Happy Birthday to my handsome, sweet, thoughtful husband! I am immensely blessed to have him to celebrate! 🎂🎉🥳
Happy Thanksgiving! Are you prepping and cooking a special meal too? One of my favorite meditative activities, which infuses nourishment into my soul, as well as love into the food I am preparing, is chopping, slicing, & dicing with a GOOD knife. This @steelportknifeco Carbon Steel Chef’s knife is way beyond good and exponentially adds to the experience. It’s incredibly sharp and so very satisfying to use. In fact, the best knife I’ve ever used! I feel SO very blessed by all the beautiful connections I have in my life. An additional blessing is that I won this knife via a joint give-a-away with one of my husband’s and my favorite Youtube chef’s @rick_bayless. My husband regularly makes many of his recipes and we even traveled to one of his restaurants in Chicago - twice now (@fronteragrill - incredible). One more beautiful blessing to mention is that Steelport Knife Company is in Portland, Oregon! My husband and I are excited to go visit them and tune up our knife skills! Thanks so much! So much to be grateful for! Many blessings!
Happy Thanksgiving week! May you find much to be grateful for in this wonderful world. This is my beautiful mother, sometime in the 60’s (she was in her 20’s), also pregnant with one of my younger siblings. I love this photo!
I am incredibly grateful for all the people in my life, especially my family, friends, running buddies (my soul sisters/personally appointed mental health coaches), clients and professional colleagues as well as my many acquaintances, my puppies, Rosie & Theo, my new role volunteering with @accent_care hospice, my health and the magnificent Pacific Northwest I live in. Much love to all of you. ❤️🙏
Short but super sweet visit for my Dad’s 85th birthday! 🥳 We had a wonderful dinner out on his actual birthday. We later enjoyed a family celebration at my sister’s lovely home. My middle son, who lives in Maryland, joined us, as well as my niece and her beautiful family! I got to hold her precious brand new baby boy and got hugs and kisses from her cutie pie daughter! Also pictured are just a handful of my parents many pets, all rescues except the collie puppy, my mom’s dream dog and my the result of my meditative rock balancing down my the river they live on. I’m very grateful for my family. They inspire me.
Celebrating our beautiful, smart, inspiring and totally fun friend, @portlandcarol after her choice of a hill repeat workout in the cold and dark! She always shows up regardless of weather and any shenanigans 😉 that may have kept her up late the night before. Happiest of birthdays dear friend! May they only get more amazing each year. You are such a blessing and we all appreciate you! 🥳❤️
My maternal Pop Pop.
Nearly 5 decades of sisterhood together with these beautiful women. Lifting each other up through struggles, celebrating successes, and expressing unconditional love. And of course shenanigans, mischief, and hilarious fun. I am so grateful.
Fall ‘dos for these two joyful pups! 🥰
📷: by our awesome groomer, Kendra!
#signaturelabradoodlesnapshots
Yay! Beautycounter is back up and running today (November 1st - December 1st) before their big relaunch early 2025. If you are like me, my sensitive skin was missing Beautycounter SO much. I tried a few other “safer personal care products/brands” and I am just not getting the same results as I have been getting with Beautycounter and actually am currently nursing a delayed reaction. I’m still a Beautycounter consultant and would love to help you choose what works for you during this “In-Between” sale. I’m happy to answer any questions you have. If you would like to shop with me, my link is in my bio or you can type it out as: beautycounter.com/hollymorello. As a consultant I receive a commission. I appreciate you shopping with me! Be sure to check out the special deals too!
Back Story: As a Functional Nutritional Therapy practitioner and as someone that cares a lot about the health and wellness of those I love and my community, I’ve been committed to helping clients and loved ones address their wellness holistically, which includes addressing chemicals of concern in everything they put in & on their body and what they bring into their home.
I’ve been impressed by Beautycounter’s mission: advocacy & education to get harmful chemicals and even those of concern, out of personal & home care products for everyone. I’ve also impressed that they were a B Corp and so much more.
Regardless, everyone wants high performing products, and high performing they are, which is also big reason why I use, support, and align with Beautycounter.
During my work with Beautycounter (Counter Brands dba Beautycounter), they were bought by a larger corporation from the much beloved founder, Gregg Renfrew. That corporation shut down in the spring of this year. Sad news. HOWEVER, there is good news! Gregg Renfrew, the founder of Beautycounter, was able to acquire some of the assets including the right to sell Beautycounter products in the future. Gregg and her team are working very hard at their re-launch with much enthusiasm.
Very much like my Aunt Rene who just turned 100 (see August 28th post), my beautiful Aunt Marie, 95 years young, and pictured here, has been very active throughout her life. She spent years traveling around the country with her husband, my Uncle Howard, doing a special form of square dancing. She golfed, and for many years had an RV and traveled all over the US. She reminisced these experiences with me and others when I stayed with her the last night I was visiting a little more than a week ago). I was so impressed and inspired by how fit she is at 95. I asked my Aunt Marie for some words of wisdom to the younger generations and she replied “mind your own business!” 😂
Some great wisdom there and what I need reminding of every day. I’ve learned that lesson by not following it THE HARD WAY, especially when I started nutritional therapy and wanted to shout out all I learned and experienced from the rooftops - sometimes in a very dogmatic way. I’m embarrassed by that now but none of us are perfect. As long as when we know better, we at least try to do better! If you catch me in the act, all you have to say is, “remember the words of wisdom your Aunt Marie shared with you?”
