Positively Positive

I heard something recently that made me think a lot about interactions with friends and/or would be friends. It was something about how we, as humans, are attracted to those who love themselves. If you love yourself and are happy with yourself then others will want to be around you. I happen to love myself, not always proud of my decision making but overall I am impressed of where I came from, what I have gone through and where I am now. When I look at my inner circle I see a lot of great people that I believe love themselves as well. Part of this seems a little basic but when you think it through it makes a lot of sense. It all goes along the lines of positive thoughts attract positive results and the same for negativity. When I think about the negative people that are somehow tied to my life I see negativity all around them and even how that affects those around them. Busting my butt the last year or so on some different projects I got advice from a great friend. She said that I should visualize these projects getting accomplished and how my life would be affected. I took the time to think each project through thoroughly from the point I was at to completion and the results I wanted. It has made a huge difference it how I feel about each project and how much I get accomplished. I have also come across ideas that I would have never thought of before. I recommend trying this, even for 5 min a day. I think this will improve your current results almost immediately. It was simple for some projects and situations and a really bitch for others but every person is different and some of my projects tested my ability to visualize how I wanted situations to go but in the end even when some things didn't go as planned I was a lot more prepared than I would have been therefor saving stress and that in itself is great! If you want more help or guidance I will put some suggested books at the bottom of this post for you to check out. Positivity is all in how we approach and view situations, projects, other people, etc. Some situations may call for you to force positive thoughts but at least your are trying to see the good in the things or situations around you. Good luck and if you have a similar story I would love to hear it!

REAL food

REAL food has been sneaking into our diets for years and up until about a year or two ago I was, like so many others, fighting it. How silly would it be to have great nutritional food that didn't make us gain weight in fact if we ate it we would lose weight. Surely we would have been able to produce something better than Mother Nature??? All these new diet companies must know better than the typical gardner right? The solution to our problems had been sitting in the store all along- Fruits, Vegetable and Whole Grains! It's hard for man kind to accept that there are many things in this world that we do not need to mess with and food is one o f them. Look at how many diet companies there are out there! And all of the food companies that cater to people who want to lose weight. I finally stopped the madness in my home and went back to basics. I cut out 80% of my dairy and all of my processed food intake(which also cut out most of our GMO food). See there is a simple, basic method to this. Kangaroos drink kangaroo milk, lion cubs drink lion milk, horses drink horse milk, humans drink---- well everything! and a lot of moms don't even want to breastfeed their child, but more on my opinion on that subject in my other post Our Family Bed. Considering this article about how many puss cells are allowed in that glass of milk from Food Matters and this one from the Huffington Post about painkillers and other synthetic material that is in dairy. It is all very sad. Then we thought about eating the animal that puts out that milk... gross. There is another very simple way to think about this as well. How much land, food water, time, energy and antibiotics do we spend on one animal? What about the gas it lets out (yea I am being serious) and I am sure its not the most awesome thing to do- kill an animal- well not to my mommy self it's not, maybe someone else but anyhow you see where I am going with this? The answer for water is over 5000 gallons of water for 1 pound of beef. How many people could be fed by the same amount of food that we feed the cow? What would the health effects be on the human, the effects on the cow are wayyyy better lol and after the cow is dead there is the time it takes cutting it all up, the inspections, the packaging waste, the TRANSPORTATION, then how much will you throw out? Lets talk about medical costs. This article in the NY Times says that the cost of eating a animal based diet is the same as smoking- $50 BILLION! That is a huge amount of money and when you think about our insurance premiums going up, the rate of cancer and tumors increasing along with diseases like MS and Alzheimer's rising it was very easy for my family to say- NO THANK YOU! I heard once that if everyone in the world ate like Americans and wasted food as much as Americans then we would need 5 earths to grow the food. YIKES! In my home we only eat meat on occasion. I on average cook 1-3 meals a month that contain meat.
Since we changed over to a PLANT BASED diet, we are not vegan or vegetarian, we have all seen changes. I lost over 30 pounds in 2 months, my anxiety has gone down and I feel soooo much better. I get up earlier and my sleep is better. My husband use to take allergy medication everyday because he had itchy skin and sometimes he would sneeze and his nose would run and now he doesn't take it anymore. My kids are all adjusting fine but the two oldest sometimes look at me funny. In their dads home they eat really really bad. One night for dinner my daughter told me the family had Ramen.. that's it :( and there are sodas and energy drinks like Monsters in their home. They eat a lot of processed, unhealthy food instead of REAL food that has to be prepared and cooked (instead of coming with the option to microwave) and so when they come here having a veggie dinner or bean chili it shocks them but then they eat and they like it. My oldest daughters acne clears up a little and they both say they feel better eating like this. I think that once you know what's in your food and what causes you to feel good or bad you tend to pay attention more to what you and your family are consuming.
Being on a plant based diet takes a few weeks to get used to. It is not easy to realize that you have to work at planning your menu and really preparing and cooking your food. I think the biggest hurdle is realizing what your friends and family (and what you yourself) are/were eating and feeding their families. You all of a sudden become the food crusader! We are not stuck up or better than anyone we just don't want to feed our family processed foods, sodas and a meat based diet.
The benefits of going plant based are amazing and you feel great both physically and mentally. The impact on mother nature is pretty awesome too. Here are some movies that really started me on this path. (I am also going to post a sample of what one of my menu plans look like for a week or two and include a planner for you- COMING SOON.) Good Luck and I hope you take a few baby steps towards a plant based diet soon!

