Vibrancy

The December Birchbox was full of goodies this time, in addition to the usual samples they also included some cute gift tags and a little compact! Beautiful Nutrition – Lemon Rinse I’ve been pondering a clarifier lately, feeling a little like my hair was lacking volume and bounce. This treatment smells amazing and is perfect for cold mornings when you need a little pep. At $10 this is definitely…

The Year of Cozy – January

Last Christmas I bought myself and a couple friends a book called The Year of Cozy.  It gives you a bunch of different ideas, from crafts to recipes, to try every month to help build a cozier lifestyle. I’ve done a few here and there but this year I’m going to commit to trying at least a couple of ideas each month. For January I picked; Do Nothing, Vegetable Cassoulet, Handwritten Love Notes and…

Crafty – Votive Holders

I didn’t have a lot of time this week to devote to a large craft project so I thought I’d show you one of the most astonishingly quick and easy crafts that I have every done. This one came from Darby Smart – Stained Glass Bubble Votives. This was also really fun to do, ok so a lot of that was from the novelty of it. All you need are a couple of glass votive holders, a couple of different colors…

Meal Planning and Preparation

Considering that the overall goal for this month is getting on a regular schedule, I have to take my eating habits into consideration too. One of the things that contributes, for better and worse, to what and when I eat is the amount of meal planning and preparation that I do. This is something I’ve been doing for a very long time, even before I was diagnosed, but the reason for doing it have…

Shabbas – Empathy

One of my readings this week was on empathy, not just caring for others but doing so even when you’re inconvenienced in the process. Those moments when you have to pull over for a siren, or you have to sit in traffic and wait for an accident to clear or even when an appointment is cancelled or postponed for someone else emergency.  It’s pretty easy, I think, to focus on how those things impact…

Shabbat is probably the most difficult mitzvah for me to write about much less practice. However, it is the most important ritual mitzvah, and therefore worthy of further contemplation.  Conceptually it is also perhaps the most spiritually valuable mitzvah: all individuals are relieved of the labors of everyday life, you have the opportunity to contemplate the spiritual aspects of life and can…

January 2017 Goals – Getting on a Schedule

Well I would like to firmly say that I accomplished my goal in October to start the new year off with a set of life affirming habits but not entirely. Between work and some lovely surgical side effects, I’ve been in maintenance mode, just focusing on getting through the day to day. When I looked back on that post in the process of setting my goals and resolutions for 2017, I realized that I have…

This month I decided to dust off a jewelry project I’ve been meaning to tackle for about six months now (better late than never right?!). A couple of years ago I got interested in making jewelry, in my opinion one of the only crafts that you can get pretty pieces no matter how much you spend…and you can spend a lot. My favorite pieces are chainmaille, lots of different patterns, relatively easy…

Meditation – Benefits and Practice

About six years ago I was introduced to the benefits of meditation by a book called Undoing Perpetual Stress by Richard O’Connor Ph.D.  In the book he outlines all of the physiological things that happen to your body when you’re under continual stress, the psychological habits and/or issues that contribute to the stress response and a number of different ways to combat stress or lessen it on…

Habits – October 2016

My goal in July was to end October with a clear set of life reaffirming daily habits: exercise, meditation, mindfulness, gratitude, time devoted to my loved ones and to my writing and creativity, and growth. I think I’ve narrowed down what I need to be doing there and have set up my schedule to reflect that, unfortunately my job isn’t in a place where it doesn’t interfere with everything on that…

L’shanah tovah! Or… For a good year! It’s a shortened version of the full saying (here in the masculine) L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem! Which translates to, “May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.”  Note… the response is “Gam lekha!” or “Same to you.” And with that we kick off the Days of Awe with Rosh Hashanah – literally the head of the year. Yes, I am fully aware that it is…

July – Shifting Priorities and Perspectives

I wrote this back in January: “Living with Cushing’s requires a significant amount of acceptance and patience; you don’t have much control over your body and every treatment is followed with a wait and see what happens.” That’s certainly true. In the almost four years that I’ve been struggling to get my Cushing’s back under control, I’ve had many setbacks, stalls and a general state of ambiguity.…