Friday Favorites for February 3, 2012

Posted on February 3, 2012 by FreeRangeChick - Shanti Posted in Friday Favorites | Leave a comment

Friday Favorites for February 3, 2012

featuring DJ Phillips who has a new album which you can pre-order right now!

I have to start my Friday Favorites post with a confession. What follows are not this week’s favorites. I got food poisoning this week. So unless NOT spending my evenings sequestered in the bathroom counts as a “favorite”– and it does rank highly, I must say– I have to go back a bit.

Luckily, the week before last I was in Hawaii getting engaged to my lovely lady and generally enjoying paradise, so I’m not exactly lacking in favorite things! I had three of the best meals of my life on Maui including: a Mahi-mahi fish sandwich from Coconut’s Fish Cafe, a ridiculous Mediterranean Chicken Pita and a platter of fresh Ahi Tuna caught by the owner that morning at Pita Paradise (we went there twice) and an appetizer duo of Spicy Tuna Nachos and Pan-Seared Crab Cakes at a place called Cuatro. It’s impossible to adequately describe how much I enjoyed these meals. I want to never not be eating these things.

Pile that on top of sunsets every night so picturesque that it makes you yell at the horizon, “Really?! Again?!” and a trip up to the summit of Haleakala, a dormant volcano, where there are plants that exist nowhere else on earth and you are literally above the clouds. My cup of favorites runneth over.

-DJ Phillips

I LOVE my daughter!! She was ten months old on the 2nd, and I found myself reflecting more than normal on the intensely joyful and incredible journey we have been on. She is spirited, passionate, determined, and stubborn. I love watching her discover something new everyday. Currently, she insists on waving 58 minutes of every 60 (or so it feels) and the other 2 minutes playing pat-a-cake. Yes, she is ALWAYS on the go!! I have never experienced a love like this… And am so, so in love with that little girl!! I’m so blessed to be her momma.

-Joni

These past 3 weeks I have transitioned into running this blog and the Free Range Chick Etsy store fulltime, leaving 3 part-time jobs behind. As I’m sure you know, no transition comes without some hiccups. My main hiccup happened when I went from spending 8-10 hours a day on my phone and email to just a few hours here and there, leaving me with a lot of quiet time around the house. Since I now spend the majority of my time fulfilling Etsy order for custom Toms I decided to dive into How I Met Your Mother on Netflix which can easily run in the background as I embroider the day away.

The show has been highly acclaimed by my friends for years, but catching up on six seasons was a daunting task. After taking the plunge I was not disappointed. This light hearted sitcom nails both pop-culture and real life issues that everyone faces between college graduation and their early 30′s.

So if you haven’t experienced the joy of How I Met Your Mother I highly encourage you to try it out, and for this edition of Friday Favorites I am signing off the same way Marshall ended his letter to his 30 year-old self. Have a great weekend and A Licky Boom Boom Down

-Shanti

To be honest, finding a ‘favorite’ thing this week was a little tricky. I had a nasty cold for most of the week and spent the majority of my time lying in bed, surrounded with used tissues. Coincidentally, my MacBook got sick at the same time and was shipped to the Apple Hospital to get a new hard drive (among other things).

With all this time in bed and no computer to keep me company, I spent a good amount of time listening to podcasts. I downloaded the ‘How Stuff Works’ app on my iPhone, and it has a plethora of podcasts to listen to. Shows like ‘Stuff Mom Never Told You,’ and ‘Stuff You Missed in History Class,’ to name a couple.

One night I was listening to a show called ‘Stuff to Blow Your Mind,’ and the particular episode was called The Anatomy of a Hangover. Talk about mind blowing. I thought I knew exactly what was going on inside whenever I wake up feeling like death after a night of drinking, but apparently I did not! I had no idea that one of the reasons you have a splitting headache the next morning is because your vital organs are borrowing water from your brain, which causes it to shrink in size. I had no idea aboutmany of the specific processes that happen to rid the toxic junk from our bodies. It was very enlightening and will definitely make me think twice about what I ingest! You can listen to the podcast here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind/id350359306 or by downloading the free app.

