Redmond Trading Company Product Review

I am really excited to say I have been given the wonderful opportunity to write about some of my favorite natural health products from Redmond Trading Company. They were so generous as to offer me an array of products that I have been testing out for the past few weeks and now get to share my thoughts about with you!

So without further ado…

Facial Mud Mask- I love this product. It is made from clay and water. That’s it. Nothing like the facial masks you would find at the drugstore. It’s not riddled with chemicals and preservatives and it works really well. I have occasion breakouts and this really calms them down. It’s also a really relaxing excuse to watch an episode on Netflix.

Bath Salts- Similar to all of Redmond’s products, these bath salts have a short ingredient list. It is real salt, unrefined, filled with trace minerals. I went out and bought a small storage tub as a makeshift spa tub for soaking my feet with the bath salts. You can also use it in the bathtub obviously. It’s not an oily salt so it will not leave you or your tub slippery and greasy. The minerals soak in through your pores and make your skin really soft.

Earthpaste- I have been using Earthpaste for over a year and according to my dentist, I have perfect dental health. This toothpaste comes in three flavors, all made with clay and essential oils: Peppermint, Wintergreen, and Lemon Twist. All are very good and leave your mouth feeling even cleaner than traditional toothpaste (also drinking orange juice right after doesn’t destroy your taste buds).

Seasonings and Salt- I was pleasantly surprised to find that Redmond had a line of seasonings. I’ve tried garlic salt, onion salt, seasoned salt, and Real Salt. All are really good swaps for regular seasoning and table salts. I was hesitant to start using the seasonings because it visually looks different. Redmond doesn’t refine their salts, meaning they don’t strip it of the naturally occurring nutrients. I thought I would be able to taste the difference and I was worried it would affect my recipes, but I was glad to find it didn’t. I highly suggest switching to Redmond for Real Salt because you’d be surprised to find that your table salt has been rid of everything great about natural salt and has unnecessary additives.   

Dehydrated Clay- There’s a lot of ways you can use the clay powder. You can make fresh facial mud or toothpaste and store them in an airtight glass container. You want to make sure that the clay doesn’t touch metal as it can draw out toxins from the metal and you don’t want that in your bloodstream. A more ambitious way to use the clay powder is internally. Clay is actually really good for digestion and stomach problems, (perhaps for more severe problems consult a physician) and drawing out toxins from your body.  To ingest the clay, add a little bit to a large glass of water. Getting dehydrated clay would be ideal for someone who enjoys making their own products.

EarthCure Soap- If you have ever wanted a natural soap that doesn’t kill good bacteria, I suggest this. I had tried a bunch of different soaps from organic grocery store soaps, to Lush’s handmade soaps, but none have been really good hand soaps. I use Lush as a body wash but when you’re washing your hands to make dinner, you don’t really want particles of plants all over your hands. EarthCure soap is a foaming soap that is made only with natural ingredients. I have Peppermint scented soap and I really like that oil for disinfecting. I am kind of germaphobic so I wash my hand a lot and this soap doesn’t dry my hands out like other kinds do. It also comes in Lavender and Citrus which I am probably going to order right after I stop writing about it.

To browse Redmond’s amazing products go here!

Also be sure to follow Fly With Time via email! 

Dealing With Expectations

One of my biggest flaws is that I expect a lot from myself. I think, now that I’m not a teenager, I need to be successful at everything right away. I get down on myself for not being a perfect eater, for not working out enough, for sleeping in ever. I have lost a lot of sleep just worrying and picking on myself for not being perfect already.

So to combat my Type A, perfectionist self, I made a list (naturally). In my list, I wrote down everything that I expect of myself. Then I wrote down everything that other people expect of me. It’s quite overwhelming to look at. There are small things, such as being expected to put my dirty dishes in the dishwasher, to big things like figuring out what I’m going to do for my whole life.

I decided to go through my list and cross off anything that was a reasonable expectation so I could have a more focused look on the difficult ones. They were things that I had no idea how to manage and things that I wasn’t sure I wanted to maintain.

A huge part of the reason why anybody stresses out is because of expectations. To anyone who feels like they are drowning in expectations, you can choose which ones apply to you. If someone expects you to be there for them 24/7 and they don’t appreciate you and could easily survive without you, you can choose not to be there for them anymore. You don’t have to live up to unreasonable expectations. You decide which ones you want to live by because every day you wake up, it is you living in your body. No one else. It’s your life that is affected by your actions.

I still have a hard time letting things go. I get angry because people think things or expect things from me that I resent, but it’s a learning process. So, Internet Friends, I ask you now to make a list of expectations. A huge list. Get a little anxious about it. Then pick and choose what you want to do. It’s not selfish to hone in on yourself. You have to put yourself first. 

Fly With Time Goes to Etsy

My Harry Potter obsession just got real.

As of a few weeks ago, I have begun making Harry Potter wands and I opened up my own Etsy account. You can just call me Ollivander. 

