Andy's Idea Factory

Ever since the first time I saw one of these systems, I thought, "yes, one day you will have one of those."  The day has arrived. That first time was three years ago, when the Juice Plus Company first released The Tower Garden ® as their newest product of their short list of healthy living items, and a friend came in to the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council 's monthly meeting to show it off.  It wasn't just me. Everyone in the room went, "oooooh," "ahhhhh." Granted, this was a warm audience - a room packed with gardeners, local-foodies, and health nuts - but we oooh'd none the less. For lack of space in our previous quaint home, we held off even though the Tower Garden takes up a total of maybe six square feet.  But as soon as we moved into our new home in December I knew, come fall, we'd be putting together our first Tower Garden®.  And we just did. Let me backtrack a little; we love  to garden.  As soon as the snow melted thi

Great recipe from Lauren Toyota, from Clean Eating !

Updated: Fall 2019 When I wrote this post in 2014, I had recently joined a new community of health-minded individuals, and after five years with Juice Plus, I went back and updated, shorted, and revised this post so you can all see and hear how powerful a consistent practice can be of adding more plant matter to your body.   Our Story – The Kennedys and Juice Plus In 2007, Craig broke his femur waterskiing. Craig is a T-12 paraplegic, meaning his spinal cord was severed at the Thoracic #12 vertebrae, just above his hips. Craig was injured skiing in March 1996 in Steamboat Springs, 2 years after moving to Colorado, just before his 25 th birthday, and has used a wheelchair ever since. It doesn’t slow him down. It didn’t affect his love for skiing.  And it didn’t affect his soulshine. Craig and I met in 1998, at a bar in Steamboat, and we started dating in August 2000. I fell in love with Craig because of his Can-Do contagious attitude, and immediately we started travel

Just in from the Colorado Calligrapher's Guild We are working on an official ‘call-for-entries’ with more detailed information, which will be posted on the Speedball Art Products website ( www.speedballart.com ) the first week in September. If you or someone you know would like to receive a call-for-entry via e-mail, please send the e-mail address to  speedballtextbook@ speedballart.com . In conjunction with the new book, we are planning a website which will have instructional videos and copies of as many of the older editions as we can locate. We are hoping to find someone with copies of the first seven editions (they are horizontal), so please let us know if you have any of these early treasures. The Speedball Textbook book has always been a reflection of the lettering of its time. This special Centennial Edition is our collective legacy - a record of lettering today and an invaluable resource for students of all ages and levels. We invite you to be part of it, and look f

My lesson learned in the last four years is that only YOU will advocate the most for your health. Only YOU know your body best. Know when something is wrong, despite negative tests, medical brush-offs, and a lot of "yeah I have that too, nothing helps." Keep searching for the answer, because healing is within your power, and starts from within. Hypothyroidism  30 million women and 15 million men are affected by a low thyroid - known as hypothyroidism - caused by toxic environments, stress, and a poor food system. Four or five years ago (lost track) my the symptoms started with swollen, painful joints, which lead to the discovery of a gluten intolerance, so I cut out wheat, but the symptoms eventually returned about a year later. So then I cut out all grains, then sugar, then caffeine. Nothing made me feel better, just deprived. I was put on Vitamin D. Vitamin B. Nettles. Apple Cider Vinegar. Probiotics. Nothing made me feel better, just over medicated. I tried more e

Yesterday was my first  Magic of Henna workshop with a great group of women in Moab, hosted by the Moonflower Market and Henna Sooq , and what an exciting afternoon it was!  I was thrilled that over half of the women who attended wanted to jump right in and try it then and there (I had planned on just doing a strand of hair with them)!  All of the participants had similar stories - either they dyed their hair with chemicals and wanted to switch to something natural for various reasons such as burning scalp, or they were sick of the gray and wanted to try something natural. Either way, they were all very eager and willing subjects - so awesome! All had brown hair and wanted to keep their brown color so we used a lot of indigo yesterday - more than I had anticipated - so some of them with longer, thicker hair were going to have to likely do a second round soon, but were ok with doing the top part of their hair. I started out with all my research - the history, the Ayurvedic/medicin

A lot of people ask me what I like to shoot best.  I'll be first to admit, I'm a super lucky girl when it comes to photography (among many things in my life) - I grew up behind the lens on that super-tough stuff called  film in the darkroom, I studied under an Ansel Adams long-time apprentice, and under several other great teachers, too. I have a degree in Visual Arts, and one more for good measure in Travel Photography. I'm well traveled.  And to me, what this all means the most is practice.   And practice always leads somewhere. I've been published, awarded, and covered.  I'm the volunteer Event Photographer for STARS , and as Marketing Director for YVSC I get to shoot all our events too. And on the side, I shoot for a little extra business here and there... a wedding a year, some headshots, some homes, some pets, some food, and random fun calls for things like engagement shoots or new skis, or an occasional instructional session... and I truly do love all  of

As you know from many blog posts about it , I am ecstatic about henna and what it's done for me, in order of importance: the overall health of my hair and scalp, the all-natural solution, the compliments-attracting color, the independence, the low cost... so of course, for all those reasons I am forever talking it up to my girlfriends - whether they already dye their hair or not, but especially if they do.  So far I have three friends who have gone with henna after my encouragement and all of them have gorgeous, lustrous, vibrant hair of various colors now! To continue to add validity to this topic, here's the story from the latest convert:  (Thanks Alicia for sharing!!) My henna experience…. Alicia Wright of Bella Sol Spa   I have to say first and foremost, I love henna! At first, I was nervous about my hair turning red, and I was not ready to take the plunge.  The grey hair that crept up on my head as my roots grew out had me frantic about solutions. Not having the ri

View previous posts on Henna: 1- About Henna and my process 2- The first dying 3- Other products from Henna Sooq 4- Cleansing and Independence It's been almost a year since my last Henna post and I realized I have a few things to report that might be useful! If you've read the other posts, you'll know I'm a meticulous person. I like researching something until I know it fully, and then I like developing my own process and adapting it. I was made for an R&D department, unfortunately I'm not in that career, oh well. Accordingly, I've studied Henna until I'm blue in the face. I've found an awesome provider at Henna Sooq (my only complaint is that they run out of the good stuff so you have to plan ahead, a funny story on that to follow). And I've tried several new hair products now so that I'm proud to say there are no chemicals on my head any more. After two years, I feel I have this process honed. Here's what I continue to learn a