With all that is going on in Japan right now many are concerned about the effects of nuclear fallout reaching them. Potassium Iodide and Iodine are sought after in regards to radiation exposure so it is no wonder that sales of these are going nuts right now. But please don’t pay $500 for a packet of potassium iodide pills that were selling for $10 last week. There are natural sources of iodine that you can look to and Potassium Iodide and Iodine can help your glandular system after radiation exposure.

This concern is not foreign to me actually because I had to think about this issue once before… when I dosed myself with radiation for a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan, which is basically a nuclear medicine imaging technique. It was awful to sit in a cold time capsule like room and and watch a nurse get a syringe out of a lead box, locked in safe, and inject you with it. I think I would have bolted had she donned a Hazmat suit. But hearing those words “cancer free” just meant too much to me at the time.

Anyway, I am familiar with getting iodine via IV and loading up on iodine rich foods to try and counter any negeative effects. The sea is our friend in this regard. Natural iodine sources include sea vegetables and seaweed… kelp, spirulina, chlorella, blue-green algae, kombu, nori, etc. Not only do they contain iodine they are also extremely helpful in detoxifying the body of  heavy metals, which is always of concern with radiation exposure. So if you are worried it may be time to start adding spirulina powder (what they gave children in Chernobyl) to your smoothies, munching chlorella tablets, and eat that surf clam seaweed salad or miso soup at your local sushi bar.

Other foods to try for their protective and/or detox qualities:

Reishii (a mushroom)
Green and black teas
Garlic
Dandelion
Nettles
Burdock
Ginseng
Lentils
Collards
Mustard Greens

Other methods:

Epsom salt baths
Baking soda baths

Even if you aren’t concerned about what is going on in Japan this is always good info to have, especially since our own government is in love with nuclear power. And we can expect more of these events in the future unless we (as a planet) make a move away from dangerous fuel sources. Until such time it is not a bad idea to add Potassium Iodide Tablets to your emergency supplies kit… after the prices come down of course.

My youngest guy is a bit a grazer and a night time eater. He will rarely sit down and eat a whole bowl of cereal or yogurt but give him a bento box filled with nuts or flax chips and he will munch slowly for a couple hours until he has managed to eat it all. Like me, he struggles to find the appetite to eat in the morning. Not sure why that is. So in order to vary things and encourage him to eat more in the morning hours… I have been giving him a variety of foods to eat in small quantities… usually just a little bit of all the stuff he loves and it has worked like a charm. This is his breakfast bento for the morning/afternoon.

Greek yogurt, dehydrated banana chips drizzled with nut butter (almond/hazelnut I think), oatmeal w/cranberries, and trail mix with pepitas, nuts, chocolate chips, raisins, ect. To drink is a green smoothie with spinach, collards, turnip greens, wheat grass powder, and frozen fruit.

The nifty stainless steel divided plate (or bento style tray) and the matching stainless steel cup are from Yellow Margosa. They are non leaching and safe for kids to use. LOVE them! Safer than plastic and not as breakable as ceramic and glass.

For my breakfast I think I had a bite of everything I gave him and a quart of that green smoothie. Yum!

The glass straws can be found here.

I have enough water bottles I tell ya. Between my glass water bottles from Lifefactory, my adorable stainless steel water bottles from Blue Q, and my Intak water bottle, I have got the water bottle situation covered.

That was until I saw this:

The Contigo AUTOSEAL Kangaroo Water Bottle with Storage Compartment. BPA Free!!

I just joined a gym recently and faced the common conundrum of what to do with the small stuff that I want to keep on hand while I exercise… like my gym card and the key for the lock I put on my locker. Also when I go hiking, do I leave my purse in the car or do I just put the bare minimum in my pocket… ID, cash, debit card, key, etc?

I have to tell ya I am seriously  in love with this bottle and can’t wait to get my hands on it. I don’t like taking a glass or metal bottle to the gym, especially the pool area and I am always worried stuff in my pockets will be lost on hikes. This may be the perfect solution. Comes in several pretty colors but I am partial to this turquoise one.

What is your preferred bottle for the gym or for outdoor adventuring?

