Juicers and Blenders and Snow!

Hello!

David, Sophia and I are still enjoying Texas, although it hasn't been sunny for all but about an hour! It even snowed, and Sophia has had her first snow here in Houston.

In other news, our dear friends Angela and Matt were recently in a bad car accident, and to aid themselves in speedy recovery, they both undertook a one week Juice Feast. This is from Angela Stokes-Monarch:

'Tis the season to get juicy, fa la la la la, la la la laaaaaaaa...let's jump in with:

Easy Juice Feasting with the Hurom Juicer

As many of you know, Mr. Monarch and I had a pretty intense car crash two weeks ago, in Pennsylvania. Immediately afterwards, we began a week-long Juice Feast to help expedite our healing process, which definitely seemed to help us enormously in terms of fast regeneration. At the same time as this week-long juicing session, we were travelling back from the east coast to the west coast to be back in time for my next immigration interview. Time was pressed, driving 8-12 hours a day with no real breaks, across the whole country. SO, we were EXTREMELY grateful during this juicy journey to have our new Hurom Juicer with us to handle the juicing duties. Neither of us had ever Juice Feasted with a Hurom before and it was a GREAT experience to try this out for ourselves. We had heard reports of people being able to make a GALLON of green juice in 15 minutes with this amazing new machine and now we got to try it out for ourselves ;)
If you're not familiar yet with the wondrous little Hurom, it is tagged as a 'slow juicer' and even has a picture of a snail on the packaging and YET, the name is kind of ironic, as it is the FASTEST slow-moving juicer we've ever used...Mr. M and I actually recently did a comparison video between the Green Star and the Hurom and the contrast was HUGE - see here below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_blKzX5NFdU

Juice Feasting with the Hurom was indeed FAST - we would wake up in hotel rooms, juice up a few gallons of juice each morning, store it into glass jars, pack them with ice blocks into a bag and get on the road again for the next 8-12 hours. The juicer is quiet, fast, efficient, easy to clean and the juice stays good even through to the next DAY (as we found out one day when we couldn't quite handle all the carrot/fennel/romaine juice we'd produced that day ;) If I was to do another lengthy Juice Feast again, I would definitely want to have a Hurom at my side - we LOVE it :)
We have Hurom juicers for sale HERE (we also have a 220v model that works in the UK now :)

enjoy :))))

SO much love to Angela and Matt both, we are so grateful that they are both OK and still continuing to shine their light!

We are currently using David's first little Samson juicer, the one that he used for his first ever Juice Feast in 2003. It lives here in Houston at his parent's house, and it has been making us some beautiful juices. It is quick to juice and super easy to clean as well!

We also brought our Vitamix with us, and I can tell you, you don't want to be stuck in Texas with out a Vitamix. You don't want to be stuck anywhere without a Vitamix for that matter! Still my absolute number one favorite appliance.

Sophia helping mama make the morning Green Smoothie.

Sophia has been dabbling in Green Smoothies for a few weeks now, and this morning we shared our spinach, strawberry, orange, and banana smoothie with her. She LOVES them and goes "mmmmmmMMMMMmmmmm" while she sucks away on finger-fulls of goodness.

That is all for today! May your days be merry and bright!

With much Love and Blessings,

Katrina, David, and Sophia

Full Time Festival Continues!

Helloooo!!

Well, here we are, long been home from the fantastical, amazing love fest of raw spirits down in Arizona where we literally wandered around in fairy dust and bliss the whole time.

Such amazing things are happening on this beautiful blue planet right now, I can hardly catch my breath, my head spins, my heart races! Are you in?

I know it is quite easy at this time to be tuned into the opposite side of the spectrum, and while it is important to take all things into account, the more that we do choose to tune into the love the bigger indeed it swells, personally and globally.

Like Neo and Smith in the Matrix, as good becomes stronger, so does evil, (remember as Neo became more powerful, so too did Smith, in a force of seemingly endless Smiths!) we have to choose what we believe in and make a full time job of it! It may sound like a platitude, but look around and see just how REAL it is! The full time festival continues!

One of those magical, Neo-like forces, is beloved Angela Stokes, recently taking the world by storm with her charm via the networks at CNN. Remember, the worse it gets, the better it gets, and it seems that in response to 20/20's discouraging piece on "orthorexia" (a non-term if you ask me) the universe has provided us with CNN's piece on Angela.

I was very lucky to spend some time with this woman right after Raw Spirit Festival (in the continuing festival of never-ending moments) and I can tell you my faith in love and magic was taken to the next level.
Angela is a beautiful example of the magical transformation that we are all capable of if we believe in ourselves and in love enough. When we choose to embrace growth, love and beauty, we experience a re-birth in to a new and more meaningful life, where emotional, spiritual, and mental transformations are just as poignant as the physical ones. They in fact go hand in hand in the trinity of body/mind/spirit. Angela is a TRUE POTENTIALIST and she lovingly, by example, is teaching us what is possible with our own growth and transformation.

I know that I used to find myself fascinated with people's before and after photos, and would reference them frequently as inspiration! I realize now that the even more dramatic and meaningful changes are those that we can't photograph, those that we ourselves forget about as we begin to feel comfortable in our own skins, and to enjoy our lives. Did I really used to wake up every morning feeling agitated with the words "I hate my life" in the front of my brain? It feels like another life time now.

In a nut shell, what I am writing about today is PERSISTENCE!! KEEP GOING!! Even if you are already at a place where you wake up with a smile on your lips and words of grace in your mind, stay the course!! We are living in a time where the edges of good and evil are being expanded exponentially, so keep on pushing out on your limits of love baby!

Oh, and I'm sure most of you have seen this already, but if not, please check it out! Angela's CNN interview: (which was filmed in my Papi's garden! A garden built on "juicin' energy")



And here is the text version of the story!

How about a few of our RSF photos to end the post?





For a true photographic experience of Raw Spirit Festival, check out the Flickr account of the extraordinarily lovely Suki Zoe, and for a great run down via the written word check out the blog of the ever prolific and goodies Heidi and Justin.

Hope to see you soon at the festival!

With much love,

Katrina