Happy New Year

We have made a family decision to delete my (Jeana's) Facebook account and instead use this for family and friends to see what our family is up to!
In the new year Tim and I are hoping to make more time for our family and continue to prepare ourselves for our move home to minnesota and transition out of the military and into the civilian world, we can now say NEXT YEAR!!!
My resolutions are to go gluten and sugar free completely and to add in more and more raw food, to continue my reading on becoming the best parent to Nova possible and to judge less and be more understanding.
I am not sure if Tim wants to share his resolutions for the new year I will let him decide!

Happy New Year from me and mine :)

Sorry we have been MIA

Hello all my long lost blog followers! We have decided to delete our FB and use this to show our friends/family pictures of us and things about our life! We have gotten too wrapped up in FB and the negatives have started outweighing the positives! Anyway a quick update! Nova is 16 months who knows where all that time went! She is a big girl now and walks and talks all day long! We have strayed from our 2012 goal on some things but not on others. We still buy used most of the time (but not all the time I wish we did) and we are still vegans although we do occasionally have dairy :(
I got crazy and chopped all my hair off and I think Nova and Tim have more than me! Other than that things are similar! I will try and update this regularly! Thanks for reading! Jeana

I think I found it!

So as most of you know we already get all our fruits and veggies from a local farm through a CSA, but I am having trouble finding other things like flour sugar beans yeast etc... well today I think I found the solution! I found a website: http://www.azurestandard.com/ that is a coop out of Washington that delivers bulk grains that they have grown and a variety of other natural foods most, maybe even all made in US or fair trade! I am so excited! You order by a certain date and then they deliver in quite a few states on the west coast! I am super excited I don't think I will get in by the February order (feb 1) but I am going to try for march! We are hoping maybe we will be able to get all our things that isn't produce from them and avoid the store all together!
I have to research them a bit more but I think this is it!

Yesterday we went to Santa Cruz to the surf Museum and a surf competition! Here are a couple pics of Nova! Man she is CUTE! :)

neat website

I found a pretty cool website (http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/) which is local to me but has info for people all over! It talks about living a life as a localvore a person that only eats and does things local! I am excited about all the info it has on it! I haven't been posting much because Nova is getting 3 new teeth and because of it is quite the handful! We took Cami one of our dogs to a local naturopathic vet for her reoccurring skin infections and ear infections so I am hoping all our homeopathic remedies start to give her some relief and maybe be an end to the constant issues she has had!

Other than that I got a new pair of wool longies (diaper cover/pants) for Nova and I am in love with them they are SOOOOOOOO cute :)

Thats all for today! We are still on board with our goals haven't bought anything new in the year 2012, no made in china and trying to do most of our food shopping local or at least USA grown! :)

moms visit

So my moms visit went well it was SO fun having her here! We went to the barn to see Gourmet (the horse I lease), Santa cruz to go hiking and to the Boardwalk to see the Sea Lions and we ended the day with Saturn Cafe (the best vegetarian restaurant ever!!!), Point Lobos, Big Sur, Fisherman's Wharf and Cannery Row. I think the best part was her getting to see how big Nova is getting! She is such a fun little one! She learned to clap while mom was here and that was pretty cool! She is very near crawling and stands up on everything!!
So on a different note we picked up our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which is where we get our vegetables from it is a farm called Live Earth Farm in Castorville about 30 min away. We pick up a box of Vegetables all grown at the farm every week! Today in our box we got lettuce, swiss chard, carrots, Romenesco cauliflower, apples, lemons, tomato juice, cabbage and Brussel sprouts, after a holiday break we were VERY much looking forward to fresh veggies straight from the farm! We also went to Trader Joes we are going to try and phase that out and slowly add more local things but for now we are about half and half and from Trader Joes we try and only buy the USA stuff!

I included a picture of this weeks groceries (on the left is the local veggies and on the right Trader Joes)!

gorgeous days!

Sorry I have been MIA the last few days, It has been gorgeous outside!! We have been hiking and I went riding! We had friends over for dinner and I made supper and we played indoor mini golf what a blast!
Tim and I are trying to figure out a way we can do ALL our grocery shopping local! It is tough and there are some things you CANT get bananas, sugar (we do use alternatives for most things), yeast, stuff like that! So we decided to do it in steps! As far as veggies go we only eat local and the ones we get straight from the farm which this time of year here in Cali means lots of dark greens, it has been a challenge finding fun ways to prepare them :) Fruit we only do bananas and apples this season, one is local one isn't I guess thats life :) Our next one we are going to attempt to find local is grains, mostly flour and oats! I make mostly everything from scratch (crackers, bagels, bread, granola all sweets etc) The next one we need to figure out is an affordable way to make almond milk and tofu to bake with I have a recipe but it is expensive!
Well anyway my mom comes tomorrow and I am SOOOOOOOO excited and not sure how often I will get on so I may not post until after the 17th!

