Exciting news: I'm speaking at BlogHer 2013!

I'm so excited to officially announce that I've been invited to speak at BlogHer 2013 in Chicago this year!



The panel I will be part of is the Beginner Marketing & Monetization Track, the title of the session is "Perfect Pitch":

From your stats to your ‘special sauce’, learn what to include in a pitch to catch a potential partner/client’s attention and earn their business.

As you know, this will be my 4th year at BlogHer, and I am super excited and honored to be speaking! I will be representing not only this blog, but also The Green Sisterhood, offering insight and experience from our collective niche blogging perspectives over the years.

If you are planning to be at BlogHer this year, please make sure you stay in touch via email or Twitter so that we can plan to meet up. I've never been to Chicago, so this is going to be an adventure!

Bloggers: Green Sisterhood hosting free webinar today!

Today at 1:00 pm CST, The Green Sisterhood is proud to present Amy Lynn Andrews in a webinar critiquing some of our blogs in a special webinar:

Learn How to Simplify and Organize Your Blog for More traffic and Lower Bounce Rate!

Register here

If you register online now, even if you cannot attend, you will have access to the recorded call.
While my blog was not selected for review, I am very interested to hear her suggestions.

Who else thinks she's going to suggest everyone moving to WordPress? * cowers in fear *

Wine n cheese with "the girls", if you know what I mean

I had the opportunity this week to spend an evening at the fabulous Hotel ZaZa in uptown Dallas with a few fellow contributors to Dallas Moms Blog. The suite was decorated with old school Hollywood pinup photos, dark paint, leopard couches, and luxe touches. While we were there, we had wine and cheese and other snacks that I don't get to see much of in my house full of dairy-intolerant toddlers.

Other things that we just don't see a lot of in our house...

...Wacoal's line of bras and lingerie!

Yep, we were there for what was, in my case, a much need bra fitting!

I knew I was overdue for this fitting. Heather from CottonBabies wrote a great post about why we need to stop and take time to get refitted after having children, and just this past fall, Amber wrote about her fitting in NYC while attending BlogHer. After breastfeeding two babies in 3 years, I had very little idea what size I actually am anymore, and honestly I was a bit afraid to find out. This is why they gave us wine.

When I got back into the fitting room, the super hip New York bra fitting expert took one look at me and declared me a 30 band size. This was not a surprise, since I typically get 28 or 30 when I measure myself (at which point I give up). If you are familiar with ladies' undergarment shopping, you will recognize this as an extremely difficult band size to find. You cannot, for instance, just go to Target or even Victoria's Secret. Most brands don't go below 32.

Here's where I learned something, though: did you know that the cup size alters a bit for smaller band sizes? For example, a D cup for a 30 band size is smaller than a D cup for a 40 band size. Makes sense, proportionately. This news made me super excited, because I turned out to be a "larger" size than I thought I would be. All is not lost!

Fortunately, Wacoal bras come in band sizes from 28-46 and cup sizes from AA to HH. Their b.tempt'd line has some super cute styles, with a slightly smaller size range. Both lines are conveniently available at Macy's, Dillards, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus.

And now, I will leave you with some compelling facts from Wacoal's Bra Expert, Liz Smith:

Bra Facts

• 8 out of 10 women wear the wrong sized bra 
• A woman should be fitted once a year 
• If you gain 5 – 7 lbs, your bra size will change 
• It only takes 15 minutes to be fitted for a bra 
• Most women wear their bras 1 – 1 ½ inches too big in the band and 1 cup size too small
• The average woman has 27 bras in her lingerie draw and wears the same 2 bras repeatedly 
• A bra should be worn once and then washed to extend her life
• After washing and wearing a bra 100 times she needs to be replaced

Well, if that doesn't make you want to go out and get fitted, I don't know what does...
Good luck and good fitting to you!


NOTE: I was given a free fitting and bra from Wacoal at this event, but I was not obligated in any way to write about them or my experience. Opinions are my own. I just felt like you really hadn't had enough TMI posts from me lately. You're welcome.

6 tips: switching from antiperspirant to natural deodorant

If the weather is still chilly where you are, now is the perfect time to get started on the switch from toxin-filled, potentially cancer-causing antiperspirant to a safer natural deodorant. I say this because the heat of summer is not exactly the time to work on preventing body odor while using natural products that work differently than what you've been accustomed to using. Get used to the difference now and you'll be a pro by the time the warm weather kicks in and you rely more heavily on your natural odor preventing routine.

