February is Heart Health Month.  The number one cause of death for women is cardiovascular disease in the United States.  It is recommended by most health experts that individuals should take at least 10,000 steps per day to remain healthy.  New studies have shown that even this may not be enough to ward off heart disease.  

In addition to training for my second half marathon, my goal is to complete my first sprint triathlon by the end of this year.  Training, working full time and caring for kids sometimes (if not always) make meal planning a challenge.  So far, we have managed to cook most of our meals during the week. We simply plan at least two days ahead what our meal options are.  Initially, it was rather funny for my family to start thinking of meals ahead of time, but it reduces a great amount of stress when you know what your kids will eat in a few hours as oppose to scrambling to cook a meal with cranky hungry kids hovering over you as you cook.    As part of this months' heart healthy theme, we are celebrating Valentine's Day by making our own organic pink lemonade (with strawberries, grapes, lemon and water).  We are also planning to make our own valentine's day cards.  We use recycled red construction paper and cut/glue images from print advertisements onto our homemade cards.  Here is an example of one of our homemade valentines (using an image from a print ad).  

You can use print advertisements (Sunday editions tend to contain the most print ads) for many other holiday celebrations as well (Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.).

We love cooking, especially during the holidays.  Homemade pumpkin pies are easy to bake and provide a lot of antioxidants and nutrients.  We simply follow the baking recipe that is on the pumpkin can (yes, I use the pumpkin from the can as opposed to carving up my own, although I hope to try preparing a pumpkin pie from scratch next year).

I am excited to offer you this free Chocolate kit giveaway.  My kids enjoyed making our own chocolates.  It tasted great (not too sweet) and the instructions are easy to follow and fool proof.

Make Your Own kits are available in Make Your Own Chocolate, Make Your Own Chewing Gum, and Make Your Own Gummies, these activity kits are all-natural, educational, and eco-friendly. With pre-packaged ingredients and easy-to-follow instructions, everyone aged 8 and up gets a real kick out of making candy from scratch. Focusing on the history behind and the origin of these candies, each kit is designed to captivate your interest, connect you to the global community, and create something yummy to eat in the process! 

You can have a chance to win a free chocolate kit giveaway.  In order to qualify for the free Make your Own Chocolate giveaway, you need to:

1) Sign up for the FREE eco-friendly living email newsletter (I do not share your email with anyone and send quarterly (4 x / year email messages)).  

2) Sign up for the free Glee Gum newsletter: http://www.gleegum.com/contact-us.htm

The giveaway will be selected randomly by December 31st, 2011.  Best of luck and have a joyous new year!

We enjoyed spending thanksgiving with our extended family.  Instead of stuffing ourselves with all of the extra food, we ate reasonable portions and my sister in law showed me how to freeze the leftovers (which I have never done before).  When you freeze food, it usually lasts two weeks longer than just refrigerating leftovers.  To prepare/defrost frozen food, you need to place the food in a microwave safe container, add some water (you need to add some moisture) and then heat it up.  


We are getting our Christmas tree ready for Christmas.  We've used the same plastic tree for over ten years and plan to use it for many more.  We also save the Sunday newspaper so that we can use them as wrapping paper.  In keeping with an eco-friendly tradition that we started a few years ago, we will not be lighting the Christmas tree (to save energy, electricity and money).  Although most probably we will light it up on Christmas Eve for a while.