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Beaming Vegan

Camping July 2018

I’ve been talking Griffin’s ear off for years about how epic of a getaway camping with my grandma is. In the summers he joined me in visiting the Pacific Northwest, we never set out on a single camping trip. Actually, I hadn’t even been since I was about 16 or 17, but the whole thing is pretty unforgettable.

To summarize what I had been telling him: there’s incredible food, breathtaking scenery, the best swimming hole on the planet, and weather you could only dream of for a summer night.

Now we both know that there’s ALSO: more stars in the Milky Way than there are pine needles on the ground, wild mushrooms and berries galore, friendly forest deer that check up on campers regularly, waterfalls around every corner, oh… and morning campfires are our favorite.

When I camped with my family in the past, I was not vegan and joined the gourmet campfire feasts of chorizo breakfast burritos, pancakes and bacon, burgers and hotdogs, pulled pork, steak dinners, etc. but of course we’ve been vegan one year now and for the first time we had to plan camping meals, plus we tried to coordinate with what everyone else was enjoying to avoid any kind of meal time separation. We didn’t want to separately cook an entirely different meal, nor did we want to avoid eating together. I’d say overall we did a pretty darn good job for our first time! Last time we camped we were within a short hiking distance of our house and only went out to sleep. Then we went to the city for brunch… so we definitely did not get the full food experience!

We’ve never really taken our dogs out for multiple days at a time, either. So that was new. I’m super happy we took them though, because they impressed the socks off of Griffin and I and they absolutely loved camping with a group. No matter where Griffin and I were at, we were not worried about our pups because there was always someone walking by the dogs’ lounging area lovin’ up our hounds. This is partly because they have perfected the absolutely pitiful puppy dog eyes, and suckered every passerby into feeling sorry for them. They also occasionally tangled their leashes up in trees [Marble] so someone would come untangle them.

Collectively they were extremely well-behaved and people friendly. Bo enjoyed multiple swims in the river with his dad, and Marble avoided getting wet at all costs. Bo also made a friend out of my Aunt’s new fur baby, Zuben! It’s been years since he’s had a friend close to his own size to play with and it was heartwarming to watch his puppy-like side come out through play. Marble has spent her entire life being sassy toward strange humans so we never put her in social situations. This trip was her first social outing in years and she loved every second of affection she got from her grandma, cousins, and aunts!

This trip was extra special because I wasn’t the person visiting from Kansas this time, having to leave my paradise after only a few days. I was the local, enjoying a visit from my family from Kansas and reminding myself I could make the short trip back whenever I wanted!

Mid-Year Resolution Chat

At the beginning of 2017, I made a commitment to myself (I guess this was a resolution, if you will) to double down on saying “yes”. To invitations to events, to almost every time Griffin asked me to go somewhere that scared me on a hike/exploration, to working more hours, to taking more trips, to following my dreams, and to my dog’s sad eyes when she wanted to play. I didn’t completely succeed, but the resolution hanging over my head prompted a lot more “yeses” than if I hadn’t set it in the first place, and I like to think it became a permanent habit, or something I’m permanently working on.

In 2018 my public resolution was to be an example for people who want to go vegan. Seeing me eating unhealthy vegan foods and staying unfit and unhealthy is not motivation for anyone to go vegan, but seeing others ignore the tragedy that is animal products saddens me more than anything in the world. I resolved to stop ignoring that we can make the world better, save lives, and be healthy. I resolved to be fit, happy, and do good so the world could follow. But my not-as-public resolution (the one that naturally came to me and didn’t leave my brain) was to inspire.

At the beginning of 2018 I saw one of those memes on Facebook where the words flash so fast and you’re supposed to screenshot the image and whatever word is frozen in your screenshot is the word that describes the year ahead of you. Mine was inspire. I was not satisfied with this, not that I truly believe in these things anyway. I just wanted to land on “prosperity” or “adventure” of course. I didn’t even know what inspire had to do with anything. Then I started seeing the word everywhere. In magazines on the stand, on Pinterest, in books I was reading, and in conversations with random people. Not only did I hear and see the word everywhere, but each time I did so, it was in a way that made sense to me and made sense of the word in relation to the new year. I saw that it even tied back to my original resolution, to generally inspire veganism.

