1. Make a List and Check It Twice:

Before you get caught up in the holiday shopping tornado, plan your attack. Make a list of killer gifts that are not just thoughtful but also Eco-conscious. Have you ever gone food shopping without a list? You know you end up buying tons of stuff you don’t need, but if you keep to a list you’re going to save money and buy only what you use.

2. Support Local Hustles:

Forget the big-box madness. Hit up the local markets, craft fairs, and boutiques. Supporting local businesses helps your community, fellow local humans and shrinks your carbon footprint. Double win! If there’s nothing that interests you locally, check out sellers on Etsy or online small businesses – you still may be shipping items to you but at least you’re supporting small businesses and getting really unique gifts.

3. Choose Products That Are the Real MVPs:

Opt for gifts made from sustainable materials. Think organic, think reusable, think stuff that won’t end up haunting landfills for centuries. Your gifts should be as long-lasting as your Aunt Karen’s fruitcake (but way more desirable). This is where you may spend more money but it will save you money in the long run. Buy quality items that will last.

4. Get Crafty with DIY Magic:

Unleash your inner crafting wizard. DIY gifts are not just about saving cash; they’re about creating something unique and lowering the environmental impact. Plus, it’s a legit excuse to get glitter everywhere. This year I had leftover material from a project that I had no use for so I created throw pillows for my kids. They loved them, and since I’m not a pro and there were seams – my kids said the “imperfections made it more perfect”. My oldest daughter took a knitting class in college (I know, I know, it sounds like the new underwater basket-weaving but she loved it) and now made everyone’s scarves and hats for the holidays. Check out my red penis scarf – it’s my favorite gift!

5. Experiences Over Things:

Gift memories, not just things. Concert tickets, museums, spa days, or a virtual escape room – experiences beat material possessions any day of the week. My daughter cannot tell you what doll or game I bought her for the holidays 5 years ago, but she remembers the ice skating lessons we got for her. We even got the whole family involved that year when her grandma bought her a new pair of ice skates. We celebrated our other daughter’s birthday with a Broadway show and a day in NYC. Less stuff, more memories. It’s the way to go.

6. Wrap It Up, Green Style:

Ditch the boring wrapping paper and get imaginative. Use recycled paper, fabric scraps, or repurpose old newspapers or maps. And hey, reusable gift wraps like scarves or tote bags? Double the gift, zero the waste.

7. Eco-Friendly Holiday Cards:

Send e-cards or pick cards made from recycled materials. Or, how about going digital and sending a video message? Because why waste paper when you can be a video star? My favorite holidays gifts from my kids were when they wrote me letters – years later when I need a little pick-me-up I still read them.

Those are my Lucky 7 Eco-friendly suggestions. Stay tuned because I don’t live on Mars and know that you’re going to buy some stuff for the holidays so watch out for my holiday shopping guide coming to a computer screen near you. Together, we CAN celebrate the season without trashing the planet. Cheers to a dirty, clean holiday season! 🌍🎁 #DirtyCleanHolidays #SustainableCelebrations #LivingCleanAndDirty

The post Dirty Santa, Clean Earth: Navigating Eco-Friendly Holidays Like a Pro appeared first on Living Clean and Dirty.

When it comes to parenting, my husband has a primary goal. “It’s our job as parents to teach you how to exist in society”. I personally think keeping them out of the adult film industry should rank slightly higher but I get where he’s coming from. All the life lessons we struggled through to get where we are now are the greatest gifts we can give to our children. Sure, there’s plenty they have to experience on their own but any leg up we can give them, in my opinion, is worth it. Now to be fair, just like 80s fashion choices you can’t have the good without some of the bad (acid wash jeans, really?). They certainly pick up our bad habits and “colorful” language but hopefully they pick up more of what we have to offer that’s, let’s say, “socially appropriate”.

As a mom I think for the most part I have my shit together. Oh don’t get me wrong, I get frustrated and lose it just like the next sleep-deprived mom out there. I’ve mouthed the words “Karma’s going to get you someday” when my kid’s back was turned but I try to keep my mini meltdowns on the DL. As an avid yoga fan, when one of my kids start pushing all the wrong buttons I remind myself to breathe. My yoga instructor calls it “Take 5”. Five breaths in and 5 breaths out – to the count of 5. It calms my inner demon and probably keeps Child Services out of my house. Five In Five Out…FIFO.

While both of my kids present hubby and me with unique challenges, it’s my younger daughter who definitely needs more “managing”.   Her spirit animal is apparently the Hulk and honestly if she was born first she would probably be an only child.   I love her to the moon and back, but sometimes I want to move to the moon just to get a break from her.

