The Crunchy Wife is in transition! That’s why the site looks all funky. Don’t worry, we’re still here… I am just in the process of switching blogging platforms. Everything should be complete by next week (1/30/11). Be patient and please don’t abandon us! We’re just making things look all pretty. It’ll be worth it to stick around, I promise!
I know I said I wasn’t going to update for a couple of weeks, but I just had to share what I did this weekend. I finally did something that I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years now. You see, one of my high school friends, Sarah, is an aerialist and even has her own mini circus troupe she started called The Weird Sisters Circus. Well, I follow her blog and have always admired her passion for the aerial arts and promised myself long ago that I would try it out…sometime…someday. (Sarah also happens to be designing my blog makeover for me, which is coming along wonderfully if I do say so myself.)
So a few weeks ago Living Social (or Groupon? Can’t remember which one) had a deal for some classes at a local aerial arts studio. Now that I’m not pregnant anymore, I knew this was my chance. So, my friend and I both bought the deal. This weekend we took an ‘intro to aerial workshop’ and it was awesome! I couldn’t believe how hard it was. Well, I could…but I guess I was mostly just shocked with how out of shape I am. I needed help flipping over into the poses, and I couldn’t even flip over enough to get my legs up on the trapeze! And, I could only climb the silks to about 6 inches off the ground. But, this just made me even more determined to get back into shape, and to go back for more. I must climb that silk! So, my friend and I signed up for the beginning class. It starts in February and I can’t wait.
But for now, I’ve got to take care of these sore muscles…two days later and I’m STILL in tons of pain. I’ve also come down with a cold. Yuck.
Unfortunately, I have to stop my NaBloPoMo fun for January. In fact, you won’t see many posts at all in the next couple of weeks. I’m super bummed out about this, but my blog makeover has continued to cause some technical difficulties. My feed is all messed up now, so anyone that was following my RSS feed is no longer getting my updates. I won’t go into all the technical details, but it should be fixed as soon as my makeover is complete. It’s set to start this Monday and will take between 2 and 3 weeks. I’m switching from Blogger to Word Press so the makeover is a bit more complicated than just an updated layout.
I’m so bummed because I was doing so well with (and really enjoying) posting every day! Maybe we’ll try it again in February.
On the plus side – I’m still going to be writing posts so that once the switch is complete, I’ll have a bunch of posts ready and waiting to publish! Thanks so much for being patient with me during this time, and I can’t wait to start posting again. In the mean time, I’ll still be updating twitter and facebook (and maybe I’ll throw in a blog post or two), so please keep following us.
Have any ideas for the new layout? Please leave them in the comments or shoot me an e-mail at thecrunchywife at gmail dot com.
Last week I posted about our brand new spiffy household schedule. I really wanted to try something to get B and I into a good routine so that our house doesn’t look like a pit all the time. Now that I’m staying home, I get in such a crummy mood if the place looks like a tornado went through it. I’m in a much better mood when it’s straightened up, and it gives me a lot more motivation to actually get things done. Does this happen to you? When it’s a mess, I just want to sit on my butt all day and do nothing.
So, we’re right smack in the middle of our first true week of doing this schedule. How’s it working? Great! Better than I thought it would, actually. For now, anyway. We attempted to start last week, but we hadn’t really figured out the logistics of planning on who would do what chores, so we made this our first official week. I’m so excited about it! It’s honestly a lot easier to clean when you don’t have a million and one tasks to do in one day; It’s so nice having them broken up.
To view our full schedule, click here.
I love white boards…I had bought one when I was still working and used it at my desk to keep track of the projects I was working on. Well, since I’m no longer working, I decided to make use of that board for our weekly schedule. We put up all of our meals for the week on the board, along with the week’s extra task (deep cleaning a certain room, washing the dog bedding, etc.)
Then, we used some craft sticks (tongue depressors?) and wrote down all of the tasks. We even broke down the cooking by day. (Brian’s been doing most of the cooking since Monkey was born, but I really want to start doing more of it…and this is the perfect way to get me to jump in. Of course… I picked four days to cook this week!) Then, we took turns drawing sticks. We chose to be completely random with each task. It worked out great this week, but I’m curious to see how it goes over time – I’m sure I’ll start getting annoyed if I get ‘poop scoop yard’ every single week! Ew. I also got ‘clean chicken coop’ this week – but Brian’s stuck with cleaning the rabbit pen so we’re almost even. We each have a cup that will house our sticks for the week. Once they’re complete we move the stick back to the main cup.
It was almost fun, but mostly nerve-wracking to pick out our chores. I started thinking about how if this works out long term, we can incorporate Monkey as he gets older. The three of us can all choose our chores for the week, and he can see that even mommies and daddies have to do chores too. Yeah that’s thinking way ahead of time, I know. Maybe I’ll stick with looking forward to him crawling.
