Categories
nest things to do

live a little

while simplifying my life and getting rid of stuff, i found an entire cupboard full of candles. of course jared says, hey why don’t we get rid of a bunch of these? i say, no! they don’t go bad and we’ll need them for the next y2k or the zombie apocalypse or whatever. plus he doesn’t help with the hoarding because pretty much every trip we go on we find a cute little boutique and buy a beautifully scented soy candle. then we get home and say, why did we buy another candle?! now it’s a running joke and whenever we’re at the store asking what we need, one of us will say, candles!

as silly as it is, the discovery that we hoard candles got me to thinking. what are we saving them for? special occasions? but then i forget to light one. i remember to put out the holiday ones every part of the year but  never light them. i used to be this way as a kid. i’ve been a saver for as long as i can remember and while that’s a good thing most of the time, sometimes it makes you forget to live a little. i remember saving my halloween candy so it would last and i could still be eating it long after my brothers. but at least once or twice i saved it so long i forgot about it and found it once it was questionable. over the years i’ve tried to be better about this habit and enjoy things when i have them but it’s tough!

so i’m going to try to be in better practice of burning candles. so even if you have taken travel by the reigns and been all over the world, sometimes you have to be brave about different things and live a little. what does that look like to you? that looks like a lot of things for me,

but today that means lighting a candle

and enjoying it.

Categories
nest things to do

sleeping through the night

10/33

hahahaha.

oh, you want to know why i’m laughing? i’m laughing because i’ve been duped, we all have! we think that there’s a time when kids start sleeping through the night, and then always do!

oh, your kids always do sleep through the night? ok then i’m not talking to you…go have fun with your unicorn 😉

for everyone else, what the heck right? i mean that is THE number one question i have gotten since my daughter was 2 weeks old, is she sleeping through the night yet? not the question i expected. i expected the when do you want more kids question but no, this is by far the most asked question.

i seriously still don’t know how to answer that question. ye…well, i mean, kind of. i mean she can, and she does, but not all the time. i know everyone in our parents’ generation has forgotten history and thinks we were all sleeping through the night since 6 weeks old and that was that. so then when people asked when she was little there was all this pressure to give excuses as to why she wasn’t all the time. it’s so silly! who cares if your kid isn’t sleeping through the night all the time but when everyone and their mom is asking you, you start to get paranoid that there’s something wrong with your situation…should i be letting her cry more, should i give her more food, should i make her warmer, colder, but she’s teething and i can’t do anything about that and and and what should i do to get my kid to sleep?

luckily all my friends are going through this right now and none of their kids sleep through the night all the time. so that made me feel, well, normal! no need to be paranoid but seriously why is that THE question?

i think the next time someone asks, i’ll just send them to this website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claire-zulkey/baby-acting-crazy-its-probably-a-case-of-jbbb_b_4337821.html

JBBB it will set you free…

Categories
celebrate eat things to do

good food takes time

9/33

i was peeling a clementine for the babe the other day and she was getting whiny. she’s 1 so she gets whiny a lot, growing into a toddler is hard work! off the top of my head i told her to be patient because real food takes time. i’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. real food does take time! it’s a lesson i really want to teach my kids. there’s a place for fast food but i really want to stay in good habits and make fast food for unique occasions. i want them to learn how to cook and enjoy it, like i’m only beginning to do now in my 30s. today making the thanksgiving meal was awesome and everything was from scratch. i actually enjoyed it and a big reason is that i just felt good about how healthy it was, no shortcuts, no junk. it was a meal i could feel good about feeding my family, including the baby!

oh and my pomegranates all went rips so i spent the good portion of nap time seeding these. see, real food takes time!

Categories
nest things to do

living cleanly

7/33

oh my gosh, i can’t believe i just discovered this!!

after cleaning up our eating habits, we started looking into lots of other things in our life that could be toxifying our life. we just went through all the cupboards and just got rid of a ton of lotions, shampoos, cleansers, etc… because they are full of terrible chemicals. some of the chemicals are known carcinogens, there is food coloring, formaldehyde, and chemicals that change your hormones! these ingredients are in so many items, ones that are even advertised as ‘natural’. but why am i surprised, all the food is falsely advertised…

so i was googling to find what are good ingredients in soap and i came across this website, goodguide. you can search any product, and if you have the app, you can even scan products, and they rate them based on health, environment, and social and you can see how it measures up! i ended up looking up everything we owned, threw 95% of it out, and searched for products that rated 10 for health. we were able to find a lot of products at target and amazon, some i’m still on the hunt for but i’m so happy to say that my cupboards are cleaned out and simplified.

i feel safer with less toxins for our bodies and less risk if kids ever get their hands on cleaning products. as with everything healthy, the ones we went with are a bit more expensive, but it’s worth it…it’s worth it…it’s worth it!!! ask me and i will tell you how clean eating and clean living is worth it!!

Categories
eat things to do

you are what you eat – costco run

 

5/33

remember when i used to blog about healthy eating? well as i said in one of the posts, where i shop changes all the time because of prices and selection. so here’s my latest costco stash! they are getting more and more organic and all natural products and that’s exciting!

organic apple chips

organic fruit snacks (seriously like candy these are so amazing!)

organic sugar

chocolate chips (ethically sourced)

organic squeeze pouches (i try to use these more for when we’re out and i really need something on the go, otherwise i think it’s better for kids to eat whole fruits and veggies)

organic chickens (the best deal around! 25 for 2!! see my chicken post on how to cook a whole chicken – put one in the fridge and freeze the other)

organic string cheese

organic uncooked tortillas (2 pack which is great because you can freeze one)

kerrygold butter and cheese – see below

organic eggs (not pictured, they didn’t have any this time wah)

organic mac and cheese (annie’s brand)

ok so this brand is amazing! super affordable and grass fed cheese and butter!!! no need to be organic if it’s grass fed 🙂

obvi this is the best thing to get at costco though…you really can’t tell how big these are with this angle, i think you really need to go check them out for yourself. and then buy a u-haul to bring the thing home and then snuggle forever and forget all your responsibilities like making whole chickens and eating healthy…

Categories
nest things to do

project simplify

3/33

a few months ago a friend was encouraging other people to join in their spring cleaning event of getting rid of 40 bags in 40 days.

the first thing i said was, i don’t have 40 bags of stuff to get rid of but…

they give you a .pdf with 40 spaces to write down areas in your house that you can go through. then you print a blank one and write down what you actually went through that day and how many bags you actually got rid of. you know because you might have written down an area you just don’t feel like getting to yet and need to go out of order 🙂

it was certainly a challenge but i did it! it really made me question everything i have an ask myself if i really need it. it is so easy to get bombarded with STUFF and feel overwhelmed by it. we have so much here and yet we feel our houses are small because we have no room for it all. i was especially motivated to get rid of stuff because living in our home for 4 years before having kids really allowed us to overflow into the future kid rooms. but we don’t want our poor kids to have to deal with our stuff in their closets.

it got really addicting when i got going and i just wanted to purge everything! what is this, a shirt i’ve had since i lived overseas ten years ago? cans of food that expired in 2008 which means we moved them to our new house in 09?!?! lotions as gifts from students that i don’t even like the smell but felt bad throwing away, decorations i don’t really love, outdated paperwork, the list goes on. i think just going through my closet i got through seven bags and to be completely honest with you i was in shock because i don’t buy a lot of clothes and don’t care about fashion as much as i probably should. so it was a little embarrassing to think how long i hold on to stuff.

i did it this year and i plan to do it again!

join in next time! it’s fun!