Want to go green and get paid for it?

Who doesn't? This is why I am now returning to this blog after a space of a couple of years. I have found a platform where I can spread my knowledge and passion all things natural and organic, and get paid for it. Here is the lowdown.

Ever since I started using natural and/or organic products in 2008, I have always wanted to find a way to share my passion and knowledge about it with others and get paid for it. This last month I have seen posts by other people, including my coach and team members of the affiliate marketer I'm a member of, promoting this company who sells organic products that are toxic free. It is a network marketing company, where you train your way up the ladder until you reach the highest level. It being organics, something I know about, I was v interested in it. After a lot of thinking, I joined the other day and am in Rebecca Woodhead's team, who is my coach and upline for the other company. Rebecca has put a lot of faith in me and my skills, and has made me the Ambassador of Focus, where I focus on training, helping others who join with training and possibly market themselves, too. Am looking forward to doing this. The company is Essante Organics. If you want to find out what they offer, their website is www.GoGreenGetPaid.com.

If you watch that and want to join me becoming focussed and passionate about organics, then my website is: www.essanteorganics.com/hopewithjulie. To join, click on the 'join' button on the top.

If you want to know more about marketing and getting discovered as an author and/or marketer, whatever your business, then sign up for a newsletter here

http://forms.aweber.com/form/25/1466306025.htm

My pledge for Zero Waste Week

This week is Zero Waste Week and lots of people are pledging to reduce waste, esp food.  As someone who is v keen on recycling, reducing and reusing, this is an ideal time for me to think about what I can do to reduce my waste and I have come up with an idea. I use baby wipes to wipe myself, and usually either flush them or bin them, depending on what I use it for. So this week, I have pledged to use them and flush them instead of binning them all the time. How have I been doing? Well, I had put two in my bedroom bin so far, but I have taken one out and flushed it down the toilet when I used that room.  I plan to do this during the week as I go along.  I had started using face wipes, which aren't biodegradable or flushable, but I pledge not to use any of these this week and just use warm water and flannel instead to wash my face in the evening.

Earlier this morning, I started reusing a magazine that came in the paper for catching hairs from my legs when I shaved them. That is another way to reduce wastage.

So, let me know what your pledge is, and how you plan to go about it and get on with it.

Loving home grown fruit and veg

We have recently been loving home grown fruit and veg from our veg patch. We have been eating chives but they are getting rather brown rusty-looking now, either from age or the weather. Not many to cut at the moment. We haven't had much look with radishes again this year. Only had one out of the whole lot, which were nibbled by something.  We have had some carrots, and await more. We had a few cherry tomatoes the other day, and they were sweet.  We have had some spring onions, which taste stronger than shop bought ones. Even my mum finds them strong, and that is saying something. Recently we have had a glut of fresh beetroot, which we've grown for the first time.  They are really nice cooked.  Have a slightly earthy taste but nice. Probably grow some more next year.  We usually see what grows OK one year, to decide to plant again next year.

So, have you been growing fruit and veg?  What have you had success with so far?

Excess packaging on Father's Day

Today is Father's Day.  I bought my dad two packets of handkerchiefs, which came in a plastic box.  Now in those two plastic boxes, there was a piece of card to keep them standing up straight in the box.  In the hankies themselves, they each had a roll of card/paper to keep them standing up as a roll.  There were 5 hankies in each box. So that makes 10 pieces of paper, 2 pieces of card and two plastic boxes.  I had to throw away the plastic, as I didn't think I could recycle it.  But the other bits went for recycling.  Although most of it has gone for recycling, I still think that this was too much packaging.  I did make up for it in a way.  I put the boxes in a gift bag, but didn't sign the card on the bag so I can use it again and again, which I will do.

So, do you think this was too much packaging for two boxes of hankies? Let me know.

Changes to my eating over the years

I recently read in a Sainsbury's magazine an article about how food and how it is cooked has changed over the decades.  It asked people to email in to how their food has changed.  I thought this is a good ideas and replied.  Below is my reply:

In the 80s: breakfast was cereal such as rice crispies or Weetabix with milk. Lunch would be sandwich, yoghurt. Dinner would be fatty foods such as meat pies, pasties, meatballs, burgers. Desserts would be fruit pies, trifles.

