Winter honey

I love the idea of finding wellness in God's creation. I use a lot of teas when I'm sick with sinus, allergy junk or when I have cold/flu symptoms. This fall I decided to take an extra step in my wellness with a honey blend of my own thinking.



I start with a fresh, clean canning jar and toss in about 10-15 whole cloves, 5 or 6 cinnamon sticks, and a lemon (quartered and sliced thin) and then fill the jar with local honey. I keep the jar in the door of my refrigerator and give it a good stir every few days.


When one of us has a tickle in our throats we either take a spoon full of it alone (delicious) or we add it to a cup of herbal tea.

Luxury from the kitchen!?

If you are anything like me, you probably suffer from dry skin in the winter. Sometimes my skin is so dry it actually hurts.
A few weeks ago I found an overripe avocado in my refrigerator, it was more mushy than I would have wanted to eat so I decided to make something fancy for my face! I ground up about a quarter cup of oats in my magic bullet, tossed 1/4 of the mushy avocado in with about a tsp of liquid coconut oil, a drop of vitamin E oil and about a tsp of milled flax.
I blended it all up and smeared it on my face...


I let it soak in for about 5 minutes and then rinsed and put my coconut oil moisturizer on. My face felt like butter!!

Drama and all it's nonsense

I hate drama and how it affects me and I am stepping up and saying "no more". I'm not interacting in silly fights on social media because honestly, it's fruitless anyway, nobody cares about what somebody else's opinion is these days. Especially if the opinion is from somebody with more conservative views. I'm tired of being called hateful, judgmental or a hypocrite when I disagree with somebody else's opinions. I am capable of disagreeing without hating or judging. 
So often, people assume that if you disagree you must hate. I don't know about you but I can disagree with you on something and still love you! I can't think of a single person that I agree with 100% of the time... not even my husband (and I'm madly in love with him). If I am friends with you, your view on vaccinations, marriage equality or the color red won't change that. I may disagree with your opinion but that won't mean I hate you!
So, why is it that people are always fighting on social media? Why has it become a place for everyone to passively aggressively (or just aggressively) attack one another? Why have we all become so loudly opinionated? I remember when I was growing up how our parents kept their views on things like politics to themselves. People back 20 or 30 years ago had enough respect for their friendships to not discuss things that could cause unnecessary problems. Trying to convince a long time republican that Bill Clinton was the best choice for president would probably cause more hardships in your friendship than it would swing their vote so why open that can of worms? 
My plea is that we all try a little harder to respect one another, not call names and try to remember that as firm in our views as we are, there are people just as firm in theirs. I'm not talking about not sharing the gospel, that is our duty as Christians, I'm talking about things like vaccinations, politics, parenting styles... Sure, you can say, "If your kids didn't get the flu shot, we may skip the play dates until the spring." You are making a parenting choice there. However,  saying, "I can't believe you didn't get the flu shot, you must like getting the flu." is just asking for a fight and is pretty disrespectful. 
I've been guilty of saying things in the heat of a debate that weren't kind, most of the time it was out of retaliation or defense of my own views being attacked, sometimes because I just wasn't thinking about how it was coming across. Either way, I'm walking away from it. 
Maybe we can all try a little harder to not post rants on social media that we know are going to cause hardships between some of our friends and maybe if a friend does post something we disagree with, we keep our own opinions to ourselves or speak to them privately about it.  After all, aren't our friends important to us?