My Resolution

I’m pretty slow to start the new year with my resolutions for change. It seems that each year, I am completely burnt out after the growing/harvest/preserving season then jumping right into the holiday season that by the time the new year begins, I only desire to sit and do nothing (ok, I want to chat on Twitter or take naps). And cook yummy food from all that I’ve put up!

I’ve been reading about what several others have been saying their resolutions are and for me, the only major things I need to change in my life this year is to get more exercise and more sleep! I have no problems eating what’s in my pantry as one big challenge I’ve seen people participate in. In fact, I try to live this way year round and am nervous we are going through our canned tomato and sauce supply way faster than I thought we would and I am trying to make the home-canned supply last til next summer! I’m sure it won’t at this rate.

I don’t need to challenge myself to do a 3 week jumpstart your diet challenge which is another big one I’ve seen written about to detox your body on a plant based diet. I eat a plant based diet and occasionally the very nutritious eggs from my own backyard chickens so this is a way of life for me, too. I also like to wait until springtime to do a liver cleanse, it’s too cold for me in the winter to do cleanses like that.

No, what I need to do (and began doing this past week) is something I saw written up on the Huffington Post called “Sleep Challenge 2010 – Women, It’s Time To Sleep Your Way To The Top, Literally.”  Once I read that article, I knew I had to do it. I was resistant at first, I like going to bed between 12-1 am and sleeping in a bit in the morning but with an almost 6 year old boy as my daily alarm clock, I rarely get to sleep past 7 or 7:30 and that’s late for him. So I was getting around 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep each night. I have been dragging and some days, I’ve only gotten about 5.5 hours at night and that puts me over the cranky edge so I can’t function the way I want and need to.

I realize I have to get a minimum of 7 hours of solid sleep at night and preferably 8 hours of sleep every night to feel well. My son sleeps through the night for the past few years and even in his own room now. The only time he wakes us up at night is if he’s sick or had a bad dream. After suffering through several years of extreme sleep deprivation because of him, I should want to go to bed early and get 8+ hours of sleep every night! Why my resistance I wondered? I realized it’s because it’s “me time” for several hours in the evening. After we eat a family dinner, my husband does the bedtime routine with our son then has his guitar playing hour (or more) every night and I clean up and have things I catch up on, books I am reading or tv shows on Tivo to watch! I wind up waiting for my husband to watch certain shows with me and we seem to go to bed too late because of this. He always says he does better on 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep and if he sleeps longer than that, he’s dragging. I’m the other way around so I don’t believe him! Who can function well on 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep every night? Not me!

He is sort of doing this sleep challenge with me because consistent, solid sleep is so beneficial for your body in so many ways and he’s recovering from several weeks of some funky virus invading his body and doing strange things to him. Solid sleep also helps to prevent getting run-down and sick in the first place. Your immune system works better, you have more energy, you look younger and your mental state is in a much better place, too. There’s also evidence that not getting enough sleep makes you gain or retain weight and sufficient sleep helps you lose it!  There really is not one downside to getting your “beauty sleep.” It is quite a challenge for me to get up to the 8 hour mark. I’m working on cutting back on my evening activities and getting more things done during the day.

This past week I’ve been aiming for 7-7.5 hours of sleep each night (by counting backwards from my 7 a.m. wake up time) and I feel good but still tired and dragging at some point in my day. Clearly a sign I need more sleep! Who knew? This week, I (and possibly Michael) will be trying for 8 whole, glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep each and every night. If I can do this, I will feel like superwoman and will be able to really increase my workouts and pretty much revolutionize my world! I like the info in this update from Arianna Huffington about what happened to her after finally getting those 8 hours of sleep each night.

I encourage anyone reading this to give this sleep challenge a try. Lawd knows we all need it!

To Grandmother’s Homestead We Go

We went to visit my Mother-In-Law & Step-Father-In-Law on their 13 acre homestead in Sonoma County, CA in June of this year. It’s a really special place – there are large Redwood trees in the wooded parts of their land and there is also a big creek running through the property. In the middle of it all is their passive solar hand-built house and several large growing areas for their various veggie gardens, vineyard and greenhouse for my MIL’s lavender growing business. The views are beautiful and you can see large vineyards for miles around.

