Bluebirds and Butterflies

Sweet Lola Yogurt Bar.....A discovery on my recent trip to Houston

Don't you just love frozen yogurt?  To me, there is not a more refreshing treat on a warm day than a scoop or two of delicious, creamy frozen yogurt!   Yogurt or sorbet is always a good low-fat/low sugar alternative to regular ice cream, so for people like me who try to watch their weight, it is a great choice for a snack.

As many of my readers know, I recently flew to Houston from Seattle to help my son celebrate his 29th birthday.  I spent a week with my son and his wife and had a wonderful visit with them.   While in Houston visiting, I helped my daughter-in-law host a birthday party for my son.  The guest list included many of my son's friends.   We had a great time celebrating! 

The day after the party, on Sunday, we spent a relaxing day walking and browsing in an area of town known as Mid-Town in Houston.   Sundays are great for spending time with your family.  We had a wonderful time dining alfresco at a local creperie.  After our lunch and more browsing, we spotted the most adorable yogurt bar called "Sweet Lola."   The shop was calling to us, so we decided to venture in for some desert.   :)

 

Inside this shop awaits the most delicious yogurt with every imaginable topping available.  

I was in yogurt heaven you might say...

You can sample all the featured flavors, and that is exactly what we did.   All were delicious....

And, if just the yogurt itself were not enough to entice you into Sweet Lola Yogurt Bar, the shop also sells some gift items.  I purchased a wonderful book in the shop while browsing.   Love the decor of this cute little shop.....so cheerful!

I was so in love with Sweet Lola Yogurt Bar that I asked the friendly people serving us if I could make a few photos to share with you on my blog.   They not only said they would be happy for me to do this, but also took one of my blog cards.  

"Love with Abandon"

Flowers brighten any day...

I love sconces and chandeliers....   I am all about the ambience....

Look at this adorable apron that was for sale...

Looks like we are not the only ones who have discovered this little gem, "Sweet Lola"....  

There is a cute spot to relax and enjoy some delicious yogurt with all the toppings right inside the shop.  

But, on this gorgeous Houston day, we chose to sit outside and listen to the birds and savor our yogurt at one of the outdoor bistro tables...
When I shared this photo with a friend, I was told this looks like I could be dining in Paris....

Merci!  How do you say, "This Sweet Lola Yogurt is awesome" in French?

The English word is "Yum!"  :)   Or, as the sign says in my next photo....."Crave worthy!"

When I find a place I love, I enjoy sharing this experience with others.  I hope that if you visit the Houston, Texas, area in the future and are looking for a great treat on a beautiful afternoon, that you visit "Sweet Lola Yogurt Bar."   I know I will be returning again on my next visit to Houston. 

Thank you to the nice folks at "Sweet Lola" for your good old southern hospitality and for letting me make all these photos and feature you on my blog. 

I hope that you are having a wonderful day today.  Thank you for visiting me at my blog, Bluebirds and Butterflies. 

Have a "bluebird" day! xoxo Kim       Click here for the link to the shop featured today Sweet Lola Yogurt Bar

Oh, How I Love the Beaches of Florida..... (Part two)

Nothing is better than walking the beach with someone you love.  If you read part one of this blog posting, "Oh, How I Love the Beach," you know that I recently got to accompany my dear husband on a business trip to Florida.  Even though my sweetie was there on business, he did get to sneak in a few walks down Cocoa Beach with me after hours.  

After a hard day at work, there is nothing better than walking the beach.  Here is my husband, Mark, at the beginning of our walk.  Look how bright and blue that Florida sky was....

Cocoa Beach, FL

 

After a day at work, it is nice to walk down the beach with someone you love...

It is so relaxing to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin and the cool water on your feet as you walk down the beach along the shore.   Walking the beach, one of my favorite pasttimes...  Wish I could do it every single day!

Growing up in a small beachtown in Florida, my husband and I spent many hours at the shore when we were in high school.  My husband, Mark, like many guys raised on a beach, was a surfer.   We were not too far from a spot on Cocoa Beach that many surfers congregate to.....the Cocoa Beach Pier.....so we decided to walk that way.

The Cocoa Beach Pier is a popular place for surfers.   It is home to the annual surfing and bikini contest each year.   People come from all over to compete in the surfing contest.  The popular event always draws a crowd.  