So welcome to Fly With Time, the shop who's owner likes to whittle wooden sticks with a hunting knife on her front porch surely scaring the postman, all in the name of art (for the sake of Harry Potter appreciation, because you really can't take it too far). 

So if you've ever liked one of my DIY craft blogs, you'll probably like the wands I've made. 

Check out my shop here! Four wands are listed now, but many more are to come.

Also new to my blog is a "Contact Me" section with an email specifically for my blog. Any comments, suggestions, questions, or general curiosities are welcome. I created the email account for those who have told me how difficult it is to leave a comment on my blogs without having a Google Plus account. 

Thank you for reading :)

Julia

https://www.etsy.com/listing/238089011/handmade-hermione-granger-inspired-wand?ref=shop_home_active_1

https://www.etsy.com/listing/238188256/handmade-harry-potter-inspired-wand?ref=listing-shop-header-1

https://www.etsy.com/listing/238087681/handmade-harry-potter-inspired-wand?ref=listing-shop-header-2

https://www.etsy.com/listing/237489728/handcrafted-hermione-granger-wand?ref=listing-shop-header-3

Book Review: Moon Time by Lucy H. Pearce

About a year ago I bought a book called, Moon Time: a guide to celebrating your menstrual cycle by Lucy H. Pearce, and it was just what I needed.  So many women have this idea that their periods are gross and that no one needs to talk about it, so it often is not discussed. I remember as a young girl I was always really excited to get my first period, but when I did I hated it. No one told me what cramps were going to feel like, I don’t think I was even aware that cramps hurt. I didn’t know how to deal with it, or the PMS, and I began to rue the day that I was excited for something so torturous. It really is a problem that menstruating is not on open topic of discussion. It’s the reason why any of us exist, so why can’t we all get over the “ick” factor and move on.

Moon Time is incredibly life altering if you really want to improve your relationship with your menstrual cycle and yourself. Pearce is not an author to write a book for profit. You can tell with every page that she cares about you and your growth as a woman. She teaches you the beauty of your cycles, how to care for your body and soul in natural and loving ways. I suggest having a journal that you keep with you as you read it. There are sections of the book that are interactive. She will ask questions to which you should respond. I go back and read my answers now from a year ago and I’m glad I have that insight. This book takes you through a metamorphosis with not just how you think about your cycles, but how you treat yourself because of them. I really cannot stress how important it is that women’s views on their periods need to change. We really should be celebrating them, not popping Advil and hating them for being an inconvenience.

If you are even a little bit curious about this book, I highly recommend you pick it up. Open yourself up to new ideas.

http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Time-guide-celebrating-menstrual/dp/1468056719/

To find other inspiring books by Pearce, check out her website.

http://dreamingaloud.net/

Feminism vs Hypocrisy

Mark Ruffalo has recently come out swinging at the “I am not a feminist,” movement and until I read that, I had no idea that such a thing existed. In order to understand the situation a little better, I looked up the tumblr page dedicated to women against feminism. I sit here now reading posts by women everywhere listing reasons why they don’t need feminism. Overall I have found that these women have no idea feminism really is. 

I’ve had multiple conversations with other women who are afraid to call themselves feminist because of this stigma that it is a dirty word used by men-hating women. People seem to think that feminism now consists of women who want special treatment. 

I will admit that I’ve met people who claim to be feminist and use it as leverage to complain about their misfortunes and pull the gender card whenever possible. These women do not understand what feminism is. Feminism is about equality. It’s not about getting special treatment. It’s not about oppressing men. These women who claim they don’t need feminism are so caught up in this horrifyingly trendy fad that they don’t understand that without feminism their lives would be extraordinarily different. 

One woman wrote that she feels she doesn’t need equality because it already exists. I understand that not everyone in the world will feel the effects of inequality, but that doesn’t mean it’s made up. Personally, I am disgusted by this ignorant movement. Their ignorance is not an opinion, it is a fact. Inequality is not imaginary, it’s something that women deal with every single day, it’s something I’ve witnessed and experienced, and women who are actively fighting their pursuit of equality should be countered. Something I hope everyone who thinks that feminism is a dirty word takes away from this is that there is a difference between hypocrites and feminists. 

True feminism is about equality, and that is something that does not exist yet. Of course there are people who take it too far, but extremists exist everywhere and an entire movement towards better treatment of people should not be tarnished because of a few people who crossed a line. Sound familiar?

Advice for Loving Life pt. 3

On the eve of my twentieth birthday before I fell asleep, I took some time to reflect on my teenage years and although there were some major cringe-worthy memories I was actually sort of impressed with myself.  In the past three years especially I’ve done things that really made me feel like a human. 

As a woman it is easy to sometimes feel limited in your decisions and actions, but when you go against the grain it feels so good.  These are some things that I really feel that every single woman should do ASAP.  

