We’ve made it to the last day of 2017! Congrats to us! Life is not always easy but we’ve hopefully given our best to all our endeavors and continue to cultivate the best in ourselves along the way. Relatively speaking, I’ve had a great year, not without challenge, or hardship but the good outweighed the heavy. I hadn’t planned on doing one of these ‘best of 2017’ posts but I thought about it long enough so here I am reeling in the highlights but mostly I wanted to express my sincerest gratitude to all of you for your support throughout the year. All of your comments, our exchanges, your expressions, and appreciation of my work are deeply valued. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Photography Highlights

This year was incredibly fun and adventurous for me as far as photography goes. I spent many hours learning the ins and outs of my camera and took more photos than I have in the past years. “You miss 100% of the shots you never take” became my motto and I plan to embrace even more of that in 2018. Some of my favorites I’ve shared here on victorialise.com would be;

Alpenglow on Teocalli | Predator and Prey | Succulents By The Sea Santa Cruz, CA | Magic Hour In The Gunnison Valley | Colorado’s Iconic Crystal Mill | Lily Lake | Trees of Colorful Colorado | Moody Mountain Days | The Castles Gunnison, Colorado | Backdoor Sunset  | The Mojave Desert parts 1, 2, & 3 | Junior NSSA Surf Competition Santa Cruz, CA

Lifestyle Highlights

It was super great to share more of my favorite vegetarian recipes over the last year and you all seemed to favor A Vegetarian twist on a BBQ Classic,  I mean who doesn’t love a carrot dog?!

Although, Monday Motivation: Hiking Mountains at 55+ didn’t take place in 2017, I was finally given permission to publish the adventure. And it still stands as a favorite memory of mine to this very day! If you’re unfamiliar check it out, my mom climbed her first rocky mountain in her 50’s. I don’t know what was better the view or the east coast attitude revealing itself on the trail, ha!

Seven Magic Mountains, Meditations from Mt, Axtell, A Mountain Girls Take On Lace, and Wearable Trends for Mountain Towns were incredibly fun to put together and tickled all of my creative fancies. There will be a lot more of that jazz in 2018 and more collaborations with fellow artists. If you’d like to connect and/or collaborate shoot me a message on my contact page!

Celebrating our rescue dog, Styx’s 2nd birthday and him in general is always a highlight, alongside our west coast and Mojave desert road trips, the adventure of hiking Teocalli Mountain, Mt. Princeton hotspring trip, celebrating our first year married, our annual Living Journey’s summit and so many more that I could continue to ramble on about.

Advocacy Highlights

Remembering Tyson was the most near and dear to my heart and the most difficult to write. However, it was just a small way to honor his short life. Know Better, Do Better was another favorite and continues to serve as a gentle reminder for me to live in accordance to not only my truth but the universal law of compassion and oneness.

All Else

As far as on the blog goes I enjoyed writing People You Meet While Walking Down The Street series 1, 2, 3, and would like to pick that up again as it trickled off after #3. It was nice to share some of my poetry and thoughts, like The Power of a Flower as well as Finding Confidence In Creativity which is something I feel I’ve brought life back to in the last year or so. Outside of the blogosphere, I rekindled old friendships, stoked the flame to new ones, went on a whole lot of adventures, hiked 2 new mountains, stayed very committed to all of my practices and pursuits i.e. fitness, yoga, all things creativity, blogging more consistently, daily walks, and a more frequent meditation practice to name a few (was that more than a few?).

Last but not least, one of the best of the best, was my cousins venturing to Colorado from Delaware in September. Somehow it never made it on the blog but we celebrated the vibrant life of their mother, Jacquie. We climbed a mountain (their very first rocky mountain), went paddle boarding, danced at the Talk Of The Town, attempted to fly fire lanterns (and failed), shared homemade vegetarian meals together, and relished in our gratitude for life as well as the lifetime friendship we share.

While we can’t control all of what is to come we can always hope that goodness lies ahead and we can always make the best of the goodness we have today.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, adventure filled 2018! Have fun and be safe tonight!

Thank you for joining me here and until next year..

Happy trails!

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