If you have artistic kids and you want to add another element of social awareness to your lives (and who doesn’t) you may be interested in a kids design contest being run by The Company Store in honor of their 100th anniversary. I rarely post about things like this but their concept just rubbed me the “right way”. Giving cool comforters to kids who are homeless or going through home transitions just seems like a great way to give needy children a sense of home no matter where they are.

Their Kids’ Design Contest, is a program geared at inspiring creativity while supporting art education and charitable work among America’s youth.  Under this initiative, The Company Store will accept original artwork from children 12 years and under.  The winning piece will be transformed into a comforter print for their ongoing Buy One, Give One Comforter Donation Program, in which The Company Store donates a new comforter to a homeless child for every comforter sold. Submissions can be uploaded to www.Facebook.com/CompanyKids.

If you are looking for some after school art ideas this may be a fun one to try…

Read and AMAZING book over the weekend. One of those books that can really change your life it you let it. The Happiness Project chronicles the one year journey of author Gretchen Rubin as she tries to find ways to increase her happiness everyday.

Now she wasn’t depressed or even unhappy really. She had/has a very good life but she still found that she had trouble living in the moment and “feeling” that happiness that she knew she should be feeling. She was nagging her husband, being short with her kids, blowing off friends, and in general not making every minute count. So she decided to start a one year happiness project where she studied happiness, started singing in the mornings, acting happy even if she wasn’t feeling it, cleaning her closets, and trying to have more fun.

This book resonated with me for a couple reasons. Like the author I have a good life and tons of reasons to be happy. I have great kids, a great husband, a nice home, we don’t struggle with money or have any real problems. But I also have trouble sitting back with a smile and thinking .. “I am happy right now”. Why is that? I have the habit of thinking “I will be happy when”…. and then following that up with some dream or goal. The problem is… when you reach that goal it changes to something else or if you haven’t managed to reach that goal then happiness feels elusive to you. That might make sense if there were not a hundred other things you could be and should be happy about right now!

Another reason I liked this book is because I started my own happiness project of sorts at the beginning of the year. I just didn’t realize it at the time and I didn’t really discuss it here. I decided that instead of making a bunch of New Year’s Resolutions I was going to make this the year I took care of ME. Whatever else I accomplished this year I was going to get back to putting self care at the top of my to-do list. For the past 10 years I have put all of myself into taking care of my kidlets and putting my self dead last. With my youngest turning five I decided it was time to start taking care of me again. Of course my kids benefit when I am feeling good as well… I have more energy, I want to do more fun activities, and I snap at them less. Its a win-win for all and I am not sure why I allowed my needs to come last for so long. The other aspect I wanted to work on was my marriage… which has had an equally low place on the totem pole since kids came into the picture. But I quickly began to see that taking care of me was equally beneficial to my husband… I nagged less, I wanted to spend more time with him, and we got along MUCH better when I could see the forest through the trees.

Sooo… even though I wasn’t calling it a happiness project I had started one of my own design already and so reading this book and seeing the steps the author was working through was such an encouraging thing. Each month she chose a theme to work on and had a checklist of things she needed to accomplish for each. For the first month it was Vitality. Her main goal was to boost energy and she set about doing this by getting more sleep, exercising better, organizing her mental and physical clutter, tackling her to-do list, and acting more energetic even if she didn’t feel more energetic. Each month was similar to this and I LOVE the concept. I have been working towards vitality myself for awhile now. In the past month I decided to go to bed at 10PM instead of 11 or 12. I joined a gym that I love and have been taking water aerobics classes. I have also been organizing and decluttering. I categorized it as part of my self care plan but it fits nicely within the vitality theme as well.

My marriage goals work well with the second month’s theme… Remember Love. I also think I skipped ahead to month 7 with Buy Some Happiness because I have been buying myself flowers once a month to perk up my desk. Okay not quite flowers… some blooming branches, but same difference. They make me happy and normally I would feel guilty splurging on something like that. Why do moms always feel guilty when we treat ourselves?

Now I think I am going to be more mindful of having a theme and a checklist to work on each month. Breaking it down into bite size chunks makes it easier to tackle. The best part though is that you can really start to identify what makes you happy and that you are quite happy already most days. It is no longer that elusive thing you are aspiring to… it was already there you just had to learn to be mindful of it. We can get off the roller coaster of thoughts that tell us we will be happy when this or that happens. We can be happy now… as in right this minute, if we want to be.

Do you also have trouble being happy in the moment?