My dear bloggy friends, I've got a fabulous guest for you today. Kristina is visiting to share with us her pursuit of a healthy lifestyle for her family and some simple ways you can do it too. And she's so sweet because she's going to give some custom organic beauty products to one lucky reader. I always lament that I can't enter my own giveaways because I want one of everything. I suppose I'll have to just order myself some lotion instead. I hope you'll visit Kristina and show her some love!
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Hi there! My name is Kristina and I blog over at From City Corporate to Suburb Mama. A huge reason I got into blogging last summer was our real foods journey. If you're not familiar with the term "real foods" it basically means eating food as close to it's natural form as possible and getting all the goodness you can from your foods. This means tossing the packaged food, trying to eat more seasonally, buying organic (or at least avoiding the dirty dozen) and making all your foods from scratch (as much as possible) and preparing them similar to how they would have 100+ years ago. It sounds like a lot, and it's definitely been a journey that has required baby steps in some areas.
While I wanted us to pursue a healthier lifestyle, I also knew that because we are a 1 income family, we would need to be careful about how we made this transition.
I wanted to share a few things that we were able to do fairly quickly with little or no money involved. They also were immediate steps to better health.
Make your own yogurt. That might sound complicated, but as you can see here, where I shared how easy it is, you will find that it can be done! Not only is it so much better for you than store-bought yogurt that has so many additives and sweeteners, it's also so much cheaper! When you figure that organic yogurt on sale can range from 75-99 cents per cup, it's easy to have that add up! Especially if you have kids that like to snack on yogurt too! I dare you to try it! :)
Stop using your microwave. This is something that started in our home with the ringing in of the new year. I've stopped using plastic in the microwave, I challenged myself and my readers back in the fall, but I know I need to give it up completely. It's so easy to pop things in the microwave, but I get excited thinking about how much healthier our food will be for us without the use of the microwave! and this tip is completely free! I confess, this is a hard one, and I do occasionally still use it, but with our move next month, we're leaving the microwave behind and not getting a new one! I'm excited about that!!
Make your own on-the-go snacks. Especially because we're mostly grain/gluten free in our home now, having snacks for on-the-go can get super expensive, super fast! It's amazing the variety of gluten-free options there are out there, but they don't come without a hefty price and they are mostly processed foods so a no-go now! Most of the time, I make all our snack foods. Most recently I made Larabars. If you've never had larabars, they are naturally gluten free and usually involve just a couple ingredients. Truly my kind of "make-it-yourself" recipe! They are so easy! Here's a link to the simple instructions I use: make your own larabars.
Another thing we did almost immediately that greatly helped our son Lucas, find relief from his eczema, was make our own hard lotion. It's a recipe I've perfected over the last year or so and I'm thrilled to have recently opened my etsy shop, Organic Mami. It's organic and all natural and hard, so it requires the use of NO preservatives! It also uses ingredients you could eat, so I feel really good about putting it on all our skin! I'm so happy to offer one lucky reader some lotion and lip balm today! And, I'd love to hear from you and get to know you better, so please, stop by my blog and say hi!
