Category Archives: Help Getting It Done

1COMMENTS

Raw Cucumber Gazpacho

You asked, so here it is! Don’t blink – this one is quick and easy, so there aren’t too many instructions. Besides, I’m going to a conference on Plant Based Prevention of Disease, so I have to go pack!

This recipe is flexible, so don’t be afraid to adjust it to your needs. Nut free? Use coconut milk. Like nuts? Use a cup of raw soaked cashews instead of the avocado. Do you want it a little more green? Add a handful of spinach. And absolutely fiddle with the seasonings until it tastes the way you like. I like cilantro and basil, so I add it to the soup and use it as the garnish too. Also, a word of caution: Until you know how things taste, add the strong flavor in a little at a time. For example, if the recipe says 1-2 cloves of garlic, use one and taste, then add the other if you want more. There’s no cooking here to mellow the flavors and you can’t take it out, so little by little is best. It’s no fun to dump a blender full of food because it’s over-seasoned. Now let’s get started!

Ingredients

2 whole cucumbers

1/4 cup almond milk

2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1-2 whole avocados, depending on size (or one cup of raw cashews, soaked overnight)

1-2 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp white miso (it’s good, but you can skip it if you don’t have any. A dash of tamari, coconut aminos, or soy might be a quick sub)

2-3 romaine leaves or a handful of spinach

1 tbsp maple syrup (optional – can help if the greens are a little bitter to taste, but it’s not required)

4-5 mint leaves

a pinch of crushed red pepper

salt and pepper to taste

Toppings: drizzle of good EVOO, fresh cracked black pepper, sprinkle of sea/pink/black salt (whatever you like), basil and/or cilantro leaves, cucumber slices, sprouts or pea shoots, slivers of grape tomatoes, pesto (not raw, but tasty!)

First, gather your ingredients. I added the lettuce leaves to my blend.

Then slice your cucumbers longwise, scoop out the seeds with a spoon, and cut into big chunks. If you’ve got a high powered blender, you don’t have to cut much of anything! Put everything in the blender except your toppings. If you’re using cashews instead of avocado, drain and rinse the cashews and add them to the blender with everything else.

Blend away!

This soup is best cool, so if you can wait, let it sit in the frig for a couple of hours. Then drizzle, top, and serve!

What do you think? How do you feel after eating this soup? Want more raw recipes? Let me know in the comments below!

1COMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations

Raw Food, Energy, and Loving Mom

Strange title, right? But stay with me – it’ll come together…

It all started when Elena and I went over to our friend Lisa’s house to visit. We were talking and laughing and enjoying ourselves when Lisa pulled out a blender of raw cucumber soup to share. She blended it up and served it with a pretty little tomato-basil garnish. I was flipping through a raw recipe book on her counter when she told me how she uses a raw food diet especially when she’s sick for healing and energy. As we sat there eating, I remembered that I made this before and it was a wonderful summer soup, cool and delicious. I’d been feeling tired and run ragged with all the end of the year activities, so I started playing with the idea of doing a few days of raw food to boost my energy levels.

I immediately dismissed the idea.

Why? I’d done a raw food diet in the past for about a week, so it wasn’t as though I didn’t know how to get started. There began the internal argument. If I do raw for any length of time, I’m going to have to go to the store and buy a bunch of veggies. There’s all that prep work that goes into eating raw, and I would have more limited eating out option. And what about my wine? Well, that was a bogus excuse not to go raw. Actually, they all were just excuses. I started thinking about why I’d want to try raw food again. The last time I went raw, by the end of the week I had so much energy that I was only sleeping 5-6 hours a night. Now, I’m a 7 solid hour-a-night girl, so this was odd. Sleeping 5 hours and feeling alert and light was attractive. Also, I have all the kitchen equipment that makes a raw food diet easier. A raw veggie cleanse might get me out of this junk food loop I’d fallen into lately. I was going to be near a Whole Foods the next day when I went to do surgery, so I could get stocked up. No more excuses – I decided to go for it and see how I felt eating raw. Since I also have Amazon in my arsenal, I ordered the raw food recipe book and made my grocery list.

Sweet spicy Thai salad with zucchini noodles

I started with the cucumber soup. Easy, peasy. While I was enjoying my soup, the small people started coming around to taste and they liked it too. I knew I had a winner when my husband came upstairs from his office cave to taste and ended up licking the bowl!

Raw cucumber gazpacho

The first thing I noticed was that I had to think ahead. Everything to eat in my house isn’t raw, so I had to prepare each meal for myself with a little more forethought than, “Gee, I wonder what’s in this frig that could be dinner today”. I searched the internet for ideas and pulled out my food processor and Vitamix. Quite a few recipes needed some nuts or seeds soaked before the food could be prepared, so I had little bowls of ingredients lined up sitting in water on my counter. I figured this was going to turn out to be too much work with everything else I have to do, so I’d probably give up after a day or two.

But I didn’t. Partly because I’m hard headed, but also it was because I learned something else. When I put thought and energy into my food, I started to feel differently toward myself. By the middle of the week, I was feeling cared for and nourished, like I was important to consider amongst the other needs in the house. As a mom, I’m always looking to the needs of the family, so when there’s a time crunch, the first thing to get eliminated tends to be my needs. I’m absolutely positive that I’m not the only one doing that! Having fresh, delicious, colorful food to eat that I made for me said I was important too. The nice part is, I didn’t have to hope/ask/beg for someone to help me make it happen. i just needed to take a few extra minutes to put it together!