It takes a little bit of experimentation to figure out what works for your body in a natural deodorant. If you've been using antiperspirant, you are accustomed to not sweating. A deodorant will allow you to sweat. The right deodorant will take care of the odor that the sweat would cause, but not the moisture. It took me a while to get used to that feeling, but after a while I learned to accept the way my body functions naturally.

Below are 6 tips that will help your transition from antiperspirant to deodorant go more smoothly:

1. Watch what you eat. If you are putting a lot of processed foods, white flour, heavy meats, and sugar into your body, the sweat that comes out is going to smell worse. Sweat is your pores' waste, and if you are putting junk in, you'll get junk out. Focus on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and a minimum of red meat and you will see a reduction in your body odor overall, even without deodorant.

2. Watch what you wear. Sleeveless tops are now your friends. Any shirt or top that fits tightly around the underarm is NOT. Think layers of looser fitting jackets or sweaters over tank tops, even in the summer. Or just a tank top. Whatever you do, avoid long sleeved body suits. Remember, any time you perspire there will be moisture.

3. Shave your underarms every day. Let me be the first to tell you that even though I am a fitness instructor and wear capri workout pants multiple times a week...I rarely shave my legs. Too much effort! But when it comes to underarms, I never take a break. Hair traps bacteria and, therefore, odor. Having any length of hair in your underarm area will exacerbate the odor causing bacteria that you want to avoid. So take a few seconds every morning to shave. Guys, I don't know what to tell ya...societal norms just aren't on your side on this one.

4. Find a brand that works for you. Everyone's body chemistry is different. What works for me (crystal deodorant first, followed by Nature's Gate solid) might not work for you, so experiment. But not with Tom's of Maine. I have heard from multiple readers and personal friends (as well as from my husband) that Tom's of Maine's "natural" deodorants are terribly, terribly ineffective overall. I realize that this brand is the easiest to obtain because it is manufactured by Colgate and is therefore in Walmarts and Targets nationwide, but please avoid it. Try nearly any other brand but this brand. Seriously. Trust me. Check GoodGuide and the EWG SkinDeep database for brand recommendations.

5. Try teas. In the summer, drinking iced peppermint or other mint teas will help to naturally cool your body from the inside, helping you to sweat less. In the winter, try warm teas such as chamomile to help calm and keep you hydrated.

6. Be committed. Because this is going to take some experimentation, keep your goals in mind. Why are you taking steps to clean your body and the way you live? For your health? For your children? Due to pregnancy or holistic treatment of chronic illness? Whatever the reasons are, realize that they will not change even when you encounter challenges.

I'd love for you to make the switch with me, and hopefully these tips will help with the transition.
Please let me know in the comments or via Facebook or Twitter if you do make the switch!

Un-becoming vegetarians: why meal planning is a beating

Our family of four is an insane mix of vegan, vegetarian, and omnivore. This is how it breaks down:

Me: I've been a lacto-ovo-pescatarian since 2003. I did it initially because I realized that when I ate meat, my stomach issues got much worse. When I stopped eating meat, I felt SO much better. I eat dairy, eggs, and fish but no meat from mammals.

My son, LS: Has consistently refused to eat meat or beans of any kind since he was about 9 months old. Yes, this includes hummus. And no, he has never actually tasted red meat or most beans, so it isn't a taste thing. He can somehow magically tell if there is red meat or beans in something and will not even put it in his mouth. Recently he has also stopped eating eggs, so we lost that source of protein. We also found out in the last few months that he is dairy and soy intolerant. Not allergic, but cow's dairy or soy products (including soy lecithin, which is in everything) make him sick to his stomach and cause him to have chronic diarrhea. He will, however, eat turkey hot dogs. Occasionally, since we took him off dairy and soy, I have been able to convince him to try chicken and some fish. Victory! Otherwise, he is basically vegan without the soy and beans. Thank God he's not allergic to nuts.

My daughter, LL: Eats nearly everything except soup. I can only get her to eat meat about every other day, though.

My husband: Eats everything except white things. For instance, will not eat anything that contains sour cream, yogurt, mayonaise, and completely forget Alfredo sauce. He will not eat leftovers of any kind, ever. The first time the meal is cooked is the only time he will be helping consume it. Anything that is not eaten might as well be thrown away. I have lived with the man for 7 years now and I can assure you that this is not going to change.