My MIL spins her own wool on her spinning wheel, has a loom to weave it on and showed my son, Leif how to card the fibers and then to spin it on the wheel. He thought this was great fun.

We did many special things while we were there and since my son likes art projects, I thought it would be interesting for him when we took hikes around the property to collect cool looking items we found in nature to build some fairy houses on the banks of the creek. He loved that idea since we have read a few books about this. I think by the end of our trip, he built 5 fairy houses and we took many pictures of them all.

My husband and I took a day off to be by ourselves to celebrate his birthday and go to some wineries for wine tasting and to see some sights around Sonoma County. One place we went to is an exact reproduction of a 12^th century castle just outside of Calistoga called Castello di Amorosa. It was awesome! Such amazing detail work with actual artifacts from salvaged castles – including the stones of the castle – were shipped over from Europe to build it.

Since our son was hanging out with his Grandma and Papa all day on the homestead, they had some fun projects lined up for him, too. My Mother-In-Law knew in advance that we were taking a day to ourselves so she gathered items from local thrift stores to build a “scarecrow boy” the size of Leif. He LOVED this! When it was done, they staked it right in the middle of a new garden bed.

He did a special building project with his Papa, too. My son requested to build and paint “a sculpture.” So my FIL gathered some scrap wood from his workshop and found some paints and Leif said he wanted to build a tree. The two of them laid out the design and then my FIL nailed it together and Leif very carefully painted it green and brown. He decided before we left to give it to his Grandma to hang in her greenhouse “so she could remember him!”

Later that day, they had to gather up some firewood to stack outside their house and my son had a great time helping to load up the pick up truck from the various wood piles in the woods and then help unloading and stacking the split logs by the house.  They would have gone swimming in the creek but it was a little too cool to do that so they built another fairy house instead.  He had a great day alone with his grandparents and we had fun drinking wine, going out to dinner and seeing the sights alone, too.

Café Gratitude opened a restaurant in their town a few months earlier and I was ecstatic to be able to finally go in person! I had purchased their cookbook last year and I think they craft some of the greatest raw food recipes. We ate there 3 different times! Michael and I went to dinner there after our day out alone and saw local musicians play while eating. Such a perfect ending to a perfect day!

On my husband’s actual birthday, we helped my MIL work in her booth at the local farmer’s market. She sells lavender plants of all different sizes and varieties. She cultivates 38 varieties now and is always testing out new kinds to see how well they will do in her area before she will grow and sell them. There is even a white lavender variety named “Melissa” that she grows & sells.  And out of all the herbs I work with, lavender happens to be my favorite. I even had some sprigs of it in my wedding bouquet.

We had a family birthday dinner that night back at the homestead with relatives that live in their area. We drank lots of great wine and I learned so much more about the art of crafting wine this trip since my FIL has been making his own wine for decades. Michael’s Step-Brother-In-Law gave him a bottle of his own homegrown, locally pressed extra virgin olive oil. It is SO GOOD!! I wish we could grow our own olive tree orchard where we live! We learned more about this process, too.

We visited Bodega Bay and played by the ocean (which is always cold and breezy), went to Armstrong Woods State Park which is an amazing place to hike around the giant Sequoias (can you see me in the tree photo below?).  We also visited “Train Town” in Sonoma which was so fun for Leif.

It’s so nice to spend quality time with family and get a fun vacation out of it, too!

Blog Action Day ’09 – Climate Change

Today is Blog Action Day where thousands of bloggers all over the world write about today’s very important topic – Climate Change. I’ve been a big proponent over the years of people being aware of what I’ve always called “Earth Changes” which now is referred to as “Climate Change” but they are both one and the same thing. It’s one of the major reasons I relocated – I had so many dreams telling me I have to move it was hard to ignore them after a while.