Raw vegan tacos (the filling was sunflower and pumpkin seeds with lots of spices)

The next thing I realized is that unless your family is joining you on the raw food journey, most of the recipes out there are too big for one. I had containers all over the refrigerator with leftovers that I needed to finish up. That presented a problem for several reasons: One, I don’t like to waste food, especially expensive Whole Foods prices food. Two, raw food doesn’t store for long before it spoils. Raw food is alive, with all the enzymes and beneficial bacteria that help you digest it, so it’s going to break down if you let it sit in the frig. The last problem surprised me: I thought I’d be hungry all the time eating this way, but I wasn’t. Maybe it was the nuts and seeds that filled me up, but probably not since I didn’t have those in all the meals. I think it was also that eating this clean took away my taste and cravings for junky food. I just didn’t want it.

Raw corn chowder with an avocado scramble topped with marinated mushrooms, spinach and tomato

It’s been a week, and I’m back to sleeping 5-6 hours a night. I felt light and loose on my walk yesterday morning, and I’m going to get my garden planted early this morning as soon as the sun comes up. When will I go back to cooked food? I don’t know – I may stay with this for awhile. I just bought some kelp noodles that look really good, and I want to try some recipes with those. The kids and I made some raw mexican hot chocolate dessert balls, so I have my chocolate fix. I’m not feeing rigid about this raw food plan. When my coworker offered me some of her fried mushrooms yesterday, I ate some (and they were delicious!). And sometimes I miss warm food, so we shall see. Right now, I feel good in my body and my spirit eating this way. That’s the best reason I can think of the keep going!

Ice cream made from frozen bananas and blue spirulina algae (ok, that’s a rare ingredient!)

Have you ever tried a raw foods diet? Would you like to see some recipes to try out at home? Please share in the comments below!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

All The Time I Need

They did it!

My big kids did their Memory Master thing! They all successfully finished their exams without any mistakes and earned their titles as Memory Masters. I wrote about the specifics of the test last week (you can read about it here), but suffice it to say that they each had to memorize hundreds of pieces of information for this exam (and my big girl over 1000!) and they did it! So I have two Memory Masters and one Mega Memory Master, and they have the t shirts to prove it!

So we’ve wrapped up the official school year, celebrated with ice cream, and I taught my meditation class. And yet, I woke up morning after morning this week feeling worried and behind. No matter what milestones we reach, there’s always more to do. It feels like I should catch up at some point, since I’m always running so hard to get everything done! Time keeps passing, and things need to be done, so I keep my feet moving. But just because my feet are moving, something in me thinks that my mind has to be wound up and frenetic or I’ll miss something.

That’s not really working well though. If I let my mind run the show, I’ll be locked up in a straightjacket before my kids get to college! That or drinking heavily to calm the racket in my brain. Since neither of those are a good option, I meditate. Every. Day. It’s that important. It’s my time in the early morning to still my mind and listen to God so I can get calm for the day ahead. Now, don’t get me wrong: Every day I sit down to meditate isn’t some zen nirvana experience. Plenty of mornings I watch my mind race around like a two year old after a massive slice of birthday cake with ice cream on top! But it’s good to know where my mind is so I can help it settle back down. It’s the practice of stilling the mind that makes it easier to settle when I need to.

So this week I got up feeling anxious and sat down on my pillow to meditate. Some days my mind zipped around. But one of the days as it tried to worry about all that needed to be done, it got quiet for a minute and I heard it. This quiet voice said, ” You have all the time you need.” And I said, “Really?” I mean, that doesn’t seem right. I don’t feel like I ever have enough time! But that quiet statement just kept coming back.

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought this week. Do I really have all the time I need? Certainly, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. Most of us sleep for 6-7 hours a day, so we all have the same waking hours. With all the things I worried about not getting done, what did I do with the time I had?

Prepared for three potlucks.

Wrote cards and wrapped gifts for the kid’s teachers for the end of the school year.

Washed my hair.

Went shoe shopping with my middle girl.

Made multiple raw food meals for myself.

Lunch! Raw cucumber gaspazcho…

Did surgery and food shopping when I was in the city.

Saw patients in the office.

Did some writing.

Finished my laundry.

Worked on the August office schedule.

Celebrated the kid’s accomplishments by looking at puppies and eating frozen custard!

I’m sure I’m leaving some things out – you know, there are always the things that you do as you go that weren’t planned for. But in the end, it all got done. And yes, there are still things on my list, and since I’m working this weekend, I won’t be able to use that time for catch up. But worrying about the things I did this week didn’t help me get it done. In fact, because I listened to God’s quiet whisper, I stopped worrying about how I was going to get it all done and did what I could each day. Worrying would have made it so much harder! Try it – when you feel worried about getting it all done, use this as a mantra. “I have all the time I need.” Or, “God gives me all the time I need.”

What I’m learning is that everything can get done in the time I’m given. I may not be able to get it all done and watch all the TV shows I’m interested in, or read all the books I have stacked up to read. At least, I can’t do it as fast as I want! But that would be having all the time I want, not all the time I need. Learning to trust that I have what I need helps me to calm my mind when it wants to whirl around in worry. And living in a calm mind is a wonderful place to be!

How do you manage your mind when it worries? What do you do to calm your anxiety? Please share in the comments below!

3COMMENTS

Help Getting It Done

Bullet Journaling

Ever feel like you’re running as hard as you can to get things done and you’re going nowhere fast? At those times I feel like my lists are growing lists and I can’t get a clear picture of what I’m getting done. I also tend to have this nagging feeling that I’m going to miss something important, which leaves me with a vague sense something bad is going to happen when I forget it. Not a good feeling…

But writing a bunch of lists can make me feel a little crazy and overwhelmed. Everything isn’t going to get done today – but a long list sure makes it look like that’s the goal. When it doesn’t all get done, I have mild sense of failure, like I let myself down. And if I write the list for only the things to get done today, what about all the other things that pop into my head that also need to get done (at some point). What about the shopping or my ideas or plans and projects that don’t fit on today’s to-do list?