Let's review the things that my family will not or cannot eat:

• meat
• beans
• eggs
• dairy (milk, yogurt, cheese)
• soy (tofu, seitan, most Asian foods because of the soy sauce, most baked goods because of the soybean oil)
• soup
• anything with a white sauce or filling or topping
• leftovers
• fast food (well, at least we have that positive)

Do you see why meal planning is a beating for me?

What can I actually feed these people?

Lately I have been considering something along the lines of meat and veggies, actually. Which means I'll be completely disregarding myself because meat makes me feel sick. This week, with the help of Greenling and Pinterest, I cooked two separate meat dishes.

Meal #1 from Greenling meal kit - pork with roasted veggies and salad, I added the rice

The kids ate a few bites. I consumed both pork and chicken that first day. I immediately regretted it both times. Within 30 minutes of eating, the old heavy-stomach feeling of indigestion and bloating started up with my stomach. I will leave the rest to your imagination, but needless to say, my stomach is still not OK with meat.

Another disadvantage of the meat and veggies approach is that meat is expensive. We are pretty firmly committed to buying only meat that was raised responsibly -- no factory farming -- grass-fed or vegetarian-fed only, and organic whenever possible. Even going through local CSA's or buying directly from the farmer, this can be expensive, especially since we can't buy in bulk. We just don't have the storage space and only 2 of the 4 of us will even eat meat. Remember that my husband is the only person who actually consistently eats meat, and that he will only eat that first meal. Anything not eaten in that first plate is wasted. That is a LOT of waste. I would say that any time we eat meat, only about 1/3 of it is consumed. The rest is served and re-served to the meat eaters but they reject it repeatedly and it gets thrown out.

I don't have a great conclusion to this post about the challenges we're facing when it comes to meal planning and eating. I guess it's more of a venting. It's good to see the restrictions written out. I'm trying to really look at this from all angles and try to determine the best solution for our family.

Has anyone else faced these same challenges? What did you do?


NOTE: I was not compensated in any way by Greenling for any of my discussion of their products/service. They were kind enough to retweet a picture I put on Instagram and Facebook of their meal kits, but otherwise they don't really know who I am. I'm just a fan!

7 Quick Takes #47

--- 1 ---

This is going to be really fast because I need to go nap. I'm teaching at 6:30am 3 mornings a week now instead of only 2, and it's really hard for me to get up at 5am 3 days a week if I don't get enough sleep somehow. Naps have really been standing in lieu of going to bed early since we have so much going on most evenings.

--- 2 ---

Speaking of teaching Pilates, if you are in the Plano area and would like to try out our Megaformer Pilates classes, we are running a great special on VOICE Daily Deals here. I recommend the 3-pack deal. Come see us!

--- 3---

vIf you follow me on Facebook and Twitter, you know that I dyed my hair pink. Here's a quick pick I took just now wearing very little makeup.

I have discovered that this haircolor really looks better if I wear some kind of color on my lips but, oops, I wasn't doing that in this picture.

--- 4 ---

Hopefully this will be invisible to you, the readers, but I'll probably be migrating this blog to WordPress (it's on Blogger now) some time in the next few months. I am worried and reluctant to make this move, but there are reasons bigger than my personal preference that are involved. Some of the primary goals are to make the site much more usable for my readers, and make commenting easier.

--- 5 ---

Everyone here is freaked out about the flu, how about where you are? My friend EcoKaren did a great post today about natural ways to prevent the flu, aside from or in addition to vaccination. I highly recommend checking it out! As for handwashing, remember that last week I blogged about how to make your own antibacterial hand soap from essential oils and castille soap.

--- 6 ---

It's January 11 and I have already completed one of the items on my To Do List: making our family blog books for 2011 and 2012. They take about 2 weeks to arrive from the publisher. Can't wait to see how they turned out!