- Kate

My Quarter Life Crisis

Posted on February 2, 2012 by FreeRangeChick - Shanti Posted in This 'n That | Leave a comment

Three weeks ago today was my last day at one of my jobs. Last Thursday marked the end of my second job, and Friday, the last day of my third job. I was burned out. At the spry age of 18, I bound off to college ready to take over the music business world. I had dreams of spending 300+ days a year on the road as a tour manager, negotiating a licensing deal with MTV, haggling with concert promoters until you get the correct door split for that night’s show, booking nationwide tours. The list goes on and on. These are all things I did go on to accomplish, plus a lot more (oh, except for the 300+ days on the road, I maxed out at 90 one year, and that was plenty!) I’ve been in the industry long enough that it is rare for me to turn on the radio or go to a concert and not have some connection with the bands playing. The problem is, at the end of the day, there is just not much money in the music industry right now. Yes I can continue to work 80 hours a week and just barely scrape by. Yes I could bite the bullet and go get a corporate office job in the music industry, but well I’m just not really a corporate office type of person! Plus as each year passes the time I get to spend with friends and family becomes more important to me than reaching that next milestone in my music business career.

So when the time came that I started quitting all of my jobs, I knew there was definitely a quarter life crisis settling in. This was not my first go-round with a quarter life crisis (sometime I’ll have to tell you how I cried myself through my 25th birthday.) When this quarter life crisis started weighing down on me, I decided this time I wanted to deal with things differently. I no longer wanted to continue to work 5 jobs to just bring in a little extra cash. I wanted to take a break. A break from everything. Unwind, and really decide what was next in my life. Where I really wanted to be in 5 or 10 or 15 years. For the first time, in quite possibly my entire life, I didn’t have a plan. And it felt amazing. I was at peace with the non-plan, which is very un-Shanti-esque.

In the past three weeks I have gotten a lot done. Partly because I am determined to conquer my entire 12 things to accomplish in 2012 list, and partly because I am sans car for another 5-7 weeks. Either way, I’m in a pretty good place right now. This whole Free Range Chick thing is keeping me pretty darn busy. Just last week I made more money off my Etsy store than I made in an average week working three jobs last year. It’s funny how sometimes when you stop planning, pushing, and worrying about things, they sometime just fall into place, and you know that you are right where you are supposed to be. Well at least until that next quarter life crisis…..

Friday Favorites for January 27, 2012

Posted on January 27, 2012 by FreeRangeChick - Shanti Posted in Friday Favorites | Leave a comment

Friday Favorites for January 27, 2012

featuring Tammy Curry from Tammy-Curry.com

Working on our journey to a sustainable suburban homestead has its ups and down. Probably the biggest upside for us is watching the kids automatically taking the changes into their lives and sharing them with their friends. My youngest shares what we are doing with his friends and invites them over to help work. They happily come over and rake leaves or help with whatever task little man has been assigned to do. My girls can speak eloquently about our endeavors to anyone who will listen. The biggest surprise on that has been how my step-daughter who returned home to us just over a month ago has taken to the changes like a fish to water. She remembered just enough of her life with us before to make the transition easy.

A journey like this one can only work with the whole family on board. Everyday we make one small change to lessen our carbon footprint, to build a more natural wholesome garden and to provide a sustainable lifestyle that will be more of a benefit to our children than to ourselves. The Sustainable Education Initiative will be the life work that my husband and I leave behind for our children and hopefully our grandchildren. You can take this journey along side us. Our theory is that if every family makes one small change to be more “green” it will snowball into a world wide effect of improving the planet and the global economy.

-Tammy Curry

I absolutely hate spending big bucks on workout gear. A bit odd since I will spend big bucks on jeans, yet I spend far more time in my workout clothes than my jeans these day. For Christmas my in-laws got me an Under Armour running outfit, and I absolutely adore it. The coldgear compression leggings are exactly what I have needed these past couple weeks as I hit the road in preparation for The Color Race next week.

-Shanti

My favorite thing this week was easily the giant thunderstorm that broke loose on Austin Tuesday night. There is nothing like crawling into a warm bed while the rain is pouring down and lightning illuminates the room. My dog, Brady, loves storms just as much. He spent the evening laying on the floor with his head on the windowsill, completely caught up in watching Mother Nature hard at work. I love that despite the harshness of a storm, there is something so serene about being inside, safe from the elements. With that said, my least favorite thing this week was waking up the next morning – still pitch black and pouring, and knowing I had to leave the bed for work. Ughh…

- Kate

Amongst the packing and moving plus caring for a sick baby, this 3 barrel jumbo waver has been a lifesaver. Super quick do that looks fab. Can’t go wrong as a super busy mom!!!

- Joni