Enter the bullet journal!

If you don’t know what a bullet journal is, you’re not alone. Even though there seems to be twelve thousand videos on YouTube about bullet journaling, many people I’ve mentioned it to have never heard of it. A bullet journal in its purest form is your lists in a notebook. It starts out blank and you customize it to fit your own needs. I just added a blank grid notebook into one of my leather covers.

But wait! Before you close this post because you’re not about to make your own planner/journal, it really doesn’t have to be hard. If you want to be intimidated/inspired (depending on your personality and time constraints), then go on YouTube and watch some videos. I made that mistake at first. For me it was a mistake because I fell into the rabbit hole of all the fun/creative/artsy things you can do with this journal (think calligraphy and embossing powder) before I remembered that I don’t have time for all that stuff. I also got discouraged when I realized I didn’t have the artistic abilities of one of the video makers (and then I realized that she makes these pages for her online business).

Here’s why I like the bullet journal. Whenever I’ve tried to go find a planner that I can use to keep myself organized, I can’t ever seem to find one that does all the things I want. When I’ve bought planner/calendars, they always seem to have a bunch of stuff in them that I never use, and then I have a lot of blank pages that seem like a big waste of space. I need a place to write important dates, things coming up, my to-do list, inspirations, projects – a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem to all fit in a calendar. There’s something about the ability to touch and write on paper that I like too. I know electronic calendars are convenient and we actually have been using ours more these days because they help everyone coordinate and communicate. But there are more things to keep track of than events, meetings, gatherings and appointments. Let me show you what I’ve made so far…

The first page is an index. As you add pages, you write down what’s on which page. That way, you can go back to any list or plan you were working on without flipping through every page.

Then many people add a calendar. You can create any kind you like (weekly, monthly, yearly), but since I never seem to use the weekly or monthly views and those are covered on my e-calendar, I just made a yearly view. It’s not fully filled out, but I can add whenever I think of something new and get a view of how the year is developing.

Then I added my To-Do lists. There was a video I saw where the creator made her lists weekly and I liked it, so I decided to do mine this way. Then as I get things done, I cross them off and I can add new to-dos as they come up. If they don’t get done, I can move them to the next week. At the bottom I put a space for things that didn’t have to get done right away but I don’t want to forget to put them down. They usually end up on the next week’s list.

The cute little boxes are made of Washi tape, movable patterned paper tape. Before you get impressed by my creativity, I already had the collection of tapes in a drawer and had never used them. So when I saw the tape used on a video, I figured I might as well use it up!

I also had a big box of colored pencils that I probably bought for a kid as school supplies and then kept for myself. So I dumped them in a container with some markers to decorate my idea pages.

Now I have a place to organize things I want to do but can’t get done all at once. I’m hoping this will let my mind relax instead of struggling to remember all this stuff!

My favorite pages are the idea pages. Mostly they’re favorites because they’re pretty and that makes me smile, but I like having a place to keep ongoing lists and projects. I’m planning to use these lists to grow each project on its own page, but this way I can break things down into manageable pieces!

This is my latest organizing tool, and so far, I’m enjoying my bullet journal. I’m still trying to decide if it should live on my desk or travel in my purse. For now, it stays at home because my bag is far too heavy already and my chiropractor would frown at adding more to my load. I just add whatever thoughts I’ve jotted down on sticky notes throughout the day into the right pages in the journal when I get back to it. So far, so good!

How do you organize your busy life? What tool is your favorite? Please share with us so we can manage better too!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done

Capturing Thoughts

This week has been nonstop action. I almost didn’t write this week. The interesting thing is that hardest part of it has been how I’m thinking about it. Let me catch you up.

I’ve had plans for every night this week. When you add that kind of activity to a busy work week, for me that feels like too much. We had people over for dinner Monday, I visited a public speaking club on Tuesday, we hosted our family group from church on Wednesday, the last girl’s hair was done on Thursday, a friend is having her birthday celebration Friday, and we get to go to a show on Saturday. I also had two days at the hospital this week, which means extra early mornings and fighting that Atlanta traffic (which by itself wears me out!). So needless to say, I’m spread a little thin.

Just the home schedule. Work is another deal!

This is where I stand at a crossroads: Do I think about how hard this week has been, how tired I am, how much I want to have a little breathing room, how frustrated I am not to have more free time to write and create? Do I spend time flogging myself for scheduling all these things in one week, telling myself that I brought this pace to the party? Am I going to sit in frustration that the course and book I’m writing hasn’t been touched this week? Or, do I remember that I added the last minute dinner to be able to let my son spend time with a friend that we wanted to get to know better? Maybe I remember that even though I didn’t leave the hospital early enough to get in front of traffic, the commute was unusually easy and I got a 40 minute nap when I got home. It’s possible that I choose feeling grateful that I got all three girl’s hair done this week (four if you count my own!), made two homemade dinners, encouraged eleven people with my time and energy, and had plenty of time to think on my commutes. It’s all in how I think about it.

Ok, that might sound too Pollyanna for you. Or maybe you want to choose the second way of thinking but it just doesn’t seem to work out that way. For me, the first way of thinking is the most natural. It’s where my brain goes when I want things to be different than they are. I start thinking of all the ways things aren’t the way I think they should be, and that spirals into why I’ll never get to where I’m supposed to be in my life because work/kids/people keep getting in my way. Of course, then I resent work/kids/people and am short tempered and complaining. That doesn’t feel right at all. Actually, it feels terrible. If our thoughts produce feelings, which produce our actions, which produce our results, then to change results we need to start with thinking differently. Can you really just start thinking new thoughts?

