Tag Archives: parenting

Earth Day’s Little Helper

Our local Whole Foods has a plot at our park district’s community garden. {find a local garden} A few years ago, I admired the gardeners from afar when I lived in the neighborhood. I used to lay on a grassy hill with my (then a puppy) canine companion and admire the gardeners as they tended to their plots while I flipped through the pages of a book.

starting seeds in newspaper cups. the plants then go directly into the garden (in the cup), since the newspaper is compostable. perfect!

Back to Earth Day… Whole Foods volunteers planned to break ground at their garden plot on Monday and I have been excited for the past couple weeks to take Dekker. Fortunately, the weather in our area is on the up and up after our monsoon of a storm last week, and it was a gorgeous day to let him get  dirty!

helping hands giving plantlife a start…

a teaching moment

getting dirty!

children can be so genuine in their interactions. i loved it :)

lettuce plants…next stop, sunflowers!

I’m so thankful for the volunteers who take the time to do things like this for the community. I hope more and more people take advantage of these opportunities!

Life gets busy. Weather locks us in. Time doesn’t allow for everything to get done. But events like this are important for me and provide opportunities to teach my son about life and health. I looked at him during his late afternoon nap, and smiled at the innocence on his face and dirt under his fingernails. I can’t help but look forward to getting some of my own plants in the ground now that the weather here will finally allow us to do so. Hope you had a healthy Earth Day!

Maybe you can find your own community garden here!

Motivation Monday

I sit. I think. A lot. Well, maybe I don’t really sit, but regardless my mind is always moving, planning, dreaming. My professional life is evolving and I am making some positive changes, and am finally pursuing some longer term goals that have been idling away in my mind. I have my personal set backs but continue educating myself about nutrition & health. I am in the physical shape that allows me to keep up with an energetic toddler and I put in a lot of work to achieve fitness goals I set for myself both short and long term. My personal life is genuinely happy and I try to wake up each day in a good mood, excited for what the day holds. I see myself as an optimist and try to limit (but deal with!) any “bad moments” that creep up on me.

However, I saw the quote above on Instagram (because Instagram is the greatest place to visualize your life!) and have been ruminating on it for weeks. No joke. Weeks! Since I had Dekker over 2 years ago and started on my journey to whole-health, I really have never “gone back.” If there’s a bump in the road and I make a mistake, I learn from it and move forward. I consciously make an effort to learn from the obstacles I have left behind while remaining true to myself. I am grateful that I am now making the time (and have created an amazing opportunity!) in my professional life to further my knowledge and teach others.

Life is going to move forward whether you want it to or not. You can keep up and enjoy it, or you can watch as it passes you by. I am at the place in my life where it is only going to get better and I’ll be running alongside it, gathering others as I go!

Must Sees

An enjoyable weekend often includes watching documentaries. We try our best to educate ourselves on the varying perspectives of topics and make decisions that are best fit our family. I wanted to share a list of documentaries that we have watched over the years; the ones that have played a part in our decision-making when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle.

I encourage you to watch them with an open mind and continue to make educated choices that best fit you. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

FOOD-RELATED DOCUMENTATRIES

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (2010) ~ “100 pounds overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease, Joe Cross is at the end of his rope and the end of his hope. In the mirror he saw a 310lb man whose gut was bigger than a beach ball and a path laid out before him that wouldn’t end well- with one foot already in the grave, the other wasn’t far behind…”

Fed Up (2002) ~ “70% of the food we eat contains genetically engineered ingredients and the biotech industry is spending million a year to convince us that this technology is our only hope.”

Food Beware (2008) ~ “For the first time ever, our children are growing up less healthy than we are. As the rate of cancer, infertility and other illnesses linked to environmental factors climbs upward each year, we must ask ourselves: why is this happening?”

Food, Inc. (2008) ~ “An unflattering look inside America’s corporate controlled food industry.”

Food Matters (2008) ~ “Food Matter examines how the food we eat can help or hurt our health. Nutritionists, naturopaths, doctors, and journalists weigh in on topics organic food, food safety, raw foodism, and nutritional therapy.”

Forks Over Knives (2011) ~ “Examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.”

King Corn  (2007) ~ “In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm.”

Vegucated (2010) ~ 3 people make a life-changing decision to adopt a vegan lifestyle for 6 weeks

HEALTH-RELATED DOCUMENTARIES

One Nation, Overweight (2010) ~ ”There is an obesity plague in America that costs the nation as much as $147 billion — and an untold number of lives — every year. Nearly two-thirds of American adults are either overweight or obese. Childhood obesity is triple what it was a generation ago.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. (2011) ~ “Breast cancer has become the poster child of corporate cause-related marketing campaigns. Countless women and men walk, bike, climb and shop for the cure. Each year, millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? Pink Ribbons, Inc. is a feature documentary that shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer, which marketing experts have labeled a “dream cause,” becomes obfuscated by a shiny, pink story of success.”

Cut, Burn, Poison (2010) ~ “A controversial, eye opening, and sometimes heartbreaking documentary that puts the business of cancer treatment (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy) under the microscope.”

Sweetest Misery: A Poisoned World (2004) ~ ”Narrator Cori Brackett had a strange cause-and-effect experience with the diet cokes she was drinking and quickly found herself disabled and diagnosed with MS. Slowly able to walk and speak again, she believes her illness is linked to aspartame. After 7,000 miles, and 25 hours of footage, “Sweet Misery” will reveal one of the most pervasive, insidious forms of corporate negligence since tobacco.”

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note: These aren’t “old” videos. They are very much current and relatable. My husband recently said to me, “people are likely to spend more time researching a new television than they do decisions about their own health”…