New project for you.

I have been working on a few projects this month as well as getting ready for our open house, so this is why I have been mia for a while.  I wanted to share a new project that I completed this month and you can now buy the design on society6. Here is a link to my shop. 

  

Glimpses of My Life, Living in a Yurt

 

I am blogging in a new space. I am so excited to share my new space with you. As most of my readers know we now live in a Yurt. It is 1200 sq feet including the loft. The spaces are odd shaped and sized but we are determined to make the most of every square inch of space. This space is in my bedroom so it is small. I had planned on building a desk that would fold up when not in use but I got impatient and when to my local antique/junk shop and found this 1950's sewing desk. It had the 4 drawers that I really wanted and it was small enough to fit into the space that I have for it. I love the thought that I can write even in the middle of the night and not bother anyone because the space it in the perfect spot. No I do have to worry about my husband because he can't sleep with the light on, so I'm sitting here at 2:15 am in the dark typing by the light of the ipad screen. 

 

When I got home from work today I knew that I just needed some outside time, so I decided to read on my porch for a while. I have a small porch outside my bedroom door. I love it because it is in the shade in the afternoon so on warm days it is at least 20 degrees cooler if not more. I can get a little bit of sun if I want to our just peacefully sit in the shade. I just need to add a small table to the space and it will work a little better. I am already talking to my husband about expanding the space from this 4' x 6' space to an 8' x 12' space. This is one of the next projects we are going to start now that he has the fences complete and the horses can roam our whole property. 

 

I love that the shadow in this picture shows off the yurt. We are still getting used to living in a round house and using the space to the fullest. I keep seeing way to change the furniture placement to make things fit better so you never know what I'm going to do from day today. I want to change the layout of the living room and put the couch where the tv is and the tv in the little nook under the stairs. Right now the tv table gets hit by the front door if your not careful. So a change of the space is in order I think. 

 

This is the placement of the couch and the table in front of the window now has the TV on it ad the chairs are in my bedroom. So you can see that even from this picture I have made changes that I have yet to photograph.  I have another section of this couch that is a chase lounge and I am thinking about putting it into my bedroom. I am not sure it will fit but I am willing to try. 

The One Thing You Can Do Today to Jumpstart You Health

 

 

Today starts a series of post for Get Healthy With A Southnern Lady. 

The focus of this post is one that you can do today to jumpstart your health.

I have been on this journey for a while now and I feel like I cam share what works for me. I am not a Doctor and if you have health problems you need to talk to your Doctor before you make any major changes to your life. 

The one thing that you can do today to get healthy is MOVE. I do't mean move homes or cities or even countries. I am talking about getting up from your seat and move. More than likely your are sitting at a desk reading this post or maybe you happen to be in your favorite coffee shop with your laptop or ipad. I can almost say with certainty that you are sitting still. 

So your challenge today is to get up and move. Not go to the gym, even though that would be great if you have a membership to one. I mean just move.  

I am going to share my top 10 favorite ways to do to get moving each day. You can start out small and work your way up to more time spent moving until you can get 30 min of movement a day into your life. 

1. Walk in place for 5 min, ( just raise your legs up and down lifting your knees as high as you can).
2. Stretch your arms,(raise your hands up above your head and interlock your fingers and stretch, keep your fingers interlocked and stretch your shoulders and neck) You can do this right where you are right now. 
3. Find some stairs (with at least 10 steps) and walk up and down them twice.
4. Stretch your neck, (roll your neck from side to side and let the stretch work its way to all sides of your neck)
5. Take a 10 min walk around the block.
6. Stand up and squat at your knees 5 times (try to build up to 25 adding 1-2 more reps each day, until you can do 25 at a time)
7. Stretch your toes and legs, (while sitting or laying down, point your toes straight down and hold for 5 seconds, next point your toes up as far as you can and hold for 5 seconds)
8. Stand up and do a task instead of sitting, (This will help you feel more energized). 
9. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. 
10. Use your chair as a prop and stretch your whole body. Take a long as you can and hold each stretch to maximize each one. 

Now all you have to do to get moving today and Jumpstart your health is pick a couple of things from the list and do them.  Then each day add another 1 from the list and this will help you get to your goal of 30 min of movement a day. 

Free Mandala to Color

 

I thought i would share a mandala that I have designed as a coloring page for you to print and color. all you need to do is right click on the image and select print. 

My Journey to Reclaim My Health

 

For the past few weeks I have been trying to take care of my health. I am eating Whole Foods and have eliminated processed foods from my diet. I started this in hopes to help my fibromyalgia and auto immune symptoms to subside. I have kept it pretty quite except when I am eating around someone. I really wanted to see if it would work before I said much more. Well two weeks in I have less inflammatory issues and I have more energy as each day progresses. I started off cutting everything out but fruits veggies and meat for the first week. I made good use of my juicer and I found that I love drinking beet juice, it is so good and so good for you. I mix it with carrot, apple, ginger and fresh tumeric.

Here is a little back story for you, I have not really shared this here because I have really just wanted to keep everything more positive here because the blog has always been my place to share my good days. 

In late 2010 early 2011 I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia,  I was told that I would just keep getting worse and that there really wasn't nothing that could make it go away. They offered me meds that had horrible side effects and I told them that I would not take them. I have always hated taking meds and to this day I don't like putting chemicals into my body. For a while I would have ups and downs and the downs would get longer and the ups would come father and father apart. I knew that I had to find something natural to help me, I started using essential oils and herbs and nutritional supplements but never changed my diet. That is until January of 2015 I had the worse episode of my life. I had the worse reaction to food that I had ever had, I had hives from head to toe, my throat almost completely swelled shut before the EMTs arrived. The next month I found out I had had an allergic reaction to beef, and testing had shown that I could no longer eat beef and pork or an meat from animals that walk on for legs. So it was the fins and feathers diet for me. That still didn't clue me into what I was putting into my body was causing all of my problems. So over the past couple of years I have been researching this issue, and have come across links to this allergy and other auto immune issues. So through my research I found various people who have seen a link betweeen processed food and fibromyalgia symptoms. ( I am not a medical doctor so this is just from me readin various research and you should look into it yourself and ask your doctor before relying on anything I am saying) . 

So this time I felt that I really needed to take back my health, because for the past few months since I started my new job at the end of the work day I was so tired and in so much pain, that I have to come home and go straight to bed. I knew that this was not the way that God meant for me to be living. So I began looking for a better way to help fix my problem. I started looking in to the ingredients that are in most processed foods that I was eating and really took an inventory of what I was putting into my body. Sugar and caffeine were at the of the list along with high fructose corn syrup. I knew that these were the reason that I was crashing everyday, so I decided that I would make a change and quit them cold turkey. I have tried two quit processed food cold turkey before but I have never really had the willpower to do it so this time I knew I had to push through. The first few days were horrible. I really was having withdrawal pains from taking everything away at once, but on day 5, I woke up feeling like a new person. I had energy and that night I reall started to sleep better. I am not coming home and going to bed after work anymore, I have the energy to do things with my girls and my pain has almost completely gone away. I take tumeric and magnesium every night before bed still and I really wake up refreshed and I am sleeping through the night. I was waking up 4-8 times each night not being able to get comfortable because of the pain in my joints. I will be sharing more of my journey to healing my body through Whole Foods as I go. 

Here is a great book that I am ready that has some wonderful recipes that will help you on the journey to living a more healthy life with nothing but Whole Foods.