Year: 2013

Categories
eat things to do

you are what you eat part 4

this is part four of a series about our all natural and organic diet. Read part one here, read part two here, read part three here.
juicing
we got into juicing because we had heard a lot of our friends talk about it and we watched a few documentaries about the food industry (which i recommend you watch if you want to cut out bad food because you won’t crave certain things afterward!!! – at the same time, they also have their agenda so take them as you will…) here are our thoughts about juicing and what we’ve learned:
when you’re learning about health food and start researching, you realize that every time you open a can of worms, you open another can of worms. this is why i’ve really loved going all natural, there’s no justification or talking myself into eating something that has a ‘no’ ingredients. the hard part though, is trying to figure out what is really all natural sometimes, especially with all the gmo talk and everything. but organic fruits and vegetables as far as i can figure are safe.
but another thing i was worried about with juicing is that eastern thoughts about food recommend cooking all vegetables, and not eating them raw. there are various reasons for this but it’s interesting that it directly contradicted western thoughts and say that cooking vegetables kills all the benefits. so when i did my vegetable challenge a year or so ago (cooking one new recipe a week with a new vegetable) i cooked all the veges. now, we’re trying juicing with raw vegetables so far with no ill effects 🙂 i did finally learn on one of the documentaries that there are nutrients and micronutrients in food. the micronutrients are all the vitamins and minerals in food (the nutrients being the rest of it like fat, fiber, etc…) so cooking food gets rid of the micronutrients which is generally why you would eat vegetables to begin with.
some people are concerned with juicing because you don’t get a lot of the fiber that you would get from just simply eating the veges. here’s my philosophy about that, would i sit down and eat this pile of vegetables throughout the day? not likely, in fact i probably wouldn’t eat that amount of vegetables in a week. so by only drinking the micronutrients of that pile, i’m at least getting more than usual. plus, how do good habits form? by starting them. so we’re starting every morning with juicing so that hopefully throughout the day we will remember how we started it and try to make good food choices the rest of the day. just because you juice doesn’t mean you can’t have a salad for lunch or carrots for a snack. i’m pretty sure you can’t get too many veges. also, our juicer has two settings, one that is mostly juice and one that leaves a lot of pulp so we do end up getting some of that fiber.
another thing we learned is to not put too much fruit in the mix. the point of juicing for us is that we don’t get enough vegetables. fruit is easy to eat by itself, it’s not really necessary to juice mostly fruit. if you’re trying to add green nutrients to your diet, just put in a little fruit for flavor but use mostly vegetables.
some of our friends who have gotten into it since have had concerns about recipes and how to know how much to buy. since i hate wasting time/money, i found a recipe we could both agree on (after trying several) and we just buy the amount of each vege and fruit for the week (and i shop once a week) and that way i have enough but my fridge isn’t so full. here’s what we do:
3ish handfulls of storebought organic kale or 3-4 stalks of garden grown kale (i finally have my garden up and growing and kale grows SO well here!!)
2ish handfulls of organic spinach
5-7 organic carrots (best place to buy these is at costco for $4/10lb bag
1 large organic cucumber (most expensive item but important to be organic)
1 organic apple
1 organic pear
(i juice them in that order too because some things get jammed in there and this is the best way to get the most of each thing that we’ve found)
we love it…now. what i mean by that is that the taste is something you have to acquire a little bit. the first couple days were rough i’ll be honest. once i found a recipe that was easy and nutritious without too much sugar (fruit) i stuck with it and now we crave it. you just have to change your thinking about juice. it’s not fruit juice that is chock full of sugar, and it’s not a smoothie that is also 90% fruit with sugar added. it’s a great way to start the morning full of vitamins!
enjoy!!
(note: these two pics were from when i threw some beets in…i loved it, jared thought it tasted like dirt so beets are out. i also tried celery but i think it’s too bitter of a flavor so those are out too 🙂

read part five here 

Categories
craft play things to do

Upcycling #1 and Pranks

two things we’ve had a lot of fun with lately are upcycling (because i don’t like wasting) and harmless pranks! i have some fun step by step upcycling posts to share later, but for now i have some small finished projects that i did to redo a wall in our living room.