They say patience is a virtue, they also say cleanliness is a virtue and she doesn’t have that one either. She will go from zero to frustrated almost instantly and change from Norman Rockwell to Norman Bates. How could such a cute little girl turn into such a witch? My first thought obviously was to blame myself. Did I scream too much in childbirth? Was I demanding too much? Is this how Hitler’s mother felt? She would literally blow her stack right in front of me. I tried ignoring her screaming meltdowns watching in horror expecting her head to spin around and vomit pea soup…that didn’t help. I’ve taken away her iPad and her computer…that didn’t help either. I took away every single stuffed animal and toy in her room, but then guiltily left her one to sleep with. She brought it into my bedroom, threw it on the floor and said “you forgot one” (true story)…so obviously none of this was working. To make things worse, her temper was becoming contagious and was turning me into a banshee where I would start screaming back at her. Five In Five Out…FIFO was the only thing that kept me sane.

Nothing was working and although my good natured mommy friends assured me this was just a stage, I knew that I couldn’t listen to this shit for years or worse…let it continue and have a teenaged Attila the Hun under my roof. My only saving grace was that she just did it for an audience of one…me. No one else knew my dark little secret…”Hi, my name is Ellen and I am the worst mother in existence”.

As some of you unfortunately know all the words to this familiar song, this started to change. Her inner-Hulk started to reveal itself on playdates and at school. To be fair she wasn’t a nuclear meltdown 24/7, but when she did pop she popped big. The stares, the begging (from me) and then I got the dreaded phone call… her teacher wanted to have a meeting with my husband and me. I figured we weren’t walking in to an award ceremony for “Best Parents Ever” but you can always hope (I made room on the mantle just in case we were taking home some kind of trophy, but I think you see where this is going).   Apparently she becomes so frustrated in school at the other kids, she will scream at them until they burst into tears. Now mind you, she wasn’t a sociopath, meaning she didn’t smile while they cried, she felt bad but just couldn’t control it. I sat there and patiently listened to her teacher ask if there were problems at home or any life changes which could be affecting her, to which there were none. My only thoughts were “I’m failing…worst parent ever”. Five In Five Out…FIFO

Now back to me…I’m not a screamer but I get overwhelmed like everyone else and I’m grateful for my yoga outlet and what it teaches me, Five In Five Out…FIFO. I’m taking care of me, my hubby, my mom, two kids and two doggies and there’s just not enough hours in the day. I want to scream bloody murder and lose my shit too, but I don’t (well, mostly). I’ve learned that when life gives you lemons there isn’t always an opportunity to make lemonade.   Sometimes life takes those lemons and squirts you in the eyes and rubs them in your cuts. You have to keep your shit together and keep on living. It all sounds great, right? If only life was as easy as some blogger makes it out to be. My life isn’t perfect and neither is my daughter’s…neither is anyone’s. Most of the bad shit in life is out of our control and the only thing we can do is choose how we react to it. I recently started teaching “little Attila” that nope…life isn’t fair and hell is other people. Like her dad constantly points out to them, you need to be able to function in society even when society sucks.

I’ve started bringing my little rage monster into the FIFO fold and we’ve seen a dramatic change for the better. She’s starting to recognize when things are making her frustrated and before it gets out of hand she starts to calm herself down.   I’ve seen her in mid-conversation with her sister; she stops, closes her eyes and start deep breathing.

As happy endings go (no hubby, not that kind) this sounds like a great one. I’d love to tell you that she has completely changed her ways and turned into a shining beacon of joy and happiness. As Americans we love our stories to have happy endings where all the problems are solved, the hero wins and the villain has been defeated. Unfortunately in real life sometimes the definition of a win is no one ended up in the hospital and the cops were not at my house.

My little short-fused firecracker has certainly mellowed out when she reached double digits (almost in time for teen-dom, hooray!). She practices her FIFO and the meetings with her teachers are now more focused on her love for history and her disdain for math. While definitely not at a helicopter-mom level I still keep one Bionic Woman ear on her play dates, and I’m happy to share that she is growing into a conscientious and thoughtful young woman. I’m sure, like anyone else, she’ll have her outbursts and meltdowns and that’s OK.   My hubby says “that’s just the cost of doing business”. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but he says it with such an air of wisdom that I just nod and smile (hey what can I say…he’s pretty).

