numero uno

Hello there!
Bear with me as this is my first ever blog... and although I was in college for 5 years(Psych major-whoop whoop) and have written many papers I am still human and am bound to make several grammatical errors, along with punctuation errors. (you may have already found some, but hopefully not)

SO--

Why did I feel the need to start a blog, and who am I? (I'm still somewhat asking myself these questions) I'll try to give you a bit of a background without going too far down the yellow brick road.
My name is Lauren Maki and I was born in the South but raised in the North. We northerners get our fair share of comments and concerns about where we live but personally I love it! It's pop not soda, ok?😉  I am a bit of an Earth child so I love all 4 seasons and all things pertaining to nature, however I like to think I still have a bit of balance and I do respect modern day luxuries, medicine, and conveniences... hence this blog. I am married to a Wonderful man and together we have 3 lovely little children...or as we like to call them hooligans. Together, both my husband and I grew up in families who felt strongly about health and natural solutions so if you're following my flow I believe most of my writing will be about these things however, much of my day to day absurdities will also be interwoven.

I have the tendency to be a random, blunt, silly, extroverted big mouth. I am passionate about things I believe in so I tend to get a bit excited; if you don't like it please understand it comes from a big heart and a good place...(however if you really don't like it maybe this isn't the blog for you) 😳
I have many passions and fancies and I love learning new things... and now I will try to cram myself into a some words separated by commas and such...

      I have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, I am a child of God, and have a strong love for Our Lady. I have a passion for gardening, making a house a home, and watching things grow.  I'm a big fan of wine, coffee, tea, and dirty chia teas. We have a fixer upper house that I love and sometimes want to set on fire. I love reading, poetry, podcasts, jocko podcast is my favorite, and music! (I was a huge choir lover in high school) I am rich in beautiful friendships and love in my life; I am not thankful enough. I love all things to do with the Great Lakes, beach combing, and have a small business with a gal pal called Willow and the Reed (www.etsy.com/shop/willowandthereed). I'm an optimistic skeptic about most things, I love baking sourdough bread with my own starter, I'm an essential oils, herbs, and natural remedies of all kinds believer! I have had 3 home births and plan on having more. I love to collect bittersweet in the autumn (a tradition passed down by my lovely mother), going to farmers markets, and antiquing.  I am impatient, loud, and a lover of life and people.  I LOVE to laugh, hike, climb, cloud watch, and be outdoors.  I have a feeling I may one day turn into a bird watcher with a sweet pair of binoculars and I am terrified and beyond excited about what my future holds.

OK-- thats good enough on me for now.. I'll share more in the future if you all don't get too bored reading it.

Now onto the real reason I started this blog-- "Health, Wealth, and Happiness!" (the movie 'Just Married' get it? ) ehh no? Actually it'll mostly just be about health 😉 or really natural living.

So how did I get started on this journey? A tad bit over 4 wondrous years ago my husband and I found out we were expecting our first child. This was incredibly exciting news for us and without going too far into my pregnancies and home birth stories (I will be save them for another time and a future blog.. if you're not sick of me by then) this is where our journey began.
At the end of November we had our first beautiful and perfect little girl. I remember looking at our sweet baby so absolutely perfect in every sense of the word; it was intimidating! Anxiety crept up into me like it never had before. The world all of a sudden became an absolutely terrifying place; germs, accidents, pet dander, seasons, people, cars, everything! I was actually quite tempted right then and there to become a hermit and keep our perfect jewel in a bubble. (I still sometimes think this sounds like a good idea😉) However I am Not a hermit and I do my best to let our children experience all that this life has to offer: the beach, dirt, cooking, playing, sunshine, rain, snow, sand, boo boos, arguing, loving, talking back, laughter, silliness, dancing, imagination, insert all of the things!

Fast forward through our little sweet peas first wondrous year of life to right around the time when we started to introduce food. Our sweet girl had always had a bit of eczema and had some allergies to pets but we hadn't thought much of it... until we started to try and give her food.  We started first with baby food and then moved to more adult food which I believe was dairy, greek yogurt possibly?  Her reaction wasn't too bad at first until about 10-15 minutes after eating it and she started to have a bit of labored breathing followed by her losing her little voice. Terror started to rise as we witnessed our daughters first allergic reaction (call doctor, husband goes to get Benadryl, I put her bathtub to try and calm her breathing, trying not to show my stress, anxiety, and feelings of uselessness). Now adays I handle these types of situations much differently, but mind you this is our first little baby and we have next to NO idea what we are doing.

