to live with me and my hubby. When they bring these 2 cats they will take Wolfie, the brother of the kitten they have. So the 2 sister’s will be in the house by themselves and then the brothers will be back together again. My son has one other cat which gets along with Dublin the other brother. I am bringing home Wolfie and the exchange will happen next week when my son drives home from Arizona before Christmas. That is one reason why I am up at my daughter’s to bring kitty home for the exchange. We will go from no cats to two cats. My daughter from one cat to no cat and my son from 4 cats to 3 cats. Haha, are you following along? Did you do the math right? Are we in school with a math problem? how many cats do I have? 😀 😀 😀
Wolfie the obnoxious but absolutely loveable kitty. He loves his cat toys!
As I write this my daughter is making cinnamon rolls. I am hoping for more coffee to go with my cinnamon roll and I am wondering what this kitty pictured above is going to do to my Christmas tree at home! YIKES! I am sure he will try to climb to the top! And am praying he won’t knock it over, I think my coffee share next week will be very entertaining of what this cat is going to do to us for the one week he will stay with us, maybe he will surprise us and not cause to much damage or wreckage or upheaval – what ever word to describe it. I purposely did not put any of my really pretty ornaments that could break on the tree this year. I don’t think it will fall over, but you never know. Think the worse and hope for the best? isn’t that a saying?
Thank you for having coffee with me this weekend. What are you up to this weekend? Shopping for Christmas? Oh dear, I’m behind on shopping and gift buying. I am going to be a last minute shopper this year for sure, I already know this!! Just always busy and the harder part, what to buy? Sometimes just small things from the heart is all you need, usually that’s what I do. I will try and put in a link to the coffee share’s here. And ya’ll have a wonderful weekend!
I said I would share my Christmas tree decorated so I ended up taking about 4 photos and they all came out a bit different. I am just going to share all of them. The lights on the Christmas tree are pretty new, maybe only a year or two old and they change colors which I think is kinda cool. As I took the photos the colors kept changing from all colors to just white! It makes for a fun look I think. This has really put me in the Christmas spirit, maybe it will help you too? We haven’t gotten any presents yet this year, the time is ticking! YIKES!
This is the colorful lights. The other half of the 20 bears I have collected are all around the fireplace. Yes, I counted them and we stopped buying them after the 20th bear!Another close shot of the colored lights – I accidentally cut off the star, too close! LolI like the softer colors of this photo even though it’s a little dark near the fireplace. This is the white lights as they change!Same tree but with the lights white, pretty cool as I really like this photo and the lighting!
Now, if I can figure out what to get everyone for Christmas I think I would be good. I still need to buy the Christmas cards I wanted and then we are picking names for immediate family. This will help with the Christmas shopping this year! For me, my present is just being with family and enjoying each others company. THAT IS THE BEST PRESENT OF ALL! ❤
What makes you smile? This is my weekly smile hosted by my blogging friend Trent! Thank you Trent as I just Love to share!
Welcome to my weekly smile and for me this week my smile goes to something that we all Love I think and that is the sun. I am so happy to see the sun and the warmth from the sun just made me smile! I also thought that my ponies were enjoying the sun as well and yes, I just have to share as they were really relaxed enjoying the beautiful weather when they were turned out and you know, I just have to share!
My girlfriends horse Gracie! You can see I am along the fence as she is in the arena wanting a treat! The trees were being trimmed. The row of trees are all pomegranate trees and the horses like eating them and Zack is rummaging for some goodies!
I am outside the arena fence taking this photo with Gracie right near me in the first photo. I decided to zoom in on Chloe as she is WAY in the back of arena in the corner which I found amusing as she just stood there for a long time. I later saw some cows in the adjacent field that I am sure she was looking at, I wonder what she was thinking?
I haven’t seen her do this before as she stood there resting her leg for a long while. Over 10 minutes which is a long time when you are lose in an arena! Zack finally made it down to where Chloe was standing. I thought my zoom photos turned out pretty good! I can’t believe how clean and white Zack’s coat is as there is mud everywhere! I am a happy grey horse owner with his nice clean coat!
That’s my smile for today! Short, simple and sweet. What made you smile this week? it can be something really simple like having the sun warm your cheek. I actually took these photos yesterday, such an awesome day. Today it was actually colder and more dreary without the sun. The clouds were hovering for most of the morning and then the sun peeked out and I enjoyed a wonderful trail ride just Chloe, Zack and I – so peaceful. I hope you all have a great week and thank you kindly for visiting my smile!