I started to see everything I could do to inspire Griffin, my family, a better world in whole… the biggest thing was that I saw myself being inspired. Inspired to launch my blog once and for all, inspired by all the love surrounding me throughout different parts of the year so far, inspired by going home for a quick visit. I also noticed myself being inspired by huge mountain-moving things such as medicinal miracles and people achieving their ginormous goals. I saw that a little inspiration could do amazing things. It’s the spark that lights never-ending fires.

It’s silly but I guess what I’m trying to say is that I settled in with my universe-given resolution. I do believe it was meant to be mine this year, and here in the middle of 2018 I am stepping back and looking at what I can do to keep it in full swing ‘til December and for as long as I live. I hope we’ll do great things.

[Side note: this was written in the middle of the year, I swear ;)]

 

 

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Beaming On: Settling Down

Ellooo friends. Welcome to a new featured series of Beaming Vegan that falls in line with my original intentions for the blog. The “Beaming” aspect of the title came from feeling like the happiest vegan in the world, but also to fill a desire to _____ <- (Insert verb here) on a variety of topics. So, I’ll be beaming on these topics. Starting with settling down.

While reading this I intend for you to keep in mind I’m not referring to getting married and having children. The things we commonly refer to as “settling down”.

I’m talking about something beyond that. You can have a spouse, five kids, and exclude yourself from late nights with the girls, and still not be settled down. The type of settling down I’m referring to is a strange thing society teaches us from a young age to do. Some people who are unable to settle down in this way even aspire to, as it’s what they were taught is the equivalent of success, or an accomplished life. And that’s just not true. Some people are natural born wanderers and get sucked into the path of modern-day “settling down” by accident. It’s a fragile thing, and a conscious decision we choose to make, to avoid doing so.

I met Griffin when I was 16 years old. He was 18 and living in a house of his own, with his own career, vehicles, goals, and food in his fridge. Aside from wondering about that food in his fridge, I also had some major starry eyes over his goals not having anything to do with the common society “settling down”, even when they did tend to fall along the lines of building a house, forever living up the road from our childhood home, getting married a couple years down the line and maybe even having babies. There was always a sense that this was not the equivalent of success. Reaching these goals was not where we would stop dreaming, and that’s what I loved most. There’s an eternity of paths to take in life, and picking one and sticking to it was never the plan. Shaking the world up was our true underlying plan whether we recognized it or not.

When I was as young as a freshman in college, we were in the market for a different house. Or, so we thought. We looked in all the surrounding small towns for something welcoming with acreage and a pond. We almost accepted a near $100,000 loan for a house that fell short of what we wanted and was way more than what we needed. (Who the heck would give two kids this kind of loan?) We tried for the house, but eventually (against my burning desire to nest here) followed our gut instinct that this would hinder our plans to not settle down.

This was absolutely the most wonderful possible outcome of that situation. I wouldn’t be tied to a job I didn’t even get yet with a degree I didn’t earn yet because of my need to finance a house that didn’t really turn out to be what I wanted in a place I didn’t want to live forever (Ha!). The best thing that could have happened to us was what came next (actually a few years later), and it taught me everything I need to know about settling down.

Griffin’s then-dream-career-path took an unexpected turn, and when we rolled with the tides, all of our other plans and goals started falling into place so naturally. We got the privilege of living in a house that had everything we wanted and more, without having to own it, which was perfect because it helped us move across the country at the drop of a hat. If it weren’t for the job change and having nothing to lose (besides way too many belongings), we wouldn’t have felt comfortable hopping over to live in our next stop on the map, the Pacific Northwest.

We came here with the knowledge that we still want to be married, own our next dream home: a cabin in the mountains, and still not settle down. We knew we wanted to explore new career paths, get entrepreneurial with our ever-flowing creativity, travel the world, meet exciting humans and let our future roll out in front of us as smooth as red carpet. Even since that point, we’ve decided to establish residency in other countries, other parts of the world, and the things we wish to accomplish have nothing to do with an income being put to use keeping up with the Jones’s.

Being willing to change plans when it works out in our favor to do so, looking past materialistic things, never reaching a point and saying “We’ve worked long enough. This is where we’ll stop and sit back”. That, to me, is not settling down. Even if society tends to frown upon it, even if it’s exhausting, unsettling at times, whatever may come our way. I think I’ll look back at the end and be more satisfied that I never stopped dreaming and wandering than I would be if I had reached a point I was satisfied with.  I’ll keep rolling with the tides, and being forever thrilled by aspirations I never knew I had falling into my lap and piecing themselves together without resistance.