I’m learning to retrain my brain to think differently. You can do this too! It’s an amazing ability we have, to reorder the connections in the brain to function in a healthier way. It’s not easy or automatic (the default is what you’ve been teaching your brain to do up to now), but it can be done. It starts with knowing that you can. I believe it’s possible because I don’t think God would ask us to “take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5) if it wasn’t. But how?

It all starts with recognizing what we are thinking. Since we have tens of thousands of thoughts a day, most of them go unrecognized. They are however, influencing our actions and interactions, whether we are aware of them or not. The first tool you can use is doing something called a thought dump. This is not journaling (though I think journaling has it’s own value – we’ll come back to it in another post). A thought dump is where you write (or type if you prefer) all the thoughts you can capture down in one place. It could be a composition notebook, an electronic device where you keep notes, or a locked diary – doesn’t matter. It just needs to be where you can jot down as much as you can as quickly as you can. It doesn’t need to be neat or organized or even full sentences – just legible to you. It’s useful to do this at night for five minutes before you go to bed. This helps you to unload your brain from all the activity swirling around in there (and can help with more restful sleep!).

Where I let my thoughts go…

Once you’ve started dumping all those thoughts onto paper (or e-format), what do you do with them? I find that just writing them down helps make space so I can think about more than all I have to get done. Once you’ve written down the thoughts/frustrations/wishes, you can look at them. It’s almost like having the thought outside of you in your hands – you can turn it around, look at it from different angles, decide if you want to keep it or let it go. You may decide that there’s another way to think about it all together.

You’re not going to get every thought you think written down in a thought dump. You will get some though, and the process of looking at them one by one can help you start the retraining process for your brain. Warning: This will not work if you don’t write them down in some format. The thoughts just rattle around in your head and go where your brain is used to putting them. It’s the magic of writing them down that gives you the space to evaluate the thoughts. Is this thought true? Do I like how I feel when I think this way? Is there another way to see this situation? You get to choose a new thought if the old one doesn’t serve you. I’ll share more on how to do this in the future. To start, begin with writing it all down.

Some of my favorite writing tools!

This is the beginning of retraining your brain. There’s certainly more we can do to manage our thought lives. Today, let’s get started with capturing our thoughts and looking at them more intentionally. It’s the start of a new way of experiencing the life we live!

How do you do with capturing your thoughts? Do you have special ways to slow down and retrain your thinking? Please share in the comments below!

2COMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations

Seeing The Vision

At our last family reunion, my cousin who planned the weekend (who is a genius!), scheduled time for anyone interested to make vision boards. We hadn’t talked about it, but she had done one in a group and loved the experience. I had been wanting to make one for years, but had never set aside the time. I gathered my magazines and clippings and packed them up…

It was a great time! The kids gathered around the table and made small boards, and when they got tired of it, they wandered out to the pool with my parents. I got a large board, a stack of magazines, my glue stick and scissors and started cutting. Since I had never done it before, I didn’t know how long it would take. I just knew the topic: Holistic Health. It was the direction I was headed and I wanted some visual inspiration. Long after the kids left, I was still cutting away. My husband came down and started a board of his own. Hours later (they were setting up lunch!), my board was finished. I don’t think it was supposed to take that long. But I loved it!

My Vision Board!

I brought the board home and encountered the first problem – where should it live? You’re supposed to be able to see it, right? But it was huge and had no where to be that wouldn’t seem cluttered, so it ended up in my pantry office. You’d think I’d see it there whenever I went to work in my office, but I don’t. Let me explain: The reason why it’s called a pantry office is because it really is a pantry. The basement pantry. It’s a great room as a bomb shelter or if there’s a hurricane – we could all sit in there and snack away while we sit safely protected from a storm. But there are no windows, and except in the dark days of winter, I don’t really like spending time in a cave like that. Also, my desk chair isn’t very comfortable. So even though I have very beautiful and inspirational things in the space, I don’t spend much time in there. So the vision board sat, alone and unwatched.

Can’t see all the pantry stuff, huh?

I went in there the other day as I was preparing for this solo retreat and pulled it out. It bothered me that I had all this fire and joy that I poured into this board and it was sitting ignored in the corner. That’s not what it was for! So I propped it up across from my side of the bed where I’d see it. Every morning and every night I’d look at it, rereading the words and wondering what it was supposed to be inspiring in me. As I packed up the car to leave, I figured I’d have time on my retreat to meditate on it. So I propped it up in the trunk with the bag of books and journals.

Some of my books and journals…

These days away have been precious. They’ve been hard too, because I’ve been working through some old thoughts that needed to be broken down and rebuilt. But in the midst of my silence and prayers and meditations, the board has been sitting there. And I questioned why I brought it. This time was really for reflection and listening, for journaling and bible study. It wasn’t time for career ideas, right? Was it a distraction, something to draw me away from why I was really there? I thought this was supposed to be a serious spiritual retreat!

Actually, I really didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing on this time away. I didn’t make a plan, because I always make plans. The concept was to let God make the plan, and for me to practice following. I knew enough to bring my bible and journals, some books and my yoga mat. But I didn’t know what would come from spending days alone. Last October was the first time I did a retreat like this, when I went to the beach in South Carolina. But that time there were still people around, wandering the beach, talking and spending time together. This time I planned a mountain getaway in a secluded little cabin. What if I got bored? Lonely? Cabin fever or snowed in – it is winter in the mountains!

In the end, who really knows what will come from this time away. But I know this – I’ve gotten lots of sleep, I feel gratitude for my life and family, and I have moved forward the work on me that needed to be done. And, when I woke up this morning, I finally had the idea for what I want to teach. I’ve felt for a long time that my medical practice and my holistic health coaching need to be utilized together, but I couldn’t figure out my message, my program to teach. There is so much to whole health and no one can coach it all at once. And I knew I didn’t want to keep practicing medicine without the holistic approach. While I laid there looking at the ceiling this morning, the idea came. The more I turned it around in my mind, the more full and clear it became. It was an answered prayer to the questions I’d been asking – God, what do you want me to say?