I am a professional psychic/medium (as well as other specialties) and I have been guided to learn to live my life in as self-sustainable a way as possible and have lived this way in both a rural setting and a suburban setting for the past 15 years. I’ve been an astral traveling dreamer at night my whole life and I can remember back in the‘80s having the start of my earth change dreams where I could fully recall them and wondered why I was being shown this and what was it all about? It was like fitting pieces of a puzzle together and I started tracking strange weather info in the news. Then in the early ‘90s I came across different Native American prophecies that foretold of a great time of change and upheaval starting to happen on our planet: “Turtle Island will pull into her shell” is what the Hopi have said regarding the USA (Turtle Island). They are the keepers of this ancient and very accurate prophecy. According to them, we have passed “The point of no return.”

One of my recurring dreams I’ve had over the years in my astral travels regarding earth changes is being in New York City (I am a native NYer) and looking out of an office building window down at the street below and seeing the buses driving through water that came up to their headlights. I say to a co-worker, “Why is there so much water in the streets?” and she tells me that there has been water rising around here for some time now. She obviously has gotten used to it and says, “Let’s go check out this new club after work” and I think she’s crazy and feel that we must evacuate ASAP. I get this feeling of urgency and my co-workers think I’m the strange one and go on with their life and adapting to the rising waters around them.

There have been times over the past 15 years where friends will email me photos of massive flooding going on in NY, tunnels being closed, cars submerged (my own mother’s car went under water in a parking lot from flood water). But then it all eventually returns to normal and people seem to forget until the next time. I keep watching the events escalate – a tornado touching down in Brooklyn? I don’t recall any tornadoes in the metro NY area when I was growing up!

I had a very vivid astral travel dream just a few months ago of being in Antarctica and watching a major ice shelf collapse and then all of this water came rushing out with such force. I got so upset over this and kept saying in the dream, “No more sea level rising” and heard back, “This is the way it’s going to be, due to the actions humans are taking.” Two days later, I heard on the news about a huge ice shelf collapsing in Antarctica which scientists said was unexpected and they were surprised about it.

My son, now 5.5 years old, has had some pretty interesting earth change dreams of his own already – he has given us pretty detailed descriptions (in 5 year old terms/descriptions) of being inside a volcano and it was going to erupt. He had a series of these dreams every night for about a week then they stopped. Less than a week later, there were a few volcanoes that erupted in the “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean.

From what I’ve been seeing both psychically and tracking in the news all of these years is that climate change is REAL and events are happening at an alarmingly fast pace – faster than the scientists have even predicted and mostly due to the choices and actions we humans have taken. I think by now it’s pretty impossible to ignore the increase in frequency of major traumatic climate change events like earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, rains/flooding/mudslides, extreme droughts/fires. It doesn’t mean the end of the world is coming but it does mean MAJOR CHANGE for millions, maybe billions of people many of whom will have to start over from scratch in a new location or, will cycle off the planet during a major weather event.

So what can we do? We all have to learn new skills (and yes, some you won’t like but learn them anyway), learn to adapt mentally and physically and find locations you resonate with and feel in your gut are safe areas to live/raise your family and to build community in. We all have to work together. And respect the Earth, herself. She’s going through a lot!

We who are aware of what’s going on must step up and DO SOMETHING to help both our fellow humans AND the animals that are so affected by climate change.  There is still some time left to change the laws to end the abusive practices corporations are doing to the planet. Let your voices be heard by your governments! Let’s hope all countries join together to make radical shifts now to law and policy so there will be some semblance of a nice planet left for our kids to live on. As I see it, if we don’t make the changes NOW, our children are going to have to deal with MUCH worse!

Birthday Extravaganza Week

I know I’ve been a bad blogger and haven’t posted in a few weeks. There has been so much going on: I’ve been trying to learn some new technology, learning to use Twitter, as well as working on my website redesign and planning my son’s 5th birthday extravaganza with his buddy! That’s right, it was a joint birthday party for 2 little 5 year old boys.

His birthday was last week, Fat Tuesday, actually. He was born on Fat Tuesday, too. The kid likes to party!