Nova

So today we went to the Dr for Nova. She was sick over christmas she woke up Christmas Eve morning covered in spots not itchy or raised but she seriously looked like a leopard. She then got a fever and was definitely not feeling well but I really love our Dr and he wasn't open until the tuesday after christmas. So we waited it out even though I was nervous. When we went in she looked to have gotten the rash from a viral infection. She had an ear infection also and some wheezing in her breathing.
Our Dr is soooooo awesome though and doesn't use prescription medicines unless REALLY necessary, so he put her on a few holistic treatments and said come back in 10 days so 10 days later and she has a clean bill of health!
So what we did for her ears:  3x a day oil of oregano 3 drops rubbed on shins, feet and chest. 3x a day garlic oil dropped in ears 2 drops and rub her jaw line. 3x a day saline in her nose.
Today she is good as new! Hurray!!!
I love holistic treatments!

disaster

So this blog post in completely unrelated to our goals!
Yesterday Tim and I took Nova and the dogs for a hike and to get a few geocaches at Huckleberry hill. It was just a couple mile easy hike. We left around 2 and hiked and only found one geocache so we were a bit frustrated anyway. We get back to the car and look for the keys and they are not in the bag! Which means they are somewhere on the trail. So Nova and I sit and play while Tim runs back to the place where we changed Nova thinking that is when they fell out but nope not there. So he runs all the way back to tell me we need to re walk our whole path. So he wraps Nova and I take the dogs and we go opposite ways and meet up and nothing. By this point we are hungry and it is 4 or so and starting to get dark. We only brought one diaper in the backpack with us as it was only supposed to be a short hike and her sweater was also in the car. So we walk everywhere we went and it is nowhere. The place we parked closes at dark and it is too cold for Nova. So we are sitting at the car trying to think what to do next! Then a woman comes and I asked her to give me a ride to our house. Nova had eaten about an hour before and wasn't hungry so I leave Tim, Nova (no carseat) and the dogs, I take off my sweater to wrap her in and off I go. The sweet lady takes me home and of course there is traffic, I finally get back and go to my neighbors and call our landlord and they put in a work order and said they were unsure of when a maintenance man would get there. So my friend gives me a ride to get Tim and he says he walked down to the park office and there was a note saying the keys were at the police station. So she gives us a ride there and we get our keys then go back and get our car. While I was gone though Tim set up his hammock and wrapped Nova in my sweatshirt and his flannel and he said she had a meltdown of Epic proportions so imagine how it looked a guy in a hammock in the park after dark with a screaming baby! I feel so bad she was probably scared and hungry and poor tim! Then we finally get our car and decide on the way home to go to Chipotle as most of the ingredients are local and fresh and we can get them vegan. While we are there Tim realizes we forgot the water bottle and we had to drive all the way back to get it. When we finally get home we realize we had accidentally left the stove on low from lunch!
Oh man what a day I believe nearly everything went wrong! We are all fine though and today has been a better new day :)

dilemma

So Tim and I are having a discussion on what equals buying local:
So take a lightbulb for example, what is buying local?
1) Do we go to a local hardware store, say one Tom down the street owns and buy made in China? No because yes we would be supporting local but we would be buying made in China.
2)  Do we go to Orchard Supply a hardware store chain (corporation) and buy made in USA? It is a corporation but we are supporting USA made?
3) Do we order from the made in USA company directly? It is not local at all but directly supporting a USA company.
Ideally we would find made in USA lightbulbs at Toms store and that is what we are going to try to do today! If we don't which of the above options do you think we should do?

welcome

We are starting this blog because everyone we tell our New Years resolutions to, thinks we are crazy and says you should blog about it, so here we are!
We decided to do this because we feel that we all could be less wasteful, more local, healthier and better for the environment. We decided to do this now because our daughter is 6 months old and we want her to grow up appreciating the world around her. So why not start now.
Over the next year we will let you know the ups and downs and turns along the way, as we work to live more in harmony with the planet.

So here are the rules and our thoughts:

1) Buy nothing new, only used
Shop thrift stores, craigslist, freecycle etc.. or just don't buy!!! Remembering what is important, is it a want or a need. There are a few exceptions, undergarments and one I never thought about lightbulbs! Naturally ours burnt out New Years Eve around 9pm. haha Also, gas is obviously new but we are limiting ourselves to 250 miles a week so we can still do things but we are trying to not be excessive. Tim bikes to work which saves us a lot!
2) Buy local when possible
We are going to try and avoid large corporations and give it to the community. We are going to try but we realize there are some things we can't avoid. Food, we get our vegetables through a local farm CSA but for the other staples we are going to be going to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Internet and phones are out of our control but we did get rid of our cell phones, so just internet (Suddenlink) and our house phone (Vonage).
3) Use homemade/reusable when possible
We currently make laundry soap, deodorant, cleaners, many of our food staples (bread, snacks, baked goods etc..)  we do no 'poo (shampoo and conditioner is baking soda and Apple Cider Vinegar), family cloth (cloth TP), cloth napkins and cloth diapers.
4) No made in china
Says it all we are going to try to stick to USA made when possible
5) Go vegan
Consume/use no animal by products (meat, dairy, eggs, honey, leather). We have been vegetarian for some time now and on and off vegans but Nova has a dairy allergy so we decided to take the leap!

So wish us luck I will try to keep updating on our successes and struggles!