Now, all I have to do is bring the idea to life! Well, I know that may take some time and will certainly take some work, but it’s fun to have the idea. The best part is that I’m absolutely certain that this was only a little piece of the retreat. The idea is a joy, but the greatest gift so far has been the renewing of my faith in the love of God for me. I’m just getting started here. There’s more to come!

Have you ever done a vision board? What did you do with it or how did it help you? Please share in the comments below!

2COMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations

Christmas Traditions

Last weekend I went to three of the five Christmas events I was invited to attend. I wanted to go to all five of them, but logistically, it wasn’t possible. If it was, I probably would have gone to them all, which tells you how crazy I am…

One of the parties I attended was a cookie swap for the moms in my homeschool group. I really wanted to spend some time with these ladies away from school. Between keeping an eye on your kids and getting the school day done, there often isn’t much time to talk and connect. Besides, sometimes I can’t be at our Monday classes because of work. Also, I like cookies. So I drove out to the party in the cold and rain to meet up with the other moms.

It was fun! We ate appetizers, swapped Christmas ornaments, and played games. I had to leave before it was over to meet my husband to go to another party, but before I left we went around the group sharing our Christmas traditions. It was interesting to hear how other families open a present each on Christmas eve, make cookies together, go to candlelight service, or start decorating for Christmas in November.

Cookies from the swap!

It started me thinking about the Christmas traditions in our family. Sure, we open presents on Christmas day and eat a big dinner, but what else do we do? With our family of six and most of our family in states far from Georgia, we don’t often travel for the holidays. I feel like I’m at a time in my life where instead of participating in the traditions of our extended family like we did as kids (dinner at Grandma’s house, helping cook dinner, piling up for sleepovers in the guest room with the cousins), I’m developing my own traditions with our nuclear family.

But I don’t always like it. There was something about having the aunts and cousins and grandma all participating in the holidays which made it special. And I still want special – and I certainly want it for the kids! So I find myself torn between overdoing activities and trying to simplify to make what we do meaningful. We don’t have an automatic Christmas plan anymore.

But we do have traditions! It took some time and thought, but I realized that without knowing it, we have started to form our own traditions. When the kids were very young, we started taking a family Christmas picture to send to our family. Perry then creates a calendar with pictures of all of us from the past year as an update for our family that doesn’t see us often. So now, we gift a calendar and framed picture to our family every year.

Calendar 2018 : The 2019 calendar is coming up!

Some years ago, I figured out that many people put up Christmas trees as soon as Thanksgiving is over (I know some do it before, but I’m not doing that – one holiday at a time!). So we’ve been going out the day after Thanksgiving and choosing our Christmas tree together. We’d spend the weekend playing Christmas music and decorating the tree and the house. It started because I decided that if we were going to spend all that money on a tree, we might as well enjoy it as long as possible. This year, I bought an pre-lit artificial tree (gasp!), so we didn’t go to the tree lot. But we did decorate, and even though we don’t have a sweet fir smelling tree, we do have a beautifully decorating tree with evenly spaced lights. I always like warm white Christmas lights, but the kids prefer multicolored (as I did when I was little), but with the new tree we can compromise. They have the tree lit with the colors for them during the day, and in the evening it’s all starry white for me. (I’m diffusing my essential oils for the Christmas smell…)

Colored lighting for the kiddos…

One tradition I’m changing is wrapping all the gifts on Christmas eve after the kids go to bed. There’s already too much to do, so I’m chipping away at the wrapping early. I plan to watch a Christmas movie after the kids go to sleep this year!

My parents fly in from Boston for Christmas almost every year. They love Pappadeaux (a creole restaurant) and most of the time stop there on the the way to our house from the airport. We’ve met them a couple of times and the kids love it! This year, the kids reminded me that we didn’t get to go the last time their Mana and Papa John came and asked if we could do it again. So it sounds like that may be a tradition we make happen this year!

My mom and I usually make Christmas dinner together for the family. She’s an amazing cook, so I do my part and mostly get out of the way. But it’s a lot, so I’m toying with the idea of ordering some (or all) of the meal from Whole Foods. My partners at work think I’m nuts for doing all that cooking, which is how I discovered the idea of ordering a holiday meal in the first place. It just hadn’t occurred to me! But my husband mentioned to me the other day that he was really looking forward to the scratch lemon meringue pie my mom makes for him every year, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be doing some cooking. Of course, the kids want their homemade mac and cheese, and we have to make cookies for Santa, so we’ll be giving the kitchen a workout in any case!

Some early holiday table decor…

The kids have been participating in our church Christmas show for the past few years. This year, Ana is dancing, Aria is singing a solo, and Perry and Anora are in it too. I’m singing with the adult chorus, so I get to see things up close! They’ve been rehearsing for weeks and everyone is very excited for Sunday…

There are some things that I’d like to have as Christmas traditions but haven’t stuck yet. We have donated toys and clothes to folks who needed them in past years. I’d like us to have a service we do every year (and not just at Christmas!), but I don’t have one. We used to go see the Nutcracker every year, but it’s really pricey and a lot of hustle to get into the city for the show. Maybe next year. I also have a beautiful picture book with daily readings that is designed to be read every day of December leading up to Christmas, but we can’t seem to keep that on track. We always talk to the kids about Jesus and what Christmas is really about, and I limit the gifts I buy. I don’t want the commercialism of the season to overtake remembering the gift we have in Jesus. I would like to have a tradition that reminds us of this, but I haven’t made one that we sustain – yet. I’m still looking!