Since his actual birthday was a weekday, the party was this past Sunday. He doesn’t go to preschool on Tuesdays so I had to plan a day of fun for him since he has no family here to make a big deal over him. It’s all up to us to do it. My husband took a half day at work so we drove down to his new office and picked him up, went to a nearby fun playground with really big slides (his favorite) and had a picnic. Did I mention it was almost 70 degrees out and sunny that day? Amazing. We played hard there for a couple of hours then went to a nearby (cheap!) movie theater that was showing 2 different animated kid’s movies and he picked the movie, The Tale of Despereaux. He LOVED it! It was a very cute movie. He ate a giant bag of popcorn mostly by himself, too.

After that, we drove into Denver to a restaurant, Casa Bonita, that is so kitschy it belongs in Vegas! South Park TV show actually did a whole very funny episode about it, too. That is the only thing I can think of when I think about this restaurant. I’ve lived in CO for almost 15 years now and have never been there and after reading about my friend Heather’s experience there recently with her kids, I knew my son Leif would love it and I was right! The food is pretty lame Mexican food (according to my husband) but we had a great time there. There is a wandering mariachi band that plays and sings while you eat and you can get free sopapillas throughout your meal. I was able to “veganize” a taco salad so my dinner wasn’t too bad!

They actually have a little show they put on approximately every 15 minutes on this tiny stage area that is right in the middle of the dining area and there is a 30 foot drop down into a pool of water. There is a waterfall and fake palm trees, too. Leif was mesmerized by the little skits and then the guy diving 30 feet off the platform into the water – he thought it was the coolest thing!

The place is enormous, rooms and hallways leading to all sorts of areas including 2 arcades (with ski ball no less – my favorite – but it’s called “ice ball” here), tons of both new and very old school video games – even Pac Man! – a mini arcade area with rides for little kids, a place to redeem the coupons you win at the arcade for little toys, a treasure chest room, vendors selling different trinkets, etc. It really was so fun!

He then had his birthday party at preschool on Friday and it’s a Waldorf school so it’s a special type of ceremony for the child. The teacher crochets a crown for him and he wears a birthday cape and holds a star wand and she reads a special birthday story and lights candles for how old he is. Each parent/teacher/child at the ceremony says birthday wishes/blessings for him as the teacher ties “wish knots” in play silks for each wish spoken and the silks surround his handmade doll she made for him. He takes the basket and unties all the silks and finds his present at the end. It’s very sweet and loving. We will miss this!

Last Sunday was the big extravaganza birthday party at a local gymnastics place that we shared with his buddy, Jackson who goes to preschool with him and lives down the street from us. His 5th birthday was yesterday.  We carpool to school with him, too and they both have been talking about their party for a few weeks now – it’s very cute listening to them.

We did a flying theme (airplanes, helicopters, etc) and the party was at a local gymnastics place that Leif loves going to. We tried to “green up” the party a little by buying a zero waste event kit from our county recycling office. All the plates, utensils, napkins, cups are compostable (made from corn) and go into a huge BioBag trash bag that we return to the recycling dept. for them to compost. All the food was vegan, too. Even the cupcakes, frosting and whipped cream – it was soy whip.

They both had lots of fun as did their friends and when we went home, his buddy Ava came over to play with both Leif and Jackson at the playground and the 3 of them just had a great time! We made some homemade pizzas (3 different cheeses – cow, goat and vegan cheeze) for dinner and Leif and Ava played with all his new presents only stopping to eat pizza and birthday cupcakes. My son was a very happy birthday boy!

He did get a new scooter (that he’s been asking for everyday!) for his birthday which he was so excited for but he now realizes he can go farther and faster on his bike – scooters are much more work! He still loves it and even let Ava try it out at the playground. Jackson got a new scooter, too. This should be fun watching them scootering around together soon!

Little boys are just the cutest, sweetest things! I love my little birthday boy so much!!!!

My Local Sustainability Fair – Part 3

Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.

