Recipe: Raw Kalifornia Salad

Happy Summer Solstice! Today marks the longest day (most hours of sunlight) of the year, but that's not the only big celestial event this week. This weekend we're also getting ready for the arrival of the 2013 supermoon, which will deliver the biggest and brightest moon of the year. We're so excited as we love to celebrate earth and her natural cycles, and we also feel this would be the perfect weekend for our Luna to arrive! We really feel this is such a special, important time for everyone to meditate and reflect on their spirit, but especially for those pregnant mamas and their families who are creating and bringing life into the universe. It truly is the perfect time to set your intention for the soul you will be a vessel for bringing, and how you will walk in the role of motherhood. We encourage everyone to soak in the moon & sun this weekend & enjoy the gifts of the earth available to you this time of year!



This is one of our favorite recipes for a perfect kale salad, inspired by California-grown foods (citrus, avocados, tomatoes, oh my!) and the urge to snack on something crisp & healthy while beating the summer heat.

Ingredients:

• 5 cups of chopped kale or other dark greens (I used chard, kale, and spinach) 
• 2 cups of chopped red cabbage
• 1 diced cucumber
• 2 avocados, cut into bite-size chunks
• 1 diced heirloom tomato
• 1 cup diced red bell pepper
• 1/4 of a red onion, diced
• Juice from 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
• Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

• Once everything is chopped, hand mix/toss in a large bowl
• Make the dressing by mixing lemon juice, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, and s&p
• Drizzle over salad and mix again, not being afraid to mush the avocado! It gives the salad a great consistency
• Serve alone, in a wrap, or with big multigrain chips like we did

Hope you enjoy and make it a very special weekend! Don't forget to play outside and feel the power of the sun & moon!

Luna Cove: Welcome Party

A few weeks ago my wonderful sister and mother threw us a baby shower in honor of Luna's coming arrival. It was such a special celebration and our hearts were filled with joy from all the love surrounding our growing family. We got the photos back this week and I've picked a few of my favorites to share here, but you can check out the full set on the CJeanPhotography blog! 

Welcome to The Hive!

My Grandma's last party/event she was able to attend before passing away.
Such a special blessing and memory for us.

Soon-to-be parents!

My "adopted" Grandma Molly with the quilts she made a few years ago for me and my sisters for our first babies!

All the pregnant bellies... plus my Dad! :)

Wishes for Baby - so neat to have all of these blessings and sweet notes!

Hope you enjoyed a little bit of our celebration and were able to feel the love! Be sure to check out the rest of the photos here. Wishing you all a beautiful, happy, peace-filled week ahead! 

Natural Remedies: Homemade Conditioner

Lately there's been a lot of talk around The Hive about thoughts regarding beauty care, food and medicine, and how we want to approach these areas in our lives. During Oscar's Juice Cleanse, we started tapping into the spiritual roots behind these topics, and how we truly believe that everything is connected. The way in which we treat our physical bodies is a direct reflection of how we treat and care for our spiritual bodies. Realizing this, it's becoming a priority for us to rid our lives of unnatural, processed goods wherever we can.

"If you wouldn't put it in your body, don't put it on your body" has been a repeating mantra in my mind this week. We've been clearing our house of all sorts of conventional foods and products, and figuring out what to replace these things with. A big one for us is shampoo and conditioner, but especially conditioner!

Both Oscar and I have thick, curly manes that require a lot of love and taming. It seems we're always on the search for a "perfect" conditioner. We've tried both natural and unnatural, inexpensive and over-priced. The ones that did seem to work well were full of so many ingredients I couldn't pronounce the names of, it made me wonder if the chemicals we were using weren't just damaging our hair more and simply masking the fact. A lot of the products labeled "natural" or "organic" still contained a wide variety of overly-processed ingredients, and sadly the overall quality was often lacking in this realm, usually for a much higher price .

Believing in the healing power of earth and food, it only started making sense that our body products would literally be "good enough to eat" in order to be any good at all, and so I set out to make a conditioner from edible items in the kitchen. I put together this super simple, yummy recipe, and it really turned out great! It cost less than five dollars to make and Oscar couldn't believe how much he felt it really healing his hair even after just a few days. In addition to the restorative properties it contains, it leaves the hair with this wonderful light, protective coating that continues to condition the hair all day long!


