Tag: #christmasfamilylove

Weekend Coffee Share; Dec. 27, 2020

On By DianaIn Walking for Health and Well being, weekend coffee share20 Comments
  • Welcome to my weekend coffee share where we meet to share what’s happening in our lives with old friends and new!

As I sit here coloring my adult coloring book I am reminiscing about Christmas as I relax and enjoy this gift. I have to tell you that my artsy crafty side of my brain is completely addicted to this coloring book! This isn’t my first one, I am not sure where my other coloring book is but this one has cool sayings and quotes. I am enjoying it immensely! I’ll share a page and you can color too! Haha, you will find it very addicting. I am coloring away thinking I really wanted to share coffee with you today and share the happenings of my Christmas weekend. So I will set it aside for now, and I’ll share what I’ve colored so far.

I started with just the small box of crayons. Today I purchased a much bigger box and some twistable colored pencils!

My daughter is on her way home up North and we had a great time together with my son and my hubby. We video chatted with my family in Arizona as we opened gifts that we sent each other. We did a secret Santa (website) so that it would pick names so that we could buy each other gifts to make Christmas a little easier. We use this website where we can share our wish lists, which sure comes in handy and makes shopping so much easier. It was great fun opening up gifts together (video chat) and catching up and seeing those beautiful grand kids!

I told my daughter I wanted to try and have a Swedish dinner for Christmas. It wasn’t exactly authentic as we made everything vegan. We made Swedish meatballs using frozen vegan meatballs which heated up super fast. I found the recipe for the IKEA Swedish meatball sauce, and I may have made more sauce to meatball ratio, which is okay in my book and YUMMY! My daughter made homemade Swedish Cardamom bread, and even though we may have over-proofed it (I think that was our mistake?) It turned out delicious! We made a Swedish Potato casserole and a Swedish beet and apple salad. Dessert was pumpkin cheesecake bars. It was so fun cooking with my daughter! ❤ We started baking/cooking at 3:30pm and didn’t stop until we sat to eat at 7:30pm Christmas day. Cooking from scratch takes a lot of time! BUT WORTH IT! Now I need to find the energy to make soup for dinner tonight! Haha 😀

  • Swedish beet/apple salad, potato casserole and meatballs!
  • Swedish cardamom bread

The cardamom bread was so delicious. It is a little sweet and I just LOVE the taste of cardamom. We were struggling with timing everything as I only have the one oven and since we didn’t meal plan or plan out the timing of everything, unfortunately we think the bread sat too long before we could get it into the oven to bake. Being a yeast bread, that can make a huge difference. It was still very soft and tasted wonderful but was slightly dense in the middle and that bigger loaf a little under done in the center, but just barely. It sure smelled good while baking! All the food tasted wonderful and how can it not when it is made with Love! ❤

We decided to go out for a hike as my daughter is always inspiring me trying to fit in exercise where we can. We had a bit of winter weather which brought rain which clears the air and the next day was beautiful! My daughter wanted to hike to Pumpkin Rock which is a huge boulder at the top of this hill in our town. The locals here keep pumpkin rock painted, as it will get a bit of graffiti and/or fade over time. I just googled it and it is there as Pumpkin Rock Trail Loop which is 1.7 miles long. Sounds just about right! Here are some photos from our hike.

We are about half way up enjoying the views. It is a fairly steep trail, so if your not in shape you’ll need to stop and catch your breath! Haha!
The foreground is George Ingalls Equestrian Center. You are looking at Norco where I live! The mountain range you see in the distance are the San Gabriel mountains with the highest peak at 10,064ft/3,068m.
We made it! I’m with my son on the left and I’m with my daughter on the right!
We were celebrating, we made it! Haha!!
Me and my SHADOWS!

We had a blast on our hike up and down on Pumpkin Rock Trails. As we were leaving the rock and started back down we were laughing at our shadows. We just had to take photos and I thought it would be fun to share. I didn’t take my phone so I didn’t have my camera and my son did a great job with all the photos I am sharing with you. We could not have picked a better day to hike, only 65F such a beautiful, gorgeous day. I will say that as I am sharing with you this last weekend of reminiscing, I am realizing that we didn’t take any photos of present opening. I usually always take photos of at least one gift each person opens, oh well, it was a fun day even though I didn’t digitally record it and it goes with this rather strange year.

I took this photo the next day and I had to zoom in from the road below. I wanted you to see what we see when we are in town even though the photo is really grainy!

Thanks for having coffee with me today. I forgot to ask you for a refill but I just get going on and on about things so I apologize for my lack of hospitality. I do enjoy our visits and hope you enjoyed your holiday however you were able to celebrate!

Happy Christmas Weekend!

Love, Diana ❤

Weekend Coffee Share; Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

On By DianaIn Family is important, Love being Grandma, weekend coffee share13 Comments
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! ❤

Happy Christmas Crazy Grandma,

~Diana

Christmas Tree is Decorated!

On By DianaIn Family is important, Living life7 Comments

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! Lol
I 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! ❤

To Happy Holiday!

Love, Diana ❤