7, week 6

today marks the final day of the final week of fasting related to the book 7, An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. friends and i have noticed that our entire way of looking at life has changed since we started reading this book (much to some of our husbands' chagrine - my minimalist man loves it ;).  so here's a recap of last week's...

Week 6: Spending

this was sort of a weird one because we chose to "make it easy on ourselves". the idea of it was to only shop at 7 places for the length of the fast (a much more difficult accomplishment for the month the author maintained it than our 7 days ;). unfortunately, it was jason's last week of summer vacation, and we had lots of celebrating planned... our list of 7 places ended up including:

Uptown whittier farmer's market

online bill pay

home depot: we were still hard at work with our garden boxes & home projects, and ended up there multiple times during the week... we were originally going to buy a scoop of gardening soil from a local garden store (less waste, etc), but couldn't justify including said random garden store in our list, since jason was also planning on working on refrigerator and plumbing projects this week. so we bought the 27 bags worth instead (boo as far as waste. this book has created more tensions in me than anything else, i think!)

the junkyard: they were having a sale, and jason's brother came over from out of town specifically to go there with him - this would not have been an option if it was for the whole month, probably, but for a week? no prob ;)

target: i know, i know. not the best place to be spending your money, as far as ethics and all that. but the author included it in HER list (as she put it, so her son wouldn't have to take a bunch of kale to a birthday party if it came up - haha)... so i felt justified in doing it, too. i may need to admit, however, that a main reason for choosing it was... the starbucks inside. it was jason's last week of summer, ok?! and they were doing that receipt for a $2 cold drink promo thing! 

costco: this was another "cheater" one. we do shop there, sometimes often, but i'll admit that the reason it made the cut was that, on top of groceries and anything you could ever want, there is a food court (for those days when i just can't cook 8 months pregnant - they are more than i'd like ;) AND a gas station. score!

chick-fil-a: my sister has free chick-fil-a every day of 2012 because she won a contest, so we are often meeting her there, spending time together (and they have their peach shakes in right now, which i crave every other day - and you don't mess with a pregnant woman and her cravings, right?!!)... and no, this choice had nothing to do with the much ado about nothing all over the news the last few weeks.

easy, right? yeah, that's what everyone i talked about it with said, too. but so many things come up during the week! like a good friend of Jason's birthday fell on that wednesday, and he wanted to take him out to dinner at Lucille's... not on our list. solution? costco has gift cards for lucille's!! bought 'em that afternoon, and used them at dinner :) we did break it once, when jason took joey to "Splash!", a local water park, on his very last day of summer vacation... he decided those memories were worth "breaking the fast".

 but a dozen other things came up throughout the week that we had to say "no" to. this is good, as august this year will be the smallest paycheck month we've had in a long time, and we are trying to stretch every dollar... we ate out less, even went grocery shopping less - worked hard at eating what we already had in the refrigerator/cupboard (why is this so hard?? such a "first world problem")

one thing we bought (at target.com) with gift cards from our baby shower last month is a brand-new video monitor! i love it. i get to watch my boy sleeping - the only peaceful moments of his day, and i cherish them! the first night we used it, however, we discovered how much we didn't know about our son (having only used audio monitors before). this video was taken almost 2 hours after he had been completely quiet in bed. we always assumed that meant he was asleep (since his every waking moment generally involves human interaction/communication - he's always been super-verbal). what the?! 

the other side of this fast was spending time researching companies actually worth giving money to. you know, like no sweat shops, actually looking toward the good of their community and world, etc? we've bought from tradeasone.org before - a fair trade organization, where you get to see a little bio on the person/group who made whatever product, and how your purchase is helping make the world a better place... everyone on our Christmas list received something from there this past year. but there are dozens of amazing companies, working at helping refugees, getting women out of prostitution, stopping human trafficking in so many ways... THOSE are the places i want to spend my money! we gave (giving money doesn't count as spending in this fast, according to jen hatmaker ;) to an organization called kiva.org; well, more specifically to a corn & bean farmer in el salvador named jorge. the way they work is by giving a "microloan" via donations, and then if the person's endeavors succeed, they "pay you back" the amount of the original "loan", and you can then reinvest it in someone else who needs it (which apparently happens 98% of the time)! SO COOL.  i got so inspired looking at the list of companies and how they are helping people, that it got me thinking: i own a business... could i employ refugees, sponsor children, stop human trafficking, give back to my community and the world somehow?? i give from the proceeds of my etsy shop to a couple of groups doing this kind of thing, but what about closer to home? could i personally be involved in justice & mercy to the world? still mulling this over as the days and weeks go on... any thoughts?