Making Dishwasher Detergent

Here is the Amish Mama part of me. A few months ago we ran out of dishwasher detergent and instead of loading the kids up to run to the store for one thing I looked up how to make my own. I've tried a couple of different recipes and I have come up with my own version. It takes me about 3 min to make a mason jar full that will last me a few weeks and costs around $1.00. We run a load of dishes a day, sometimes 2. I don't have a top of the line dishwasher but it is also not falling apart so I think this should work for most of you out there. I made a couple of jars for friends around the holidays and they all say, except for one (she blames her old dying dishwasher) that it works great for them.
Here are the ingredients that I use to make the detergent.
-1 Cup Baking Soda
-1 Cup Super Washing Soda
-1 Cup Borax
-1/2 Cup Kosher Salt
-4 Kool Aid Packets
-2 Lemons & 2 Limes zest(optional)

I put all of this into a quart mason jar and shake until everything is completely mixed. I think that it looks really 'housewifey' to have this beautiful jar as the container.

The Kool Aid packets and zest make it smell so fresh! When you put it into your dishwasher you will add about 5-6 drops of your dishwashing soap onto of the mixture. I use 7th Generation and since it is not as sudsy as say Dawn is I use 3-4 extra drops.

This is what it looks like before I close the flap.

I add about a cup of vinegar to the bottom of the dishwasher and make sure that my reservoir (usually used for Finish) is filled with vinegar too. We use vinegar for everything so I buy 3-4 big bottles from Costco a month.

There you have it! I love this stuff. No my dishes aren't always sparkling but they aren't cleaned with any crazy chemicals and I spend about $15-$18 a YEAR on dishwasher detergent! Soon I am going to make my own clothes detergent and I will post about that adventure as well. Please let me know if you have your own home cleaning products/recipes that you like or even some that you don't like so that I don't waste my time.

Our Family Bed

Co-sleeping or having a 'family bed' seems to be a hot topic for moms. It's 70/30 across the board, with the moms I hang out with, on having children co-sleep . (70% FOR 30% AGAINST) I would say that more dads want their beds back than moms. The reasoning for each side makes sense not and there are good points for each not. I love getting asked "So is your 4 year old still sleeping with you?" And when I give my response of "Sometimes" I am usually met with some type of sympathy like my child has some illness but not to worry "She'll grow out of it soon." or I get to hear about what a struggle it was for them to get their own child into another room/bed. It is annoying to be treated like I must have something wrong with me like weak willpower or my child somehow lacks the independent gene. I do not think anyone stops to think that this is actually a choice, or that I have already gone through all of this with older children A DECADE before these moms were even rowing the motherhood boat, sigh. Then there is the statement "You're still breastfeeding!" as if I am committing a crime. I'm going to give you one guess as to why women have boobs... and if you are worried about my breastfeeding it is probably because you didn't breastfeed your children and if you did it was only for a few weeks or maybe a couple months at best and then you got lazy and sucked into the bottle hype and convinced yourself that bottle feeding was OK and gave yourself a pat on the back for the weeks/months that you lasted. The usual copouts, I mean reasons for quitting breastfeeding are "My milk dried up." "The baby wasn't getting enough milk." and "The baby wasn't latching on." I wish moms didn't lie I wish they said the truth like "Damn breastfeeding was so hard with bloody nipples and all" or "I'm too lazy to breastfeed" or "My friends didn't breastfeed so instead of supporting me in my quest to breastfeed they brought me down and told me that a bottle was better and I caved from peer pressure" Just be honest, dang.