In the next photo, you can see the Disney cruise ship between the support posts under the pier...

The necklace you see my husband wearing in this next photo is a spanish coin that was found under the ocean.  The coin was given to my husband's father by famed sunken treasure hunter, Mel Fisher, many years ago.

I love these photos of the seagulls sailing through the breeze with the Cocoa Beach Pier in the background and Disney cruise ship passing by...

These cute guys were sunning themselves by the shoreline...

As I mentioned, my husband was a surfer when he was young.  As we were approaching the Cocoa Beach Pier, I was thinking about all the times that I went to the beach with him.  My girlfriends and I would sit on a blanket on the beach, chatting and listening to music on our radio, while watching my husband and others surf.  Even though my husband does not surf much anymore, he can still hold his own out in the ocean on a board.   Many great surfers have been born on these Brevard County beaches.....including this one....

Famed surfer, Kelly Slater...

Of course, of all the great surfers out there in the world, our favorite surfer is this one....

Our heart belongs to this little surfer girl....

That is our grand-daughter, Brenna, with her surf instructor. Looking good there, "Gidget"......great form!  xoxo

Brenna's dream is to be a pilot one day.  I think she will be a surfer and a pilot :)    Who knows?  The beach is great place to walk, meditate and dream....   What is your dream?  

My son, Elliott, taught me this when he was in elementary school.  It has stuck with me through the years....  "Hold fast to DREAMS for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."  So true!
Thank you for visiting my blog today...

xoxo Kim

Oh, how I LOVE the beaches of Florida.... (Part one)

I hope you all have been doing great while I have been on vacation in Florida.   Thank you to everyone who visited my blog in my absence.  As most of you know, my husband, son and I relocated from Central Florida to Washington State seven years ago.  Still having family in Florida,  it is very nice that my husband occasionally has the opportunity to head back to Florida on a business trip with the company he works for.   This allows us to mix business with pleasure and spend a little time with our family and friends who still live in the area we moved from.   A couple of weeks ago, I accompanied my hubby on a business trip to the Cocoa Beach area.  Late April/May is the perfect time to visit the beaches of Florida.   The weather is beautiful there and not too hot yet.  

For the first part of our trip, while my husband was working, we stayed in a hotel in Cocoa Beach which was great for me because it was walking distance to the beach.   All I had to do was to follow this little path behind the hotel which leads right to the beach....

This was great for me because, while my husband was working, I had an opportunity to do something I really love to do.....walk down the beach and look for shells...

I love to walk down the beach.   It is such great exercise and so relaxing!  I enjoy watching and listening to the seagulls as I walk and hearing the waves splash along the shore....

Sometimes, you meet some interesting people along your walk...

These four ladies were practicing their poses and moves by the seashore.   What a great spot to practice!  They were very nice and even posed for me so that I could photograph them for my blog.  Hmmm......I should have brought my yoga mat!  What a great spot for morning yoga this would have been.

The waves crashing upon the shore and the ocean breeze certainly is conducive to a peaceful soul and always transports me to a zen place.   It is soooooo peaceful!  Along the way, I photographed some of the sandcastles that the children visiting the beach had built.   This sandcastle village was named "Wonderland" so I think the builders were sharing my zen feeling...

This cute little guy I passed along the way was hoping to catch a big fish...

Seeing someone fishing always makes me think of my Dad.  Oh, how he loved to fish! 

These kids were making freeform sandcastles by dripping wet sand on top of itself to make high points....like ice castles.   My sister and I used to love to make these when we were young and would go to the beach with our parents.  Seeing these children playing made me think of being a child myself and making sandcastles with my sister and brother...

 

My sister, Jeri, and I still love to walk the beaches together today....

I think my sister and I get our love of the beach from our dear mother...

(our Mother in Daytona Beach, Florida, when she was young)

My sister, husband and I spent a lot of time on the beach together when we were young.   We still like to clown around on the beach when we get together...

(sand flea on the beach....)

(seaweed along the beach shore)

(Seaweed mustache for me and Mark imitating Z Z Top....)
Life is too short to take yourselves too seriously....  You gotta have fun!

Life is what you make it!

And life is meant to be enjoyed...

with those you love...