In the 90s: breakfast was the same. Lunch was the same, too but dinners were changed to be more healthier due to my dad having major strokes, and finding out it was mainly due to high cholesterol. Out went the fatty dinnners, instead we had home-made chicken curry, spaghetti Bolognese, cold meats,casseroles. And we didn't have any desserts like before.  The curry ingredients changed too.  We first had potatoes and bread with it, then we cut out the potatoes.  Then we changed the bread to popadums, then finally out went the popadums. 

2000s: Another major change in my diet happened. I found I was interolerant to cow's milk, soya, fish and maybe wheat. I also changed my breakfasts to healthier versions. Instead of cereals I had different porridges: millet, quinoa and oats, which I heard about on the TV programme You are what you eat. I had these with fruit spread. These were made with oat milk. I also found goat's cheese and sheep's milk yoghurt. Out went snacking on biscuits, and instead I started snacking on nuts, seeds and dried dates. I gave up eating bread as sandwiches, after finding out I could be intolerant to wheat, and was getting fed up eating it every day by then. I started eating ryvitas instead. Dinners also changed, with a variety of new meals. These included: falafel, vegetarian sausages, houmous. This year I have discovered jacket potatoes and spices, which I have in a potato and chicken curry.  We now have two different curries.  One plain one with raisins in, and the new one with tinned tomatoes, spices, herbs and potatoes in.  I am preferring the latter one these days.

So overall, my diet has changed to a healther one over the years, for health reasons.

How has your diet changed over the years?  If it has, why?  Let me know.

Weight loss journey - month 3

So I was now appraoching my third month on the plan.  I was still cutting down houmous, walnuts and dates. Only having the nuts and dates as part of my syns of the day.  My weight was still going down.  But then came Easter.  I had treats.  I like the dark choc coated bananas from Holland and Barratts and my mum had bought me two bags of those.  Yummy.  But not good for the weight loss, though.  Having had those I went back to eating lots of nuts and dates again, and my weight went up and down.  But there was one good thing about having lost lots of weight already - I tried on a couple of party tops that had been too tight before and...they now fit snugly on me and I wasn't too tight in them.  Result.   One other thing I noticed about losing weight was that my rings kept twirling round my fingers, so the jewel on them stuck between fingers, and it hurt. But hey, I had lost 9 lbs by then.  Hurrah.  April came and went and in came May.  And...I was down to my target weight of 9 3.  Yay.  I had done it.  I had reached my ideal weight.  Ideal because I remembered that was the weight I had been shortly before being made redundant.

I set myself a new target of 9 2.  I have still a bit of a way to go, as my weight now fluctuates between 9 3 and 9 4.  I have to go back to the Plan now for the nice weather coming up.

Oh yes.  I will shortly be appearing on the Slimming World website as one of their successes.  Hurrah.  Success all around, me thinks.

Weight loss - second month

So I was in my second month of doing the Slimming World Plan, and losing weight for the first time in ages. How was I doing it?  I made a few slight changes to my diet.  I started to have raspberries (thawed frozen ones) with my porridge, and banana with another porridge.  But the banana didn't last that long as it started to disagree with me.  I had cut out spread on my ryvitas at lunch, kept an eye on my level of houmous intake, and had cut down the number of crackers I had for supper.  Plus cutting out and down the amount of walnuts and dates I had been having.  I found it is the little things that add the calories, such as the spread and houmous.  I kept this up for the month of February to March, and the results?

At the start of week 8 (12th March) I weighed 9 61/2.  So a loss of 61/2 over two months.  I was well pleased.  By then I had received two certificates.  One for reaching my target weight, and one for losing half a stone.  I also got a certificate for Silver Fitness.  You have to do 120 minutes of exercise a week.  I found this quite easy.  15 mins walk here, 15 mins of hoovering there, and 30 mins of shopping elsewhere.  This is what is keeping me motivating.  That I have to enter my weight each week, and enter my exercises too.  Knowing that I am keeping a tab of what exercise I am doing, I ensure that I do it.  I asked my mum once if she thought my attitude to exercise had changed, in that when she asked me if I wanted to walk over the road to the garden centre, I used to say no and now I say yes (to get the exercise in), and she said yes.   Result!

So, if you need motivating to lose weight or keep exercising my suggestion is: keep a diary of it somewhere.  As well as on the Slimming World website, I enter my weight weekly on the kitchen calendar.  You could do the same.  So have you any other tips to keep yourself motivated when losing weight or wanting to exercise?  Let me know.