my grandma gave me a whole box of old cameras, lenses and filters etc. i had them sitting in a box for the longest time not knowing what to do with them. we did a little redecorating and wanted to do movie/camera/film sort of theme. so this is what i did with some of the lenses and filters:

and a few flashes – i wish i didn’t have to use so much glue but i couldn’t figure out how to keep them in there. they are also in an old crayon box i picked up from an antique store 🙂

and this one is a bit more personal. my grandparents had all of their 8mm home movies in a box stored away for decades. i can’t remember why i had them, but we finally digitized them and ended up with all the boxes which i couldn’t throw away. they are just so cool looking! so i made a little collage of them. the fun part about them is that we’ll be able to show our kids what our grandparents had to do in order to see their home movies!

and we also put a little montage of outdated maps together. these are all cities we’ve been to:

now for the prank. it all started when we were watching gentlemen broncos with our friends over at zelo photography. they made a time capsule and blew on a friendship stone…well it’s kind of a weird movie and you just have to watch it. aaaaanyway…so since we live about 2 miles away from each other we talked about giving each other keys so we can watch each others’ houses when we’re out of town.

so this is how they gave us our key:

we were laughing so hard, especially when we opened it and found the key on top of the friendship stone 🙂

so, we had to come up with something just as good for giving them our key. my grandma also gives me things that aren’t so useful sometimes, like these ‘old’ cameras from the 90’s. i did save them just in case and then when we were at a flea market, i thought of it!!

a camera with antlers! random i know, but i think it turned out pretty cool.

and her’s the finished product and we put the key in the film slot 🙂
and, since they happened to be out of town when we finished it, we thought it would be fun to play a little prank and sprinkle their place with army men. unfortunately i couldn’t find any army men so cowboys and indians it was 🙂

i think it fits in really well on their entry table!

oh and these picture frames below were empty so we filled them too.

now i’m really in the pranking mood, and trying to think of who and what will be next!
 
Categories
asia places to go

Sendai, Japan – ’12

another one of our last minute adventures. we knew we had some time to go somewhere but weren’t sure where to go…tickets to europe were out of control because of the olympics and we found out that japan wasn’t as expensive as we expected it to be, and we’d both always wanted to go there so off we went.

we went in august which is a time of year that they have a lot of celebrations so we tried to go around and find places where we’d be able to see some neat things. first stop, sendai! many of the celebrations in august have to do with the dead, specifically tanabata festival. it’s a long story but in short the stars align and they are able to commune with their dead ancestors, but bad spirits are allowed to come too during this time so there are lots of ghost stories. they make a bunch of things out of paper to put out their wishes to the dead. all these beautiful hanging streamers must have taken an  incredible amount of time to make! they were so cool!

we really wanted to be in hiroshima on the 6th but it didn’t work out that way, it would have been cool to see the floating lanterns in celebration.

jared was REALLY grossed out that i got this but it was soooo good!

japanese love their malls and there are enclosed shopping malls like this everywhere!

they also seemed to be shooting news or tv shows in every town we were in, so we made sure to walk in the backround of each one, hopefully we made some japanese TV!!

yup, makes sense…

that’s MISTER donut to you!

people in japan also love everything that is cute…and there is a lot of cute in japan 🙂

people can write their wishes on slips of paper.

there were lots of mocktography opportunities this trip 😉

see, cute! he dyed his dogs’ tails…cute or weird…not sure.

there aren’t a lot of gringos (err gaijins) in sendai so we’re not sure if they were having everyone do this or if we got made fun of a little…we still don’t know what this was all for but they made us put on these robes and pose for a picture. random!!

yep…err what?

soda…water…beer…just a normal vending machine.

and then we were off to our next spot on the bullet trains, stay tuned for more!