Anyway back to the title of this post- I personally have had all 4 of my children sleep in my bed until they were old enough or ready to move onto their own bed but whenever they need to come back, they are welcome. I still breastfeed my 18 month old so he is next to me at night and sometimes our 4 year old gets in bed with us too. We are starting to plan our sons move to his bedroom, which he will share with his sister, in the next 6 months or so but if he stays with us then so be it. I'm sure that some of my passion comes from the fact that I was constantly kicked out of my parents bed and even when I was scared and wanted to sleep on their floor I ended up getting ushered back to my bedroom, scared and all. I chuck it up to my parents being alcoholics and working 'Vegas Hours' to the fact that they did not comfort me the way I wanted or needed, night or day, but that is a whole other story. So growing up and knowing that even when I got scared at night from the dark or a bad dream I was unable to find comfort from my parents. Most people would say that I was taught to "self soothe" (which I refer to as crap) and no I didn't. We carry children around in our warm tummies constantly talking to them and when they are born they are breastfed (or at least should be) and then what? We put them in a room down the hallway and left there to 'self soothe' because otherwise they maybe spoiled? Their little tummies have to eat every 2 hours and moms out there get upset and think babies should be 'trained' as if they are dogs... It makes me upset that this is how babies and children are treated. When Jesus was born did Mary and Joseph request a stall 5 doors down from theirs for Jesus to sleep in so that he could learn to 'self soothe' and that way his parents could get some sleep? NO! Babies need us! They cry because you, their mom, dad, the person that loves and cares for them, are warm and loving and you feed them- OF COURSE THEY WANT TO BE WITH YOU, duh. If anything you are teaching them that when they cry you will not be there for them. How can babies communicate with us? They cry when they need something and you are ignoring them to 'teach them to self soothe'. I can't believe that this is acceptable to parents. Sure I have had nights where I don't get a ton of sleep but my children are my priority and their happiness is so important to me. I want them to know that I am here, their dad is here, this is their home and whenever they need us they are welcome to jump in bed and snuggle up. It's called parenthood and sleepless nights are part of it just like bumped knees, dances, and report cards. If your sleep is more of a priority over your child's happiness and comfort then maybe you should reconsider having more children. This does not last forever, kids grow fast. I know that teaching kids to sleep in their room sometimes needs guidance and encouragement and its not easy (remember that I have older kids too) but my point is that you shouldn't kick your kids out of your bed or act as if they have disturbed you when they NEED their parents love and arms. Love your kids, tomorrow is not promised and I personally will always take a snuggle from my family whether its 3pm or 3am :)

2013, Year of the Circus

Happy New Year everyone! My family and I had a great time saying goodbye to 2012 at our friends home. I plan on making the most of the new year and hope that I can meet all of the challenges with patience and understanding although I am sure that my circus will get out of control at times I am also sure I will pull it together when need be. I loved hearing what my children, hubby and friends are planning to accomplish in this new year. Supporting each other with our new adventures should also be one of our resolutions! The most common goals in America are to lose weight (get healthy), find love, organize finances, or organize the home, etc. You know what they are and all of these are not easy or else they would already be doing them. So I wish everyone luck with your goals and I hope that you find the courage and strength to attack these resolutions with a vengeance. I have had a couple of people write me and I love love love hearing about what you are doing so please feel free to post about your 2013!
Here are a couple of calendars that I think are beautiful and functional. A great calendar will help anyone get on track.