Ingredients:

• 1 ripe banana
• 1 ripe avocado
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (1 for finer hair)
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 15 drops essential oil of choice (Not required, but I like orange, rosemary, or lavender)

Directions:

• Simply combine all items and blend together until smooth
• Store in refrigerator for up to a week
• I used a glass mason jar but a squeeze bottle would be much easier!

Hope you enjoy this silky goodness for your hair and make it a beautiful week, wherever you are! 

Unassisted Birth: Prenatal Care

We get a lot of questions about how prenatal care is handled when birthing without assistance, and I realized it's something I didn't mention in our last post about Luna's birth day, so I wanted to take the time to address that topic now. Choosing a freebirth really does give you just that... freedom! To pick and choose every step and action along the way that resonates with your intuition and spirit. Some women choose to see an ob/gyn or midwife and some choose to do their own prenatal care. Some choose to participate in ultrasounds and tests, while others don't. The field of obstetrics has created an in-depth system for monitoring women and their womb during gestation, and many people take comfort in this type of care, still choosing to receive some or all of it. Others may choose an entirely uninterrupted pregnancy and birth, relying solely on their own intuition and connection to their babies and bodies to detect any problems; ideally developing the peace of mind that all is well and meant to be in the course of pregnancy.

This journey has consisted of both realms for us. When we had planned to birth at a center close to our home, our prenatal care was being handled there. I went for the initial blood-work/full health history checkup, one standard measure-your-belly-and-blood-pressure checkup, and received one ultrasound at the twenty-week mark. Although I am happy for the choices we made at the time, both Oscar and I agree it's not something we would choose again in the future, since we have fully come to the side of wanting to connect with this process in its most natural form. Our now at-home prenatal care consists of a healthy diet, lots of walking and yoga, meditation, sleeping whenever needed, and just generally loving on the mind/body/spirit in all the ways we can! I've checked my blood pressure twice at the grocery store, but that was mostly for fun/myself and not something I felt necessary for Luna's wellbeing.

It has been such a special opportunity to rely on our faith during this time, connecting with the Divine and our Little Moon in ways we never thought possible. The road has definitely been one of perseverance and trust, worth every step of growth along the way. And now, in just a few short weeks, Luna will be joining us! The earth is truly alive with magic and light!

     

Photo Diary: Oscar's Juice Cleanse

Hello, friends! We've been having a magically transformative week here in The Hive. It's been such an adventure and I can't wait to share every detail with you! A few weeks ago Oscar mentioned wanting to do a juice cleanse and it struck up a conversation about the recent popularity surrounding juicing, fasting, cleansing, and so on. We started talking about the importance of a person's intention behind physical cleanses, as it relates to such deep emotional, mental, and spiritual issues as well. Because of this, Oscar didn't want to do just any juice cleanse, so I sat down and started doing research to create our own. I decided to create a seven day cleanse that would focus on a different main body system each day. It was such a fun experience to learn and create, and the results were seriously magical!

Food is a beautiful gift from the earth that has been distorted and abused in so many ways, to the point where most of us are numb to how largely our choices surrounding food affect our beings. Oscar and I are making so many decisions regarding how we will raise Luna and build a family, and this cleanse really got us talking about what it would look like to honor food and the choices we make surrounding our approach to it. We had originally planned to do a full report on the cleanse, recipes included, and post it here on the blog, but we have SO MUCH to share, there is no possible way to condense it down to a blog post or two. That being said, we're very excited to announce that I am actually working on a hand-drawn/illustrated guide to the cleanse that will be available through our blog in a few weeks. We still want the information to be accessible to everyone, so the book will be made available by donation.

We believe in our collective ability to transform this world through how we approach our basic necessities! Can't wait to share more with you, friends. In the meantime, enjoy our photos from this past week, and make it a beautiful Wednesday!

Day one!

Third eye juice.

Sunny shopping day.

Circulate. 

Citrus love!

Boost. 

Happy tummy!

Immunity.

Excretory. 

Earth gifts.

2 cups of juice from this English Cuke!

Carrot.

Radish.

Watercress.

So many jars!