teawithsteph's Profile

Some excellent points. I personally have tried many different ways of eating and honestly the more I have tried the more I learn about how my body reacts to everything. I have battled being sick and tired for years and have tried lots of things because I was desperate to feel better. Now finally after over a decade of blood tests, trying all sorts of elimination diets my doctor and I finally figured it out. Started by accident because I was super stressed out so we put me on a simple and restrictive diet to keep the hives and fatigue at bay. I felt better than I had in years. The end result of that was figuring out I have celiacs disease (yes even obese people can have it) and cannot even process any dairy products at all. As a result I feel better than I have in years. Also on my doctors suggestion I eliminated nearly all processed foods and eat only a few grains very sparingly. I even recover from being injured faster than ever.

People need to listen to their bodies, which is hard if you have ignored it or been confused by what it was telling you. Honestly one of the reasons I love hearing about all sorts of lifestyle or specific diets and how people feel on them. People ignore their bodies and often trying a new way of eating helps them learn to listen again.

One thing I do not see mentioned above and is crucial with any dietary or other imposed restrictions is to make your child involved in the lunch making process. If they help assemble and pack the lunch they are more likely to eat it.

I have 2 children and one is about to go into high school and the other is in middle school. We have several severe dietary restrictions (no dairy and no gluten) and they do just fine. We tried all sorts of things and they still prefer rather simple sandwiches or roll-ups in corn tortillas.

As a native Washingtonian I suggest you go walk your neighborhood and talk to some of the neighbors whose yards you particularly admire. I especially love my older neighbors as they are always good for advice and often free starts. My yard is really starting to come together thanks to some of the ladies I have met this way.

Be wary of anything fast growing and check out the official invasive weed list as many of the plants other people suggest are actually illegal to have in WA and you can get fined (which rarely happens anymore).

I will however second our offical WA state flower of a Rhodendren. There are so many different colors and varieties and you can get them with different bloom times even. I particularly like this one I see that has orange flowers and is a bit more spindly in its growth and blooms late summer. The other plant that is even fantastic in full sun is the beloved Hosta. Again you can get green ones with yellow edges to the leaves to continue your yellow accent color or variegated green and white ones. You might even like the huge Blue Boy who has a lovely silverly green color.

I too have found that couponing does not fit my lifestyle or the types of food we eat. I do better with buying store specials or using the store coupons. For example this week there was a coupon for eggs 4 for $5 that was a good deal for our family especially with 2 teenagers.

Sweet! Great review Gregory! Those are nearly all the same things that after having my phone since launch day that I still adore about my phone even now. I have a Samsung Focus as well and the number one reason we chose it over the others was the display.

I like that we now have copy and paste however I find myself using it fewer than 1 or 2 times a week. Multi-tasking I have not had a lot of problems mainly because each thing I use loads quickly. I also have found that my overall time on the desktop has decreased since I find I use my WP7 more and more on a daily basis.

For the soft keyboard haters I recently read an article about the development of that over on wmpoweruser blog. And found out about a free game called text text revolution. I have only played it a few times and it has already increased my speed and accuracy just by playing a fun little game.

The most recent win in our household for the WP7 is that my Mom figured out how to look things up on her phone to help her with the more difficult crossword puzzles she does.

I have seen some of those frames at Michael's craft store.

I am so pleased to see this post. I agree with many of the others about the avocado, nutbutters and coconut milk especially. I have been personally dairy free for 3 and a half years now and cannot believe the difference it made for me. My sensitivity is so severe that even a misplaced cheese shred in my salad can make me sick and miserable for several days. I did not realize the constant pain and discomfort I lived with until it was entirely out of my diet. Now our household is dairy and gluten free for myself and both of our children. Sometimes you have to see the data and then the results of a trial to agree to the severe lifestyle change.

I have plain coconut milk yogurt in my fridge right now to try my hand at making homemade coconut milk yogurt. Yogurt is the one thing I had not been able to find a substitute for so far. The coconut yogurt can be expensive especially for a household with 2 teenagers.

Oh I nearly forgot I found a substitute for whipped cream the other day entirely by accident. I have canned coconut milk that is stored outside in the garage. It was pretty cold and the solids have separated in the cans. To get it to a usable state I had to whip it back together with my immersion blender, it resembled whip cream almost perfectly. So I added a tablespoon of sugar and a splash of vanilla and the kids and I were in heaven with some on our strawberries.

I think this is a neat idea and definitely one I will consider. I live in Wa and to be honest I find plenty of these on the ground after a storm even just outside my house. Ripping them off trees is not even necessary.

I am up in the seattle area and I know some people were able to get the industrial grade felt from Boeing Surplus store. I do not know if it is something they always carry but you might want to check out a similar industrial surplus.

I almost always do a thank you note and a gift card to somewhere that the teacher shops. I ask them, telling them I don't want to give them a little knick-knack that will just clutter up their room so ask where they go to replenish supplies or books.

Today's was a gift card to Amazon for my son's 4th grade teacher. They have neat ones that you can print that include a thank you and a place to customize the message.