That’s the beauty of traditions: They remind us, they keep us grounded, and we can add new ones that have meaning for us. We also can eliminate ones that don’t serve us any longer. Sometimes we keep traditions that wear us out or keep us busy just because we’ve always done them. But if we will have traditions that are meaningful, we must be thoughtful and selective. I used to feel sad that we couldn’t keep the extended family traditions we used to have. But now, I have the opportunity to choose the traditions our family keeps, and let go of the ones that just take up time and energy. And so we create our Christmas!

What Christmas traditions do you keep? Any that you’ve let go? Do you have any special reminders of Jesus or service that you do at this time of year? I could use some ideas…Please share in the comments below!

2COMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Keeping The Crazy Out of Christmas

It’s officially Christmas season!

I’m a stickler for keeping Christmas after Thanksgiving. It feels like the retail industry wants to push us earlier into Christmas every year. I know some people just love Christmas and decorating and all that so much that they want to get started close to Halloween, but for me Thanksgiving is a special time of gratitude and family. I like Thanksgiving. But I fight being resentful of the commercialism of the holidays, even as I’m tempted to get pulled into all the activities and shopping. For me, that’s just not the point of the celebration of Christmas – but I’m easily distracted by all the noise. So I hold out until the day after Thanksgiving to get started on Christmas decorating. But now it’s here!

Tonight I’m sitting in front of the fire, writing during a rare moment of quiet in my house. The kids are out at Tae Kwan Do and I have an hour before they return and we have a couple of guests over for Taco Tuesday dinner. My focus music is playing on Spotify and I”m all alone. It’s so peaceful!

But a few minutes ago, the kids were running for the car, I was reminding everyone to get their coats, and their father was searching for the car keys. They took off trying to get to class on time, and I got ready to settle in and enjoy the quiet. Then I heard little footsteps on the stairs. They’d left the five year old behind who was upstairs quietly trying to get her uniform on by herself. I quickly called her father, who turned right back around and picked her up. Then they were off again.

On the road again…

What does this have to do with Christmas craziness? Nothing exactly. But you have to take the moments of quiet when you find them. I’ve been waking up early again with my mind racing, thinking about all the things I needs to get done for Christmas and lamenting that I hadn’t gotten organized enough to get all my shopping done between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I worked in the hospital Wednesday before Thanksgiving and in the office the Friday after, so I couldn’t have been out in the stores shopping. Besides, even if I’d have been off, I wouldn’t have gone out anyway. I saw the videos of people fighting over TVs and whatnot – that scene just isn’t for me.

Now, don’t get it twisted: I did lots of online shopping for the sales. The kids needed jeans, my hair products and intention tattoos were on sale, and I got the kids’ Christmas gifts ordered. But for some reason it took me getting into this week to realize that I have two offices of nurses, midwives and doctors to get gifts for, not to mention I need something for my parents and my husband! Thinking about all that means I work myself up with worry, thinking that if I’d have planned better I could have finished all this over the weekend and just enjoyed the season up to Christmas. That’s my type A self talking.

Maybe next year…

You know what though? Things are really good, even if I’m not all done shopping. My brain wants to think it’s only ok if I can hang out and plan to watch Christmas movie marathons or bake cookies all day with the kids. Here’s the real deal: I’m not 12 years old, I work, and I’m not on vacation, yet. The Christmas tree is up, my black Santas are everywhere, and I even have a Christmas candle burning. I have probably 80% of my shopping done and a plan to get almost all of the rest done. It’s gonna be ok!

That’s the first key to keeping the crazy out of Christmas: Gratitude. I have to remember what’s good and keep my focus there. Even though it seems like it should be easy to enjoy life around the holidays, it’s so easy to get swept up in all the to-dos that feeling overwhelmed can suck all the joy from the celebration. This is the time of year I need to actively give my grateful list a workout. I like peace and quiet – the hustle and bustle of the holidays can make me irritable. Focusing in on the beauty and good reminds me how wonderful my life really is. Even people who’ve lost loved ones and experienced tragedy during the holidays can find the good moments and feel some comfort.

My second key to keeping the crazy out of Christmas is easy: Simplify. I’m considering doing something this year I haven’t done before – I may order dinner from Whole Foods. I looked at their offerings for Thanksgiving and was shocked that it may cheaper than I thought. I still might cook, but even the thought that I could make things easier for myself helps me worry less. Also, I say this every year, but I actually am doing it: The kids are getting one gift each from us. That’s it. Seriously! Well ok, they’ll get a stocking full of stuff too, but that’s Santa. The rest of the family sends enough stuff, so there’s no need to get myself nutty with buying gifts for them. All their birthdays are in the 30 days after Christmas, so they’re gonna get more then too. Besides, haven’t you noticed that the more stuff they get, the less happy they are? I think they get focused on the volume of gifts and can’t enjoy the actual gifts themselves, much less the love in each one. So yes, one gift for each kid from Mom and Dad.

One more thing: What will happen if you don’t do it all? Pay careful attention to your answer to this question. Your mind may give you all sorts or interesting reasons, most of which may not even be true. It might just be fine if you do less…

I’ve got more to do, and managing my mind this season is on the top of the list. My focus is going to be on gratitude and keeping it simple – and enjoying the holidays instead of worrying about getting it all done. Here’s to a joyful holiday season!

How do you keep the crazy out of your holidays? Please share in the comments below!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Recipes

Shortcuts for Healthy Eating

Eating well in the midst of a jam-packed full schedule can seem next to impossible. So often between work and home and activities, there doesn’t seem to be any time for plans for meals, much less cook them. And here we are starting back to school, so the fall busyness is ramping up!

So this week I thought I’d share some of my favorite cooking shortcuts to help you get more homemade whole foods in your life. One of these may save you that run by the grocery store on your way home from work. And if you don’t have to fight for a parking space, stand in line, and drive home in traffic, it may even be faster than picking up dinner!