happy end of summer!

my boys love the beach... and it's free!
as long as we remember to get gas at costco beforehand... ;)

up next: week 7: "fasting from stress"

7, week 5

waste.

something we a do a lot of, and i have always wondered how much more responsible for the earth i could be as a good steward of what we've been given... we've always recycled bottles & cans, but that's about the extent of cutting down on the waste our home contributes to the earth and its landfills... 

ok, i also repurpose and "upcycle" a lot of castoffs (trash turned treasure) in my art and jewelry and decor... but, let's be honest - that was just cause i LIKE rusty stuff, not out of any kind of intentional awareness of being less wasteful. i'm sure i have been one of those people who (at least inwardly) mocked those who made actual effort at "being green". but it has been more on my radar the last couple of years, and this chapter of the 7 book just really brought it to my attention. 

so week 5 was a "fast from waste". we chose as our actions this week to:

*build and begin to maintain a compost bin

*build garden boxes, and start our long-awaited vegetable garden

*recycle everything possible

*no paper towels or ziploc bags, and try to avoid any type of non-recyclable packaging as much as possible

*try to buy fresh local organic produce in season (farmer's market) 

i LOVE our compost bin! just aesthetically, it is lovely with its weathered old pallet-wood. and we (meaning Jason - i stapled window screen to the inside of the slats... and then quickly retreated to the air-conditioning) made it entirely out of stuff we already had around the yard and garage! and i am so amazed at how much i used to toss in the trash can actually be composted. this was one contributing factor to our significantly smaller trash load this week.

our first offering:

as you can see, we are (so far) fairly casual composters... not grinding everything to a pulp so it breaks down faster - just tossing it in there (we did chop stuff like corn cobs & whole rotting apples). we cleaned out our fridge this day, and i felt much less guilty about throwing aging produce into the compost bin than the trash... at least it will eventually fertilize our garden...

for which we built three garden boxes (we were warned against using pallets for growing food itself, not knowing if there were any chemicals in these old guys' past), and planted them with (mostly) stuff that can be planted late summer for a fall crop (did you know home depot has a year warranty on their plants?! so my poor sweet basil that has already wilted in this august heat will either resurrect or get composted and another in its place! win-win ;) - tomato, bell pepper, basil, and cilantro plants; and carrot, spinach, and broccoli seeds... i chose things we eat often and i always feel like we throw some away because it goes bad before we can eat a whole costco quantity of it... this will be even BETTER than shopping at the farmer's market!

we researched what our trash company will accept to recycle in our blue bin, and i was pleasantly surprised to discover it was a LOT more than i thought! i guess my only category for recycling involved what can be taken in and exchanged for money (bottles & cans, basically) - not that we have really done much of that. but i always warned jason against throwing random papers and plastics in there - but you totally CAN! as long as it's "numbered plastic", and nothing is all food-stained...! yay! our recycle bin had to get taken out MUCH more frequently than our trash this week - hooray! and as we have been continuing to sort through our "possessions" to rid the excess left still from week 3, we came up with lots of alternate uses for junk we would have put in the trash before!

and i couldn't believe how easy it was not to use paper towels or ziploc bags! not a one, and we totally survived! even with the "great kitchen caramelization of 2012"! yes, i was trying to make dulce de leche by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk for 3 hours. but we left and went to dinner halfway through, completely forgetting it, and came home to this:

the stove fire was still on. i am so thankful that a) our house didn't catch on fire, and b) no one was standing there when the lid blew on this can, spewing its boiling contents across our entire kitchen. we spent at least 6-8 hours in the ensuing days trying to decaramelize and unstickify the ceiling, cabinets, counters, appliances, and floor. what a mess. 

and what a WASTE of time. 

coming home from dinner that evening, our plan was to clean out the rest of the kitchen cabinets, not deep clean it from top to bottom! but now i have a deep-cleaned kitchen! something else i'm thankful for :) now, onto that pesky cabinet-cleanout, weeks in the waiting...

