✿~Peace & Love~✿

Posted in Nature, Photography, Winter
Tagged Nature, outdoors, Photography, Snow, winter
Fresh white snow
bright blue skies
a walk in the woods
your hand in mine
My desire set aglow
by the twinkle in your eyes
catching my breath
my heart sighs
at the touch of winter romance
© Julie Rehnelt 2021
✿~Peace & Love~✿
Posted in Photography, Poetry, Winter
Tagged Nature, Photography, Poetry, Romance, winter
Floating on an ocean of glass
frosty sea creatures rise to greet the winter dawn
© Julie Rehnelt 2021
It’s finally cold enough for nature to breathe its icy breath on my bedroom windows! I love winter’s unique beauty!
No matter the weather wherever you are when you happen upon this, I hope you’re keeping well and finding beauty and joy in every season.
✿~Peace & Love~✿
“Kindness is like snow –
it beautifies everything it covers”
Khalil Gibran
Technically this isn’t snow in this image, it’s hoarfrost (which we’ve been delightfully blessed to be having quite a bit of here lately), but who’s being picky? Certainly not me. 😉
So HI YOU GUYS!!!
Sorry for ‘shouting’ all in caps, but I’m excited!
But I’m not excited with this new editor thing. Ugh. Probably old news to you all by now, but it might take me a while to get used to it.
So, I’ve sort of been away from here for months and you know what? I’ve sincerely missed you all! ❤
I have no explanation really, but I did start back to work in the beginning of October. I feel like I’ve been on survival mode for like, ever. You may relate, yes? And that doesn’t promote much inspiration or creativity. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had many moments where there’s been both of those, but I guess maybe I just haven’t been able to take the time nor had the energy to share. Plus, do you ever get tired of yourself? Like, do you ever feel like you’re always sharing the same thing and have nothing new to offer? I don’t know, like I said, I don’t really have an explanation. And then new habits and routines form and before you know it, it’s been months since you’ve shared on your blog…
Even now, I’m squeezing this post in before I have to hurry off for work. But I saw this quote and just had to take this time to share. I’m feeling it so much…
I have more to say, but I’m gonna have to leave it there for now. I hope you all are well. I’m sending out so much love to all of you!
✿~Peace & Love~✿
Posted in Nature, Photography, Poetry, Winter
Tagged Frost, hoarfrost, Nature, nature photography, Photography, Snow, winter
Posted in Nature, Photography, Winter
Tagged Frost, Minnesota, Nature, Photography, weather, winter
Icy crystals
dazzling with delicate beauty
glow
in dawn’s warm rays
© Julie Rehnelt 2020
{Brrrrr} it’s cold here in Minnesota this morning! ❄ Currently, it’s -11 with a -28 windchill! Makes me grateful for a furnace, among other things…
Hope you have lots to feel grateful for today. Wishing you beauty and joy. And warmth!
✿~Peace & Love~✿
Whew what a week it’s been! I can’t think of a more perfect time to reflect on all the things I’m thankful for…
Feeling grateful for these two beautiful people – my sister and brother-in-law…
for taking me to experience this beautiful place…
I’m still feeling all the aaahhh remembering.
I’m grateful for the random patron at the library who brought in tulips for all of the staff…
There’s nothing like fresh flowers in the midst of winter to remind you that spring will indeed come again. 🌷
I’m beyond grateful for this lovely – my daughter, who turned 28 this past Tuesday…
and grateful I was able to celebrate the day with her. It may have been her birthday, but she’s the gift – to me, to her children, and to everyone who crosses her path. Such a beautiful person, inside and out! 💕
I’m also grateful that I’ve kept various journals all these years, so that I can look back on gems like this from my daughter’s infancy…
Eeek! Hahaha!
And now for the reason for the “whew” I mentioned at the top of this post…
I’m grateful for my quick spring to action when our basement flooded the other day, and for the ability to channel my inner MacGyver, so I could rescue all of our family heirlooms from water damage. You cannot imagine the horror and panic I felt when I stepped down into that ankle-deep water. I was down there for hours trying to get things under control, it was a nightmare. You’re probably not really going to be able to tell what is going on in this photo, but basically, I (with the help of my sister’s gigantic brain) rigged something up in the aftermath to direct the remaining water that was leaking from a cracked nut on the spigot on the main water pipe coming into the house to go directly into the floor drain. The whole basement flooding thing is a long, long, long story, which will only exhaust you and make me have to relive it all, so let me just say… A funnel, a hose, a half-full can of paint and two lasagna pans walked into a bar…
with a measuring cup and some tape. 🙃
And I’m so grateful for this shiny new pipe the city came and installed…
For FREE! On account that it was one of their employees who cracked that nut when he came several months ago to install a new water meter. They couldn’t fit a new nut, so they ended up replacing the entire pipe (which I’m pretty sure ordinarily would not be free). This one has a handy lever instead of a twist knob too. Hopefully I’ll never have a reason to need to shut off the main water to the house again, but if I do, that lever will make it much easier.