I look forward to a long life filled with offering unrequested pearls of wisdom and nuggets of advice to my girls. Late night talks about a broken heart over a quart of ice cream, helping fill out college applications and reassuring a hormonal pregnant mom-to-be that she’s going to do just fine…these are all hopefully in my future. As parents we have a lot to teach our kids and as a mom of girls I feel like I have a specific responsibility in raising these potential leaders of tomorrow. The benefits of teaching both of my kids about FIFO is twofold. I’m helping them develop the coping mechanisms they’ll need throughout their lives as well as practicing myself which I think makes me a better mom and gets us all a little closer to our Happy Ending (that one’s for you hubby).

Five In Five Out…FIFO

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I’ve had some doozies.

• Eat more kale.
• Eat fewer desserts.
• Perfect my Daffy Duck impersonation.
• Declare myself a pirate on my tax return.
• Slay my enemies.
• You know…the usual.

When I hit my mid-thirties (for about the tenth time), I gave up on New Year’s resolutions and started declaring each year my “Year Of…”

My first was the Year of Fear.

Instead of making promises I knew I’d break, I decided to spend an entire year saying yes to things that scared me. Nothing crazy. I wasn’t wrestling alligators or jumping out of airplanes. I started with things like parallel parking and buying a pair of long, dangling earrings because I’d always convinced myself they weren’t “me.”

Eventually I worked my way up to public speaking at my daughter’s elementary school graduation, jumping off a cliff into a swimming hole, trying a trapeze and riding a trail bike down the side of a mountain.

That last one wasn’t my finest decision. I broke my shoulder in two places.

Live and learn.

The next year became my Year of Me.

Not in a selfish way.

In a healthy way.

I started saying no to PTA committees I didn’t actually want to join. I stopped feeling obligated to attend every family event simply because I was expected to. I started reading books again, knitting some truly ugly scarves and slowly removing toxic people from my life.

Don’t get me wrong. I still emptied the dishwasher, went to doctor’s appointments and handled all the things adulthood requires.

I just stopped putting myself at the bottom of every list.

So here we are, hip deep into 2018, my third year of YO. I’ve learned to embrace my fears and put myself as a priority so when you mesh the two together you obviously get the Year of No Fucks Given. Let me explain…I’m tired, obviously as a mom I’m sleep-deprived but I’m talking about being TIRED. I’m TIRED of always doing the right thing, TIRED of being the bigger person and I’m sure as shit positively EXHAUSTED by not sticking up for myself at the risk of someone else’s feelings.

So here’s a little slice of my 2018…there’s a guy I know and he’s super creepy. And by creepy I mean if I was to hear that 20 dead hookers were found in this guy’s basement my first thought would be “hmmm…thought the number would have been higher”. He’s also got a little Family Feud era Richard Dawson in him and likes to kiss hello every female in his path. It doesn’t matter who it is…85 year old grandma, the cashier at the bagel store, young hot mom in Kohls and especially a hot ticket like me. To make matters worse, when he goes in for the kill he turns his head trying to plant one on the mouth (ugh, it’s just as horrifying as it sounds).

So for years I’ve been enduring the sleazy cheek-kiss, I got wise to the head turn early on and compensated for it. I would change my route so I didn’t run into him, some women have feigned a cold and other women have pretended to be on the phone when they saw him…but no one ever stopped him, no one ever told him no. Now, you can pass judgement and say “Oh I’d never”, well if I was sitting at my computer braless in a pair of 4 day old pajamas I’d say the same thing. The first few times you’re caught off guard and then it just becomes too awkward of a situation so you just put up with it. As women, I think a lot of us were raised to take the figurative “hit” before we made another person uncomfortable.

• “You can’t say that, you’ll hurt his feelings”,
• “Oh there’s no sense in making a scene, he doesn’t mean anything by it”
• “I know he’s a little creepy, but he’s your uncle so just go give him a hug.”

I’m here 24/7 busting my ass trying to raise 2 warrior daughters and I don’t feel comfortable telling some low-budget lothario to keep his mouth off of me? There’s only one mouth I want anywhere near me and it sure as shit wasn’t this guy’s. So in my Year of No Fucks Given I decided that awkward or not, this shit had to end. The next time I saw him, he leaned in for the attack and I put my hand up in front of my face and said, “Please stop, the kissing makes me uncomfortable. Just say hello”. He looked shocked but then accepted his fate. This public kissing booth was officially closed.

And that was it.

Years of women changing direction when they saw him. Years of awkwardness. Years of silently tolerating something none of us liked. It ended with one sentence.

Maybe that’s what my Year of No Fucks Given is really about. It’s not about being rude, selfish or impossible to get along with. It’s about finally understanding that protecting your own boundaries isn’t something you should ever apologize for.

Late last year I declared that 2018 was going to be the year I really poured myself into Living Clean and Dirty. Like a lot of resolutions, life had other plans. But there’s still plenty of 2018 left, plenty of stories to tell and plenty of opportunities to keep becoming a better version of myself. I’m still here, still fighting the good fight and still trying to figure it all out right alongside you.

And for any haters out there who would like to break my balls about not posting enough new material this year, please write me at my new imaginary email address None@Fucksgiven.com

The post I’ve Got None Left to Give appeared first on Living Clean and Dirty.

I read a lot of books.  It’s not unusual for my hubby to find me passed out in bed (empty wine glass next to me like a loyal soldier) with a book still open in my lap.  Some of my guilty pleasures have been “Nature’s Nether Regions”, “Safe Haven”, “Does the Soul Survive?”, “Everyone Poops” or once for some international flavor,  the Scottish tale of romance “A Wee Bit Lower, Lassy”.

Reading is my escape; it’s my happy place (if I don’t have the opportunity for a nap). As a busy mom I spend more than a few afternoons sitting in my car waiting to pick up one of my kids from some place or another and I always have a book with me.  If you were to peek into my passenger side window right now (along with getting a faceful of mace, you creeper) you’d see my copy of Lilly Cadoch’s Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet: Raising Happy Healthy Kids.

Obviously the title is an eye-catcher, but you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Take “Still Stripping After 25 Years” which is a book about a woman’s lifelong love of quilting (I shit you not, look it up). Well, faithful readers let me tell you that Lilly Cadoch’s book definitely delivers the goods.

“Cheat Sheets” have gotten a bad reputation over the years, or so my 11^th grade English Literature teacher would have us believe, but I’m a huge fan.  I don’t always need all the fanfare and the romance and the flowers and the gifts, sometimes I want to just get down to the dirty and the gritty.  The Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet: Raising Happy Healthy Kids is an easy to follow and understand handbook to help energize parents in their ongoing quest to raise healthier kids.  The book is broken down into three vital life categories: Body, Mind and Spirit. I couldn’t agree more with advice like “This trifecta makes up our entire being and if any of them get out of balance, it can throw everything out of whack…When we have a healthy body, we can more clearly tackle our mind and spiritual needs.”

My kids are pretty open-minded when it comes to trying new foods, but they aren’t afraid to tell me when one of my experiments taste like a cardboard box left out in the rain.  So when one of my daughters loved the recipe for the cheesy veggie omelet I grabbed on to that one and held tight.  I also used a few of her snack ideas for my kids’ backpacks and I myself practically live on the zucchini spaghetti pasta dish.  And by the way, feel free to skip to page 127 for an awesome take on Tofu.

Not only does this book offer real-life mommy advice, it helps you make smarter food choices for your family and to provide your children with valuable life-long skills. Here are just a few great ideas that resonated with me…

• Teaching your kids how to read food and ingredient labels in order to make healthier choices
• 18 tips for foods to avoid
• Ways to get more exercise into your child’s schedule
• Tactics on how to get your kids to sleep (without the battle)
• Teaching empathy
• The power of gratitude
• 45 bonus recipes that are quick, easy, delicious and kid-friendly

Seem simple?  Of course

Do we always do it? Of course not

Having kids literally jump started my holistic journey into eating and living cleaner because I wanted to set a good example and teach my kids to live a healthy lifestyle.  My girls are 9 & 12, I love the idea of them being more involved with the grocery shopping and our ingredient choices, they are after all, my target audience (sorry, hubby).  I enjoy sharing my sense of spirituality with my family and every night before bed we talk about “Grateful Universe” and the large and small things in our life we are thankful for.  I think in a lot of ways Lily Cadoch and I may have been separated at birth (or at the very least are kindred spirits) because every page I read from her book makes me want to shout out “Yes, that’s what I do” or “Thank goodness I’m not the only one who feels that way.”

This book is a fantastic guide to help any parent trying to raise healthier kids and needing real world practical guidance.  I like to think that when we know better, we do better. So any book that can give a fresh and positive perspective to eating smart, getting my kids a better night’s sleep, improving their sense of self and dipping their toes into the benefits of spirituality, that’s a little bit of “cheating” we can all benefit from.

I was sent a copy of this book for free to review; however, no other compensation was received and the opinions I expressed were entirely my own.

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