Categories
eat things to do

You are what you eat Part 3

this is part three of a series about our all natural and organic diet. Read part one here, read part two here.

on shopping, what we buy, and reading those pesky labels.

this is probably one of the more common questions we get from people, usually based on two concerns, time constraints and money. so since i hate being wasteful of anything including time and money, i’ve put together a little list. DISCLAIMER: items in stores are changing constantly so keep a list of where you like to buy things to save time.

here’s where we shop and why:

1. Jimbo’s (similar to Whole Foods) – jimbo’s is more expensive than some of the other stores, but since most of their items fall under what we can eat, it saves tons of time shopping there not having to read labels.

meat: you can find lots of organic meats but they are not super cheap. it’s good to know where they sell it though in case you need it. plus they have a meat grinder so if you want ground chicken they’ll do it for you right there. i also buy my all natural nitrate/nitrite free bacon, hot dogs and salami products there.

bread: i have actually started making my own bread with a breadmaker to save money (plus it’s delicious) but jimbo’s is one of the only places i’ve been able to find all natural bread with no soy that jared liked, hahaha! it’s just really refreshing when something only has a small amount of ingredients.

fruits/vegetables: most of their fresh food is affordable but the best thing about jimbo’s is that ALL of their produce is organic so you don’t have to worry about finding the things you need organic and compromising on others. this is especially important for us because we juice. i don’t want to have to go to multiple stores looking for all my juicing ingredients, i just grab everything i need in 2 minutes.

drinks: jared loves zevia, an all natural soda that uses stevia instead of sugar so it’s all natural and calorie free. i prefer the cane sugar sodas (when i crave one ever so rarely) and they have those too.

2. trader joe’s – my new favorite place to shop and according to their website (not sure how true it is) all of their name brand items are GMO free, which is awesome!

meat: they sell organic chickens. they also have frozen free range beef for the best price i’ve found so far.

candy: i’ve found a bunch of all natural candy here which is great because it’s nice to not have to give up everything you like when you go all natural. i’ll do a whole post on sweets 🙂

produce: not everything is organic at tj’s but they do have some things in bags like kale and spinach which makes it much easier for juicing.

appetizers: tj’s has the best all natural appetizers for parties when you don’t have time to make them yourself, they also have puff pastry and philo dough if you do want to make your own.

3. sprouts – i used to shop here all the time, but when i started reading labels i realized that many things there were off my list.  but they do have plenty of all natural snacks and sodas. i also just found all natural sprinkles which is great for cupcakes and cake since i don’t use food coloring.

4. costco and vons – every time i go to costco or vons, i see something new that is all natural. they don’t have a ton of things, but it’s great to see that they are listening to people and what they want.

5. farmer’s markets – great for all natural food, but not a time saver because they won’t always have what you’re looking for. but i love going when i want to wander and run into people i know!

if you are looking for a specific item, leave me a comment and maybe i can point you in the right direction 🙂

reading labels: this is the most important thing if you are going to change your eating habits, mainly because of all the advertising gimmicks. something that has a healthy looking label might be horrible for you. there is high fructose corn syrup in so many things you would not believe, and i’ve found sucralose (splenda) in a ton of products that aren’t even labeled as diet. so don’t just look at the name, ‘natural’ doesn’t mean ‘all natural’, always always read the list of ingredients!!

here are some examples. this jam you would most certainly think is healthy, ‘pure boysenberry preserves’

but check out what’s really in it…

this one at least is honest about their use of splenda

but it’s not just sugar free, it has preservatives and food coloring…why do we need food coloring in jam???

 even something i thought for sure would be healthy, i picked this up to maybe buy it and read the side first…when the fruit is the 3rd ingredient, you have to wonder…

and this example is why you should always read the labels…these are actually all natural cheetos, but the packaging is so bad you would probably pass over it assuming they were bad. so don’t be misled by branding, it is worth your time to read labels!

 read part four here

Categories
craft things to do

Project Rocking Chair

my parents went through their attic and found some fun stuff that had been forgotten over the years. one item was my dad’s grandma’s rocking chair. he asked if i wanted it and i was excited to get it home and refurbish it! this was my first time refurbishing anything and i had no idea what i was doing [thanks internet].

i just LOVE this stained floral print, don’t you?

luckily the only part that needed upholstery was the pad, and it was removable!

i actually thought it would be easy enough to work on this in my living room so we could watch tv together while i took this thing apart. turns out, it was incredibly dirty inside, whoops!

all the nails and staples were rusted and pretty difficult to get out. once i got them all out i noticed that the top layer of material had just been placed over the original leather upholstery. the leather was completely thrashed underneath, and it was like an onion taking this thing apart, more and more layers! underneath the leather was hay used as the padding. again, should have done this outside!

all the garbage after ripping this thing apart…

i honestly didn’t expect that this would be all that was left after stripping it down.