Weekend Coffee share is a time for us to take a break out of our busy lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)! Please grab a cup of coffee or tea and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? any weekend plans?
Welcome to my weekend coffee share. I just got back from the stables enjoying my time with my ponies on a sunny day until the rain clouds moved in and they just rolled right on in and no more sun! It is raining now this afternoon and 50% chance of rain Saturday and Sunday. Basically it will be raining for the whole weekend. Welcome December! Wow, we had a crazy wet year last year and I was hoping for a bit of a break this year. I know we always need the rain, but when you own horses it’s a love/hate relationship with any kind of weather! I forgot to ask, do you need a refill on your coffee? or are you drinking tea, maybe ice tea? I’m getting a refill to go with my cookie snack! CRAZY WEATHER!!
My hubby is such a sweetheart and put out a bunch of Christmas decoration. I always decorate the tree. So this is the before photo, and I need to get off my lazy butt and decorate the tree. Instead I am sitting here writing this coffee share! 😀Earlier in the day I was here getting them out, exercised and groomed! 😀I called Zack’s name and he looked at me while Chloe ignored me. I’m lucky their stalls are dry under their shelters!Chloe is so sweet. I can’t help myself and say often, I just LOVE her winter coat color! She is so dark this year, pretty girl!
I won’t show a decorated tree in this post because I really want to share this now and it will take me too long to get the whole tree decorated. It will be motivating instead to get the tree decorated so I can write a new post about my decorations! I like that idea, so ya’ll will have to wait to see the finished tree. I know everyone has seen a million tree decorations but it sure helps put me in the Christmas spirit! And I shouldn’t be so lazy, but working night shift and taking care of ponies, one gets a little tuckered out and now I have to decorate a tree! Are you feeling sorry for me yet? Haha, I’m just kidding of course, I enjoy Christmas but I have so many decorations I just need to get motivated to decorate! I’m just going on and on about this, I’m the hugest procrastinator. LOL 😀
I just LOVE our collection of Christmas bears! This is only half of them. There is one snowman in the bunch. We bought one a year as the kids were growing up!
I am trying really hard to get into the spirit and thought I would share my bears. How do you decorate for Christmas? I won’t put everything out as I do not have enough room. I definitely have too many decorations, just stuff I have collected over the years. Usually we decorate Thanksgiving weekend but with my sister and daughter visiting I didn’t want to pull out the decorations. Visiting with them was a ton of fun, and I still have plenty of time to get it all done. I will end with one more photo of my day. She always makes me smile!
Miss Chloe is so beautiful! They bring such joy to my life these two ponies! ❤ ❤ ❤
Thank you for sharing coffee with me. My thoughts are rather all over the place, thinking of family, weather, work, Christmas, what to do for Christmas! It can sometimes be overwhelming during the holidays. I’m trying really hard to just take one day at a time. I made it through Thanksgiving weekend and I thought it all went GREAT. Now I want to buy some Christmas cards and then we will pick names for gifts this year. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Thank you for stopping by! 😀
I really wanted to give thanks to this last week and our Thanksgiving holiday. I realize that I have been able to have things in my life that others can only dream about and maybe its been lucky of me to be able to have a good job and then live in a location that can afford me the luxury and/or my passions and I am truly thankful for all that I have worked for. I just have to give thanks to this wonderful Thanksgiving this year. I wanted to share this last weeks events, with Thanksgiving dinner and a baby shower for my new grandson coming next year!
Thanskgiving dinner with family!
We decided to serve Thanksgiving dinner buffet style which I have never done before. Usually we fit all the food on a platter or in big bowls all over the table then pass everything around. This year it was suggested to line it up on the counter than walk the buffet line. I thought why not? funny how you can get stuck one way as I had to tell my hubby the line starts over there! Haha, and then I didn’t get the photo of the set table with all the food but this works and was happy all enjoyed the food. It was all delicious!
Day after Thanksgiving. It rained all day on Thanksgiving and this is the lake in one corner of the arena! My horses drank the rain water and thankfully didn’t roll in the water but enjoyed it immensely!My sister and best friend heading out for our trail ride on Saturday!
I posted a Smile post all about our trail rides this last weekend but I didn’t share all my photos there and am recapping a little here, you can find my smile post here. As I write this today it is raining and will rain all day today. We will end up with another lake in the corner of the arena but the folks that work at the barn have dug a trench out of one side to encourage it to drain out so it won’t get so big. This will help but there will still be standing water which my horses just LOVE! Gracie, the chestnut will not go into the lake or water avoiding it but both my horses just walk right in and paw, splashing water and drinking the rain water. Silly ponies, we had trouble getting them out to be honest. I had to go get some cookies to encourage them but they finally came out for our ride!
Baby Shower Day! My daughter with my granddaughter!! They are doing snapchat, my granddaughter’s face is adorable! Snapchat photo with sunglasses! Haha, I just had to share!My son Harrison, Amber and Alice! Gift giving time. I LOVE them to the moon and back again!
After our trail ride on Saturday, my daughter, sister and best friend all headed to the baby shower for my son and daughter-in-law’s new baby coming next March. I AM IN FAMILY FUN HEAVEN! They drove from Arizona for the weekend for the shower and stayed at my daughter-in-law’s Aunt’s house. It was so much fun and we had so much fun together.
The drive to and from the baby shower was full of wonderful chats. My girlfriend Sally had us in stitches with a Thanksgiving story about finding a cell phone on the trail the year before! Oh my, I could never recreate and share like she did, I was practically crying in the car it was too funny but she was able to return the phone to it’s rightful owner! Then she was telling us a bunch of silly jokes, so funny! She uses these jokes to lighten the mood as she is a nurse in a chemo treatment center for Kaiser. She says any kind of smiles she can get out of her patients go a long way when they are doing chemo treatment. She is my kind of gal, as a smile may not cure cancer but can sure help heal the soul! ❤
I don’t really do selfies much and don’t share often but I had such a wonderful weekend. What a GREAT TIME!
I am thankful for my whole entire family. We are spread out all across the United States. Many relatives back East and my immediate family all across the Western United States. I am also truly thankful and humbled for all my dear friends, near and far! I am truly blessed. I’ll end with this joke from my best friend.
What’s the difference between a Snowman and a Snow woman?
What makes you smile? This is my weekly smile hosted by my blogging friend Trent! Thank you Trent as I just Love to share and to see everyone’s Smile!
I am so excited about my weekly smile as I have been very lucky and thankful to be smiling as I got a lot of trail riding in this last week. My sister Sharon who lives up in Idaho was here visiting over Thanksgiving weekend! Her youngest son lives here and was unable to go home for Thanksgiving so she decided to come here and we had such a wonderful visit. Sisters just love to chat and we were able to catch up on the happenings of our year, and we were able to catch up with my best friend Sally who is like a sister to us and it was a packed, fun-filled weekend! I am smiling from ear to ear!! 😀 😀 😀
My sister riding Zack. He was her horse for many years and I adopted him when she moved north. It was great FUN to all be riding together again! My best friend Sally riding Gracie with us and this is after a couple of days of heavy rain which we need but makes owning a horse interesting as we try and keep some dry spots for them in their stalls with partial roofs! This rain storm was a very cold storm and brought snow down to the 1,000 foot level. Our local mountains you can see in the background are covered in beautiful snow!
We chatted and chatted on our trail rides, so much fun and much like getting together with your friends over lunch. Our trail ponies are so relaxed and trail savvy that we can really enjoy each others company and not worry about our ponies. We do pay attention to our riding, I guess what I am trying to say is we’ve been riding these trails for so many years that the ponies are great and we just have a grand time together! I miss these days with my sister and am so very thankful for her visits and cherish every moment! ❤ ❤ ❤
Best view ever through the ears of my horse! My best friend with her horse Gracie! How can you not SMILE! 😀Thank you Sharon for making this Thanksgiving so wonderful! My sister with Gracie, Love my friends and family!
Thank you for sharing my smile with me this week. What made you smile? I am so thankful that we were able to enjoy our trail rides even with the weather. The trails dry very fast and have great footing so we do not have to worry about slippery muddy trails. We can ride the next day even with very heavy rain. My sister made it home safely yesterday and we promised we would stay in touch more often. It is funny how busy we get and how the weeks just fly by. I must say I can’t believe it’s December! I hope you have a wonderful week full of smiles!
Mylife-and-Horsestories 