Morgan Trinker

Man, oh man. We LOVE winter in Salt Lake City. People back home think we’re crazy. WE KNOW. But you have to understand that winters out west are much different than those in the east, particularly the southeast. I honestly would prefer a high of 2 degrees in Salt Lake than a high of 38 degrees in Tennessee. The biggest difference is the lack of humidity here. Cold and wet is not a great combination. But when you walk outside here, yes, it’s COLD, but the air is also crisp and dry. Even when it snows, afterward the skies are SO blue, and the sun comes out and makes everything look gorgeous. Quite an improvement over cold and rainy. Yuck. And the snow…. oh, the SNOW. I’m beginning to see why Utah is known for “the best snow on Earth.” It is PERFECT. Soft and powdery, whiter than you can imagine. Doesn’t look totally disgusting after a few hours. The perfect crunch, crunch, crunch under your feet. It’s so peaceful, yet so invigorating. I was talking to my friend Erin, who just moved to Denver from Tennessee, earlier today, and we couldn’t stop gushing over how totally and completely ALIVE we feel in the cold and the snow. I hate summer because it sucks the energy and the life out of me. I feel so lazy and gross all the time. But the winter? It’s so fresh and so clean, clean. I actually look forward to my 30-minute walks to work. And speaking of, it’s a good thing I CAN walk to work, because Jamie and I totally got stuck in our driveway yesterday morning, and I wouldn’t have made it on time if I hadn’t been able to just walk. It had snowed a lot overnight, and we didn’t know at the time that our landlady actually pays someone to come shovel the driveway. And it’s a good thing, because our driveway is literally on a 45 degree angle, and barely a couple of feet wider than our actual vehicle. Another reason I have yet to muster up the courage to learn how to drive a stick. (Yep, it’s been 6 months and I still haven’t driven here once.) So I’m glad we wanted to live downtown so badly, because with this weather, having the option of public transportation is a lifesaver.

But we’re not the only Trinkers who love snow… Gretchen is CRAZY about it! Oh man, she goes nuts when we get to the park and she finds friends to play in the snow with. It’s adorable. So I’ve had my trusty point-and-shoot with me the past couple of days to show y’all back home what REAL snow is like!

(p.s. Even though it was taking people upwards of 2 hours to get to work yesterday because of the snow, school buses were STILL running. Taylor, a girl I work with, said she can only remember having ONE snow day her entire childhood here in Utah. How crazy is that?!)

Snapped this one on my way home from work yesterday afternoon. Oh, these skies.

And these on my walk with Gretchen today:

Here she is playing with her friends. She loved them so much she tried to jump in the car with them when they left.

This was the funniest part of the day. So Gretchen looooves tennis balls. If there is one within a five mile radius of her nose, she WILL find it. Unfortunately, she’s not what you’d call a fetcher. In fact, she thinks it’s quite an entertaining game to keep as far as possible away from you when she has a ball in her mouth. Then she goes and hides and tries to destroy it. Then she comes back and runs up in front of you to flaunt it, but has lightning-quick reflexes and gets away before you can grab her. Well, I thought I had the last laugh today when she found a ball…. that was frozen into the pond she was skating around on. She was SO confused because no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t get it out! So there I was, laughing hysterically and taking pictures, when suddenly I stepped on what I thought was the edge of the pond…. and my leg busted through the ice straight into the freezing water. Gretchen looked up at me and was all, “Who’s laughing NOW, eh?”

Snow beard!

We are so lucky to live so close to a park like this. It’s so nice to have an excuse to get out of the house and just be in nature for an hour or so every day. So I guess we have the annoying-ness of our dog to thank for that. :)

On an unrelated note, I just finished reading Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace… six years after my parents gave it to me as a Christmas gift. (Better late than never, right?!) With the beginning of a new year coming, and Jamie’s new job, and hopefully the growth of my business, it’s about time we took control of our finances and learned the beauty of a budget…. and a savings account…. and compound interest. I spent the day reviewing our expenditures and making Excel spreadsheets. I want to be able to live the life my parents have… living well below our means, saving, saving, saving, giving, and being able to pay cash for everything. In order to get there, I have a lot of personal tendencies and habits to overcome. I guess my dad’s minute attention to finances is finally rubbing off on me. And as he’s reading this, he’s probably crying tears of joy and praising Jesus. If you knew me and my financial history, you’d understand why. :)

But I say all this because tonight Jamie and I were having a big Money Talk, and I said that we needed to talk to someone about investments, and he was all, “Oh, I already know exactly what to do.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. It was one of my hobbies once.”

Only Jamie…..

Last weekend Jamie and I finally got around to decorating for Christmas. I know we still just live in a lil apartment, but you gotta have some Christmas cheer no matter where you live! As you can see, my love for turquoise and green and red… and all things vintage, of course… extends even into my holiday decorating style. First up, meet our special Santa gnome friend. (My mom HATES gnomes. I think they’re quite charming myself. Sorry Mom!)

And our little tree! And yes, I did still have to use a stool to put ornaments on the top part. Jamie got a real kick out of that one.

My favorite holiday decorating tip: Buy everything AFTER Christmas! The winter before Jamie and I got married, I knew we wouldn’t have anything for our first Christmas, so I waited until everything went 75-90% off at Target and got a TON of really cute stuff for practically nothing. Another great place to check is the Dollar Tree. Granted, for every cute thing they have, there are approximately ten hideously tacky things, but if the cute things are only $1, it’s well worth the hunt!

The set of old Santa mugs I inherited. I LOVE, love, love these.

A cute gift from Debbie this year:

Starbucks veterans will recognize this wreath from about three seasons ago. This was my absolute favorite holiday set-up EVER, because they incorporated turquoise in with the traditional red and green, and because all the white cutouts of people sledding and skating were SO cute. One of the benefits of working at Starbucks: free Christmas decorations. Who knew?

These stockings are my latest find. We were in Old Navy on Saturday getting Jamie some new undershirts when I saw these and ran over to see how much they were. When I saw the $9.50 pricetag, I almost walked away… but then I spotted a “$1” sale sign at the top of the rack… So I got all these for THREE BUCKS! Merry Christmas, indeed. (And yes, they are hanging on a door, not a fireplace… but sometimes you just have to make do.)

And our back balcony, overlooking all of downtown Salt Lake (including the temple in the middle). This was one of the biggest selling points of this apartment. Well that, and the fact that there were really no other options and we were about to board a plane back to Knoxville with no place to live. But the view was a pretty nice bonus, I’d say. (And again, my mom is probably having a heart attack over the fact that I strung green-corded lights onto a white balcony with no garland… But this was cheap. And nobody really sees it up close but us anyway. Oh well.)

Clearly, we are the only ones with holiday spirit in our house. Scrooges.

So I’ve decorated, watched Love Actually, sung every Christmas song from here to kingdom come thanks to Starbucks’ Holiday Grind (which includes, oddly enough, Rufus Wainright doing “Hallelujah”- I think the people in charge just saw the word hallelujah and threw it in there for kicks, ’cause it’s really kind of a depressing song)…. only a few more things to check off to make this season a success.

Happy Holidays, everyone!