32 weeks pregnant and 7, week 4

so the day i hit 32 weeks of pregnancy (12 days ago now) also marked the beginning of our fourth week of 7 fasts. this time, it was a fast from "media". while i was tempted to hedge and include certain things as "allowable" during this week, i ultimately decided to go all out (and so thankful my husband is wonderful and joins me in these fasts...) no one else in my book group fasted from Facebook (!!!) so i got my important updates from them ;) my fast was from the internet completely, as well as all phone apps that use the internet (except i could check my e-mail once a day, since i have things for sale online, and need to ship quickly when purchased). also, no music. this was the one that surprised me as being the hardest! i always thought music wasn't a huge deal for me. i'm almost NEVER the one to turn it on in my house, and usually don't even think of turning it on in the car, unless i'm driving more than an hour or so... but i missed it! like when joey was at papi & nona's house for a couple days, and i had some time to be alone and/or with jason, working on things around the house... it was TORTURE to clean and organize silently! who knew?   

some amusing results of not being able to use apps or the internet...

*we had to use actual maps! like unfold a map of Los Angeles county in the car on our way to try to find an estate sale on a street we were unfamiliar with - it was hilarious watching us try to decipher it - "where is S-11?? oh there! but i canNOT find gretna anywhere!" looking up from map: "Oh - there's gretna in real life - turn here!! ...wrong way..." jason pulls over so he can look at it himself, and we eventually find the intersection of Clive & Gretna! amazing! and makes you realize JUST how convenient Google Maps on your phone really is ;)

*couldn't check traffic and change my route as i drove into LA for work - and without music, it felt like it took 3 hours (it was actually only 1 1/2 hours... to go 25 miles ;)

*jason wanted to go hiking and couldn't look up where "the bridge to nowhere" was located (he made his friend he was going with do it ;)

*couldn't look up all my ADD questions i have throughout the day: does sugar worsen reflux? can i eat medium-rare steak from chipotle right now since i'm pregnant? what does insouciance mean?? when are the olympic opening ceremonies? WHAT shooting in colorado?!!

*my addiction to weather.com was unearthed (people, i live in southern california - how much is is gonna change in the middle of summer? kinda hot, hot, or hotter?? but i ALWAYS look at it before i get dressed for the day!)

and some good things, too:

*i finished a book i started reading over 2 years ago (Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel) and made it halfway through The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning - yep, that's what happens when i don't have 500 blog posts backed up in my google reader, and all the ensuing pinning and clicking around... also skimmed through a book about composting in preparation for the next fast: waste. now for the other 6-8 books i'm currently in the middle of...

*discovered how different the rhythms of my day can feel without constantly checking for updates on facebook and instagram, playing draw something (i actually completely forgot game apps existed this week - didn't even think about catching up with them till a couple days after the fast was ended)... instead of looking at my phone constantly whenever there was a "down" moment, such as waiting for someone, or if joey was otherwise entertained for once... i watched joey play, or prayed in those waiting moments, or even read something if it was naptime or something! i just felt so present to my actual life (as opposed to caught up in a virtual internet world). 

funny, though, that since the fast ended, i have gone back to my exact same ways. compulsively checking Facebook being the main offender. i said when i was finishing that i planned to only check it once or twice a day, and only when i wasn't with somebody else (e.g. during joey's nap or in the evening if i'm alone). but i didn't "commit" to it, and it so hasn't happened. 

i'm in process on this... 

but i am so happy to be able to get back on here to blog! i missed it while i was gone...!

