Tag: WINTER

BLOGMAS 2024 ~ day 21 ~ WINTER MUST HAVES & TAG ?? ~ BLOG 366.354B

What I CANNOT live without in the winter is many, many things, but these are my top items! Then again, SNOWMAGGEDDON 2019 proved there are things I CAN live without, but choose not to. 😀

The one thing I am absolutely sure of is that if I have a sore throat, dry skin, cold feet or hands, cold food or catch a cold I am NOT a happy camper so I go out of my way to prevent that. I like to try and not go out unless the temperature reaches AT LEAST 40°, but I don’t hibernate well either so that is just a pipe dream of a rule.

I try and drink a cup of green tea every night and try to make very balanced comfort food meals to warm up my family from the inside out.Though I openly admit that comfort food wins every now and then when it’s bitterly cold and wet.

I also have a newer and occasional favorite hot toddy, a Lemon Aval Pota Hot Toddy courtesy of McMenamins one of our local favorite resort chains.

LEMON AVAL POTA HOT TODDY

2 ounces Aval Pota Whiskey
2 bar spoons QUALITY honey
Juice of 1 small FRESH squeezed lemon

  • Pour ingredients into a coffee glass or mug and top with hot water.
  • Garnish with a lemon zest twist.

Here are the links to a few of our favorite soups and stews for you.

✨Top 2 Winter Beauty Essentials?

  • A NICE HOT SHOWER to relax and clean out the pores.
  • A super moisturizer to keep away dry skin!

✨Top 2 Winter Fashion Essentials?

  • I wait ALL year for it to be cold enough to bring out the boots & UGGS!
  • Turtlenecks and flannel layers!
  • Scarves and gloves.  I have color combos to match anything AND everything.

✨ Favorite Winter Accessory?

  • HATS, GLOVES & SCARVES of course!!!!

✨ Favorite Winter Nail Polish?

  • Red for Christmas with glitter of course, but normally a pinky, purplish mauve. I just have too much red in my complexion to wear red all the time.

✨ Hot Cocoa or Apple Cider?

  • Homemade hot cocoa and MUST have marshmallows and or whipped cream!
  • Apple Cider if it is made into a AVAL POTA TODDY!

✨ Favorite Winter Candle?

  • Apple and Cinnamon, though that seems to be waning for me and I’m liking more mellow marshmallowy scents.

✨ Does it snow where you live?

  • Yes, but after the SNOWMAGEDDON of 2019 with a week long power outage that left us freezing or the SNOW/ICE storm of 2013 that left the cul-de-sac as an ice skating rink, we hope for more moderate levels of snow this year.

✨Have you ever made a snowman? Snow Angels?

  • Absolutely! And a snow woman and snow kids!

✨What is Your Favorite Holiday Movie?

  • IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE tops the list! Home Alone, Miracle on 34th Street and they never get old either. And a Hallmark sucker every year for their new movies each year. And yes, Die Hard is a Christmas Movie 😀

✨What’s your favorite holiday drink? 

  • Coffee
  • Hot Tea
  • Hot Cocoa
  • Hot toddies – never been an eggnog fan

✨Candy cane or Gingerbread men?

  • I like the chalk style peppermint, but I’m not real keen on actual candy canes and I like soft gingerbread men and sugar cookies.

✨What’s your favorite holiday/Christmas song?

✨What is most important to you about the Christmas holidays? 

  • That it is genuine and homemade for the most part. Christmas is not a commercial holiday for me. I believe in trying to remember the real reason for the season and keep the Christmas spirit in my heart and life ALL year long. I LOVE hosting little get togethers and dinners with friends and family. A favorite girlfriend came for dinner last night and the table looked absolutely gorgeous and then I served bacon cheeseburger balls with mac and cheese 😀 so it’s not about fancy food just time together to enjoy each other’s company.