--- 7 ---

Have to give one last shout-out to my sponsor, Happy Feet, Healthy Body! Along the lines of flu prevention, remember that she has hand sanitizer pens made from essential oils. If you've just started a New Year's workout routine (or you take one of my classes, haha!), I highly recommend her Lavender bath salts - lavender soothes sore muscles and will help you sleep at night.


~~~
Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

Everything eats chicken...except me

It turns out that chickens are sort of difficult to keep alive. Besides being rather dumb, or possibly because they are rather dumb, pretty much everything preys on them.
Successfully.

All that to say: one of our newest chickens was killed on Saturday by a hawk. We were home, it was the middle of the day, we had just come home from the store as a family and the kids were at the table for lunch. My husband saw the hawk swoop on down and attack our largest chicken. The mistake it made was trying to drag the chicken under the chicken wire of the chicken run. The now-no-longer-with-us chicken got stuck and the hawk abandoned it. The hawk flew up onto a nearby telephone pole and watched from afar. After a while, it gave up and went away.

We learned that there was no way to process the chicken for food. I know that seems cruel, but...it seemed like such a waste to bury a chicken that was otherwise untouched. Not that I eat chicken -- I don't eat meat except for fish. The rest of the family does. Still, there was nothing else we could do, we buried it. In the backyard. Well, I didn't -- Christian did.

I tell you this just to inform you of our ongoing chicken journey. My sister-in-law suggested that we go with something more like this for housing our chickens:

The crazy hair project

If you follow this blog on Facebook or Twitter (and you should), you may have seen that this weekend I posted a link to the following YouTube video of a female drummer with amazing hair:



My husband found this video through one of his friends on Twitter, I think, and told me that it would be super great if I dyed my hair this way. I have to say, I thought it was a good idea. I asked you guys and my personal friends on Facebook and Twitter and got a lot of "go for it"s and no "um, no, you are too old". So if you DO think I am too old (which was my initial fear too), you better speak up now because I am now at the seriously-considering-it phase.

It's a good phase of life for me to do something like this because a) I do not have a "real" job -- just teaching Pilates part time and no one there cares if my hair is pink b) my kids are too young to be embarrassed by me yet, c) I'm not planning on being pregnant or trying to get pregnant in the next 6 months, so it's finally safe to dye my hairs, and d) if I wait much longer, I really WILL be too old.

I'm not going to get all single-white-female and exactly copy her look, I am probably going to keep my same haircut (maybe a little more razor cutting on the ends), and most likely just use my regular stylist for the cut. The color is going to take a little more thought. I am considering these options:

1) Pay for color at a real colorist. This could be pricey. I have several recommendations that I am going to research today. Since I'd have to do a platinum bleach first, I think it would have to be re-done every 2-4 weeks, right? The advantage of a professional is that they can target a shade that will look right with my skin. The disadvantage is that I wouldn't have any control over the toxicity levels of the product they're using.

2) Do it myself. I think I would probably go to the health food store and look for low-toxin bleaching options and then order Wild Streaks Henna in pink to do the highlights. Anyone ever tried this?

3) Some kind of hybrid of both. For example, go to a colorist for the first attempt and then try to replicate the touch-up myself with alternative products. I think the bleach part is the part I need to most professional help with because that's where I'd need to match appropriately with my skin tone.

Either way, Lauren has told me that I'll probably only be able to maintain this hair color for about 6 months before it destroys my hair and I have to stop.

Anyone else tried this, used henna color, or have any suggestions?

Homemade Antibacterial Hand Soap with #EssentialOils

Looks like we are well into flu season and there are several nasty stomach bugs and upper respiratory things going around as well. Aside from keeping my kids home from school one of the two available weeks of preschool/Mother's Day Out in December (!) because I thought they might be getting the stomach thing (one random diarrhea and one vomited), no one ever got sick, and instead they ran around like crazy people not wanting to stay inside the house all day. Their immune systems are ridiculously strong, I guess? My husband, on the other hand, actually got pneumonia. The kids were never affected. I've had some ongoing coughing but I've been treating it with essentials oils and the usual immunity boosting supplements.

Anyway, regardless of how much Thieves oil you use or elderberry syrup you chug (we do both!), hand washing is always key to preventing the spread of whatever-is-out-there.

There has been a lot of concern in the green and medical community in the past 10 years about the overuse of antibacterial hand soap, particularly because it most often contains a chemical called Triclosan. Triclosan has been found to cause hormone disruption in animals and is currently being reviewed by the FDA for safety. Even the FDA's own site restates that antibacterial soaps may not provide significant benefit over plain soap and water.

Over here, we use plain ol' castille soap with peppermint essential oil, which I dilute at a 1:2 ratio with water and put into foam dispensers.