7, week 3

today was the last day of week 3's fast: possessions. i'm still sort of processing it. it felt natural to jump into this one on the tail end of the clothing fast. just realizing how weighed down i can be by all the excess in my closet ("i have nothing in my closet that i want to wear" actually means "i have very few outfits in my closet that i actually wear, so it's overwhelming digging through what i don't want to wear to find what i do."), and how freed i have felt in the past after "ridding the excess"... translates over into the rest of life as well. i mean, who needs 2 dozen bath towels in their home?? we decided that 3 per person is plenty.

this week, we cleaned out every inch of both bedrooms, the bathroom, the hall closets, and the rafters in the garage! paring down to what we actually need and use regularly. i'm sure we rid ourselves of at least half our clothes (again! we just did this in december! how did it creep back in?!) and a huge portion of the rest of our "stuff" in general.
the fact that my due date is 8 weeks away, and i had a couple of "nesting" energy bursts may have helped us get all this done... (also, in the process, we brought in the clothes and baby furniture we'll be needing oh-so-soon, and got everything rearranged and deep-cleaned :) 


but i wanted it to be about more than just "cleaning out our closets" yet again. a big focus of the book 7 is on the poor. part of what drove her to write it in the first place was interacting with the poor and really realizing how nauseatingly excessive her american dream lifestyle was. and so, her commitment for the third part of the book was to "give away 7 possessions a day for an entire month." i gladly took this as a challenge as well (yay! rid the excess! give away 7 things every day! ...for a week, not a month, of course). but she found, and so did i, that this was "too easy". just in the clothes i cleaned out from my closet, i had more than that to give away.
my big thing was i didn't want to just go make a random donation to Savers or Goodwill.
she points out in the book that the problem isn't that the rich don't WANT to give to the poor, it's that the rich don't KNOW the poor. there is a disconnect, and we don't even know what the needs of the poor are to be able to try to give to them what they need. so i wanted this to be more than a "purge" of my home. i wanted it to bless someone else that needed it.
so, the day after we cleaned it all out, we carted it over to an old friend's house, where they were going to be hosting a yard sale fundraiser so she could have a surgery she has been needing. still not the intentional person-to-person giving of a needed item i'd been hoping for, but it did some good. i will also be taking a few bags of baby clothes to a local church, where they have a "swap shop", where if a mom needs anything for her growing kiddos, she can come and take it. great ministry.
and found some friends who welcomed the diapers joey will no longer be using.
and i will be meeting up with a couple of friends from MOPS to pass on some baby items as well. so i guess i did end up finding 7 people/places to give. it just wasn't how i pictured it, i guess (in the book, she and her friends are able to furnish an entire apartment for a refugee family flying in that day - how cool would that be?!).

 and part of my commitment was to give away 7 handmade items, just knowing how much more personal that would be to me... and vulnerable. i totally haven't started that part yet.
since we're still in process, though, i think it's ok if it carries over into the next couple of weeks (and hopefully, into a generally generous lifestyle!). 


the one other thing i committed to, in light of paring down possessions, was to fast from estate sales that week. which was exceptionally difficult, since there were a BUNCH of good ones in our area over this past weekend! but it was a good exercise in stopping and taking stock of what we have, what we need, and what we don't need...

we went on a couple-night vacation at the beach during this time, so that took away from being able to continue with it, and since we've been back, we've been exhausted... and sort of paralyzed in the process of all the decision-making (does jason need all his seminary textbooks? maybe. maybe not. part of the hard part of all of this is discerning what is wise to hold onto, and what is straight-up hoarding).


so that's us in process. praying that we learn through this to both be scandalously generous, and good stewards of what we have been given. and so excited for the soul-space that is getting freed up by losing some of the clutter!


