Happy Holidays!

Yesterday was a fun day spent with family, seeing my brother and his family (including my little nephew!) followed by visiting the Santa Fe Plaza to see some trains

and share some beers with my Dad at the Marble Brewery Tap Room

and ending with massive amounts of baking resulting in cookies and beer for dinner :)

Not to mention, cookies and tea for breakfast!  Thank goodness its only The Holidays once-ish a year, I could develop diabetes overnight at this rate haha.

I hope your Holidays are filled with much joy and love and fun, I'll see you next week!

Chocolate Maven

I got to spend the day with my momma yesterday :)

We took a girls' day in Santa Fe using the perfectly legitimate excuse of having to get her car serviced.  We did some window shopping, plenty of talking and had lunch at one of the best restaurants in town: The Chocolate Maven.

If you are ever in Santa Fe for any reason at all, you really should check this place out. Its part of a standard warehouse looking building, a diamond in the rough if you will.  We got to sit next to the big window that lets you look in on the baking part of the kitchen :D

The food is phenomenal (we got veggie quesadillas - they were the special for the day) and picked up some cookies before we left.

Let me tell you guys, the desserts at this restaurant are To. Die. For.  They are so delicious, my favorites are the Lemon Picadilly Snaps.  They melt in my mouth!  I'm sure they'd melt in other people's mouths too, but I don't want to share to find out.  They're all mine.

I hope your holidays are going well!

Treasure New Mexico

I was just informed that the very talented inspiredbyelizabeth has included my long-eared beanie with pompoms in her treasury promoting New Mexican artists! 

Check out some of the amazing things being created in the Land of Enchantment :)

A Beautiful End To The Day

Here is our sunset from yesterday, gorgeous no?

I love all of the colors that you can see in the sunsets of the southwest, it kinda makes up for living in a place that looks like a cat box ;)

New Mexico Knitters! (And Wannabe Knitters!)

I'm teaching classes this Saturday!  I will be teaching beginning knitting and continental style knitting :)  More details here.

I would love to meet you and you're friends so be sure to sign up today!  Sign ups close soon, so don't hesitate.

New Mexican Lion

*I reloaded the pictures, I was getting comments saying that the images couldn't be seen, so hopefully you can see them now!

I got this in an email from my Dad who got it from my Grandma, I don't know where she finds these things but it does sound like something a New Mexican would do!

This is the true story of a Garage Owner in the Southwest New Mexico
He was sick and tired of thugs breaking into his garage shop to steal tools, etc. So he came up with this idea. He put the word out that he had a new Mexican Lion that would attack anyone that would break in or climb his fence. Would-be thieves saw the "Lion" from a distance and fled the scene.

The dog's probably trying to figure out why his head's so hot and his butt's so cold?

Peace

On the first day of the new year I traveled north to visit my momma. We were going to go have some girl time, talk and eat delicious food. Although the trip was....a trip, if you catch my meaning, the time we spent together was amazing, as always :)

We were just beginning our mother-daughter time and caught site of this fellow:

He was standing at a busy intersection waving his flag calmly and with purpose. This particular intersection is a favorite for protest or awareness groups and his absence of protest, his lack of aggression, was very refreshing.

I suggest we all just some time to ourselves occasionally to practice peace. Don't get mad at the car who just cut you off. Don't fume over your neighbor's loud music or guests. Take a breather before snapping at your SO. And don't get mad at the weather when it doesn't warm the house, but instead turns it into a giant ice box...ok, that last one was a personal reminder more than anything...

Adventures in Small Town

The other day after having been productive around the house for most of the day, I approached Matt with the idea to go on a moped adventure around little Socorro.

Here are some of the places we visited and sites we saw

you are NEVER too old for swings :)this picture SO does not do the sunset justice

The Nearby Town of Magdalena

Dominic and I took a drive some weeks ago out to a nearby town. Neither of us had ever been there and wanted to go see what this tiny little town was all about (and we wanted to get out of the apartment and enjoy ourselves without spending much money). The town was very very small, so small even that it did not have many (if ANY) chain stores, no McDonalds, no Conoco Gas Station, nothing of the sort. We enjoyed looking around and seeing all the character in the store fronts, and in the aging houses. We also found these super cool sculptures out there:

Does your town, or a town near yours have anything neato like this?