BLOGMAS 2024 ~ day 18 ~ WINTER WONDERLAND, LIGHTS & PARADES ~ BLOG 366.351B

Several years we would go to HOLIDAY LIGHTS at Shore Acres on the Oregon coast. It doesn’t change in layout so it’s NOT an EVERY year thing. At least this particular year it didn’t rain but, that made it bitterly cold! ALL of our travel is “AROUND” Christmas and never ON Christmas. The first time we went we arrived fairly early, just before dusk so we could walk through and get the lay of the land before walking through a second time after dark. The displays are animated and themed.

Shore Acres is literally perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean and began as a private estate for Louis J. Simpson, a shipbuilder. Simpson developed the 3 story mansion complete with an indoor heated pool and ballroom as his “summer home”. The surrounding grounds included 5 acres of formal gardens full of shrubs , trees and flowering plants brought from around the world by himself and various lumbermen. There is even a 100 foot lily pond and caretaker’s cottage. The cottage still stands and was really decorated cute! I’d live there. I really wish I had seen the original mansion, but it has since been torn down after a fire in 1921 and the rebuild was never finished because of the depression and fell into disrepair. Oregon bought the property in 1942 for use as a public park. The gardens, lily pond and caretakers cottage were restored while the mansion was razed.

Shore Acres Holiday Lights is by decorated sponsors and volunteers. This is an Annual event, (but they did miss a couple of years during COVID) and is famous for its beautiful 7 acre botanical gardens and Japanese lily pond on the Oregon coast among the trees. It has over 350,000 lights, animated displays, Santa, choirs… A beautiful holiday tradition for the whole family.

Even on the years we travel to SIL’s party, we are home by Christmas itself. I love having our tree and decorations with a relaxed Christmas Day schedule. We do try and take 1 trip to see some sort of “City Sidewalks” type event.

These are a few of my favorite pictures from our trip to Holiday Lights at Shore Acres on the coast. We took some time to play in a couple of the small towns and stayed over so we didn’t have to drive the windy roads late at night in the rain. We were fortunate to be able to have lunch with an old friend to catch up the next day before we drove home. It’s a walking tour and it is generally COLD as all get out, but, ALSO really beautiful.

2013 was the year of the “white” one 😀 was the first truly white Christmas we had here. I had HIGH hopes for this year, but the storm moving in appears to be much warmer so it will be a WET one instead of a WHITE one 🙁 After growing up in southern California where it wasn’t unheard of to be beach weather for Christmas, I really enjoy the cold and especially the white Christmases.
Hubby made this for me to wake up to in the back yard before the snow got too bad that year. The house across the street that usually looked horrible back then, but NOT when it was under a beautiful blanket of snow. Fortunately, these days we have great neighbors there and it looks beautiful all the time!
Unfortunately, being in a cul-de-sac, delivery tracks leave MANY tire tracks at this time of year to mar the beautiful snow cover.
Even Rudolph was shivering that year! He has since been donated to charity 😀
The first day after he storm was absolutely gorgeous though!
The duck pond behind the neighborhood was truly a work of art.
Obviously we hadn’t gone anywhere – no tire tracks in the driveway! And the fish ladder on the river was like glass with the cold and ice.

The following pictures are from 2014 and one of my favorite picture years. The Festival of Lights is now over 30 years old and a great way to kick off the holiday season. It’s an ALL Volunteer and NON-Profit. It began as a fundraiser sponsored by the Rotary Club to help get the city out of debt and then took on a life of its own and now helps with scholarships and special projects. The festival runs every night from Thanksgiving to New Years. So if you have company in town for Thanksgiving it’s a great way to jump start to your holidays. You can drive your own car or take a horse drawn carriage ride through the displays. They have also coordinated a local radio station to listen to as you view the displays. The night we went through the fog was moving in early so a few of the pictures look a bit “smoky”.They have the world’s tallest (41 feet, 16,000 pounds with a working jaw) nutcracker built by a local company, 500,00 lights, 90 animated displays, 3D displays, horse drawn carriage rides through the displays and a Holiday Village with Santa, hot cider with a bake sale and a synchronized light show in the courtyard. The displays depict fairy tales, the military, patriotism, the local logging industry, local vineyards, local fishing and the traditional Christmas songs and scenes. People come from all over to see it. Unfortunately for locals, it doesn’t change much, but is still fun every few years.

