What a weekend!

Tim and I had the good fortune to celebrate the marriage of our great friends Sarah and Damond this past weekend in Norwich, CT. It was so relaxing to spend time with our wonderful friends, eat good food and just hang out away from the pressures of everyday life. I got my nails done, took a yoga class, got my hair cut, went swimming and had such a great time. I think it’s so important to step away at times and take a break. Stress is something that’s been creeping back into my life at a very steady pace given the demands of my day job and I don’t think I realized the toll it was taking until I really disconnected.

On Sunday for our drive home it was absolutely amazing out – a true New England Fall day – where the trees were literally bursting with color. Tim and I stopped in Mystic, CT to have lunch at Mystic Pizza (yes, I grew up with that movie and LOVE that place!) and the whole world just seemed to be calm and peaceful.

Here’s to everyone who took some time to celebrate life this weekend and gain back the perspective we all deserve and need!!!

Might be familiar to some but new to me!

I just found Natural News – what a wealth of information around healthy living! I really love this article that shares tips around Green Living. 

Here are a two of the tips I found really relevant to me and how I try to live:

• Green Clean Your House: Conventional household cleaners and bug-killers can contain as many as 200 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals. These harmful toxins are dangerous for you, your children and your animal companions, as well as harmful to the environment. Chemicals in cleaning products have even been implicated in Parkinson`s disease, infertility, brain damage, cancer, and other health problems.It`s safer and greener to buy only organic, all-natural cleaning products. Many natural, cruelty-free cleaning products are available in many supermarkets and drugstores. Thrifty cleaners can also make their own green cleaning supplies with everyday, inexpensive ingredients like baking soda, borax, cornstarch, and white distilled vinegar, which is effective for killing bacteria and germs.

Here’s one of my stories around green cleaners. I’ve been using the Shaklee Get Clean products in my home for years – both to clean my house and to do my laundry. I’m extremely sensitive to the harsh smells of cleaning products and when I first started dating my husband I would get crazy headaches. Once I determined it wasn’t him  J I realized that he was using chemical cleaners and laundry detergent. I bought him the Shaklee Get Clean products as a present (so sneaky…hehehehe) and once we washed the linens a few times to get rid of the detergent and cleaned the house with the new products I was headache free. The real ‘ah ha’ moment came for me a few months later when we were in the grocery store and for some reason we ended up in the ‘cleaning’ section and my husband was like “on my gosh – this place STINKS!” it was like he suddenly got his sense of smell back and hadn’t realized how harsh the smells and chemicals were that he had been using.

• Eat Green: If you want to be green, it`s important to eat green-vegetarian, that is. “Meatless Mondays” or Thursdays, or what have you, are a great start. The less meat you eat the more you help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, curb pollution, and conserve water, land, fossil fuels, and other resources. Consider this:*A United Nations report revealed that the meat, egg, and dairy industries are responsible for more greenhouse gasses than all the cars, SUVs, ships, tractor trailers, trains, and jumbo jets combined. According to the Live Earth concert handbook, “refusing meat” is the “single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.” Researchers with the University of Chicago even report that going vegan is 50% more effective in stopping global warming than switching to a hybrid car.

  *The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that run-off from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. The EPA also reports that about 80 percent of ammonia emissions in America come from animal waste.

  *It takes more than 4,000 gallons of water per day to produce food for a meat-eater; only 300 gallons of water a day are needed to produce food for a vegan. Nearly 80 percent of the agricultural land in the U.S. is used to raise animals for food. E: The Environmental Magazine has reported that more than one-third of all fossil fuels produced in the U.S. are used to raise animals for food.

We try and do this in our house with one meal a day. So we either take a meatless lunch or make a meatless dinner. It’s harder to do then it sounds, but if you plan a little it can happen pretty easily.

How do you make a Meatless day work?