 

this is the chair without the pad and that’s the material i picked out.

already looking much much better

and done! well for now anyway. still trying to decide if i should repaint the chair, thoughts??

Categories
california places to go

Idyllwild, CA – ’09

jared and i just visited idyllwild this weekend so i thought it would be fun to share a travel installment from the first time we went there four years ago! i’m not exactly sure why or how we decided to go to idyllwild that time, but we had so much fun that we’ve been twice since! we don’t do winter sports, we love quaint small towns and it’s only 1.5 hours away. we brought chains just in case, but since we’re newbs to driving in snow we didn’t know how to put them on. turns out that by the time we got up there it was already dark and there was snow and ice everywhere. so, in the dark and in falling snow, we pulled over and jared worked on putting on the chains for the first time. we couldn’t really figure it out and about 5 miles down the road one of them fell off. so then, in the dark and the falling snow we had to go hunting for our fallen chain. we found it, put it on again, lost it two more times, put it on two more times and finally made our destination.

we found these little cabins that are so fun! they are a little ghetto inside, but the outside is really cute and they have a wood burning fireplace! we were especially just happy to be there finally and not driving anymore. and there was falling snow!!!! i can count on one hand the times i’ve seen falling snow in my life (my favorite being on another trip i’ll blog about later) and so it’s pretty exciting for us to experience it 🙂 that night we heard all sorts of wildlife having a party…love the forest!

in the morning, we awoke to a winter wonderland. it was seriously magical! i liken it to the feeling people get when they see the ocean for the first time. the back door to our cabin opened up to a virtually untouched hill of pure snow full of animal prints, evidence of the noises we heard all night. we ended up making snow angels back there, something we hadn’t done since childhood.

this was definitely a first. good thing we were staying one more night and didn’t have to deal with this until the next day!

seriously…amazing! the powder from the night before softly falling through the air. a beautiful taste of heaven.

 hmm, really smokey?

i kinda want to live here someday so that i can have my name on a sign, how fun!

suicide rock

playing in the snow! that’s right, we wore our snow pants all weekend! [being married, you always have to prepare for a snowball or getting tackled in the snow]

this bear looks awesome with a fanny pack. reminds me of the time we thought it would be funny to try to bring fanny packs back…[future blog post] 😉

along with enjoying the beauty and wonder of the snow and forest, we thoroughly enjoyed the funky shops in this town. there are some seriously awesome things for sale, like this!

or these…

but i think our very favorite thing was people watching. anyone ever watch the show portlandia? we kinda think that people believe that the dream of the 90’s is alive in idyllwild 🙂

also, notice the top right photo below…that is jack nicholson…well so we thought. i even posted this to get opinions from people and it was about 60/40 that it WAS him. well a year after we went on this trip, we went again and were bragging to someone in the coffee shop that ‘we saw jack nicholson last year when we were up here’. the guy who we told said, ‘no you didn’t, that guy is a local here and everyone thinks it’s him but it’s not’. embarrassing!! haha. and recently some of our photographer friends told us the same thing, and that apparently he buys into it and lets people take pictures with him and buy him drinks. so look out for nack jicholson [that’s what we’re calling the fake jack nicholson] if you’re ever up there 🙂

on the way back down the hill, we built a snowman on the car to see how long it would last 🙂 surprisingly it lasted quite a while (see video below)! 

had to pull over and mocktography these guys! so so random! since we were back up there this weekend, we wondered if we’d see these guys again, but sadly they are gone. good thing we stopped when we did!
every time…..
 and here’s the silly video we made of this trip. yup, we’re total dorks and here’s the proof: