The New Arrival

This is little Miss Ella. Born May 2, 8:25pm.
7lbs., 7oz., 20 1/2" long.

I Promise I'm Still Here.

April was quite a busy month! Denise Deniger came back to the studio and taught yoga for three lovely weeks. I learned a lot and I believe my practice has reached a new level. I tried to go every day, and I think I only missed one day while she was here.

It's been raining here like mad, so my lettuce is finally growing! I might be able to have a salad out of my garden this summer after all. Last weekend, I bought some plants to fill out the empty spaces. I got a watermelon, a cantaloupe, and heirloom tomatoes. The smallest flat of tomatoes had 9 plants. I only had space for 2 so I split the others with 2 of my friends. Hopefully between the 3 of us, we will have some vine-ripened home grown tomatoes. YUM!

My laptop died a quiet death last night. (Taps playing in the background...) Luckily, it's been acting a little sick, so I had all the important stuff backed up, so it's not a major tragedy. I just have to figure out if it would be better to fix it or get another one. I went to the Apple store today to look, but didn't feel like making a decision about it today.

The RawFu magazine has shipped. I'm waiting patiently to get it in the mail before I look at the online version. If it doesn't come in a day or two I may break down and take a peek.

I'm seriously contemplating going back to 80/10/10 for the summer. Connie has been such an inspiration with her transition the past few weeks. Plus I'm starting to notice I'm not feeling as great, and my food is slipping more than I would like.

I finally got over to the new Natural Market they opened near the yoga studio, and they have all organic produce. It looked so bright and lovely on the shelves. The celery just looked too good to pass up, so I got some and came home and juiced it with lemons. It was oh, so refreshing.

On the family front, I have a new little niece, born last night. She is the daughter of my nephew so I guess I'm her Auntie-Auntie Lisa. Does that make her my grand-niece?? I can never get that straight. Anyhow, I can't wait to see her and hold her.

Homemade Detergents

I've been researching and experimenting with homemade detergents the past couple of weeks. Thanks to some help from Sarah, Connie and Google, I finally found some good solutions.

I've started doing my laundry with 1/4 cup of table salt, and 1/4 cup vinegar. At first I was afraid it wouldn't work well in my high-efficiency washing machine, but I decided to be brave and try it. No problems at all : ) and my sweaty yoga towels come out smelling clean and fresh. I have also started adding in 1/4 cup of Arm & Hammer Washing Soda to that recipe just to give it an extra boost.

Since that was such a success, I wanted to replace my automatic dishwashing detergent with something a little cheaper and more effective than the eco-friendly detergents at the grocery store. So, between all the recipe ingredients online, I came up with my own completely food-grade detergent that gets my dishes sparkly clean.

I put in 2 tablespoons (total) of baking soda in the wash cups, and vinegar up to the line in the jet-dri cup. I discovered that citric acid is supposed to get silverware shiny, so I added the juice of one lemon on top of the baking soda. It fizzes! I didn't have any powdered citric acid, I will get some this week. In the meantime, I will use my lemons that are past their prime, and I got little packets of lemon kool-aid at the grocery today (without the sugar added) that I can supplement until I can find some straight citric acid powder.

Anyhow, I ran the dishwasher and my dishes came out really clean! Much cleaner than with that expensive eco-detergent.

Birthday Parties

Yesterday was celebration day at work. 3 of my co-workers are celebrating their birthdays today. So some of the girls planned to decorate and bring food. I was undecided what to bring. I considered doing the "easy" thing and just stopping and getting muffins or doughnuts. Then I decided to go the healthier route, because there is usually plenty of junk "food" at these things.

Anyhow, I ended up getting a bunch of fruit. I was kind of planning on a fruit salad, then I decided I would make fruit kabobs, kind of like Sarah used on the birthday cake here. I used pineapple and strawberries only.

I got an already cored and peeled pineapple just for the sake of time, because I had to put them together in the morning before work. I threaded them on the sticks and just placed them in a plastic container for transport. I got them together a lot faster than I thought I would.

When I got to work, people were taking them before I even got them to the snack table. About half were gone when I set them down, then about five minutes later, there was not a trace of fruit kabob to be found. Everyone commented on how beautiful and tasty they were and several people told me they were going to make some for their kids' lunches. I wanted to get some pictures, but they were gone too fast. A couple of people told me they didn't get one and were disappointed. I'll have to make more next time.

Oh, and a big box of doughnuts were hardly touched, even after lunch.

Breakthrough!

Haven't posted in a while, but I've been experimenting a bit with my less-restricted diet. I've really been trying to de-focus on the food aspect of my life as much as possible. I wanted to see how I would do just being on auto-pilot. The results so far are pretty darn good. I think I've gotten my habits and my body to a very good place. Tonight, I was ACTUALLY CRAVING celery/cucumber juice. I had to go to the grocery because I was out of those particular items. I purchased them and came home and drank 45oz. of juice (1 head of celery, 2 big cukes, and 1 huge Meyer lemon). And ate a bunch of kale chips. Hmmmm. I think my body was wanting some greens.

Also, last week at work, some co-workers wanted to go out for lunch. I told them I would go but I wanted to eat my own packed lunch. Today, we had a lunch meeting in, and I asked if I could just wait and eat my own food I brought. I thought they would order crappy pizza, but instead it was crappy deli sandwiches and cookies. Ugh. That stuff is so un-appealing. I had grapes, strawberries and bananas :-)) YUM!

Not to say that my diet has been 100% raw perfect. Not at all. I'm adding in some cooked items that I've really been missing. Now that I've taken the taboo off of them, they seem to have lost their hold over me. I can have those items in the fridge/cabinets and they sit there for days, whereas before I would practically down them all at once.

This is a new life for me.

Yoga is going great. I went back Sunday of last week after taking 2 weeks off, (1 week sick, 1 week of re-gaining my strength). I took today off as a rest day after 8 straight days. It's my intention to keep going like that... daily practice until my body declares a rest day. Listening to that, and continuing on that path. I will see where that leads.

I did have company last weekend. My niece and her mom came and stayed for a few days. We shopped until we dropped. I actually fit into a size smaller jean. YAY!! Progress is being made.

FebRAWary Update

It's been a busy month, and a while since I've posted. My daily yoga challenge went rather well. Here is my calendar:
I ended up with 26 classes in 28 days, doing one double class on friday the 13th. The month ended with a yoga workshop yesterday from noon-3pm. It was a lovely workshop taught by Denise Deniger. She shared with us some of the spiritual aspects of yoga, and taught some asanas from Tibetan Heart Yoga. She taught classes the last week of February, and I was able to catch 2 of them, plus the one included with the workshop on saturday. It really deepened my practice, and I feel blessed to have been able to particpate in her classes. Unfortunately, I was coming down with the flu (or something) yesterday and had to sit out some of the class. Coughing and achey joints/bones. I came home and slept the rest of the day/night, and I feel a bit better today, although not 100%.

As far as the RAW part of Feb., I did make it 100% the first 10 days. After that, I fell back down the rabbit hole, but I did stay mostly raw until about the last 10 days. When my diet really gets out of hand, I feel it makes me feel so bad, that I can't stay down very long anymore. Fortunately, I'm happily willing to get back on the wagon after such digressions now.

I learned a lot from this little 28 day challenge on both the food and exercise fronts.

1. A daily yoga practice is different than an almost daily yoga practice. My body opened up so much more, and I feel my muscles are getting stronger.
2. While I feel that daily practice is important, challenges don't leave space for stuff that happens in real life. When real-life happens during a challenge, I get knocked off-balance pretty quickly. Since balance is my ultimate goal here, I don't think I will be doing any more challenges, I will do the best I can each day and that will be enough.
3. As far as food goes, I find that the healthier I eat, the better I feel. Feeling good is the point. I also feel for me that eating all raw, all the time, is just too constricting for me at this point. I do like being high raw, and low-fat raw is definately a good path. I just want to go there easily and not force myself into it. If I get there that way, fine, and if I don't, then that's OK too.

Denise was teaching us in class how to SURRENDER into the pose. It feels very different to surrender and let yourself be lifted into a pose, as opposed to muscle-ing and forcing yourself into it. Surrendering is beautiful. A much easier and lighter feeling. I'm surrendering to the food. I'm surrendering the weight. It is what it is. I'm not fighting it anymore.

Sunday Happenings

I had tons of stuff to do today so I got up early and went to yoga. My friend was having a surprise birthday party, so I ran out to get a present/card for him. While I was out, I stopped at the nursery and got some seeds to plant in my garden. Then I came home and ate a HUGE salad. Yum. I was starving and it was really good. I'm really going crazy for greens lately. Last night I had a big bowl of green leaf lettuce with a topping of avocado blended with clementines. Lovely, simple and sweet!

So here's what I got to plant so far:

• Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
• Paris Island Romaine
• Salad Bowl Lettuce
• Mesclun
• Cabbage
• Collards
• Mustard
• Dill
• Parsley
• Cilantro
• Spring Onion (plants)

I didn't have time to get anything planted before the party. I was dog-sitting this weekend, and I had to take her back home, so I had to leave even earlier. Anyhow, the party was fun and I got home around 8pm. Of course it was dark outside, but I went ahead and poked all the little onions in the ground. They filled up 3 of the squares. The lettuces will have to wait until tomorrow.

Even tho it was dark, I noticed at least one of the dogs had been digging in the bed. YIKES!! I told them "NO" tonight when I saw them sniffing around it, but they forget easily. I might have to build a little fence around it to keep them out. Hopefully they will be respectful of the space from now on. Gggrrrrrrhhhh if they aren't.