*******************************************************************************************
week 4 begins in the morning, with our "media fast". i will not be blogging (or checking Facebook, instagram, or other phone apps/internet sites), just so you know. i'll be back in a week or so to let you know how it went! :)

7, week 2

...and then came clothes. this "fast" ended up being slightly comical in nature... i thought, "hey, this'll be easy - i did the experimental 20 pieces for 20 days in december, so i've already basically done this!" and it's true, i had already processed through a lot of what the fast was meant to allow us space to process. just how much excess we constantly live with, and how it presses on us, and how freeing ourselves from the majority of the zillion choices we have to make (starting with what to wear in the morning), can make life simpler, freer in general. this one had a few modifications, though. shoes "counted" into the 7 clothing items we could wear for the 7 days, and no accessories (!!). this definitely ruled out the whole "creative" factor that i generally enjoy seeing come out as options become limited. bo-ring! but i decided that, hey, maybe that's the point. so, for 7 days, i wore only 7 items of clothing (first question everyone has asked me: NO, underwear doesn't count. ;)

so here's a look at my 7 i chose...

1. black tank top: old navy maternity hand-me-down (jason pointed out halfway through the week that the top was wearing thin enough that he could see my belly... you win some, you lose some ;)

2. cutoff khaki shorts, thrifted & cut

3. flip-flops, old navy (for some reason the author of the book counted 2 pairs of shoes as one "item", so i went with it, and had a black pair and a brown pair to match both ;)

 part of the reason i thought "this will be so easy!" initially was because it's summer in southern california, and i knew i'd only need shorts and tank tops, so i was going to have at least 3 or 4 complete outfits to rotate between. however, the first "complication" was that we went camping up north for a few days during this week's fast, and it got down into the 40s (huge departure from the 80s we were having at home)! so i couldn't get out of at least a pair of pants and a sweater of some kind... the girls in my "group" encouraged me to bring an (uncounted) extra "warm, but not fashionable jacket". unfortunately, i don't own that particular piece of clothing after "simplifying" in december, so i went without, deciding that i'd just pile on blankets as needed (and it was all fine). also, i needed these things to all be comfortable (i had to wear these pieces to bed, too!). so i went with:

4. yellow sweatpants, thrifted. this made me not have the issue that some of the other girls in the group had of getting bored with their clothing options because they were all drab blacks and neutrals - yellow! heck yeah!

5. plaid tank top, thrifted

6. camel cardigan, anthropologie

note: i may or may not have chosen my outfits for this week based on whether or not they matched my "turks and caicos" pedicure

and last, but not least:

7. the little black dress, white house black market, thrifted. if i could only wear one thing the rest of my life, it'd be this. it is that comfortable. 

sleep in it, party in it, anything in between... 

fits me all the way through pregnancy, and hides the "extra" afterwards... 

it's pretty much awesome. 

 so there you have it! a pared down, simple wardrobe that i was not even close to sick of by the end of the 7 days. i really only missed wearing accessories (i mean a plain black top or dress real warrants a necklace or scarf or something gracing it...). the comical moments mostly had to do with jason sharing the experience with me. he chose his 7 items of clothing, and had dirtied all but a fleece and his hiking shorts by the end of the first day - like, enough that they could not be worn again until they were laundered. so, we threw a load in first thing in the morning, and he went to the farmer's market in a fleece and hiking shorts ;) boys just get so much dirtier faster, i guess (working out, working on cars, yard work, hiking, off-loading... all activities he did during this week that got him in trouble and in dire need of laundry :)... when we broke down on the way to Kings Canyon National Park, and he had to change the alternator himself (sexy!) he wore only his hiking shorts, so as not to dirty any of his shirts before needing to wear them the next 3 days without laundry. good thing, too, 'cause this is what he looked like partway through:

 hahahaha SO DIRTY!!

so, i'm not sure that i learned a whole lot of new things this week of "clothing fast", but i was reminded again how much freer i can feel when my world is simplified... which leads into the following week: possessions (stay tuned!)...


p.s. what he wore:
good thing "cow appreciation day" at chick-fil-a was not until the day after the clothing fast ended, or we wouldn't have all gotten free food for our costumes we wore... i'm only willing to show you joey's, though. mine was a little too embarrassing - he's just cute :)

28 weeks (old news)

28 weeks is WAY old news, now that tomorrow will mark 32 weeks (and the next photo shoot ;)! but i wanted to at least post the pics so you can see the progression! if you missed them, here's 20 and 24 week posts in the same top... this kid is getting HUGE inside! just wait till you see 32 weeks! ;)

what he's wearing these days:


big boy underwear!

joey is potty trained - woohooooo! :) and so cute in his undies ;)

happy summer!


p.s. if you don't hear from me for a little while, it's because of my "media fast" that starts tomorrow...