 

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Ode to a Farmhouse

Hi again friends! I’m back to blogging for good now… I never thought the day would come that I’d get to work full time on making my dreams=reality, and I have Griffin to thank for that. You’re probably confused right now, but have no fear, I’ll get deep on this in a later post.

Right now, I need a smooth transition back into this wonderful world of words, and while I have many political and activism [and so many other BIG IMPORTANT] posts in my queue, I think starting simple and starting slow is the way to go.You’ll notice that these are some raw photos that I clearly never intended to be in a blog post one day! Way easier than capturing and editing new ones right now. 😉

I guess I’m just feeling distant from a place that had a lot to do with who I am right now. Not necessarily distant, but very much in-between. In between arriving to the PNW, and creating a forever home here. I’m in the process of printing thousands of pictures I took at that old home of ours, which I believe will make me feel 100% better, but until then I’d also like to have a little piece of our story at this house on this blog too. I mean after all this is a timeline of my brain you’re reading… and you can’t just have bits and pieces of the story.

Once upon a time 160 acres of Kansas farmland screamed to us through a Facebook post while we were vacationing here in the Pacific Northwest. Living in a little rental in a very tiny town not too far from the advertised farm, we had been seeking exactly what this place had to offer, and much to our benefit it was nearly the same price as what we had been paying for our rental in town. Oh, it was also on the same road Griffin had oil leases on! They were a ways up that road, but still… Having absolutely no chill about feeling it was perfect for us, I brought Griffin in on my idea right there in the middle of vacation and let the owner know I was very interested and would be coming to see it as soon as I returned home. I remember being SO anxious for the rest of the trip imagining the possibility of someone snatching it up before we got home. It was near a town with a nuclear power plant, which employs people from all over the country… Those people tend to cause rent to be very high, and they snatch up the good places before we get a chance to see them.

The owners, old enough to be our grandparents, were extremely flexible and dealt with my pushy behavior so extremely well. Their parents lived in the house before they started renting it. The woman, Diane, was a professional house/building cleaner and was very dissatisfied with the condition of the house. She requested that we not come look at it until it was spotless, but Griffin and I didn’t care about the house in the slightest. We just wanted to tell them we wanted it right then and there over the phone, but obviously needed to peek at it in person first. We’re not that crazy. I insisted that the cleanliness didn’t matter to us and if she wished, I was even willing to help clean it up. She agreed to let us come out one evening while she was cleaning it and we claimed it as our new home before we left that night. Of course, we sat in the driveway with the two of them for a few hours having a friendly chat just as we would our grandparents. Nothing about this place felt wrong.

The aesthetic on move-in day was something I dream of for our future homes. I was probably blinded by the happy-go-lucky lenses over my eyes, but all I could see when we moved in was how I was going to decorate with cute farmhouse accessories, fill the built-in cabinets with our favorite books, cool fresh-baked pies in the window, and spend all my mornings on that glorious front porch. It really wasn’t much [I’ve probably painted some elaborate Joanna Gaines-style farmhouse image in your head… Just go ahead and erase that plz ;)] but it was way more than we imagined. Too big for the two of us and more land than we could ever get enough of. This location also opened the door for so many more job opportunities, and I was all about finding a city job while still getting my laid-back farm lifestyle. Oh, and did I mention it came equipped with cows? 🙂 I love cows.

At first we only wanted it for the privacy, which really never came. We had enough to fill the house… two cars for the garage, one for the car port…a 30 ft. camper that fit its camper car-port like a glove, and all the farmhouse decor I was dreaming of. It was the coziest. It was perfect and superbly flawed all at once.

It’s where I manifested desires to be a canning, cooking, farm-animal-raising kinda gal.

  

In a house that takes the cake for comfort and that warm home feeling we find in one specific place if we’re lucky enough.

   

Surrounded by 160 acres of blissful ponds and cow trails that we just so happened to see as swimming pools and bike trails.

Where we changed our lives for the better, multiple times over and in many ways.

  

Where we welcomed friends and family for sleepovers and bonfires and drinks at the bar in the sun room.

 

Where I decorated for every holiday, inside and outside.

  

Where beloved fur babies I lost by my earthly side mingled and roamed freely.

