Saturday, December 28, 2013

Lavender Honey Lemonade // Raw Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups

Being a southern california native, winter does not equal cold in my vocabulary. So when it reached almost 80 degrees last week in the middle of December, it seemed all too reasonable to whip up a batch of lemonade so often left for warmer months. We've been experimenting with cleaner eating (no sugar, dairy, wheat, etc.) here in our hive, and since Oscar and I both have a sweet tooth to boot, I've been looking for healthy substitutes to replace our overly-processed "treats". Being major chocolate lovers, I was ecstatic to find out that before adding all the white sugar and milk, chocolate is actually good for you. Really good for you! Raw cacao is full of antioxidants, magnesium, calcium, and essential, heart-healthy fat. It also promotes healthy digestion, circulation, and can enhance mental and physical clarity. Honestly, if I would have known it was so easy to make, I would have started years ago! Lemon is a timeless refresher, cleanser, and detoxifier, while lavender holds the spotlight for being one of the most calming, soothing scents in the world. Add the perfect balance of honey sweetness, and you are in for a serious treat. The following recipes are simple, quick, and sure to please everyone, without the added heaviness of refined sugar and dairy. Plus, the taste is out of this world! Please enjoy and we hope you're having a wonderful season of winter love. 

Lavender Honey Lemonade


Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup raw honey (can add more or less depending on sweetness preference)
  • 1 cup water (for the lavender)
  • 1 cup lemon juice (from 4-6 lemons)
  • 3 or 4 cups of water (for diluting)
  • 2 tablespoons dried lavender flowers

Directions:
  1. Bring 1 cup of water to boil, remove from heat and add lavender. Use a reusable tea steeper if available. Cover and allow to steep for 10 minutes.
  2. Juice 4-6 lemons. 
  3. Strain lavender flowers (if a tea steeper was not used) and stir in honey to the hot lavender water.
  4. Combine the juice and the lavender-honey water with 3-4 cups of cold water, depending on desired strength. Refrigerate for a few hours for the best taste.
  5. Serve with ice and lemon slices.

Raw Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups

Ingredients:
  • 2/3 cup raw cacao powder
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil
  • 3 tablespoons agave nectar/maple syrup (use 4 tablespoons for a sweeter chocolate)
  • 1/4 cup almond butter
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutritional yeast (optional - gives more of a "Reese's" taste, if that's your thing!)
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • pinch of salt

Directions:
  1. Combine cacao powder and choice of syrup in a mixing bowl.
  2. Melt coconut oil over VERY low heat and add to cacao powder and syrup immediately after all pieces have melted, whisk together until smooth.
  3. Fill 12 muffin tins with liners and portion a small spoonful of the chocolate into each, spread it out so it covers the bottom and a little bit of the sides. This will be the bottom layer of your cup. If chocolate is too thick to spread, whisk in a bit more melted coconut oil.
  4. Allow to harden in freezer for 10-15 minutes.
  5. Mix almond butter, nutritional yeast (if desired), vanilla extract and salt. Once the bottom layer of chocolate has hardened, remove from freezer and add a small spoonful of the almond butter mix, then use a spoon to cover with another layer of chocolate. Return to freezer for 10-15 then enjoy! 
  6. Store in freezer for best taste! These babies melt fast. 
Depending on how thick or thin you want your cups, you may need to make another batch of chocolate. These portions would work well for a thin cup, which I would recommend. I made ours pretty thick and it was almost too much to handle! 

If we don't post again in 2013, we look forward to seeing you again next year! Lots of love and hugs from our hive to yours. May this new year be full of magic and wonder for all!


Thursday, December 12, 2013

The Sling Diaries, Vol. IV // Everything Shines: Culture



Hello and happy Thursday! I'm so excited to announce that I was chosen to participate in volume IV of Sakura Bloom's The Sling Diaries: Everything Shines. For the next six months, CJeanPhotography will be photo-documenting our babywearing adventures and I will be writing on a monthly assigned theme, all of which will be posted here on our blog! You can also follow my posts and all the other mamas and papas participating here, and read my application entry here. Make it a great day and I hope you enjoy my first post!