Another family member, a cousin in his 90’s, shared his words of wisdom too: correct and apologize for your mistakes as soon as possible. I think these are great words to live by too! I fractured an important relationship and lost too many precious years with a loved one who I tried to push unasked for Nutritional Therapy recommendations on. At the time I thought it was with good intentions. It took me years to simply apologize without any excuses. The apology was welcomed and the other person took some responsibility for the situation too. Mind your own business is fitting here too. Not easy when you love someone and want to help! Of course there are always exceptions to the rule but that’s not what I’m talking about.
I feel very blessed to have such a wonderful family.
A belated Happy National Dog Day! Rosie & Theo 🐕🐶 - the best of friends! After launching our 3 sons and a too quiet household from some time…these 2 are now the daily light of our lives. We love them dearly and they provide us with boundless love, joy, laughter and smiles! ❤️
Birthday run in the forest with my beautiful friends! 🙏🥰 Thank you, @portlandcarol & @3grigsby - love and appreciate you two and our friendship! Feeling grateful and blessed! ❤️
What an incredible blessing it was to have just celebrated my beautiful, sweet Aunt Rene’s 100th birthday (along with about 50 other family members!)! Ever since I was little, I remember how I admired how active she always was. It definitely paid off. She’s in great shape in mind, body, and spirit and such a joy to converse with! I’m so impressed by her sharp memory and ability to recall and tell stories of her youth. I’m so grateful I was able to spend this time with her and reconnect with extended family I haven’t seen in years and some I’ve never met. I have so many pictures I’d love to share, but this is my favorite.
I’m very grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to earn this Completion of Comprehensive Direct Patient Core Hospice Volunteer Training with AccentCare! This type of work has been calling to my heart for some time and I so I believe divine intervention was at play when one of my very favorite human’s on earth shared that she was a volunteer coordinator for hospice!
Thank you for the mentorship throughout this process, @terryloujordan! I’m looking forward to our continued work together with this incredible organization.
So much gratitude regarding receiving the incredible impact on the mind, body, and spirit running in our magnificent local forest with equally magnificent friends. There are a multitude of benefits here: being in nature, especially in a forest; being with girlfriends, especially while exercising as well as the kindness and support given to each other (release of oxytocin, the bonding hormone) and to those we cross paths with on the trail including the lovely young woman who offered to take our photo after seeing our many humorous failed attempts to do it ourselves via a selfie 😂 .
Beyond reproductive health, the hormone, oxytocin, has a number of positive effects on both your mental and physical health. It helps lower stress and anxiety; enhances a feeling of connection and belonging; and has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties.
There are numerous ways to boost oxytocin, a few are acts of kindness; meditation and yoga; petting/cuddling and playing with an animal friend; physical touch such as giving/receiving hugs.
What are ways you increase oxytocin?
Happy International Cat Day! I miss our sweet kitties Starlight & Shadow. Starlight communicated with his eyes. He was an indoor cat since we have coyotes around us but we’d bring him outside with us as much as possible, which he loved.
Here, (he’s in the first picture), he was showing me his love and appreciation. I think of these times when I do HeartMath type meditations in which you think of moments of experiencing love and gratitude and relive those feelings in your heart. Very powerful.
Shadow was a sweet kitty and a great brother the Starlight even if it didn’t seem like they had anything to do with each other. One morning Shadow was acting odd and started biting my ankles and running away…I intuitively thought “maybe he’s trying to tell me something,” and so I followed him to our back door where he led me and where Starlight was crying outside. He had apparently accidentally snuck out the night before and was out all night!
They both lived very long into their late teens. They were very much loved. I suspect their sweet souls are around us all the time.
#happyinternationalcatdayDay
Spend just a moment a day sending unconditional love from your heart to those you don’t resonate with. Oh what a greater world this will be. ❤️🙏
Enjoyed a wonderful indulgence today at @bluemoonbakerypdx - a 100% gluten free bakery. I tried the Boston Cream Donut and my husband, Tony, tried the Strawberry handpie (which does not contain eggs or nuts, which he is allergic to).
My husband said it was even better than our regular favorite gluten free bakery, which he clarifies as still amazing. I really couldn’t compare since I don’t usually have a Boston Cream donut but I really enjoyed it.
While I try to avoid highly processed sugar and carby baked goods day to day- I do enjoy a bit of good quality, local baked goods like these on occasion and admittedly maybe once a week. My gut and brain does better with high quality gluten free so I greatly appreciate this option in the Portland metro area.
The @bluemoonbakerypdx shop is located in downtown Hillsboro in a really cool location but know that they have pre-order and drop off locations all around Portland.
When thoughts are overtaken with worry, fear, resentment, regrets and other ruminations, move to gratitude. Gratitude and love. There’s always something to feel grateful for. There’s always someone or something to love or to send love to. I send you love. ❤️ Have a wonderful weekend.
📷: H. Morello, Rock Springs Farm, Castleton, VA
Celebrating the birthdays of my youngest 2 sons over the last 3 weeks! 🥳🥳🎉🎉🎂🎂 Neither are on social media so they won’t see any birthday wishes here but I couldn’t help sharing. My heart and mind expands beyond measure every moment I get to see and experience the world through their perspectives. My sons have been my greatest teachers. All three continue to awe and inspire me. ❤️🥰🙏
P.S. You can probably tell they both wrestled, and Jacob, the older of the two, still does through Jujutsu.