However, I will admit that after the salmonella incident with the chickens, I felt that we might need a little additional disinfecting property to our soap. Thieves oil blend contains antibacterial properties but, unlike Triclosan, does not interfere with the body's natural functions because it does not contain synthetic chemicals of any kind. You can order Thieves Oil hand soap from Young Living (I sell it, of course), but honestly I already had Thieves oil and soap, so.... I just made my own! Here's what I used:

Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Castille Soap
2 drops Thieves blend essential oil
2-3 drops lemon essential oil
Foam hand soap dispenser (approx. 8-10 oz bottle)

My foam hand soap dispensers are all from commercial soaps I've bought in the past and used up. I have one for each of our bathrooms now, and one for the sink. For what it's worth, Clean Well is my favorite soap and dispenser (because the label comes off cleanly), but it's SUPER expensive and my homemade version is way cheaper!

I fill my soap dispenser 1/3 of the way with castille soap (this is a Method hand soap bottle).

Then I fill it the rest of the way with filtered water.

After that, I add the 2 drops of Thieves and 2-3 drops lemon.

SHAKE REALLY WELL.

Important: you'll notice a separation/settling of the content, so make sure you give the bottle a good shake now and then before using. I have also noticed that the mixture turns darker when exposed to sunlight -- essentials oils do degrade in sunlight -- so it is best to keep in shaded area out of direct sun or use a darker bottle (the older Clean Well bottles are tinted).

Let me know if you try this recipe, and what you think!


NOTE: Of course, I sell the essential oils mentioned in this post. No, I did not pay my own self to mention...myself. That doesn't even make sense, but the disclosure laws require me to say it. There are also links to various Amazon products in this post, and those are affiliate links. If you buy the products mentioned, I get 2 cents or something. About twice a year I get $10 from them, so any time you do buy a recommended product you are supporting this blog and my sad, horrible Amazon addiction.

To Do List 2013

Happy New Year! As you might remember from previous years, I don't do "resolutions" but I stole the idea of a yearly To Do list from Jennie. Much more satisfactory. Here are mine for 2013.

1. Finally make those reusable snack bags.
   I bought some nylon fabric and coordinating cotton probably almost a year ago and still haven't attempted to sew snack bags out of it. I had some awesome Snack Taxi snack bags for years and this year they both went MIA. I am ashamed to say that I am using plastic baggies more now, and I hate it. I need to just sit down at a few naptimes and sew some seams to solve this problem.


2. Print family blog books.
   I have a woefully neglected family blog that I go and back-date-post so that my children will have some semblance of a scrapbook type thing for our family. In 2009 and 2010 I used Blog2Print to print books for the year and they turned out very nicely. All this year I have had "2011 blog book" on my To Do list. And lookee here, now I have "2011 AND 2012 blog books" on my To Do list. I really need to do this, it's ridiculous. I think the amount of editing it takes is a little intimidating.


3. Meal planning.
   I hate that this shows up every year. I hate meal planning for picky toddlers that can't have soy or dairy and won't eat meat or beans. I hate planning and planning and still going over budget and me being the only one that eats anything I cook. That is all.


4. Patch some giant holes in our walls.
   When we moved into this house over a year ago, the baby gate at the top of the stairs was installed backwards, so we had to rip it off and re-install it correctly. Then the screws fell out of the wall and we had to re-drill. What is left is a horrible, horrible mess. I need to get some fine sandpaper, some spackle, and the original paint from the walls and repaint it. What has been stopping me is 1) the idea of going to Home Depot and tracking down some moron who doesn't understand what I am looking for, and 2) digging through our 800 cans of paint in the garage to figure out which one matches the stairway.


5. Repaint other messed up paint...or do something about it.
   When we moved in last year, the painters put latex paint on top of oil-based paint in our living room, which is a big no-no. As a result, pieces have been flaking off or been rubbed off. I have no idea how to fix this, but someone should. SOMEONE.


6. Do something about the front yard.
   We have giant bushes covering up our porch and half of the bushes are dead, it looks terrible. My first impulse was to rent a chainsaw and go at that stuff but I don't think Christian was super excited about that idea. Also, whatever it is needs to be pretty much FREE.


7. Go to the dentist.
   Without dental insurance since I quit my full time job in 2011, and having moved to the suburbs away from our former dentist practice (it was just a dentist-in-a-box anyway), I actually have not had my teeth cleaned or looked at since I was pregnant with Little Lady. I really need a teeth cleaning.


8. Take Little Sir to the dentist.
   Oh geez. I am dreading this way more than going to the dentist myself. Mostly because it is bound to be super expensive to go to a pediatric dentist without insurance. I freaking hate going to doctors that I feel are unnecessary so that they can tell me or my children that "everything looks fine". And that will be $1,000, thank you very much. uuuuuggh.


9. Try again with the garden.
   I have to keep trying, I guess.

There you go, I'll do posts about any of these things that I accomplish and update you again at the end of the year! What's on your to do list for 2013?