Cleansing Myself of Boots with Lots of Fruit

I'm halfway through a week long yoga/fruit cleanse which I started on Saturday. Before that, I'd cut out alcohol for 2 weeks and coffee for a week. The cleanse itself is 7 days straight of yoga and the food part of the cleanse is this:

Days 1,2,6, and 7
Breakfast:
Organic yogurt with almonds
Herbal tea

Lunch/Dinner:
All whole foods, meaning a piece of fish or baked tofu or organic chicken
Organic fruits and veggies
Herbal tea

Days 3,4,5
Fruit cleanse
All fruit

Cleansing and following a discipline with food is challenging. It really puts things in perspective and gives me a greater understanding of my choices and habits. Am I eating cereal late at night because I want to feel comforted? Am I drinking too much coffee because I'm not sleeping enough? Am I gorging myself because I didn't do a good job snacking during the day? Why am I not satisfied???

With this investigation of myself and my relationship to food, I can't help but ask the same questions of my material spending/wanting habits. I notice that when I've started shopping in the past, its never enough and I can't seem to stop. My friend Faith mentioned something similar the other day.

With fall approaching, my inclination is to want new fall stuff: boots, sweaters, etc. I've been in and out of thrift stores on the prowl. I don't NEED any of these things, but something in me craves them because its become a habit. Also, I love the fall and how it feels like a new start. I've also began a new relationship and the dumb girl in me wants to look cute all the time and have new clothes to show myself off. But I don't need anything. I have a new start and a new guy without a new pair of boots, as silly as that might sound. I don't need to impress anyone. They are already impressed. :)

So I'm cleansing not only my mind of food habits, but fall shopping habits.

-Courtney

Cult of Less

A yoga student of mine sent me this link and I wanted to share it with all of you. Enjoy! ~Stacey

Getting Creative

I’ve had to get creative in order to accomplish/create some things that I usually would have bought without batting an eye. This involves a little thinking outside the box, which I’m enjoying very much.

Because I'm a writer, I always have a "board" up. This is what I use to plot out story ideas by clipping sequences of events and themes on ribbon with clothes pins. Recently, I’d run out of ribbon and I pondered where I could find some used. I searched a few different thrift stores, but came home empty handed. I was at the last thrift store I could think of, a bit discouraged, when I saw a bag of ties bunched together for $1.99. They were beautiful colors, very long, and I decided to try to string them together and use them instead of ribbon. It worked out lovely, and it’s actually sturdier and easier to pin my ideas, too. How cool. I’ll never go back to ribbon again!

Second thing is this: I helped organize a bachelorette party over the weekend for a friend. The bride-to-be loves cupcakes, and I wanted to do something fun and slightly inappropriate for her, so I decided to bake cupcakes and make them sexual in some way. In the past, I would have just gone to party city or an adult store and bought some plastic penises and slapped them on top of the icing. But instead, I had to think about this and get creative. While looking around my cabinets, I found gummy worms and bears, so I cut the worms in half and attached the bears to the side of each worm to look like a penis and balls. A total riot! What do you think? Fun, right?

-Courtney