Side note: it may be just me (I doubt it) but I Never thought having a baby would be a terrifying thing. IT IS! I remember right after she was born looking at her sweet little face and thinking "we made this!" "we have to keep you alive!" "we are parents!" these thoughts and numerous others must have consumed my brain constantly in those first couple of weeks.

OK- so we got her a blood test and took her to an allergist to see what she was allergic to after she had a few more terrifying reactions (labored breathing, losing voice, etc.) and found out she has dairy allergies, peanut allergies,  and egg allergies to name a few. All right... what in the heck do we feed this little nugget of ours? This was a large cross we had to bear as new parents and there were many discussions about how to handle it the best way.  Little did we know that this so called "cross" would end up putting us on a path of balance and healthy living. This journey was not a quick one and I am STILL learning to this day and I love it! (At least I love it now)

I always thought I was a decently balanced person when it came to diet and nutrition and what I put into and onto my body; but once I started to delve into the research, books, nutrition and all of it I realized that I was balanced maybe to our modern day standards but not to where my body and family's bodies needed me to be. So what do we do when we are a bit out of balance? We grow. I started to get into herbs and natural remedies.  When it came to food and diet we started to eat less cheese, got rid of milk, and I started to read the backs of boxes and packages.. and thats when I saw it, the lies of the food industry. I thought the food we were eating was healthy but boy was I wrong. I was sold by the words of "low fat" "lowers cholesterol""sugar free" and the like... READ THE BACK of the packaging. If you can't pronounce 90% of the ingredients in the food you're eating I think there is a problem. I started watching documentaries and reading books (Michael Pollan is one of my favorites) and when the bread at the store has over 20 ingredients and you can make it at home with 3-4 ingredients there is an issue.. no wonder people suffer from a new problem called "gluten intolerance" which is not the same as Celiacs disease.
So I stumbled onto one of my now favorite passions. Sourdough bread made with wild caught yeast.

Here are my very first loaves. ^^Yes they are almost as flat as pancakes but I was proud of these babies! (the story of how these loaves came to be is quite the laugh and I will probably share about it in the future)

Here are some loaves I made a few weeks ago.  These loaves of bread are made with 3 ingredients: flour, salt, and water. Yes, I am making it sound much easier than it is. This bread has been an exciting challenge for me and without going further into the process I think the saying "nothing good comes easy" will suffice.

Now going a bit further down the path. I have touched (actually barely scraped the surface) on diet and herbs, now onto essential oils.  Essential oils I was a skeptic on for years.  To be honest I thought it was just what was "trending" at the moment and I really don't care for "trending" things.  I have a few people who are close to me who loved them and even then I was hesitant to commit to them or believe the people who loved them for that matter. As I stated earlier I come from a naturopath family and they were big on homeopathy -- which I have tried numerous times but still think they are just glorified sugar pills. I'm sorry homeopathy lovers, just keeping it real. So I figured essential oils might be a bit like that, sort of a "self fulfilled prophecy" kind of a deal.  Slowly I started to acquire essential oils mostly for scenting my house, because I have a mini stroke every time I go into a place like Yankee Candle. I originally bought some inexpensive essential oils off of amazon, until I smelled the difference of dōTERRA after receiving samples and I also many oils as gifts.  I finally decided that for the most part I was really liking them and unlike the oils you buy off of amazon I could actually look up the process of dōTERRA oils (distillation, where they come from, things of that nature). I liked that they were safe not only to put in the air, but on my skin and into my body.  That opened up a bunch of doors for me: cooking, homemade cleaners, bug repellent, health issues, scenting my house and purifying the air, I could go on and on.

-- This picture was one of my first tries at French macarons, not the prettiest sight but hey! They were yummy. *Lemon with a honey lavender buttercream.

Now! I have pretty much caught up to where I am now currently in my life. I will go into all of these different health adventures more in detail in future blogs and I will do my best to make them less of a chaotic disorganized mess as I have somewhat done with this one. I am always a work in progress. If you feel called go ahead and leave me some feedback, good or bad! (however if its bad or I've ticked you off please don't be a complete jerk about it and if you can't contain yourself at least PM me your beef😉)

I think that's about it for me! first blog is officially done. Holy moly and good grief! If you made it this far your pretty awesome... and I would like to give you an air high five.