1)      Cut your hair off.  All of it.  I can tell you, from experience; there is nothing quite like coming home from the salon with the back of your head buzzed.  It was one of the scariest decisions I’ve made.  There were multiple instances where people thought I was a boy and many more where I felt ugly and spent a half hour crying. I thought I needed to compensate.  I thought, since I have a boy haircut I need to stop biting my nails so they look more feminine. Or I should wear makeup and dresses now so people don’t call me a boy.  I did all that for a little while until I got sick of it.  I learned to be way more comfortable with myself and my body. I stopped being upset about what people thought because at the end of the day, it wasn’t their life, it was mine and I wasn’t going to let them ruin a single day of it.  I didn’t hide behind my hair.  It was so freeing.  I can truthfully say it took away an body images I’ve struggled with.   

2)     Get muddy. Along with my short hair, I started acting a little less conservatively.  In some ways I guess I was motivated by the fact that I could emulate a man, I did something that was new to me.  I started hiking.  And in no way is that a man’s activity, I always never thought I should do it.  My favorite things about hiking are the moments when I am afraid I might get hurt.  One particular moment I love the most happened while I was trekking up the side of a creek.  It was fairly steep and icy.  I was using tree branches to help me not to tumble to my imminent doom.  There was a moment when I slipped and I thought I was going to fall, then my foot slide and caught on a tree root and my ankle twisted. My palm got scraped by the branch I was holding on to and my heart was in my throat. Things like that don’t happen every day and I think that women are sometimes too afraid of getting hurt so they don’t push themselves. Just the feeling of knowing I was strong enough to keep going after the thing I was afraid of happened, it gave me a thrill.  I would definitely twist my ankle again for more moments like that.

3)     Be weird.  I am naturally wacky, so this was easier for me.  I am a big proponent for seeing how strange you can be until you embarrass yourself.  Recently I was in my car and an awesome song came on and I thought to myself, man this song is so good I want to scream, (you know that really fun yell/scream people do in movies in convertibles?).  Well, I went to yell but I hesitated and went silent.  It was almost too embarrassing to do in a car by myself in traffic headed to work.  I have moments like this where I will be singing my lungs out to Christina Aguilera then stop because I don’t want myself to notice I’m enjoying being an idiot.  I have found the best way to counter your filter is to be even weirder.  I make chicken noises, do interpretive dances, and make goofy faces to myself.  I think weirdness is essential to being happy.

A lot of what I just talked about really boils down to going outside your comfort zone, so if I were to give one bit of advice to women and girls who are unhappy it would be to go so far out of your comfort zone that you build an immunity to it.  That’s when you begin to feel special.  

Love Can't Wait

Recent events in my life have sparked my thoughts about inequality in society right now.  I just dealt with some raging sexism at work and I realized it was the first time that I had personally dealt with the effects of inequality. I knew that we needed feminism and I’ve been an open supporter of it since I was little, but I was always coming from an outside perspective.  Now that I can say that I have been personally affected by sexism, I understand in a very minor way what the problem is.  A lot of people that aren’t supporters of feminism and think we’re already fixed don’t understand the effect it has on people.  The same thing happens with the LGBT community.  I have some real life experience that I can share with all of you about the bullying in schools towards gay people. 

During my senior year of high school, there was this boy who gave my friend and me a particularly hard time.  As us girls who are very close, hetero or not, we hold hands.  It was not uncommon for my friend and me to walk to our next class hand in hand.  We were not a couple, just really comfortable being as close as we were.  Every so often, after our lunch period, we would have an unpleasant encounter. 

One day in particular I remember, we were walking down a hall with very few people in it and from behind us came this boy who went right between us knocking our hands apart.  It wasn’t crowded in the hall so he had plenty of room to walk around us.  This sort of thing happened a few times and looking back at it now, I probably should have done something more than saying “What the f***?” because I can only hope that he will not do that to other people.  We thought it was rude and homophobic but we weren’t hurt by it so we didn't do anything.  

One other incident that only I experienced one time happened when I was walking to class alone in a hallway and he was coming in the opposite direction.  As we passed each other, he turned to me and said “Dyke,” then walked away.  As a person who doesn’t offend easily I kept walking and laughed it off, but I always worry that I wasn’t his only target and he was taking it easy on me.  There were plenty of other people in the school that were gay and I regret a lot that I didn’t do anything to stop him.  I might be lucky enough to have thick skin, but not everyone is. 

Whenever people say that we don’t have to protect the LGBT community, that they chose this life and need to deal with it alone, I’m always very upset by that.  Some states don’t include gay people in policies protecting from harassment, Indiana can refuse service, and now someone wants a bill passed that legalizes shooting gays in the head.  

Why in the world are people so offended by the idea that someone wants to kiss the same gender that they think murder is acceptable? I will never fully understand it and it terrifies me.  I am scared for the people involved in hate crimes and I am extremely upset for people who feel like they don't belong in this world.  Believe me, you do. Much more than someone who wants you out of it. 

I really hope that that boy either stopped or was stopped and that he didn’t make someone’s life miserable.  I say this as an apology to whoever has to deal with people like this.  I’m sorry I didn’t do anything then.  I also say this as a message to people who see this happening and I urge you to say something. As for the people who are perpetrators of harassment or worse.  You spend such a short time on this planet.  How about you focus some energy on healing it, not hurting it.