Where our neighbors/land owners became family.

Where we were struck by lightning for the THIRD time in the unforgiving Midwestern summer storms.

Where we left at the crack of dawn for our first  self-coordinated vacation, as short as it may have been.

Where Bo took himself swimming every time you let him out of your sights on hot days.

Where I jumped into Griffins arms and cried tears of joy after I landed the first job I ever truly loved, after working towards it for a year.

Where we sat on the porch for hours on end. Sharing drinks, sharing stories, watching those storms roll in, serving guests, and drying our laundry [because the dryer never worked].

Where my oil field man bid adieu to the oil field and set sights on fulfilling new dreams.

Where we mapped out and dreamed about every detail of the life we’re starting to live right now.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We soaked in every minute of the life we lived at this place, said goodbye to this comfortable shelter we knew as home and set off on our adventure to the PNW, only not for vacation this time, but for good. Which leads me to where we are now…..

 

 

 

 

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A New Look At Processed Food

Processed food has been a HUGE learning process for myself and Griffin…. We switched to a vegan diet last summer after discovering our desire to be more aware of what was going into our bodies, where it came from and the ethics behind its creation. Obviously, this doesn’t simply lead us to purchasing everything with a vegan certified label on it, as some of those products are tricky and have a massive ingredient label and are equally unsafe compared to their nonvegan counterparts.

I always hear about the three types of vegans joke… is it a joke? I don’t know because it is super accurate lol but the three types of vegans being the plant-only eater, the junk food vegan (consuming candy, chips, pizza, etc.), and the protien over-consuming body builder type vegan. We started as the junk food vegans (and are still climbing out of the junk food hole we’ve trapped ourselves in) and are now trying to eat mostly raw/unprocessed/whole foods. Every time I am in the grocery store I think of how many steps I use to judge a good label… I’m hoping to cut out the hard part for you and give you a few focal points when examining food labels yourselves. Stick with me even if you aren’t vegan (if I haven’t lost you already!) there’s some good stuff you might not consider when approaching processed foods that fall in line with your values and morals when it comes to consumption.

  1. Read the ingredient label FIRST

I can’t count how many times I was on board with a nutrition label and then realized the ingredients inside were indeed NOT as nutritious as they sounded. I usually like to know what every ingredient is, which is a simple rule that knocks out any shades of grey. Now I’m flipping the package over, going straight to the ingredients, and then after deciding the ingredients are simple enough I’ll scan the nutrition label if I’m worried about it being a waste of an opportunity to get some nutrients/protein.

2. Most of the time I realize I can save hundreds of dollars by either making an item at home myself or opting for a natural whole food snack instead.

Why do we pay so much more for a 2-ingredient nutrition bar than we do for a candy bar at a gas station? Make that nutrition bar yourself by the batch and get a better value. (I feel like ranting on this one, but you get it.)

3. Is it worth the waste?

We can’t even comprehend the amount of waste we are creating with our processed packaged foods. Is it worth it? Can you reuse or recycle the packaging easily (and WILL YOU actually do it)? Can the ingredients be grown in a garden or are they developed in a factory then sent to yet another factory to be transformed into our “food”? The creation process could be (I mean it probably is) a waste of energy and resources and harmful to the planet.

4. If you’re just having a craving, RUN AWAY FROM THE FOOD! 🙂

Does it really taste better than a home cooked or whole food, or are you craving the bad stuff? If you have a good grasp on part of the food industry’s tactics and the way junk foods work in our bodies, you already know this is a trap. You eat these sugary fatty foods and crave more as a result. The only way to escape the trap is to be aware of what is actually happening. Replace these foods with things that will actually benefit your body. Also, as mentioned before, make it at home and save $!

5. Be brand smart.

Purchasing from any given brand is supporting that brand’s values. You may disagree with the handling of cattle by the beef industry and cringe at the sight of slaughterhouse exposure videos, but if you’re still buying beef you’re still supporting these acts. Do a small amount of research and make sure you aren’t unknowingly throwing money at a cause you absolutely disagree with. I’m finally sinking myself into the world of cruelty-free makeup and beauty brands…. I find one I believe to be great in one area only to find out I can’t support their values in anther area. Basically, educate yourself to be able to choose wisely.

Finally, we will never get it 100% right. We will keep making mistakes and learning from them, but this is a great place to start to better our pantry and the planet.

 

 

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