All of the talks I went to were extremely interesting and informative. The best one though was by the keynote speaker, L. Hunter Lovins. She is an internationally recognized expert on climate change, green development, energy efficiency, resource use, land management and “natural capitalism.” She was named Time magazine’s “Hero for the Planet” in the year 2000.  She has also founded a school named Presidio School of Management where you can receive your MBA in Sustainable Management.  One job that these graduates are excelling in is helping large companies to convert their corporations to become more environmentally friendly and find ways for them to save money at the same time. Others go on to work for the EPA or even start their own eco-friendly businesses.

During her presentation, she spoke to us about why it’s important to build a sustainable community. For one thing, it’s prosperous for all of the residents and you will feel secure and self-reliant. All residents will have assured supplies of water, energy, food and basic services.  Being sustainable means fully valuing and enhancing all forms of capital: financial, manufactured, human and natural.

One idea that was mentioned by several speakers including Ms. Lovins was the “Triple Bottom Line – profit, protection and people.” This refers to what are the financial, environmental and social impacts of an organization, business or community? This is what we must think about when we are in the planning stages.

She talked a bit about businesses and mentioned that businesses also need to remember the most important thing which is to always start with efficiency. There will always be surprises in business but as companies are now realizing, protecting the climate is profitable! This is evidenced by Walmart who has very large sustainability goals in place and they are actively taking steps to become more green and sustainable to help their company’s bottom line as well as the planet. Since announcing this, their stock prices have gone up even in a bear market economy. I know this seems crazy that Walmart is committed to this but since they are leading the way, other large corporations will surely be following soon enough.

Ms. Lovins is also a part of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP) which is a large group of experts working together to help find solutions to reversing the damages caused by climate change, improve our economy and our national security. A plan for our 44th president’s first 100 days in office regarding climate change has been produced and since we have now had the election a few weeks ago, we know our new president is on board with halting climate change and creating economic growth by moving forward with new technologies and greenhouse gas regulations that will help save our planet and grow our economy at the same time. A win-win for all once again.

Here is the background on what PCAP is trying to accomplish:

One of the most important challenges facing the 44th President – arguably the most important challenge – will be to quickly and effectively address the three interrelated problems of climate change, energy stability and national security.

Leading climate experts estimate that the international community has 10 years to make dramatic changes in greenhouse gas emissions if we wish to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. A similar need for action in the next decade is being created by the growing international competition for oil, the approaching peak in world petroleum production and America’s increasing dependence on oil from unstable or hostile regions. Left unaddressed, these problems may create unprecedented economic and environmental hardships and increasing global tensions.

By the time the 44th President takes office, the window of opportunity to prevent these crises will be one-third gone. The people of the United States, as well as other nations, will be looking for an early indication of whether the President intends to lead the world’s largest energy-consuming and greenhouse-gas emitting nation on a responsible course of action.

To help the President launch effective Federal leadership on these issues, the University of Colorado and several partner organizations are engaging the nation’s science, policy, business and civic leaders to produce a Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP).

The plan will contain a broad menu of policy and program recommendations for the President, rather than advocating a particular policy. It will be announced early in 2008. During 2007-2008, the project will operate a web site that offers resource documents and background information on climate policy to assist the Presidential candidates in forming their climate-action commitments.

If you’d like to read the full plan, click here.

In summary, this whole event was very inspiring for me to attend. I am so happy that the ideals and beliefs about how my husband and I like to live our lives for the past 14 years are becoming more mainstream and widely accepted.  I am really feeling optimistic even in this bad economic downturn that our country will be implementing these new environmental changes that will be beneficial for everyone on many levels. The time has come and the changes have to be permanent. We are still currently before the “point of no return” and we have to make these changes so we can keep living on this beautiful planet. Don’t you agree?

My Local Sustainability Fair Part 2

Click here for Part 1.

After finishing up at the Agriculture presentation, I moved on to the presentation about Water and Climate Change. The first speaker was Charles Montgomery from The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. His words were very profound to hear spoken to the masses. I have known this info for a while but many people don’t like to discuss or even believe it.