Thank you for visiting my blog today.  I have so many photos I would like to share with you from my trip to Florida......too many for one posting...... so I'll be breaking them up into three different postings this week.   Please come back to walk the beaches of Florida with me again this week.   Until then, give someone you love a hug and enjoy your day.   xoxo Kim

Beachtime is coming!

Almost time to start packing for my upcoming trip back to Florida!    My dear husband has a business trip to Cocoa Beach coming up very soon, and was sweet enough to get me a ticket to tag along with him.   As many of you know, I grew up as a child in Titusville, Florida (pictured above) and always enjoy going back "home" again.   I love going back to Playalinda Beach in Titusville which is very near Cocoa Beach where my husband and I will be staying.

Playalinda Beach has looked the same forever!   I love that about it!   In the 50's, there were some houses along this beach, but the government bought the homes from the people who owned them and demolished the houses at the beginning of the space race.  They did this because you can actually see some of the launch pads from this beach.  For safety reasons and for fear of sabotage at the time, the government took over the property.  I am glad they did because this beach has remained in the natural state with the dunes and palmettos surrounding the beach. 

Playalinda Beach closes down when there is a launch but is open to the public at other times.   When I was a child, the wooden walkways were not there.  In order to get to the beach, you had to walk over dirt paths and sandbags that went up over the dunes of palmettos.   There was some improvements made several years ago and the wooden walkways were part of this process.   

Each section of this beach, or each walkway, has a number to identify the area.  This section shown in my photographs is known as "Number 5."  

When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time on this beach.   There was a section on the beach where you could still see a bit of a slab from one of the old houses that once stood until the government bought them.   The kids referred to this area as "the houses" and everyone knew exactly where this spot was.  Sometimes, people would tell you to "meet me at the houses" as a way to identify where you would meet along the beach.  

I have fond memories of being in highschool and hopping into my "VW Beetle" and driving to the beach which was a short drive from my parents home in Titusville. 

Armed with my blanket, my small radio, a bag of chips and a container of water and maybe my camera, I would find my perfect spot on the beach and plop myself down.  After that, the slathering of baby oil would begin.  In those days, we did not know that the sun was so bad for you.  I am lucky that I have the skin I have today because we never wore sunblock in those days, and we spent hours and hours in the bright Florida sunshine at the beach.  Getting a dark tan was important to us in those days.  I even, like many gals, combined iodine with my baby oil for optimum tanning.   Our bikinis were small and our tans were dark in those days of the late 60's and early 70's.  Thank you, mom and dad, for the good skin genes I got from you......because, based on my long days of tanning, I should look like a dried up prune today who spends a lot of time at the dermatologist's office in surgery.  I have been very lucky but I cannot help but think that if we had known about the sun damage then and I had protected my skin, I would probably look a lot younger than I look now!  Luckily, I started wearing hats and sunblock when I was in my early 30's....thank you to Dr. Kronberg in Houston....and have, at least, saved myself some additional aging due to sun damage in the second part of my life.  But, can I say............and be honest..............that I MISS those days of sitting there for hours in the sun on the beach getting a dark tan.  Alas, those days are gone but I have very good memories of sitting on the beach with that baby oil on with my girlfriends while watching the guys surf and waiting on my boyfriend, who is now my husband, to come in from hours of surfing.   The gals didn't mind waiting on the shore.  We had fun chatting and walking the beach together.

After all these years, I still love going to the beach.  My sister, Jeri, and I used to collect shells and place them in a bucket when we were kids.  It is something we still love to do....

My sister, Jeri, and I used to spend hours walking the beach looking for shells.  We still love to do this together after all these years....

My sister and I joined by memories...   

Joined by love....

And in our old hometown....no matter how old we get....always known as "the Thompson girls."

Playalinda Beach will always be a special beach to me...

(Pictured above beyond the palmettos....the VAB...Vehicle Assembly Building at the Cape Canaveral/Cape Kennedy)

I am so looking forward to being in Cocoa Beach with my sweet husband in a week.  Looking forward to being back on the beach together.  Can't wait to walk the beach together and look for shells...

I am looking forward to walking the beach just like we did when we were young.....and will continue to do as we get older....

Hope you have a beautiful day today.   Thank you for visiting my blog. xoxo Kim