7, week 1

i can't believe i've made it three whole weeks without posting about this...! (i know, it's been a month since my last post, but about 7 specifically) i am reading a book called 7: an experimental mutiny against excess by Jen Hatmaker with some friends. the basic premise of the book is that we live in a culture of excess, and that ridding ourselves of this addiction to excess in so many areas of life will allow life to be simpler, and allow God to be "bigger" in our "smaller" life. she quotes the catch phrase "simplified life, amplified God". the author of the book created for herself (and, sometimes, her family) a series of month-long "fasts" in an attempt to live simpler. she started with food, then clothes, possessions, media, etc. so this group of friends and i are reading a chapter a week, and doing our own (weeklong, much easier) versions of fasting in these areas. 

so tomorrow finishes our third week, and i need to tell you all about it!

Week 1: food

 this was definitely the hardest one (so far... i'm a little nervous about next week's media fast...) for me. partly because i'm super pregnant, and i tend to feel very "entitled" when i'm pregnant, to eat whatever i want, seeing that it is a short season of life. partly because i generally have no self-control. but i have been ready to eat healthier. and simpler. so, for a week, i ate nothing but apples, avocados, sweet potatoes, whole wheat or homemade bread, spinach, eggs, and chicken. boy, did i miss sugar! i knew i would, but how MUCH surprised me. i had no idea that i looked to a little sweetness here and there throughout my day to just cope emotionally, until i went without... which was a point of the fast, i guess (for me, at least), to allow me to see how i'm using these in unhealthy ways, when i could be going to God in the midst instead. it took a couple of days, and lots of encouragement from my co-readers, to push through the miserable part. 

the first 2 days, i was super-irritable, depressed, even... just didn't want to deal with life... it came to a breaking point with this salad, of all things. 

looks amazing, right? i had all 7 of the food items in this meal, and it should've been delicious. but my gag reflex is hyperactive when i'm pregnant, and can only take so much chicken and eggs... i gagged my way through this beauty, and was so discouraged i almost quit. but my "girls" didn't let me ;) also contributing were these perfect chocolate chip cookies i made for Jason's Bible study guys and couldn't even try a taste of the dough!! 

torture! after i made it through that day, i actually began to enjoy eating simpler and healthier, and didn't miss the highly-processed-or-baked-and-must-include-at-least-flour-sugar-and-butter kind of stuff so much. i definitely began to understand reliance in a different way than i had before, and resonated deeply with song lyrics about being dependent on God. like this kari jobs one: "i believe you're my healer, i believe you are all i need. i believe you're my portion; i believe you're more than enough for me. Jesus, you're all i need." oh so true. and the food started tasting better, too...

part of the turning point for me was this smoothie (ha!) - 

adapted from a few different internet sources, here is my final recipe:

1 granny smith apple, peeled and cored
1 ripe avocado
2 handfuls of spinach
2 handfuls of ice
a cup or two (consistency to your taste) of pressed apple juice (i used "simply apple", since it is pasteurized and i'm pregnant. we got a different organic kind later in the week that was NOT pasteurized, so i had to boil it before anytime i wanted to use it - doesn't work so well for a smoothie, but is EXCELLENT as hot apple cider :)

so yummy. never has a smoothie (especially a green one!) tasted so delicious.

the other turning point was successfully baking artisan bread from nothing more than flour, water, yeast, and salt. just feels so earthy and natural and the-way-it's-been-done-for-millennia! i love it!

fourth of july was the end of our fast, and we did feast...!

(thanks to jason's family, especially sister-in-law joanne :)

but found ourselves still so ready to eat healthy and natural! i have started buying organic/shopping at the local farmer's market for the first time, and looking at the ingredients on things... so, while the fast was an exercise in simplicity and looking to God, it has resulted in actually living the healthier food life we have long desired.

stay tuned for week 2: clothes