Seasoned View Vol. 30

Each month we share our Seasoned View.  Snapshots of nature taken by the Seasoned sisters.

Happy last day of the first month 🙂 Hopefully, 2018 came about gently, without too much hesitation. I find I can become overwhelmed at the beginning of each year. So many possibilities and dreams and wants, where to start, ya know? I only had a few days like that this January, but each time I felt overwhelmed I turned to my meditation practice. Meditation allows me to put some space in between my thoughts and emotions and myself. It’s my mental health medicine and I cannot thrive without it. If you’d like to join, I send out a Meditative Monday email each week with a guided meditation. Sign up here. But, back to the images…

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You can upload one or all of these photos to use as your desktop background or even as phone and tablet wallpapers.  Katie captured all of these in Colorado this past month. To use the images, simply right-click on the photo, save it, and set it as your background.  Enjoy!

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Teachable Moments : Flower Dissection

Teachable Moments is an ongoing series where we share simple ideas for exciting and encouraging learning anytime and everywhere. You can see previous posts here.

Today we’re popping in with a super simple science activity : flower dissections!

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Flowers aren’t often the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions a dissection (maybe you’re thinking about that frog or shark from high school biology?). Read on to see why we think flowers are the perfect specimen for preschool dissections.

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Ceasing My Smartphone Addiction

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What would you do if you had more time? While I try not to glorify busy I do find I need more time in the day. I never seem to have enough of it. There are always more photos to be edited, more blog posts to be written, more belly rubs to give Cash, more yoga to be practiced, but where do I find an extra few minutes? I’ve cut out a lot of extraneous stuff already. I don’t own a T.V. and I watch maaaaybe five hours of Netflix each month. I deleted my Facebook app eight months ago. I almost never go shopping unless it’s for groceries and I work from home so there’s no commute to deal with.

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‘What the hell am I wasting time doing?’ I thought as I scrolled through Instagram. Oh. Instagram. I checked my battery usage under the settings tab and found that I spend over SEVEN hours a week on Instagram. WTF.  I spend another eight or so messaging friends and a measly one on Snapchat.

So what did I do? I deleted Snapchat for four days. Hahaha, I decided to quit my least used of my most used apps in an attempt to make myself feel better about my phone usage. Delusional? A little bit.

Once I came back from my epic Schu Tours trek in Nepal, I realized one thing. It was a big thing. Everything is too much. That’s right, it’s all too much. I long for simplicity. I want one goal for each day. I want fulfillment to come from focus, not from overachievement. I want nothing, but I want to do something, I just don’t want to do everything. Huh? I dunno. I’m still figuring it out, but I knew that carrying around a tiny computer and using it during 15% of my waking life each day was not what I wanted. It wasn’t adding value and so I wanted less. Less communication, connection, and consumption of virtual reality. I had just experienced weeks of authentic, unplugged connection and I wanted more of that and less of everything else.

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I don’t plan on going back to a flip phone. Although it’s kind of ironic that this post is coming exactly two years after ditching mine – read more about that here. It’s even funnier that last year around this time I posted about being addicted to my iPhone. I guess it’s taken another year for me to realize this lifestyle of constant checking and updating is not one that I want for myself. That yes, my phone helps my business and that yes, I use that as an excuse to scroll through Instagram for what amounts to roughly SEVENTEEN DAYS in a year. Holy Sh!t.

Below are some tools I’ve employed to use my phone a lot less.

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Activated Charcoal Deodorant

When feasible, we like to experiment with our own beauty potions. You can find a bunch here, from lip balms to face masks to foot scrubs!

We like our deodorants simple and effective. With their long ingredient lists, it can be hard to find simple deodorants in the beauty section. And when we do find something that’s simple and often “natural” it’s often not as effective as we want it to be. Admittedly, that goes for our own DIY blends too.

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But we aren’t throwing in the towel yet, and today we have a new blend that we’re excited to share!

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Solid Perfume Necklace

We love crafting with essential oils. You can see some previous projects here.

One of the homemade gifts that I gave this year were these necklaces. Each contained an adorable acorn locket filled with solid perfume.

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Read on for the simple DIY and an amazing woodsy essential oil blend.

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Ginger Liqueur & Mule

Ginger is our ingredient of the season, you can find more ginger recipes here and more drink recipes here.

We’re popping in with a homemade ginger liqueur recipe and using it in a ginger mule cocktail. Just getting ready for the weekend.

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This liqueur has a quick turn-around. No long steeping period like our hazelnut liqueur or limoncello (oh hey, old blog!). Instead, it’s much similar in wait to something like our rosemary vodka.

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Ginger Tisane

Ginger is our ingredient of the season. You can find a variety of drink, main dish, and dessert ginger recipes here. If you like teas, you may like browsing these posts.
On Tuesday Sarah introduced you to a beautiful made-up word. Today I’m popping in to share a lovely but rarely used word: tisane.
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ti·sane
təˈzan/
noun
plural noun: tisanes
  1. an herbal tea.
    • archaic
      a medicinal drink or infusion, originally one made with barley.

To review, the true definition of a tea is any drink made by brewing the leaves from Camilla sinensis. As we discuss in this post, there are many varieties of teas. They differ based upon the type and quality of the tea leaves and how they were processed after being harvested.  My understanding is that everything else, would be an herbal tea, and thereby considered a tisane.

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And now, let’s turn to the fiery ginger tisanes. They are lovely any time of year, but particularly perfect during the long cold winter months. They’ll warm you up from the inside out and may even help to sooth some of those nasty winter blahs.

When writing posts like this, I would love to tell you all of the claims made about an ingredient or exercise, but the scientist in me can’t bear to make a claim without citing the primary literature… so I’ll just leave it at this, I believe that some cultures and practices carry with them an ancient wisdom.

In Ayurvedic medicine, ginger is believed to be a “universal great medicine” and an Indian proverb says that “everything good is found in ginger”. 

Pictured in this post are two ginger tisanes that I love. Ginger Soother by Ginger People can be opened and drunk hot or cold. I always drink it cold and usually on the go. It’s delicious and not too fiery if you’re still warming up to ginger (puns!).

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My other go-to are the dehydrated honey ginger crystals in single serving pouches by Prince of Peace. I’ve found them in grocery stores, Asian markets, and online. I always drink this one hot – just boil water and pour of the crystals – it creates an immediate ginger tisane that has a bit more of a ginger kick than the Ginger Soother. These are awesome because they’re easy to pack for camping and other travel. 

If you’re looking for a new habit this winter, start drinking a mug of ginger tisane in the evenings (and definitely during your Monday meditations).  xo