Charles said, “The world is rapidly warming due to the greenhouse gas effect. CO2 and methane are great in small amounts to balance the cold effect but in large amounts, they are disastrous.” The problems really started to escalate in the 1970’s and it is way worse in the western part of the U.S. And ground zero for global warming in the U.S. is CO, UT, NM, AZ.  90% of global warming is caused by human activities (including factory farming).  There is a coming crisis in the water supply of the western U.S.  From north to south, it will be getting hotter and drier. Where I live will stay approximately the same because I am near the mountains and the runoff. Woo hoo!

He did say with the earth’s temperature increasing, we will be getting more rain rather than snow so there will not be much snowpack in the mountains and also melting will be happening earlier which means the evaporation rates will be accelerating. Really not a good thing for all the states that rely on the Colorado river basin. He said that by the year 2100 or sooner, we are going to dry out the system. We are still currently before the “point of no return” temperature-wise so we need to make major, global changes now before it’s too late for us to be able to do anything about it.

He did leave us with this final thought, “We have to take action now, climate scientists around the world are terrified right now. Think about sustainability collectively.”

The next person to speak, Tracy from the Great Western Initiative spoke about water conservation and all that we can do. He gave examples of what sustainable, technological developments came out of Australia where they have been suffering from severe drought for decades. Another fun fact I learned is that 20% of energy used in the U.S. is to treat, pump and distribute water. I personally think the whole pooping in our water supply is wrong, disgusting and both a waste of energy and polluting of a dwindling valuable resource. I hope we will start to change our thinking on this soon since our water is drying up. There are many alternative options to this.

He also talked about “community based social marketing” which helps to identify what the barriers are to people’s behaviors changing.

What we can do: education: influence the schools, be aware of our own use, check for leaks, how do you spend your money, tell the stores, vote with your dollar.

Communicate: Telling your friends your story will then lead to changing attitudes. Change then becomes part of our social fabric and it becomes sustainable. (Which is why I am blogging about this in such detail).

The last person to speak on water was a woman named Cynthia from Aware Colorado. She spoke about the connection between land use and water being blocked from getting into the land by impervious surfaces. Now some towns are designing parking lots and roads with pavers instead of blacktop so that water can seep back into the land instead of just evaporate. She also talked about new street designs that have swales to catch the water, different street edges for water to get into the soil, xeriscaping, native plants that need less water, gravel roads instead of blacktop to absorb water, rooftop gardens to help with regulating a building’s heating and cooling and natural ecosystems put back in place.

The other two presentations on Alternative Energy and Recycling I didn’t get to hear but since I’ve lived off the grid for a few years I know all about the greatness of solar and wind power and the stupidity of us as a nation not utilizing this free power source. But we can all right now buy wind power through our local power company or a reputable online company.

Recycling in our town went up a notch recently when curbside pickup went single stream and that makes life easier for people who choose not to recycle the items that were not picked up at their house. Now they can recycle much more since almost everything is being picked up from their house and they don’t have to make a special trip to the recycling center. They also had posters up saying they would be doing curbside compost pick up within the next few years for those townspeople that don’t compost or have a garden. Amazing!

All of the speakers I heard that day were very enlightening and really helped get the message out and got people thinking. The best one was the keynote speaker, L. Hunter Lovins. I will write about what her message was in part 3.

My Local Sustainability Fair – Part 1

This past weekend I attended a Sustainability Fair that was sponsored by my town and was completely free for us to attend.  They even served a free lunch. The info I have below is really important and I feel very lucky that it was presented to us. This Sustainability Fair was a major highlight for me to have right here where I live since this lifestyle has been a passion of mine for the past 13 years.

Having lived in my conservative town for the past 6 years, I really never expected the concept of real sustainable living to reach the mainstream consciousness here so soon especially since this town is not as liberal or environmentally friendly as other places in my county.  Attending this entire day long, well coordinated conference with expert speakers talking about all areas of sustainablility and how do we work together to achieve this for the single purpose of making this town the most sustainable and eco-friendly place to live was just so deeply rewarding to me on so many levels.

