Categories
play things to do

happy halloween from us!

morticia and gomez addams – dress and jacket from goodwill, wig bought online, other details from around the hous

Categories
eat things to do

you are what you eat part 1

eating healthy.

jared and i have made some big life changes since the spring. we’ve always been relatively healthy eaters, but we decided to make an actual effort to actively choose all the food that goes into our bodies. these bodies were given to us to take care of, and we were doing a B- job of it. some of our friends have asked us to share how we handle our all natural diet, so i’ll split it up over a couple blog posts 🙂 here’s where we started…

what we cut out:

preservatives, artificial food coloring, artificial flavors, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, soy, hormones, gmos (when possible), and artificial sweeteners (which we cut out long ago, see here)

what we’ve reduced:

wheat and corn products, refined sugars and processed foods in general (mainly because they include some or all of the above items)

what we’ve added:

fruits and vegetables (we never got enough vegetables), organic hormone free and grass fed meats, vitamins and herbs

it seems like a lot in a list but really it’s simple. we eat food that’s minimally processed, has all natural ingredients, and is organic and gmo free when possible…basically not taking any shortcuts. it’s behavior modification. it takes a little time at first, but when you get into good habits, it becomes easy. we’ve been at it for about 7 months now and it’s been great. some of you were following when i was doing my cooking posts incorporating vegetables so really this started even longer ago. i was trying to actively learn to cook because i realized that we eat much healthier when i’m cooking. the funny thing is that when we made this new change, i realized it’s a good thing i was trying to get in the habit of cooking because i pretty much have to cook to be able to control this new habit.

what we’ve learned:

the chemicals/food that we chose to cut out is pretty much in every processed food

it’s very hard to find bread with minimal ingredients (stay tuned, i may be looking to make my own at this point!)

it’s very hard to find meat (stay tuned, blog about this coming up)

it’s very easy to find good produce, california is awesome at farmer’s markets and jimbo’s has all organic produce (which makes it easy by not having to read labels)

shopping took more than twice as long when i first started, but now it’s back to a normal time (stay tuned for a post about where i buy things)

i thought eating organically and healthy would be more expensive but it’s turning out to be negligible (there will be bits and pieces about cost throughout subsequent posts)

so there you have it, feel free to ask questions or let me know what you want to hear about.

read part two here

Categories
asia mock places to go play reminisce things to do

mocktography

where it all started…if you’ve seen my facebook album full of what we call mocktography, you should know that it started way back in 2004. i was living abroad and before long, photos of statues and just posing and smiling became quite boring. i honestly don’t remember how we thought of it, but it became a hobby of ours, and jared and i have run with it. so here’s a few mock photos of when it all began.

we always enjoyed making other people pose to be part of the collection too 🙂

stay tuned for more fine art mocktography
Categories
oceania places to go reminisce things to do

where it all began..

we used to have this game called geo-safari when we were kids. my brothers and i got so good at the game that when the tv show where in the world is carmen san diego, started, we were in heaven! we wanted to be on that show and actually go to all those places they talked about.

but my love for travel did not start there, it started when we were pretty young and we had our first exchange student. she piqued my brother and my interests in traveling. we had exchange students every year for years from sweden, norway, denmark, france, holland, portugal, morocco,  and australia. we would talk to them any chance we got, learn how to count to 10 in their languages, and make fun of their eating habits (pizza and fried chicken with a fork and knife, don’t you know we eat with our hands!)

the first trip i took out of the country was by myself for five weeks, i went to australia to visit 5 exchange students. i saved all my babysitting money and went, and i was hooked. i was awed by God’s creation in a place i’d never seen or even dreamed of really. i enjoyed the culture, learning the differences in our versions of english, and seeing that the world was much bigger than a 15 year old could even imagine. i knew i had to see more, and learn more, and this is where it all began.

ALSO – do please notice my awesome fashion choices! oh wait, i had no idea how to dress myself for the better part of my life…