Christmas in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado 2012.

Hello friends!

Wow, can you believe it's all over? Only one more holiday to go and then it's the new year. Where did the time go? It seems like things ZOOMED past this year. I thought I would check in and post just a few pics from our trip to Red Feather Lakes, Colorado where Ricky's parents are currently living. Ricky is determined to bunk up in their barn apartment when they get one built this coming year. After checking out the photos I'm sure you will see why ;)

The map for Red Feather Lakes.

View just outside of the house on the way into town. The photos don't even do it justice!

The entrance to Rick and Malina's new house. Here is the family room and you can see the kitchen in the background. Ricky is hanging out on the chair with Claire at his side :D

Francesca "Frankie" keeps a look out on her bench ;)

If you walk in the door and go upstairs it takes you to the loft.

The loft.

View from the loft to the family room.

The dining room. Malina made us a yummy yogurt and fruit plate with grits, a poached egg, coffee and orange juice. Yum! 

The view from the dining room table. Now couldn't you get used to eating breakfast and looking at that view?

The kitchen.

View from the kitchen window. Little "snow balls" collected on the branches and you can see that long icicle hanging down.

The hallway.

The bathroom.

The "mud room" where there will eventually be  a sink and tile floor so the dogs can come in without tracking the outdoors in. Excuse our piles of clothes and blankets ;P

Rick and Malina's room.

The tree on Christmas Eve from the window. They didn't end up getting a tree this year so they just decorated the one out front. I think it worked out perfectly!

Ricky's Nana drinking her tea. She is a rockin' 84 year old woman! 

Here is Amelia. Sweet baby is 10!

Christmas day we enjoyed a delicious breakfast of gf quiche and gf buttermilk biscuits along with mimosa's and fruit salad :D

Ricky the mountain man. He was excited not to shave for a few days while we were away. lol.

After breakfast I got wrapped up in my beautiful scarf from Nellie and some borrowed boots from Malina. 

The dogs got on their snow boots and joined us.

We began our hike out the dining room door in the back yard. Wow, just look at this! 

Here is the view from one of the hill tops on our hike. Surrounded by beauty and nature! 

Christmas night we got in our family Christmas Story pajama's and relaxed. Here is Ricky's mom and dad hanging out in the chair.

Ricky made us some incredible fondue! 

Our fruit, veggies and cheese for dipping.

Our delicious spread of olives, dips, cheese,  sweet potato fries cooked on the wood burning stove, some of Ricky's honey mustard, this amazing red pepper dip, gf crackers, and bagle chips.

This red pepper, and walnut dip the neighbors made was just incredible!

The last day of our trip. I enjoyed my morning cup of coffee on the chair in front of the wood burning stove soaking up the view before returning to the city.

I hope you enjoyed a most Merry and relaxing holiday!

xo Genea

Fall walk at Waterfront park Portland, OR

Hello Friends!

It's that time of year again, FALL!  My very favorite season of all!  On Ricky and my days off together we enjoy doing things around the beautiful city of Portland, OR.  A few days ago we went down to Waterfront Park

to get some exercise and enjoy the beauty of the city with the leaves changing colors. 

We start our journey by public transportation.

 

Here is a view of the Trimet Rail System map(sorry for the blurry photo). This map shows you the different colored lines of the MAX(Metropolitan Area Xpress). This is our light rail/train(same thing) that takes all over the city along with buses. Since our move to our apartment we live right off a MAX line so we get to enjoy speedy transit through the city most places we go.

 

Here is a beautiful little free bike repair station. Portland has a bike map for the entire city of bike only routes! 

On our way to the bridge to get to the walking path.

 

Here is the Steel bridge .

Here is a view from on the bridge walking across.

 

It's a little hard to tell wha'ts going on in this photo, but there is a little portion of the bridge that raises for boats to go through unlike smaller bridges where the entire bridge opens to allow boats safe passage. We were lucky enough to get to see the bridge raise on our walk!

 

Here is the little guy that needed to get through. Funny enough it looks like the only thing that didn't clear the bridge was the antennas!

 

We saw these geese hungrily feeding in one of the parks open grassy areas. In Portland for summer events the grass gets so trampled they actually cage off grassy areas to allow them to re-grow over the winter !

 

Here is a view of the Convention Center from across the river. I really like the shape of the building.

 

There is art EVERYWHERE in Portland! This was a sculpture under the bridge along the path.

 

Here is one of those fountains that squirts up the little shoots of water.

 

Here is the Hawthorne Bridge.

 

Here is a much better shot a portion of the bridge raising for a boat. I don't know how we managed to arrive at the bridges as they were letting boats through that day, but it was really cool to see the bridges raise :)

 

Here is where people wait for the bridge to lower again to pass.

 

There was this cool boat museum on the water that you could check out. We didn't go inside, but it looked pretty cool.

 

More sculpture along the walk way. This one looks like a ball inside a net.

 

Here is part of the path that is on the water. It has these long rusty poles with white pointy tops. I like this view. It think it would be cool if a painting was on the poles where it made an image from this perspective! 

 

Here is another shot of that same walking area.

 

This was the end of that path. I love the curve of the street above, the brightly colored trees and the covered walk way :)

 

Another sweet sculpture made out of stained glass .It was all this gorgeous reddish orange color with an iridescent luster!

 

Doesn't this one look like a tree trunk and roots with the greenery above? I'm not sure what it was supposed to be, but it's some sort of rusty metal.

 

Some more metal sculptures.

 

A seagull just chillin out by the water.

 

The MAX that takes us home. The Blue line that goes to Gresham. This is a city just outside of Portland and the end of the line for this color train.

I hope you enjoyed seeing our river front walk!

IN OTHER NEWS.....

I just wanted to thank all of you that commented on my post about naming the jewelry side of my shop! You all are so wonderful to help me brain storm! I will keep you all posted as we get things sorted. This is also the reason I'm not doing listings today like I normally would. Don't worry though, I have some wonderful beads for the next shop update!

I would also like to share the wonderful post Staci Louise, of SLArtisan Accents did about our bead swap on the Love My Art Jewelry blog! I totally adore Staci and her work! Stay tuned for more about our swap and the beads we received!

See you soon!

xo Genea