Make A Salad

I’ve said this one before, but if you prepare a salad and leave it in the refrigerator, half your plate is already done. I mix different types of lettuces and dry veggies (peppers, carrots, celery) and store it in a bowl. You can make it even quicker if you buy pre-washed boxes of greens and mix those together. If I want cucumbers or tomatoes, I’ll add those when I’m ready to eat so the salad doesn’t get soggy. The avocado always gets added at the last minute so it doesn’t brown.

Make Your Own Dressing

Sriracha mayo – quick and easy!

It’s not as hard as you might think. Because I’m trying to eat more healthy fats and fewer sugars, I’m eating creamy dressings. But many of them from the store have added sugars, especially the ones on the shelf. And I don’t have time to pull out the food processor or blender every time I want some dressing. My favorite (and quickest) option is mayo mixed with sriracha sauce. I love spicy food, so this one doubles as a dip too. I just put them both in a little bowl and stir. You can make any compound mayonnaise this way (except maybe roasted garlic or other chunky additions – you need the processor for that). If you buy the basil paste in a tube from the produce section, you can have basil mayo dressing. Like mustard? How about a dijionnaise that you whipped up with dijon and mayo? Any sauce you like can be added to mayo to flavor it. Just be careful not to choose a sauce with lots of sugar (like ketchup or BBQ). Those work against your efforts to burn fat!

Garlic green beans

This is a regular favorite with the whole family. You can do this with frozen green beans, but it’s better with fresh. Also, the thin young green beans (sometimes labeled haricot verts) work best. Luckily for us, they have these organic in bags at Costco. I chop up a few cloves of garlic, heat some ghee or olive oil in my cast iron skillet and toss the garlic for a couple of minutes. Then I add the green beans and toss. Add a couple of tablespoons of water and 1-2 teaspoons of Better Than Bouillion (our favorite is the mushroom flavor, but you use what you like) to the pan and cover for 3-5 minutes. Take the lid off, toss and let some of the water cook off. The beans should be tender but still crisp. Side dish done!

Whole Roasted Cauliflower

I picked up this recipe from Real Simple magazine, though they served it with a harissa yogurt sauce I never got around to making. Cut the base and leaves off of the cauliflower, drizzle olive or avocado oil (my new favorite) over the whole thing, then season with salt and pepper. Roast at 400 degrees for 1 hour and cut in wedges to serve. It takes 2-3 minutes to prepare and when you take it out it’s ready to go. Save the crunchy pieces at the bottom for the chef!

If you’re heating the oven this long anyway, you might as well oil and salt a few potatoes (sweet or regular) and wrap them in foil to go along with the cauliflower. If you’re eating plants only or not avoiding carbs, these will be done with the cauliflower. Add some grass fed butter to the spuds and the salad and you’re eating a beautiful vegetarian feast!

Spice Wings

You can do this with any piece of chicken, but I’ve been doing more wings lately because they cook up quickly. Drizzle your oil over the chicken, season with salt and pepper, and then sprinkle with your seasoning of choice. You could do garlic and onion powder if you want something simple, but I’ve been getting Frontier Organic spice blends from Amazon recently. Our current favorite is the berebere spice blend with a little apple pie spice blend. Sound sweet, but it isn’t because there’s no sugar. It’s kind of a moroccan flavor! I’ve also tried the five spice blend with success. Want some heat? Add chipotle or cayenne too. Roast at 375 for about 25 minutes. Make extra for lunch tomorrow!

Use The Grill

I have never understood why grilled foods seem to be reserved for summertime. Yes, cooking outside and leaving the kitchen cooler seems best for the summer months, but why deprive yourself of the joy of the grill just because it’s not summer? Full disclosure though, I have been known to be outside grilling when it’s 40 degrees or it’s raining (usually not in a full-on downpour though!). The grill gets so hot that cooking quickly is even easier than on the stove. Strip your corn and soak it in a big bowl of water while you’re preparing, then throw it on with whatever else you have planned. If you flip it a few times, it’ll be done in a few minutes. Fish fillets are another grill favorite. Again, generous use of oil, spice blends, some salt and pepper, and throw them on. You’ll have fish on your plate in no time! I have a grill mat that helps the fish not stick to the grill, but that’s not required (don’t skimp on the oil). But if you have one, you can do asparagus or green beans without them falling through the grates. Oil them up, grill, and then toss with a little balsamic vinegar, salt and fresh ground pepper. Slice a few tomatoes to go on the side and dinner is served!

These are some of my favorite quick meal tricks. What fast meal tricks do you use to get healthy food on the table? Please share with us in the comments below – we can all use more tools in our kit!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

What Do You Need For A Reset?

Ever feel like you’re running on a hamster wheel? Just round and round and going nowhere?

It happens. A lot, it seems in my life. And I know that it’s generally because of how I live. Work, kids, activities, projects – it’s a lot of things to do, and that can make the pace of life feel very fast. But I contribute to the problem because I focus on all those things to be done, and I make lists, and I push to always be completing some task. And I usually get away with it, because the normal ebbs and flows of life give me a little time to breathe and catch up. A Saturday to sleep in, a date night out, an evening watching a show on TV, these can all be a little break in the rushing around. But every so often, the pace picks up, things get a little crazy, and I start to feel like I’m losing my grip on my situation.

Here’s an example for you. A few weekends ago it was my turn to work at the hospital. I do about a weekend a month, and I pray every time for mercy and some sleep when I’m working overnight. And sometimes I do get to sleep. But this particular Friday night I was up all night seeing patients and answering calls. That phone rang every 5 to 30 minutes and that is NOT an exaggeration. By the morning, I wanted to throw it across the room just to see it splinter into tiny pieces. Suffice it to say, when I got home Saturday morning, I wasn’t fit for human consumption. I crawled in the guest room bed, pulled the covers over my head, and slept all day. I got up to go out for dinner, and that was the end of that day. I went back to work on Sunday. Of course, that means I got nothing done at home all weekend.

