I look forward to this post every year! Here, you'll find gift ideas for a wide variety of interests and in a wide variety of price ranges. These are items that I personally own, enjoy, and recommend. {For more inspiration, here are links to my gift guide from 2018 and also my gift guide from 2017.}
BUT... remember, stuff is just stuff. The best gift you can give someone you love is your TIME and attention. A great gift would be an activity together and putting your phone away for it. A gift doesn't have to cost money. Don't sweat the small stuff this holiday season! Spend time with your loved ones and have a healthy dose of gratitude. Xoxo, Merry Christmas, & Happy Everything. :)
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 We lost our beloved Labrador Retriever, Layla, over three months ago. It hurts. It hurts so much that I haven't even told a lot of my closest friends that she died. I don't want to talk about it yet. (And that's ok.) It's too painful for me to face the whole reveal of telling my friends and speaking it out loud. Somehow writing about it is healing to me, so here I am, writing about her. This kind of post is out of my normal range of topics, but I know that many of you are also animal lovers, so I think just maybe... it would be nice to talk about her to you.
 For the past two years, on my teaching anniversary, I've written about wisdom gained as a yoga instructor during that particular year. [If you're interested, you can find my fifth anniversary post here, and what I learned during my sixth year of teaching here.]
This year, I've continued to learn a lot about control (and lack thereof) and of being open to whatever happens, which are kind of the same thing. Knowing what I can and can't control and accepting what the moment brings helps me live with less stress. Even though I'm writing from a yoga instructor's perspective, the wisdom is for all of us. The more I learn it, the more fulfilling my days are. Seriously. If you find yourself often frustrated at events in your day, keep reading...  I can't begin to tell you how helpful it is to do a little reflecting on your life at the beginning of fall. Last week, I blogged about the Fall Equinox and some of the symbolism we can take from nature to learn more about ourselves. Each year, the fall equinox not only welcomes the first day of fall, but also is really neat because it's one of only two days in the entire year where day and night are in balance. It brings up two really important questions that I encourage you to ask yourself: 1) day and night are in balance, are you? and 2) since fall is associated with harvest time, what are you harvesting in your life? What seeds did you plant in the spring to give life to over the summer? What did you dream of and work on this year and what do you have to show for it now, at harvest?
Those are deep questions, but ones worth asking if you're on a journey of self discovery. If you'd like to hear more about diving into those (very personal) questions, read my post from last week Fall Equinox: What's Your Harvest? Life /goals / dreams / resolutions rarely turn out how we think they will, so if you need a little encouragement, keep reading to hear about my own harvest this year.  The Fall Equinox is just around the corner, marking the first day of fall and passage into a new season. It's also one of only two days in the entire year where day and night are in balance. And while I— like many females— am very excited for cooler temperatures, Ugg boots (don't fight it, they're comfy), and pumpkin spice lattes (don't fight it, they're delicious), this post is about much deeper stuff.
Lots and lots of symbolism can be drawn from nature at the equinox to apply to your life. In fact, when any of the seasons shift, it's the perfect time to look inward in introspection. With the Fall Equinox, it brings up (at least) two important questions: 1) day and night are in balance, are you? (more on that in Lessons From The Fall Equinox) and 2) what are you harvesting? I live on a farm and get to see this beautiful cycle every year. Fall is a time when farmers who have worked hard all year on their crops start to gather and harvest the fruits of their labor. What did you work on all year and what do you have to show for it now, at harvest time? Read on for what the Fall Equinox can teach us if we're willing to take an honest look at how we are living our lives.  Last week contained the summer solstice: the first day of summer and longest day of the year. I really, really enjoy when dates like this roll around because I think it's a great time to reflect. The summer solstice is a very appropriate time halfway through the year to stop and take notice of how life is going.
 If you think about it, eating in season -- though trendy -- is not new at all. It's really the original way to eat. Our generation is used to having access to all kinds of foods at our grocery stores these days, but it hasn't always been this way. For many people, eating seasonally IS a new way of eating.
I try to eat seasonally as much as possible. Here are 5 reasons to give it a try.  If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I love Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Her work on vulnerability and courage has changed my life and I highly recommend this book if you haven't read it.
At the beginning of the book, she references the idea of wholehearted living, which is from another book of hers, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. She describes it like this...  Having trouble finding time to exercise is THE biggest excuse I hear. I can sympathize. It's tough, especially during busy seasons of life. Even with the best of intentions, we ALL get in a slump sometimes. When that happens, the hardest part about starting back up is getting over the inertia of it all. If you find yourself 1) in a fitness slump, 2) constantly starting a fitness routine and ditching it after a week, or 3) you can never quite find the time to exercise, then this post is for you.
If you think strength training is just for bodybuilders or competitive athletes, allow me to set you straight: strength training is really just exercising with resistance in order to build muscles. That's it. And while I think everyone* should be doing some sort of resistance training, I'm not necessarily saying you have to attempt super heavy weight lifting. There are many varieties of resistance training (TRX! Pilates! Some types of yoga!) so stay with me...
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