MANY years ago three of my favorite munchkins were coincidentally there the same night we were so I had to snap a few pictures of their discussions with Santa. They have grown SOOOOOOOO much since then! The two oldest now tower over me!
Even the lights with errors turned out cute.  It was difficult to get great pictures or continuous pictures of the animated scenes since there were so many cars behind us.
Every year we also (or usually) go to the Tinsel Town Timber Parade here locally and the last couple of years the Eagles have had a float entered, but last year it started from our garage. The past couple years have been REALLY cold, but last year added in fog making it REALLY eerie. The first set of pictures is from 3 years ago and the last 3 are from last year. We are talking about maybe NOT going this year and enjoying an evening alone for the first time in weeks because it is supposed to be fairly warm for here (47°), but pouring down rain!

The fire truck below is the same one as above, but a bit later in the parade, which really shows the fog difference!

DAY 5 ~ BLOGMAS 2017 ~ MUST HAVES

What I CANNOT live without in winter is many many things, but these are my top items! The one thing I am absolutely sure of is that if I have a sore throat, dry skin, cold feet or hands, cold food or catch a cold I am NOT happy.

I drink a cup of green tea every night and try to make very balanced comfort food meals to warm up my family from the inside out.  Here are a few of our favorite soups and stews links for you.

Split Pea Soup  

Red Chicken Chili

Black Eyed Pea Chili

Tomato Spinach Soup  

Navy Bean & Ham Soup

Chicken & Sausage Gumbo  

BLACK-EYED PEA CHILI

So what do you do with left over pot roast and a can of black-eyed peas? Why, you make chili of course!  I just happened to have all of my normal chili ingredients on hand also.  I prefer Williams Chili Seasoning packet, but I had a coupon for the Mrs. Dash so we gave it a try.  It was okay, but the Mrs. Dash won’t become my go to seasoning.
MANY people swear by starting their year out with black-eyed peas for luck.  I’m not a superstitious person, but hey it can’t hurt! As a kid I HATED black-eyed peas, but I recently found the Trappey’s brand and they are fantastic! Hubs and I ate them plain and polished off the whole can. In fact they were so good that I can’t wait to try their other beans in soups, field peas, navy, black-eyed peas with jalapenos, etc…
BLACK-EYED PEA CHILI

1 can Trappey’s Black-eyed peas with bacon
+/- 2 cups shredded left over pot roast
1 can original Rotel tomatoes
1 1/2 cups V8
1 small HUNT’S tomato sauce
1 tablespoon Frank’s red hot sauce
1 package Williams Chili Seasoning packet
salt and pepper, to taste
water to desired consistency*
cheese bread or corn muffins
sour cream and onions to garnish

  • Mix together everything except the bread and garnish in a stock pot.
  • Bring to a boil.
  • Reduce heat and simmer several hours until you can smell the chili calling you to the kitchen.
  • Ladle into bowls and garnish.
  • Enjoy!

NOTE*: I use about 2 cups.  I like to start thin and simmer until thick (2-3 hours) to allow the flavors to blend together.

RED CHICKEN CHILI ~ ANOTHER WINTER MUST MAKE

QUICK & EASY CHICKEN CHILI
3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, frozen
2 cups homemade chicken broth, frozen
1 can cream of potato soup
1 jar dried beef, chopped
1 Williams chili mix package
1 can chopped green chilies
  • Place frozen chicken breasts on the bottom.
  • Pour green chilies over chicken pieces.
  • Top with cream of potato soup.
  • Top with frozen broth.
  • Sprinkle chili seasoning mix on top of chicken broth.
  • Top with beef pieces.
  • Slow cook on high for 2 hours. Reduce to low for 6 hours. Or cook on low 10 hours.
As the slow cooker heats up, the broth will melt absorbing the chili seasoning mix which will then be absorbed by the potato soup and by the end of the day you have a huge bowl of wonderful yummy goodness perfect for a crisp fall evening. Serve with cheddar cheese biscuits.