Love and hugs,
Ashley

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I have been fascinated by the subject of culture since I was a child. My parents are very strong in their Christian faith and during my youth I was encouraged to involve myself in a variety of work that helped to serve others and to spread the message of love and hope around the world. Before I reached eighteen years of age, I had experienced a taste of life from over a dozen countries, each distinguished by their own unique cultural beauty, practices, and beliefs. From South Africa to Panama, Thailand to Honduras, each place I went brought me closer to the realization that traveling was my teacher. School quickly became a rite of passage to get through, and I understood that what was really valuable for my education was to learn as much as possible from the world around me, expanding my knowledge and understanding of life through the inviting of different cultures and ideas in. Witnessing such powerfully radical differences between people groups across the planet brought me to the personal conclusion that no one worldview or way of expression can possibly work for everyone, and that if peace and harmony are to rule this planet, we must be able to unite the common threads that tie us together as a whole.

With all the influence of my upbringing it makes sense to me that I would manifest a romantic relationship with someone from another country, so I really shouldn't be surprised that Luna's dad is from Mexico and was only living in the US for two years when we met, but the idea still makes me giddy every day! Oscar has been the most amazing person to create life with and I am so grateful for his perspective and for the experience of starting a family with him. I'm also grateful for what it means for us that he is not from this country. (Going beyond the obvious language differences between our families and all the other fun stuff that comes when cultures cross!) We have explored this idea a lot together and deeply believe that humanity is evolving in a way where there is hope to see borders disappear and countries merge, sharing space on earth in respect, peace and harmony. I know some may say this idea seems farfetched, especially when you watch the news and see the types of conflicts there are between territories and land. But when I look at my little family that has crossed cultural barriers so beautifully, I see a small representation of what the future could hold, and I am encouraged by the lessons I learned through my travels as a child.

From the most remote village in Namibia, to the bustling city streets of London, I discovered the common thread tying us all together as humanity is the desire to experience love. To know and to be love, to give and to receive love. And if we could all focus our attention on magnifying that common denominator of love, we truly believe the world could become a different, better place. So instead of raising Luna as Mexican, American, Christian, or Catholic, we are choosing to bring her up in the culture of Love. A culture that redefines culture, that operates on the principles of acceptance and understanding, that gathers tradition from all walks of life and honors the beauty of each. A culture always working towards a united people and planet, richly flowing in the unique expression of every individual thread of color, weaving together a new collective tapestry of the human race.



















I'm wearing a Sakura Bloom simple linen sling in Lavender. All photos by CJeanPhotography.


Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Mountain Hive






























Hello and happy December! I'm writing this from our cozy new home in the mountains, and really, I couldn't be more thrilled or happy to share that news!! Oscar and I had been waiting and looking for the perfect place to move to for quite awhile, and one thing we really were hoping for the most was to move away from the city and closer to nature. Our prayers were answered at the end of October when we found an adorable one bedroom guest house, nestled in the mountains of Alpine, California, in the Cleveland National Forest, on acres of open land. We are having so much fun discovering our new town! Adorable antique shops, cafes, feed stores, parks and lots of small town local vibes are just a few of the things we have been loving about this place.

It's really a great living situation, not only for us, but for the family that lives in the main house. They have a lot of projects (chickens, bees, a small orchard and garden, etc.) that aren't receiving the time or attention needed to be sustainable, and we are wanting to eventually have a small scale farm but are building the funds it will require to do so, and this gives us the chance to do a lot of what we already want to do without investing our own funds. It's a win-win situation for everyone! It really has been such a nurturing past month for us. Connecting with nature, the sunsets and stars (which look AMAZING from our deck), and giving attention to certain parts of our souls that had been lost within the density of city life. We already feel so much more grounded and feel ourselves tuning in to nature's rhythms. We can't wait to see what living in the country does to our spirits as we detox from the city and submerge ourselves in the stillness and silence that comes from mountain life! 

