Archive for July, 2009

Greetings Friends!

It’s a lovely 75 degrees outside here today. The sun is shining and the bees are buzzing.
I love these days! I hope you’re all finding joy in your summer days!

I always feed my little kiddos an afternoon snack. It sure helps their focus and their attitude when they have something in their bellies in the late afternoon. During the school year, we call it our “After School Snack”, but in the summer, it’s just something to eat!

Today, Kevin requested a Banana Blueberry Smoothie. I thought that was a fantastic idea.

When I was younger, I always loved bananas and milk in a blender. When I got a bit older, I realized that adding ice makes it more like a milkshake! Last year I realized that if you add frozen blueberries with the ice, the banana flavor almost completely masks the blueberry flavor if you add only 1/4 cup. The blueberry flavor gets stronger the more you add, but my critters don’t like blueberries very much so I stick to the 1/4 cup for the added AWESOME nutrition of the blueberries with the tried and true flavor of the banana smoothie.

I think they like the idea of drinking a purple drink!

I have even added baby spinach to this kind of smoothie before. I promise, you won’t even know it’s there. But WOW, talk about your powerhouse of nutrition! Banana, blueberry, and spinach! That’s enough kick to get anyone on the right track in the morning!

But anyway…. I thought I’d share my super quick recipe for my kid approved Banana Blueberry Smoothie! Enjoy!

• your blender
• 6 to 8 ice cubes
• 2 ripe to very ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup or more of frozen blueberries
• 3 to 4 cups of milk
• 1 TBSP sugar (I used “Sugar in the Raw” today but I’ve used Stevia and honey both before.)

First, put the ice in the blender and blend using a pulsing action until the ice is pulverized.

Then add the blueberries, bananas, sugar and just 1 cup of the milk. Blend until smooth.

Once all your chunks are gone (40 seconds or so) add the remainder of the milk and blend a moment more to thoroughly incorporate.

Pour, add straw and enjoy!

This is such a wonderfully nutritious snack! Give it a whirl. You won’t be sorry!

Related Resources

The Ultimate Smoothie Book
The Smoothies Bible
Healthy Snacks for Kids
Smoothie Web
All Recipe Smoothies!

∞

I have an AWESOME non-toxic flea repellent for your dogs today!

I was doing some research online for my own darling Abby and found quite a wide variety of suggested home remedies for keeping fleas away.

The one I went with is garlic infused olive oil.

First let me say, she LOVES the flavor!
If I don’t mix it into her dry food, she’ll just lick it off the top. My friend Kris says that her dog sees her pick up the oil jar and starts getting all excited! Getting your dog to eat this will not be likely to be a problem.

Abby has been eating about 1 tsp a day for about 2 weeks now. The red marks on her lower belly where the fleas were biting her and she was digging are completely gone. She’s not excessively licking, biting, or itching anywhere anymore. Her fur has a beautifully healthy looking sheen to it now. She even had some dry skin on the top of her nose that seems to have gone away.

She’s a BIG belly rub lover so I check her under areas for fleas and ticks on a constant basis. She’s happy to roll onto her back and let her tongue loll out the side of her mouth while I rub her belly and look through her fur. After she ate the oil in her food for about 3 days, I completely stopped seeing any bugs on her.

I did, however, stop feeding her the oil for 2 days in a row and saw fleas again. It’s got to be the scent of her skin when she’s ingesting the oil regularly. If this is true, it might work to put the oil in places on the fur of the animal, but I believe she gets enough obvious benefit from eating it that it’s worth giving it to her.

Cats shouldn’t eat onions, garlic or related root vegetables. Onions contain N-propyl disulphide which destroys red blood cells in cats, causing a form of anemia called Heinz Body Anemia. Garlic contains a similar substance in a smaller amount. If it’s the scent that repels the fleas, you might be able to place the oil in a spot on the back of the neck where the cat couldn’t lick it.

It’s important that you cook the oil and garlic together. Garlic can have traces of Clostridium Botulinum, which causes botulism, because it comes out of the ground where the bacterium are often found.

Here’s how I make mine.

I add 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil to a small saute pan with a couple minced cloves of garlic. Then I cook it on medium heat for about 3-4 minutes. That’s 3-4 minutes total time. Be sure you don’t get the heat too high.

Burnt garlic is VERY yucky!!

After it cools, I store it in a small glass jelly jar. I don’t know for sure if it would require refrigeration but I keep mine there regardless.