I’m also grateful for creativity, and for the fun I had making beeswax candles with my family…
Not to mention the warmth, the light and the sweet scent I get to enjoy.
Lastly, I’m grateful for the moon, who follows me around everywhere and reminds me of the vastness of the universe…
and that I’m connected to it all…
I’m also grateful for all of you! May you have lots to be thankful for today too! Many blessing, my friends…
✿~Peace & Love~✿
Posted in Random Thoughts & Contemplations
Tagged Creativity, Family, flowers, Gratitude, Home improvement, Moon, Nature, Photography, Thoughts, winter
The spiral of life
ever turning
spinning
twisting
Curves ever winding
inner to outer
and back to center again
A journey of beauty
wonder
mystery
the spiral of life
© Julie Rehnelt 2020
~
This past week the spiral of my life brought me to Miami Florida! I’ve never been to Florida before, so it was a fun, new adventure for me!
My sister and her husband flew me there to spend a few days with them while they are on vacation down there. How nice of them was that?! I’m so grateful!
But do you know what guys? The winter loves me so much that it followed me all the way from Minnesota and made iguanas fall from the skies! Yep. They had a windchill advisory and everything. One local told us it was the coldest temps they’ve had in 5 years. I blamed myself and promptly apologized. 😉
But being a cold-hearty Minnesotan, I found it amusing that they issued a windchill advisory for 35 degree weather, and my sister and I giggled to see many of the locals all bundled up in winter clothes. You guys think this is cold? Bah, you haven’t seen nothing! Incidentally, I hadn’t packed any of my own warm clothes, thinking it was gonna be 80 degrees. I didn’t even wear a coat to the airport, knowing I wouldn’t need it. But I was wrong, it was indeed quite nippy on Tuesday evening. But that didn’t stop us from going out to the hot tub that night. The only other people we met out there with us were from Canada. Maybe they’re the ones to blame for bringing the winter weather! Hahaha!
When I got back home, I heard that the National Weather Service had also issued a warning about “Falling Iguanas” on their Twitter page and that really took the cake! But in actuality, that’s not funny. Poor things! And they weren’t really falling from the skies obviously, they were falling from the trees.
I didn’t see any fallen iguanas while I was there, but I did see one, and thankfully, it was alive and well. It was really cool to see. I snapped a picture of it, but didn’t get a good quality shot…
You can’t tell from the photo, but it was HUGE! I wish I could have gotten closer, but it ran away as I approached. I was lucky to even get this shot.
I feel lucky to have even seen it at all! And lucky to have seen all of the other wonderful and beautiful things I saw while I was in Florida too! I have 300+ other photos that I snapped during the few short days I was there. Excessive much? 😉 But I won’t make you scroll endlessly to look at them all, I’ll try and share them little by little in future posts.
But I will share this one before I go…
My big seester and I at the lighthouse on beautiful Key Biscayne ❤
May your day be with love! And may the spiral of life bring you to beautiful places, people and things today…
✿~Peace & Love~✿
There’s a chill in the air as we awake
Ice crystals formed during the cold, dark night shimmer in the early morning light
“Baby it’s cold outside”
But we’re nice and warm under the covers, wrapped in the heat of each other’s arms
Lets linger here a little longer, my darling, and forget anything else exists in this world beyond us, beyond this moment
So we do…
The world melts away in our embrace, as ice and fire coalesce
But alas… it was only a dream
I reach out to touch you, but your physical form is beyond my reach, far across a vast expanse
So I reach out for you with my heart, and with my mind, in the hope that you can feel me, sense me somehow in your spirit
and that you’ll come to me one day, when you can, when it’s time…
Maybe it will be in the winter…
© Julie Rehnelt 2020
✿~Peace & Love~✿
Posted in Letters to my Soulmate, Photography, Poetry
Frosty stars twinkle bright
awaking me with beauty in dawn’s soft light
© Julie Rehnelt 2020
✿~Peace & Love~✿