1. DYSON Pet
There is NOTHING with better suction!  Seriously, this baby gets down deeeeeep.  It even has a HEPA filter to purify the exhaust air.  Our house feels sooooo uberly clean – love it! Runs about $400 (you can find it online even cheaper:)

2. FABRIC SHOWER CURTAIN
I absolutely LOVE our fabric shower curtain.  I think I first noticed them in hotels and liked the concept – reuse, reuse, reuse!  It’s so easy to just pop it in the washer and it comes out just as good as new. Got mine at KMart for under $20.

3. VITAMIX
There is a reason the queen of the kitchen, Martha Stewart, endorses this blender – it’s the best blender out there.  Make no mistake, you will LOVE this blender and all it can do. We have smoothies everyday, but my favorite thing is the soup Steven makes with the blender. That’s right, soup! The biggest difference I see in this blender, compared to others, is that is is SO powerful. It can pulverize seeds and if you leave it on long enough, it can heat up your liquid – like when we make soups. Comes with a great 7 year warranty! Another investment to make life easier and happier:) $450, but save about $100 off when you buy the refurbished model (it has the same 7 year warranty!).

4. Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino
These can be an unhealthy habit for both your body and your wallet.  BUT if you make it a Mocha Frappucino Light, it’s only 130 calories for a Grande – score!  At about $5 a pop, you make it yourself at home in your vitamix and save a bundle!  My recipe:  1.5 cups ice, 1 cup original almond milk, 1 scoop vanilla custard egg protien (this is sooooooooo much better than whey protein – it does NOT taste like eggs;), 1 tablespoon chocolate syrup, 1 tablespoon coco powder – viola!  A perfect mocha frappucino.  I also like to mix it up sometimes and use coconut milk instead of almond and a throw in a few shavings of coconut.

5. BIRCHBOX
I’ve said it before and I’m gonna say it again – I love Birchbox and you will too. See why HERE.  Makes the perfect xmas gift! $10/month

6. PROJECT 7 PRODUCTS
This is my most recent favorite thing!  These awesome mints caught my eye while in the check out isle.  Check out their site and watch this to see how you can change the world.  It really makes a difference to do something as easy as buying a pack of mints – yummy mints at that!  Just bought the gum today – so awesome:) So be sure to grab some on your run through the check out isle.

7. LINGUAL/CLEAR BRACES
There is no better way to get braces than to go with Dr. Moles and get lingual/clear braces.  It takes some getting used to, but after a couple weeks you forget they are even there!  Everyone else does too!  Some people don’t even know that I have braces – LOVE THAT!

8. TRUFFLE OIL
If you enjoy mushrooms, you know the value of a truffle.  Our friends (Artists Eyes) gave us a bottle of truffle oil and it makes any meal POP with flavor.  Your tastebuds will love you for it.  Fantastic! Find it in your specialty grocer at around $20 a bottle.

9. MR. REBATES
Ok, if you haven’t signed up for this yet, DO IT NOW here!!!!  You get rebates back on all of your online shopping.  Who can argue with that?  I love getting my checks in the mail – and so will you!!!

10. SWIMMING
Since I don’t run in the winter, I had to take up another activity. So I went back to my favorite childhood past-time, swimming. It’s such a great workout and it really helps to lift your spirits during the cold winter solistice. I’m so glad that my friend Carol joined with me too:)  I haven’t worn a sport suit since I was a kid.  I found the best swimmers suit to be by TYR and it’s reversible – BONUS!

Check out my favorite things from year’s past HERE.

What would a wine tasting and 3-6-5 showing be without a little spilled wine and broken glass?  It wouldn’t be a party.  Thanks to everyone who came to the Sips n Shots event.  It was a great success and we can’t wait to do another event at the end of the project.

The subdued colors of the season.

It’s a lost time of year.  A time in between times.  We reel from the bounty of a harvest come and gone while waiting for the promises of winter.  The anticipation of an imprisoning snowfall and the celebration of the yuletide season keeps the heart guessing when its wandering soul will settle down for its long winter nap.

As life takes its course, seasons change, and we grow older, where do we remember life’s occurrence?  Is it defined and cordoned off in the pens of instant recollection?  Far too often we place limitations on our existence through memories kept only in the instant of extraordinary events and occasions.  We fail to  acknowledge the empty space of the now.  A place where life is running consistently and constantly running its course.

“Naked and cold,” the tree tells me when I ask how it’s been lately.  I tell him he should move down south.  He says he can’t; still has saplings to feed and get through college and his wife just took a job as a table.

Soon enough we’ll be knee deep in snow wondering where the afternoon light ran off to.  Toil through the daylight only to be greeted by the night.  We wait for the prophecy of the Solstice and the day when the sun vanquishes the darkness.

A false sense of nostalgia engulfs me as I stroll through the mounds of discarded memories.  It calls me, pleading me to find something to latch onto, to keep, to cherish.  It’s all second hand – even the nostalgia.  For certain it’s no high-brow antique store.  It’s the home of the heirlooms sold by desperate families to pay for food.  It’s the remains of a recluse’s life no family member bothered to claim.  It’s where our unwanted go in hopes of finding love and affection from another.

Thanksgiving.  Too many things to reflect upon and give thanks for.  Of all the things I am thankful for – a wonderful and loving wife, a career that pays the bills and doesn’t leave me a shell of a human after a long day of work, all of my friends and family, etc, etc – I am most thankful for the realization that we are all one in the same.  Every living being is connected in ways unimaginable.  We are all animated star dust with minor variations on the arrangements of atoms which comprise us.  The bonds which connect us and intertwine our destinies far exceed the forces categorically employed to separate and disconnect us from the greater realm of life.  Love one another and be thankful.  Happy belated Thanksgiving.

The Thanksgiving week brought many adventures our way.  Despite the long travel, traffic, and tryptophanic turkey torpor we were fully immersed in the atmosphere of familial love and fellowship with my entire immediate family.  One of the memories I’ll take with me for years to come will be our foray into indoor rock climbing.  My brother Matt and myself accompanied our nephew, Phil, to his indoor rock climbing haunt in Raleigh, NC.  Despite being in descent physical condition, both Matt and I couldn’t hold a candle to Phil’s dexterity on all things vertical.  Thanks Phil for showing up your uncle and teaching us the best humility comes from minors upstaging self-assured adults.

I’m not sure if photographic artistic ability runs in the family, but I handed over control of my camera to Phil with basic instructions while I hit the walls and this is what he captured.  Very cool work from a very cool nephew.