Imperfectly Paleo

I have been re-reading Gretchen Rubin's 'The Happiness Project' in a bid to reboot my own happiness level. Much of what she says strikes a poignant chord. Happiness: my children on a beautiful spring day Depending on the individual, the route to DIY contentment will vary wildly and not many of us can attest to having 12 minutes free let alone 12 months to experiment with all the facets Gretchen explores in her book. My five key personal takeaways to unlocking my gateway to happiness lie roughly in the areas of: 1. Sleeping and exercising better 2. Decluttering and organising 3. Launch a blog and enjoy the fun of failure (you are reading the evidence of this!) 4. Mindfulness 5. Practising gratitude The problem is that every time I have tried to build good habits to tackle and enforce each of these areas, correlating bad habits have an uncanny knack of sneakily sidling their way to the forefront, eventually obscuring all trace of existence of their bett

A few posts back I reviewed my experiences with Bullet Journalling and how it has changed my life, organisationally speaking. You can read it here . On embarking on my second journal I approached it with less no-frills function as I had when just starting out, and with a little more flair and personality, now that I know what does and doesn't work for me personally. Check out my lovely Year At a Glance page which includes all the school holidays, birthday and bank holidays neatly colour coded for ease of organisation, ahem, 'at a glance'. My 'Year At A Glance' and Key Pages I am without a doubt an 'Upholder' personality, according to The Four Tendencies devised by Gretchen Rubin, in her book The Happiness Project . I can't recommend this highly enough if you haven't read it - in a nutshell all people fall into one of the Four Tendency categories:  Upholder (adhere rigidly to inner and outer expecations);  Obliger (adhere to outer expecta

I am a stationery addict. There. I have said it out loud. Ever since I was a little girl I would collect, curate and derive infinite joy in owning a treasure trove of bright and beautiful inks, pens, pencils, paints, notebooks, paper, stickers and so on. Art shops trumped TopShop, no contest. My First Bullet Journal - next up will be the ever popular Leuchtturm1917 When other girls were painting their nails and playing with makeup I was arranging my colouring pencils. Not much has changed. Makeup is still pretty 'meh' to me, whereas a shiny new set of brush pens makes me all tingly inside. I still own much of my original paint and pencil sets from way back when - another characteristic of mine is both my hoarder instinct (a source of much discord in our home) and my careful (bordering on obsessive) regard for my possessions. So I will leave it to your imagination the level of excitement when the concept of Bullet Jounalling floated into my field of awareness! That

Recently I finally got round to reading Marie Kondo's self-professed life-changing book about tidying, 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying '. It had been waiting patiently on my To-Read list for such a long time and the time had arrived - I was ready and receptive. Subconsciously I had already started; having Kondo -ed many of my clothes drawers with her eponymous 'KonMari' method of folding and vertically stacking my clothes. Tidy House, Tidy Bowl, Tidy Mind

One of my green smoothie bowls was pictured in a double page feature about smoothie bowls in the New York Post this week! Matcha Maca Mint Green Smoothie Bowl

Kale. Coconut. Cake. These are definitely a few of my favourite things! Kale and Lime Cupcakes with Whipped Coconut Cream When the lovely people at Paleo Parents agreed for me to feature a guest post I was over the moon with excitement. Then I was struck with the dilemma of choosing just ONE recipe! After much to-ing and fro-ing I settled on the one that encompasses how I feel about the food I choose to cook and eat every day: healthful, tasty, pretty and unconventional.Thank you again to Paleo Parents for featuring my recipe - you can go check it here Guest Post Kale and Lime Cupcakes

Got to try it before you mock it right? This morning officially saw the last of the 250ml jar of coconut oil I opened 31 days ago to begin my oil pulling experiment. I didn't miss a single day. I started out with a miserly teaspoon and gradually worked up to a heaping teaspoon.

I'm still very much a Paleo girl living in a predominantly non-Paleo world. In this part of the world (by which I refer to the real world in my geographical proximity as opposed to cyber world within fingertip proximity), living a Paleo lifestyle is just not that common. I'd go so far as to say rare. Chocolate Birthday Cake with Ganache Frosting  This week marked the birthday of someone super special to me and, breaking my rule of never imposing my Paleo guidelines on family birthday cakes, I decided it was time to test the waters. Alongside my desire to create a healthful cake for my family, my seflish ulterior motive was that I also wanted to be able to join in the cake-eating fun for once.

I am super excited to have my recipe featured by Ancestral Chef (Louise Hendon) over at Paleo Flourish Magazine: I created this back in Spring but it's equally as weather appropriate in the sunny climes of Summer  - so much so that I think I might make it this week! Take a look at the full recipe over on her site x Courgette Avocado and Mackerel Salad

However I want to put it, I cannot begin to convey the joy of feeling my recipes on a physical page and seeing them on a store shelf - albeit bound within a tome of a myriad other unknown recipe creators and writers with little by way of acknowledgement and even less by way of pay (I got a free copy of the magazine!) - but that's beside the point! My recipes are in print! In a magazine available to buy (not given away for free for people to use in papier mache projects)! And in major retailers in England (not just via obscure online subscriptions)! Yay, yay, yay!!! My Whole Orange and Butternut Squash Breakfast Muffins as featured in PaleoDiet Bible Magazine

Whoop Whoop - could I BE any more excited?? Thrilled, ecstatic, over the moon and incredibly thankful to The Paleo Mom for featuring my first ever guest post. A sneak peek.. Chocolate Chestnut Chia Cake Check out the full post over on: Thepaleomom.com - guest post by imperfectly-paleo: Chestnut chocolate chia cake  xx

Paleo Treats oh how I missed you... There are plenty of things I DON'T miss about home when on holiday eg laundry, washing up, cleaning, ironing - need I go on? But I was surprised to learn what I DO miss..

Our family has had a month of passing the virus baton! Super Simple Unsweetened Apple Sauce Along with half the mums of the children in my 7 year old's class, I was struck down by some undiagnosed illness

I was deluded in believing (read, wanting to believe) that I was holding up my Paleo principles while away for a week on a family holiday. The truth behind the picture perfect...

One of the biggest challenges with adopting a Paleo eating plan is how isolating it can become. Even my husband has on various occasions threatened to issue me with an ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order, for those not UK based) .

One of my ways of dealing with stepping down from the pressure of following a perfect Paleo eating regime, is to apply the 'Helpful vs Harmful to Health' test. There are obviously foods that fall quite unequivocally into one category. Eg Vegetables, fruit, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds (unless individually intolerant of course) are Helpful to Health; Pringles and Krispy Kreme's candy-coated goodies, without a doubt, Harmful to Health.