In short – it’s working for us so far. I’d be lying if I said we did everything perfectly…last week when we were semi starting the schedule, we ended up having to do both Thursday and Friday’s chores on Friday. But, even then it wasn’t so bad. We’re also trying to take a pretty laid back approach with this knowing that we won’t always get everything done. But, I have a feeling this is going to help a ton with keeping our mood up and it will also help us with our budgeting. Once Bri starts working, I know I’ll have to pick up a lot more of the work, but by then Monkey will be older and wont be quite as needy as he is now. Here’s hoping we stick with this! I know it sounds pretty juvenile to be drawing straws and assigning chores, but if it’s what works for us, I don’t care. Plus, it makes me feel young again.
Due to some technical difficulties (haha, that makes me laugh for some reason) – but really there were technical difficulties…the blog was down today. I switched hosting sites due to the upcoming blog makeover, so things got all wacky. So, I decided I’d just post a picture for today. This is a picture I took on a hike somewhere in Portland! The abundance of green is one of my favorite things about living here.
One year ago our lives changed forever. One year ago, I had some suspicions and so I went out and bought a packet of pregnancy tests. One year ago, I saw that first (very faint) pink line. B wasn’t 100% convinced that there was a line. There was. I continued to take tests for a few days; each day the line got darker. Finally, I took the digital test that showed pregnant in words. That’s when it hit us that this was real!
We couldn’t believe it. It took a bit to sink in, but ultimately we were thrilled! A year later, we have the most beautiful, amazing little boy in the world and we are filled with so much more love than we ever could have imagined.
Since we don’t live in the same state as my family, I wanted to think up a clever way to tell my parents. So, we filmed a super quick little video. I called my parents and my mom picked up. I told her that we were e-mailing her something that she and Dad had to see. So, she got Dad and brought him into the office and they watched the video together. It was so much fun to tell them that way! I can’t believe a year has gone by already…someone please tell time to slow down!
In December, I wrote up a review about Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap and how much I love the stuff. It gave me the inspiration to create a video showcasing two of my favorite uses for Dr. Bronner’s.
Links/products mentioned in video:
Cuisipro foaming pump dispenser
EcoTools brushes (make up brushes made from bamboo, recycled aluminum and synthetic brushes)
What’s your favorite use for Dr. Bronner’s?
Oh Pinterest, how I love you. Actually, the funny thing about Pinterest is that while I love the concept of it and think that it would be really beneficial for me in organize my book marks, DIY ideas, home ideas, and more…I just don’t use it enough. I think I always forget about it. But, I’ve recently rekindled my love for the site and have been using it more and more. Click here to check out my boards and follow The Crunchy Wife.
A few of my blogger friends and I belong to some group boards on Pinterest, and we all ‘pin’ various ideas to those boards. It’s a neat tool because we all have different themes/styles in our blogging, so the combined interests are great. The boards include:
I created an ‘inspiration’ board for my blog makeover that’s slated to start in about a week. I’m thinking something super simple, lots of white space, and a couple of accent colors. I love the idea of teal and navy, but I’m also digging just a teal/gray color scheme, or…if I feel like being super bold teal and orange. I want to make my posting area wider than it is and totally re-do my header labels because I’m just not a fan. Above all, I’m over green. As in, the color. Being a ‘green’ blog, its hard not to use the color green because they just go hand-in-hand. I’m so sick of it though. So sick in fact, a few weeks ago I went crazy and quickly gave myself a new header to minimize some of the green. I’m thinking I’ll reserve the color green for my Michigan State pride and come up with something new for the blog.
Above is a screenshot of my inspiration board so far. And here’s a link to it. Thoughts/opinions? Any ideas for me? What features attract you to a blog? Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
While I was brushing my teeth tonight, I was trying to think of something clever to post about, but I wasn’t having much luck. My thoughts drifted and I started to have my nightly internal fight with myself about whether or not I felt like washing my face before getting into bed. That’s when it hit me…I’ll make Saturdays be a day of confession, starting with tonight.
Todays confession: I never wash my face at night. Okay, maybe not never but pretty damn close. Gross, I know.
Why don’t I do it? I have no idea. None. I go in phases where I’ll get motivated and tell myself that my skin will be so much healthier if I just get in a nightly face washing routine so I’ll scrub away for a few nights in a row. Then, I stop.
The skin on my face has never been great. In high school I had terrible acne, and once I got that under control I feel like my face has either been way too dry or way too oily. And still prone to acne. I know that too much washing dries it out, but not enough can cause your pores to build up. In fact, I’ve even read that the healthiest thing for your face is to only wash once a day. But, I have it backwards. You should wash your face at night (get all the grime, makeup and nastiness of the day scrubbed off) and then just rinse with water in the morning. This is what I tell myself I’m going to do, every single night….but it never happens.
I don’t wear much make up (in fact, most days I wear just a light dusting of mineral powder foundation), so I use that as an excuse to tell myself it’s okay that I’m not washing my face. Not anymore. But, when I do wash my face I feel so much better, both at night and in the morning. Starting tonight, I’ve got a new routine. I know that if I broadcast it out to the world, I’m much more likely to stick with it, so here we are. What I’ve historically been doing is washing my face in the morning with whatever eco-friendly face wash I have on hand (I like to rotate) – currently it’s Say Yes to Tomatoes – and then put whatever face lotion I have (again, I like to rotate) – currently it’s Avalon Organics Vitamin C Cream. Then doing absolutely nothing at night. Sometimes even when I’ve worn heavy makeup all day. Ew. It makes me think of the Gilmore Girl’s episode where it’s Rory’s first day at Chilton and Lorelai tells Rory that she’ll end up looking like the lady in the Headmaster’s office if she doesn’t wash her makeup off: “See? That’s what happens if you go to bed with your makeup on.” Oops two confessions in one today, huh? Yes, I’m a huge Gilmore Girl’s fan.
