Warm Wishes this Holiday Season

May peace be with you and your family this holiday season.

Some of my friends decorate their homes quite elaborately for the holiday season, while others have a simpler style. However you define what home means to you, we know that many people go to great lengths to make it home for the holidays, to be with friends and family.

For many years, I have been in the business of helping people finding and creating their new home, and it never gets old. Simply to witness my clients imagining the possibilities of how they might make this house, their home. How it will be used, and filled with friends during holidays.

For some, home is the smell of cookies baking, or perhaps a walk on a familiar beach that the family comes to every year. Maybe even a particular garden with jasmine evokes a sense of home, or just the way the sun comes through the window during this time of year, which seems to enhance the experience of the holidays at home.

Wishing you and your family a joyful holiday in your home.

Thankful and Keeping Up with Technology

The Thanksgiving Cranberry dish

My mom and step-dad are here visiting their vacation Gulfport home they purchased last year. Their Realtor told them it was a great deal in a great location, sent them videos taken with her iPhone and started the transaction process thru scanning documents via email. They closed without being here. This second home has been their work-in-progress on their seasonal treks down here from Ohio.

I love having them here for many reasons, and an added bonus is they do a lot of cooking and baking and we always find ourselves on their back patio at dinner time or for breakfast on the weekends when my daughter doesn’t have school.

This year, they are hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner since they love to cook and entertain away their retirement years. My mom, who is almost 70, texted me, asking if I could make the cranberry dish.

Last year, I recall my mom didn’t even own a cell phone. I’d leave a message on her land line if she didn’t pick up. She’d usually call me back the same day, but sometimes the next day. Now, she texts me. A lot! A lot every day, throughout the day!

The cranberry relish is now resting nicely in the refrigerator. I couldn’t think of the recipe, so I asked Aspen to please look up the recipe. She traipsed past our bookshelf cradling countless well-used cook books, logged onto her MAC and brought up a recipe in less than 5 seconds, I swear. She read the ingredients. Check, check, check. And I started making the cranberry relish and she went back to working on her science project.

Only now, as I type this, do I fully realize how weird this is. How has everything slowly sped up so quickly while we were busy working, checking homework problems in the evening, walking the dogs before bed? And speaking of homework, you can now check your child's homework on an online portal. I once asked for a teacher conference – you know, face-to-face, and their response was, "Is something wrong?" Um, no, I just wanted to connect with the adults who spend more time with my child than I do on any given week day during the school year – that's all. 

Just yesterday, we had friends over for dinner and I had to give Aspen ‘the look’ as I saw her sneak a peek at her phone under the table – a "no-no" in our world. I gave her the look, “Seriously?” Aspen gave me her “It was just a second, mom…” kinda look. Unconvinced, I realize that we need to revisit some ground rules or our ground is going to become unstable. Slowly. While we are working, after checking the homework, while walking the dogs at night.

The phone was supposed to be a safety device for her bus commutes from school. That’s how it started. Should something go awry and I not be able to make it on time, I had a back-up plan: the neighbor, grandma, a friend. We used that phone many, many times. It was wonderful! And then it got broken somehow and the sales agent gave us the upgrade talk. “For the same price, you can get blah blah blah …” And the "smart" phone ended up in her hand.

Well, you know what? It wasn’t the same price. It has cost us dearly. Oh sure, it’s saving us time and it’s reassuring us during times when we can’t be physically together, and it is a much-needed tool in my real estate business. But it is also stealing our time. We have slowly allowed it to steal the moments, the silence filled with click click click. So, while I’m certainly thankful for this technology and the conveniences it brings, I’m also weary about the times it’s interrupted our face-to-face conversations. 

So, this Thanksgiving, as I use technology to reach out to all of you and say,

“I’m thankful for all of you – my clients, my community, my friends, my family!” I’d also like to add that I AM thankful for the technology that has helped keep us connected. And I am also looking forward to the family conversation THIS family is going to have about that upgraded phone that was presented as such a good deal back then!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Tradition of Roasting Pumpkin Seeds around Halloween

Ahh, the smell of Autumn is in the air and it’s that one time of the year that pumpkins are plentiful. The fields once full with the orange, robust fruit have flowed to the shelves of every local grocer, fruit stand and farmer’s market. And we love it! 

Every year, we roast pumpkin seeds, fresh from our pumpkin haul. Having never grown the pumpkins ourselves, we make it a practice to find the best pumpkins for carving for Halloween and for toasting these nutritious “pepitos” which are filled with vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, and essential amino acids. 

We start by just pulling the gooey, fleshy pumpkin apart from the seeds. Such a perfect tradition for Halloween. Muwahahaha. In the past, we just salted them and tossed them in the oven. Now, we have added fun things like coconut oil and different spices like turmeric, curry, garlic and cinnamon. And the results have been a treat to our taste buds. We pack them in our lunches for days after the ritualistic toasting.

Sometimes politics keeps us apart, divided in our views that we stubbornly allow to ruin even the most casual of family dinners. But traditions have a way of pulling us all back together, especially traditions like pumpkin seed toasting. 

Heck with all that gooey pulling and seed sorting, one can’t help but stay focused on this task. I’d love to hear the traditions you do with your family this time of year.

Text me at 303-885-9926 with your tradition and I will send you a $5 Starbucks gift card. I know for a fact they have Pumpkin Lattes this time of year.

Keep in touch,

Stephanie