Every morning, after our 3 mile bike ride/run, I give Abby a scoop of food and add 1 tsp of the garlic oil, drizzled over the top. Then I stir it in.

She loves it and now, I love it too :)

Related Resources

• 101 Dog Tricks
• Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems
• The Dog Whisperer: Beginning and Intermediate Dog Training
• Dr. Pitcairn’s New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats

∞

Do you spend enough time by yourself? Do you recharge your battery regularly? Most people will unfortunately answer “No” to those questions. Heck, many people don’t even get a good night sleep to recharge at night.

I spend “Day Spa Monday” relaxing and recharging during the school year, every week. I do inexpensive home style spa type treatments and relax and veg for the whole day. Sometimes I’ll have lunch with a friend, but usually I just mellow out alone.

I don’t need a reason to be good to me. I deserve it! So do you!

If you’re trying to hold on to positive, good thoughts and consciously create the life of your dreams, one of the BEST places to start is to be good to yourself. You are your best friend. Even if you don’t always treat yourself as if. But it’s never too late to start taking care of YOU!

You don’t need a reason to require some TLC. You just need to put it higher on your list of priorities and take that time. You’re allowed!

You ARE Super Woman! You CAN do it all! Or at least most of it, with time to spare ,and still looking fabulous!! But it is imperative that you take care of YOU first. How can you have super powers if you don’t take the downtime to charge them up? How can you really be there for your family and friends (which is what we’re all about!) if you haven’t been there for you and you aren’t operating at your best?

Aside from the mental and physical relaxation you get from taking time to yourself, I’ve also found that it’s during this time that I’ve built my relationship with the Universe and God. I see synchronicities everywhere, all the time. I ask questions and have people or things with my answer materialize spontaneously. I truly feel that I’m living a magical and blessed life and this feeling originally began evolving for me back in 2007 when I started losing weight and taking time to care for ME!

I started to really care about myself. I wanted to feel good in my body and I wanted to LIKE myself. I made some minor changes in my life and suddenly my Spiritual growth started a snowball effect that’s had me on a spectacular tidal wave of joy ever since!

You will be amazed at the changes that happen in your life when you just start to take care of yourself.

Sometimes we DO take good care of ourselves, but then life happens and maybe we slack off a bit. I’m going through that now because it’s summer vacation and I have the boys 24-7. They’re off to Grandma’s tonight though and she’s keeping them for me until tomorrow evening, so I’ll have all day tomorrow by myself. I can’t WAIT!

So please, do yourself a big favor…. be a pal….

Go take some time, however much you can get a hold of, and spend it doing something that makes you smile. Do anything you want to, but enjoy it and relax and smile and know that you deserve to feel good. When you feel good, you make other people feel good! Then THEY make other people feel good and so on.

You don’t need a reason to be good to you!

You Can Heal Your Life

Excuses Be Gone!

Codependent No More

I made this apple crisp for my family. They LOVED it!! It’s packed with fiber having wheat flour, oatmeal AND apples! We topped it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a small drizzle of caramel.

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2-1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1-1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1-1/2 cups butter (I used coconut oil)
• 8 cored and sliced apples (I used Gala and I didn’t peel them)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar. Cut butter into mixture until crumbly.
3. Take half of the mixture and pat it into the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking dish.
4. Cover crumb mixture with apple slices, then sprinkle apple slices with remaining crumb mixture.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 to 50 minutes or until apples are tender.

∞

Are you slowly poisoning yourself and your family?
I’m one of the “Greenest” people I know and it turns out, I am….
I have just finished reading “Super Natural Home – Improve your health, home, and planet – one room at a time” By Beth Greer.

This really was a fantastic book.
It was not only filled with information on what common toxins are found in our homes, food, water, body care products, soaps and shampoos, but also all the different names they go by and how to identify them.

There are suggestions for each and every room in your home on how you can breathe easier and greener in the place you spend most of your time.

Now, I’m a pretty green minded individual myself. And usually I pick things up about how to economize or save money or be greener and I’m always happy that they’re things I already know and implement. It’s like a pat on the back and lets me know I’m doing what I can. It is a bit of a bummer though. I’m always looking for MORE knowledge. What else can I do?! How else can I make a difference?! But they’re always things I already do!

Well, LET ME TELL YOU!!
I learned SO much from this book! I skimmed through it once. Then I read it. Then I skimmed through it again. I keep referring back to it constantly. This is truly a fantastic book for anyone trying to lead a more conscious and green life.