Moving out here has been exactly what we thought it would be and is only bringing us more blessings than we had imagined. It is so amazingly beautiful out here! We are looking forward to really exploring this new space and for all the creative energy that is already starting to flow through so freely. Can't wait to see what projects and visions are born from here! Thank you for enjoying the journey with us and we hope you are keeping the love, peace and gratitude in your hearts during this often hectic season. We send warm hugs from our Hive to yours!

Love,
Ashley, Oscar, Luna & Francois




Sunday, October 20, 2013

Bee Wise Body Jewels: Consciously Crafting


We believe that all of creation is Divinely synchronized and meant to work in harmony. This belief guides a lot of how we approach our earthly existence when it comes to things like food, medicine, and the general wellbeing of our bodies and minds. We believe that creation is perfect and not lacking in anything, meaning everything we need can be found within the elements of that Divine creation, including things like cures to cancer and disease epidemics. Food, water, herbs, oxygen, all of these things and more have IMMENSE power that most of us do not give credit to. Even more important might be the lack of credit given to our emotional/spiritual posture and how that plays out in our physical bodies. I'm blessed to have a mother that also values these connections and is living proof that things like cancer can be beaten with food, nutrition, and spiritual health. (GO MOM!!!) We wonder what the world would look like if we gave priority to reconnecting with the gifts of nature. I think it would be a much healthier, happier planet, and our goal is to do all we can to make that shift, and to hopefully influence others to do the same.

On our trip to visit my Grandpa in New Mexico this past summer, I was reminded of his life's work as a studied geologist, and how I've always felt a special calling towards the earth's minerals and gems, through a love of crystals and rocks. I knew that crystals were said to have healing powers but not until recently had I allowed myself to contemplate what a gift of creation they might truly be. It always seemed a little too "out there" for my mind to grasp but as I started looking into it, I found it to be very simple and easy to understand. The internal crystalline structure of stones and the atomic vibration specific to those structures is what gives them their quality of energy. Certain stones vibrate in a way that resonants with our subtle energy vibrations, which would be things like our emotions and attitudes, and can be used to align and bring healing to an unbalanced body/mind/spirit. Since I'm still learning all about it myself, I'll leave it up to those who are very knowledgable and have dedicated a great amount to the subject to really explain the details (a link I highly recommend checking out!), I simply wanted to give you a little background for the motivation behind our fun new project!

On the last new moon I was inspired to make a crystal grid. More powerful than a single crystal alone, crystal grids are made by placing stones in a geometric pattern for directing energy towards a certain purpose or intention. In this case, ours was dedicated to releasing the past and opening ourselves to the future and all the abundance and love the earth has to offer. We burned candles I had saved from a special trip to Africa when I was 13 as an additional symbol of our intention, and overall just had a very wonderful time praying and bringing in that healing earth medicine. We left the grid out overnight and immediately the next day I felt inspired to make some jewelry pieces out of the crystals we used, something I had dabbled in but never really pursued, and to also share what I was creating with others. Right away the universe responded and we started getting requests, and more than requests for a product, we truly started receiving genuine requests for healing, prayer, and love to be sent in the form of crystal creations, such great keepers of the subtle energies that affect our spirits.

We've spent the past two weeks creating these conscious crafts, talking with and hearing from so many of you amazing people out there, and just really connecting on a deep soul level through this platform of Home In The Hive. It has been so wonderful to feel all the love and support as we pursue our dreams of self-sustainability as a family. Ideally we'd like our own website, and we definitely see that happening in the future, but for now we will be using our Etsy shop to bring you all our handmade goods. We will continue to make grids based on what requests we're getting/what we intuitively feel a need for, and presenting our crafts thereafter. The next intention has been chosen and we are currently putting our energy into gathering stones for a grid dedicated to fertility, balancing male/female energy, the pregnancy process, and reproductive health. Really looking forward to this one and excited for the people who have already reached out about it!

It's always been our dream for Home In The Hive to be an organically creative space and we are still seeing how this adventure will unfold, but whatever it looks like, we are EXCITED! Thank you deeply from our heart centers to yours, for being supportive and partaking in our journey! It's truly a gift to share. We are full to the brim with gratitude for All!