At the fair, they had an expo area with lots of companies explaining what they do in different areas relating to environmentalism. They also had presentations in different rooms by a few different panels of experts, most of whom were local to either my county or state. The topics covered were: Agriculture, Water, Alternative Energy and Recycling. There was also a keynote speaker and then lunch then a breakout session where we went to brainstorm and give ideas on each topic.

Since there was only time to go to two presentations out of the four, can you guess which two I picked? If you read this blog regularly, you can tell I’m pretty passionate about healthy food especially seasonal, local and organic plant based foods. Agriculture was my first stop and it was great.

There were 3 presenters and the first was a man named Tom who owns a large, local farm and builds solar powered farm equipment. His designs have been patented and he is now developing a solar powered tractor. His description about his whole way of living was inspiring to me.

Another man, Adrian from our county commissioner’s advisory board spoke about better farming practices and the need for younger, sustainably aware farmers since the average age of farmers now is 55. He spoke about how all of the confined animal feedlots (CAFO) are just so cruel to the animals and horrible for the environment also use the most fossil fuels and contribute to the the largest output of greenhouse gasses (including dairy and all kinds of meat production). That’s huge and the sooner we do away with these inhumane ways to raise livestock and go back to the local farms for pasture-raised flesh foods and dairy, it’s better both for the people’s health and the greatly minimized environmental impacts. We should not be eating animals everyday, 3 times a day. Plant based foods are healthier and better for you and the planet. Limit the intake of animal based foods (especially the cheap, antibiotic-laden factory farmed meats & dairy) because they are the biggest contributors to our planet’s degradation.  CAFO also uses and pollutes enormous amounts of water (which I will speak about in part 2).

Next, a woman named Cindy spoke that runs our farmer’s market here in my town of which it is part of the larger county run farmer’s markets organization and there are many of these markets here in my county which is a great thing for the people and the local CO farmers. She said on the last day of the season (Nov.1st here), our largest farmer’s market in the county made $80,000 just from selling produce. Not from the arts and crafts vendors or the prepared meals food carts. Just the farmers themselves.  That is astounding to me (and to them, too!) because it shows how many people are really interested in fresh, regional, seasonal, organic foods. It is what we need for our health and what is also good for our planet. So glad it’s on the upswing.

She also spoke at length about how many people are considered “food insecure” and how food banks and shelters are adding 200 people every week in our county and it’s only going to get worse as we go into this economic depression. There was talk about some trial programs my town just did with growing potatoes in a public park area on only about an eighth of an acre and volunteers came and dug them up a few weeks ago and donated all of the potatoes to the food bank.  They grew several hundred pounds with very little effort so more of this type of growing on public land will be happening in the future to benefit the food insecure.

Cindy also spoke about the farm to school program aka – the “School Food Project” that they are trying to get established in my school district. Currently, in the bigger city in my county their school district is being trained by none other than Ann Cooper from Berkeley, CA’s school district (and I posted a great TED video of her speaking a few weeks ago). This woman is an amazing dynamo in terms of getting off the processed, subsidized food bandwagon which helps to make kids fat and unhealthy and she is also teaching the kitchen workers how to cook real food again from many locally sourced food items from farmers and it’s all done on the school’s budget.  She also advocates teaching and growing a garden at each school and educating the children about where food comes from. I truly admire this woman and am so excited she is working with our neighboring school district because this means that program will come to my school district at some point and I would love to help out with getting that going. This is especially great for all of those children that have to rely on the free breakfast and lunch program and who have to consume many highly processed foods everyday. This will help turn the children’s health around by eating high quality, nutritious food which will also increase their mental acuity as well as educate them about sustainable living skills, too. All win-win.

Next, in part two I will write about the water and climate change presentations I went to and the very enlightening info I learned there.

Bloggy Giveaway Winner!!

Thank you all so much for entering my giveaway and leaving me with so many really great ideas for homemade and/or inexpensive holiday gifts for kids and also for the gift ideas for kids to make for others.  I will compile several good ideas in an upcoming post but if you have the time to look through many comments, you will get some great and inexpensive ideas for gifts!