There’s even a list of cosmetics (PAY ATTENTION LADIES!) with toxins in them. But you’ll also find in this book the list of natural, toxin free cosmetics and the surprising list of suppliers.

After you read this book, the illnesses and mental issues that so many people have REALLY makes sense.
I’m SO glad I’ve added this book to my collection and I VERY highly recommend you add it to yours.

I was sitting on my porch Sunday, just enjoying the beautiful sunshine, and there were 4 hummingbirds that kept coming in pairs to dart and weave around each other and the feeder,  eat, and then buzz away in the direction they came from. One pair had the brightly iridescent feathers and the ruby throat. The other pair were VERY tiny and mostly shades of brown.

I saw a picture once, of a woman with sugar water in a red plastic bottle cap and there were hummingbirds eating right out of her hand. I always thought that was really neat and knowing that I had some bottle caps, I went to retrieve a red one.

I stood with my face a mere 10 inches from that hummingbird feeder and held my bottle cap up near where the other feeder holes were, trying to sort of “blend in” which in retrospect is really stupid. LOL!

They kept coming down near me and buzzing around as though investigating and then off they’d go. None of the 4 wanted to eat from the cap OR the feeder as I stood there.

That got me thinking about my vibration.
I know my dog senses how I feel and what I want from my energy, so of course these birds would too. I took a couple deep breaths and loosened up a bit. They came back, made their rotation and off they went again.

Hmmmm….
Still no feeding. I did an quick inner body scan to look for tension. There’s something about ME that’s keeping them at bay.

I don’t need to make them come, I need to ALLOW them to come. I need to create an environment pleasing to them and allow them to be attracted to it.

Then I thought of Ho’opono’pono (?) and as I stood there consciously relaxing my body, I started to repeat in my mind “I’m sorry, I love you, Please forgive me, Thank you” and I smiled a big warm happy smile.

After about 30 seconds, the red throated pair came down and dodged and weaved around each other, chirping and twittering and both landed right on the feeder, 10 inches in front of my face. I watched, transfixed, as they slid their long beaks down into the fake flower chute and then withdrew flicking their tiny tongues in and out of their beak tips, licking off the excess sweetness.

Off they flew and seconds later, with the chant still repeating in my mind, the other pair came down and both landed on the exact same flowers, RIGHT in front of my face. Not on the other side, away from me where they might feel safer. RIGHT in front of me where I could snatch them right out of the air.

They no longer seemed bothered by me in the least bit.

I ended up putting my bottle cap down and just stood there, nearly touching the feeder and allowed them to buzz around me. At one point, I was afraid they’re run into me the way they scoot around as though riding an invisible wave. I had to force myself to stand still.

Then they flew away. When they came back, they buzzed around me as though investigating again, and then flew off.

“Why aren’t they playing and eating anymore?” I wondered.

Then I realized, it was my thoughts of fear at being hit by one of them.
I stood there and thought about it a moment. The only thing I’ve ever seen a hummingbird run into is a window, and I KNOW that’s because they see through it and don’t realize it’s there. They don’t run into trees or bushes or whatever. They know what their doing. Nature knows what it’s doing. Their dance is perfectly choreographed and will automatically adapt to my being included.

And with that, I took a deep breath and relaxed and allowed them to come back and allowed them to do their dance for me without anymore interference from me or my energy.

They were so beautiful. So graceful. Stunning!

I found that I was really enjoying the way I felt as I stood there totally in awe at the splendor of life and purposefully and consciously “Allowing” it to take place before my eyes. It really put me in the flow.

SO!

Consciously creating your life is like letting hummingbirds buzz around your head.

There are some near misses. And the nearer the miss, the more exciting it is because it’ll always BE a near miss. You’ll always be okay. It’ll always work out right because it’s a perfectly choreographed dance and will automatically adapt to you being included.
Nature knows what it’s doing. God knows what it’s doing. Take a deep breath, relax yourself, plaster a BIG smile on your face, find something stunning to look at and ALLOW life to unfold for you.

Happy Friday Everyone!!

I’m guest blogging at my friend Ash’s site today. She’s off on a super cool adventure and I’m keeping her blog moving in her absence. I’m not posting in both places, but it’s worth mentioning in both blogs so…

The subject at hand is being in a rut or funk.
You know… that down mood that we get in and it seems like no amount of positive thinking can pull us out of it. I know for myself and many other people, moods such as this can last an entire week or longer sometimes.

Read More Here!!!

And have an AWESOME weekend!!!