10/12/16

a family's guide to a healthy home


aaron and i are always looking for ways to keep our home and our family more healthy. i know we're just one family among a large tribe of others that are working just as hard to keep health and wellness a priority. in fact, our society as a whole is working hard too and is more health conscious than ever these days. great efforts are being made every single day to support individuals and families on their journey towards healthy living, which i think is pretty great!  

healthy living, gosh those words can sometimes feel overwhelming can't they? i think those words strung together can often feel as so, but honestly i don't think they have to be. healthy living has it's own definition for each individual person and family. which i find to be beautiful and powerful. what i think it so great is that we can learn so much from each other because of it. 

here in our home, we're trying to make graceful efforts to be more intentional about what helps us live the healthy lifestyle we ever so desire. so what does that look like for us? below i put together a list of things we're doing to help us get there. 

a family's guide to a happy healthy home + some tools to help along the way:

- home environment: at home is where we spend most of our time, so it's important that our environment is the best it can be. our Netatmo healthy home coach helps us out with this by monitoring important variables in our home, like air quality, humidity, temperature, and noise for example. with the winter months around the bend, it's even more important that we pay attention to these details because naturally the windows aren't open as much and the air gets so dry. the Netatmo system will highlight any potential problems and guide us to answers if needed. we also use essential oils to help with this too. a couple drops of thieves in the diffuser helps purify and clean the air, keeping those pesky germs at bay. 

- eating habits: raising little humans is a tough job. but they are working just as hard too, if not more with all the growing they do. establishing healthy eating habits is so important for everyone in the family. when we eat healthy and our bodies are getting good nutrition, we feel healthy and good. 

- sleep does a body good: raise your hand if you love sleep! i don't think i'm alone here. sleep is so important for our minds and our bodies. but quality sleep is even better. we have established routines in our home to help us with this, but variables such as temperature and noise are important factors when it comes to a good night's rest. our healthy home coach is there to alert us when the temperature of the room is too warm or too cool, which is so important with little ones. our home coach is also there to alert us if the girls are being a bit too noisy, which tends to be quite often! what i like about the noise alerting system is that aaron and i aren't the ones to remind them of this all the time. it's been helpful for them to see this alert as a gentle reminder of when it's okay to be our wild selves and when we have to keep things tame. this is also the time when we use essential oils to help relax our bodies and prepare for rest. 

exercise: aaron and i try to schedule an hour a day of some kind of workout. for him it usually always involves going to the gym. for me sometimes it's a long walk with the girls or taking them to the open field by our house and running around with them. whatever it takes, we try to get some form of workout in. it's just as important that the girls get some sort of exercise too. whether that is yoga at home or playing at the park, we try to make it just a much a part of their day as it is for ours. 

i'd love to hear what things you're doing in your home to make it a happy, healthy place to be! 

9/26/16

a children's seasonal library // AUTUMN


interrupting this radio silence to share a few books to add to your child's library this cozy autumn season but first, HAPPY AUTUMN dear ones! 

with school back in session and structure back in order (praise hands) our library visits become more a part of our monthly routine. one thing i love do with the girls, especially kaia who is old enough to really engage in the seek and find process, is to look for books that read and resemble all about the season we're living in. books of AUTUMN, in this case, tend to be full of beautiful bright orange and gold and red colored leaves and of animals preparing for hibernation and of pumpkins and jack o'lanterns and of apples and hot cider and of farmer's preparing for the year's last harvest. because autumn is the season of change each of these books resemble just that.   

here is a list of autumn-like books we're enjoying so far this season. we hope to add more to this list as the month goes on. but for now it's a good start and has us settling into this ever so cozy season very nicely.  

Peter Rabbit and the Pumpkin Patch
Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington
Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White 
Pumpkin Baby by Jane Yolen
The Very Best Bed by Rebekah Raye
Pumpkins Heads by Wendell Minor
Johnny Appleseed, A Tale Retold and Illustrated by Steven Kellogg
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner 
Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
Bear Hug by Katharine McEwen
Lonely Scarecrow by Tim Preston
Pumpkin Moonshine by Tasha Tudor


what are you reading to your littles this season? i would love to add our library and even to this list to share with all of you!

enjoy snuggling up this season, dears!

p.s. for the curious, the music playing in the background on our instagram story yesterday was 'youth' by daughter.

8/15/16

a summer morning in july

on a summer morning in july kaley from kansas, a dear soul + friend i connected with on the instagram came over to meet us for the first time. i saw that she was in town visiting with her love, his home state actually, and messaged her suggesting that her and i meet up if her schedule allowed her to do so. i am so happy that i did because… well kaley is just one of those people you want in your life. a dear, kind, sweet and talented gem that was adored not only by me but my girls too!

while we visited she captured life as it unfolds with my girls and i have to say, they are some of my very favorite. my girls played with her like they're own. comfortably aquatinted right away. we enjoyed having kaley here and to this day the girls keep asking when she'll return. i think that says a lot.