So I lost a weekend. So what? It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it was. If I can’t play some catch up on the weekend, I start the next week behind. So then the next week felt rushed and busy. I felt like I was rushing all the time, and not getting enough. In addition to being behind, my teacher was off for a few weeks and my babysitter got sick, so we were without childcare for a few days. So we patched together what we needed to keep the kids taken care of, but without that support at home, I got even more behind. It was a snowball effect.

By the middle of last week, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to sit down and write a post. In order for me to write I need a little time and breathing room to be creative, and that just wasn’t going to happen. Last week also was short because we left town Thursday to drive to our family reunion in Virginia Beach, so after work all I could manage to do was get the girls’ hair braided and finish the packing. I still forgot my razor and my hair scarf.

Now we’re back, no one has gotten enough sleep, I’m hormonal, and I’m in desperate need of a reset. Anyone got an easy button? Seriously though, sometimes starting over seems like a really good idea. If there was a way to clear the slate, I’d do it. I hate that feeling of more things hanging over my head to do than I think can get done! The thoughts “I’ll never catch up, I’m always behind, I’m drowning in all the stuff that needs to be done” – they just make me miserable. Did you catch that? The way I think about the things I need to do makes me unhappy. It’s not actually what I’m doing, or who I’m doing them for, or even how many things there are to do in the time I have. It’s how I’m thinking about it all.

And here’s the reality: There will always be things to do. There may come a time in my life where it’s not so frenetic, but it’s not now. So how do I work against my brain that wants to remind me how hard it is to get everything done? It’s a discouraging thinking pattern I’ve worn in my brain for many years. But it can be undone! It takes conscious effort to practice a new pattern of thinking. You have to recognize the thought, understand that it’s just a thought and not necessarily the truth, and you have to choose to begin thinking differently. For me, a thought I find much more helpful is, “I have enough time to do everything I need to do today.” That thought doesn’t tell me I have to get everything done today, just that I have enough time to do what needs doing today. It’s true, it’s calming, and it’s motivating.

BUT – in order to be best able to retrain my brain, it’s best if I’m feeling well. So when things get a little nutty, these are some things I do to reset myself so I can be better going forward…

Get enough sleep.

Seriously. When we’re tired, it’s like dragging ourselves through quicksand all day. It’s just a grind. Everything is harder than it should be, because all we want to do is make it to bedtime. Lack of sleep sucks the joy out of the moments that we could appreciate if we weren’t so doggone tired. A century ago, the average person was sleeping 9 hours a night. Today, the average is 7 hours a night. And I bet you can think of many nights you’ve logged fewer than that. Another fun fact: sleeping 6 hours a night for 14 consecutive nights is equivalent to your body (and brain!) to missing an entire night of sleep. It’s not a good place to try to live from, and for most of us women who are the caregivers, it’s a tough place to give from. Giving from exhaustion requires a nearly herculean effort of will, which just can’t be done on a routine basis. You must take care of yourself too, which includes getting enough sleep!

Exercise

This is usually the first thing to go. I exercise in the mornings because I’m generally too tired at night to do it, and because I just don’t seems to get to it if I don’t do it early. But if I don’t sleep (see above!), then I don’t want to get up early enough to exercise. And when I say exercise, I don’t mean an hour of cardio or getting to the gym before work. If you can get in a 15 minute YouTube free weights video, or a 20-30 minute yoga DVD or online class, that’s great! That’s what I’ve gotten in this week, and it helped keep my back from hurting so I could run around all day. I also get the benefit of feeling like I did something good for me that day, even if there’s still a lot to do. And exercise does make you feel better. It seems like it’s optional, but you’ll be happier if you get this in your day. A caveat: I don’t recommend exercise within 2-3 hours of bedtime. It can disrupt the quality of your sleep if it’s too close to bedtime. Early is best, but factor that in your plan so you can get the best possible sleep too!

Eat Well

Whenever I work all night, I notice that the next day I crave sugar. I want to eat cookies and chips and cake and doughnuts and – well, you get it. It’s my body screaming for quick energy. But it’s the wrong thing to do. I know it, but my brain doesn’t always get in line. So I have to make a plan and stick to it, even though the cupcakes the girls made look like a really good idea. They’re not. Almost ever. But a fresh green salad doesn’t take long to throw together, especially if you buy a few cartons of prewashed greens. Chop some carrots and peppers and celery and cucumbers (or whatever fresh veggies you like) and keep it in the fridge. When it’s time to eat, cook up your protein and add fat (creamy dressing, avocado, olive oil). You can also cook up some veggies in grass fed butter or ghee to increase the good fat on your plate. That’s a meal to satisfy your hunger, keep your energy levels stable, and keep you from grabbing the next cookie that crosses your path!

That’s it. At least, that’s a good start toward getting back on track when I’m getting overwhelmed. It’s my “Back To Basics” approach. One thing I didn’t do: watch TV. It’s so tempting when the kids are finally in bed to breathe a sign of relief and grab the remote. It’s a trap – don’t do it! Two things happen almost every time. One, you get sucked into a show and stay up later than you meant to. Then you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t get up to exercise, you don’t have time to meal prep, etc. And two, you wake up the next morning realizing that you lost another night that you needed to get things done. The TV stole it! So I just don’t go into the basement where the TV lives. We just can’t be together until I plan time for it.

What about you? How do you get yourself reset when you get off track? Please share in the comments below so we can help each other be our best!

Come back next week when I share some of my favorite shortcuts for eating well with very little time. See you soon!

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