Anyway, starting tonight, here’s my new nightly routine:
1. Wash face with whatever face wash I have (will keep using Say Yes to Tomatoes for now, since it’s what I have.) *Once per week – how about Saturdays – I’ll add sugar or sea salt to the face wash to exfoliate.
2. Pat Dry
3. Moisturize with Avocado Oil. On one of my short lived spurts of actually washing my face at night, I discovered Avocado Oil and pretty much fell in love. It’s a great night time moisturizer. I rub it in for about 3 minutes and it leaves my skin feeling great. (No, adding oil to your skin won’t make it more oily. You want your skin to retain it’s natural oils, and you don’t want it to overproduce. By washing and stripping your skin of it’s natural oils over and over, your skin goes into overactive mode and makes too much…which is usually the culprit of oily skin.)
4. Come morning, I will just rinse my face with water and then apply whatever lotion I have (will stick with Avalon Organics since that’s what I’ve got.)
The picture at the beginning of this post is me right after washing and moisturizing my face tonight. Day one complete. I’ll check back in one month from today and report on how things are going.
What’s your facial care routine? Do you have a favorite face wash or moisturizer? Please share in the comments! Seriously…I’ve never found a routine I love – so I’m open to ideas. Please share anything; however, I’ll only try ideas that use eco-friendly products. (And products never tested on animals.)
I think I’ve mentioned it in passing a few times, but I’ve had to completely eliminate dairy from my diet. It’s been about two full months of it now, and I’m still finding it tough to avoid dairy! I’m really feeling for vegans. I’ve had to get in the habit of looking really hard at the ingredients label because it’s hidden in so many things. Ingredients like casein, whey, and lactose all mean that the product contains dairy. For a full list of sure fire dairy ingredients, click here. You’ll find dairy in cereals, chips, soups, and well…pretty much all processed food.
So why am I dairy free? Well, it seems as if Monkey has a sensitivity to dairy. He’s been a pretty gassy baby ever since day one. It took me a while to realize just how gassy he was, and it wasn’t until we found some blood in his stool that we (with the suggestion from our pediatrician) decided that I should go dairy free. Monkey’s gas strikes him mostly at night. He used to toss and turn and moan and groan all night long. He was in so much pain it was heartbreaking to watch. I’ve been told that a lot of babies have a sensitivity to dairy in their mother’s breast milk, but that most eventually grow out of it.
I didn’t see an immediate improvement when I initially removed dairy from my diet, but slowly things started to get better. Things were going so well that I even tried to reintroduce dairy 2 weeks ago by drinking a glass of milk, but poor Monkey ended up having a rough night so I said goodbye to dairy, yet again. I’m hoping I’ll be able to try reintroducing it again around the 4 month mark.
Honestly though, cooking and baking without dairy has been so much easier than expected. I’ve started looking for “dairy free” on packaging and shopping in the vegan sections of the grocery store. The toughest part is studying the ingredients in processed foods, which is probably a good thing because it’s made Brian and I eat so much healthier since we are forced to eat more whole foods. Since going dairy free, I’ve discovered that Earth Balance makes an amazing butter substitute and I’ve grown to love coconut milk, almond milk, and rice milk. I can’t say enough about coconut milk – the stuff is amazing. There’s even coconut milk yogurt and coconut milk ice cream. Speaking of ice cream, that’s been one of the toughest things for me to give up – if you know me in real life, you know that I’m an ice cream freak; however, the coconut milk ice cream is so good that it might even be better than the real thing. Yep, I said it. There’s a local company called Coconut Bliss that makes the most amazing bars. I even turned a can of coconut milk into a substitute for evaporated milk for my Peppermint Fudge that I made for Christmas this year. Coconut milk is some seriously amazing stuff. And so is coconut oil, by the way, but I digress.
I’ve found other ways to satisfy my sweet tooth; I love eating sorbets like the blood orange sorbet I’m enjoying as I type this (shown above), dark chocolate, and vegan carrot cake from our local health food store. If you’re avoiding dairy too, be careful with dark chocolate though because many still contain milk products – I love Theo chocolate because it’s organic and fair trade and they have a couple of dark chocolate options with no dairy.
Some of my go-to dairy free snacks include:
It’s been a tough ride, but it’s been doable. I’ve got to admit though, a nice tall glass of milk with some chocolate chip cookies sounds pretty much amazing right now.
Have you had to give up dairy? Have any awesome dairy free recipes you love or tips for going dairy free? Were you able to reintroduce dairy successfully while you were still breast feeding? Please share your experiences in the comments below!