Now for the winner……#14, Carol!  I have already contacted Carol by email and if I don’t hear back from her within 72 hours, I will move on to the next number generated by random.org.

Thanks, everyone for playing and keep a lookout for my future giveaways and big thanks also to Bloggy Giveaways!

Baby Candy Mama & Child Giveaway!

I am offering a great giveaway for both mama and child that is already wrapped and ready for the holidays!  Baby Candy, a small, mom owned company, makes cute shirts and onesies for babies, toddlers, kids and mamas, too.  I am giving away a matching “Sugar Mama” chocolate brown 100% cotton tee shirt size L for mom and the same adorable shirt size 2T for her toddler.

The way they are packaged is very unique – it looks like candy and comes with a “nutrition facts” label on the back listing the size and what it is.

This giveaway is worth just about $50 and makes a wonderful gift for the holidays!

To enter (up to three chances to win!):

• Please leave a comment telling me some of your creative ideas for holiday gifts for kids that are inexpensive or homemade. I think we all will be trying to economize this holiday season and I hope you can share some tips that I may not have thought about yet!
• If you would like another chance to win, subscribe to my feed via RSS or email and leave a separate comment letting me know you have done so.
• For yet another chance to win, just link to this post on your blog and then leave another comment here with the link to your blog’s post.
• Be sure to leave a valid email address
• Contest is open to US and Canadian citizens
• Contest will end on Saturday, November 1st at 12:59pm EST
• Winner will be chosen by Random.org and contacted by email

Be sure to stop by the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival to see all the other great giveaways!

Halloween Parade 2008

Last Saturday was our town’s annual Halloween Parade down Main St. Yes, I live in a town with a Main Street and seasonal parades and other fun events here.  This town also has made Money magazine’s list for the 100 best places in America to live (we are in the top 50) several times, too.

Since we had just gotten back from vacation a few days earlier in the week, I had no costume for the boy and didn’t even have any time to get one before we left.  My husband did make a set of foam swords this summer for them to have sword fights since Leif was obsessed with doing that with anything he could find.  So, I decided to work around that. At first he was going to be a knight in shining armor but then we didn’t have time to sew a helmet and wound up making him a gold crown instead so he declared himself a king – “a good king” to be precise.

I went to the local fabric store and got him some shiny gold fabric to make a cape and I’m sure he will get a lot of use out of that since what boy doesn’t love a cape to play with?   We made him a crown out of an old paperboard sign and painted it and made a shield out of cardboard.  My husband painted him a coat of arms on the shield that had a nature theme – a leaf and vine, what else for King Leif?

It turned out to be a very inexpensive, fast, homemade costume out of mostly stuff we had on hand including the paints.  And he loves it!

Good King Leif

The King and his good friend, the Knight

The King and his good friend, the Obama-supporting Cow.

The King got tired and decided to hitch a ride upon his noble steed, aka Daddy.

Another favorite thing he has been really into this past week was a temporary tattoo we got at our local democrat office of Obama on a postage stamp.  He wanted it on his belly and loved showing it off.  I took many shots of his cute belly:

On Halloween, we plan on going to our rec center’s huge annual Halloween carnival that has lots of fun carnival games for little kids, several bouncy houses and a spooky boat ride across the large pool.  The pool area is dimly lit and there are still more places in there to play games and win prizes.  In another room, they bring in small animals for a petting zoo. We’ve gone the past 2 years and he just loves it.  Yet another great thing this town does for the children that live here and all of the events are free.

After that, he likes to go trick or treating with his Dad and loves the idea of getting things from people even though he really does not like candy (I know, strange) but that is probably because we don’t eat candy or any products with high fructose corn syrup in them so he just doesn’t like the taste. I buy him these organic, naturally sweetened lollipops which he loves so I give him those instead of the candy he collects. I am trying to get him a Unicef box so he can collect money for Unicef instead of candy he (or we) won’t eat.

I hope you all have a very happy and safe Halloween with your kiddies!