It’s that time again! The 5th annual Scotties TREES ROCK! Video contest is back! Kids in grades 3rd-8th may now create an essay about the importance of trees and win $10,000 for their school! The more creative the essay the better! Think your kids would like to enter? Just have them answer the question “Why do trees rock?” in a written essay. Trees Rock encourages individuals or groups of kids in grades 3-8 to think about the importance of trees. In each group, the grand prize winner (determined by a national vote) will win $10,000 for their school to use towards a sustainable project. So fun!
Full Disclosure: This blog post was sponsored by Scotties Trees Rock
Most years we host Thanksgiving dinner at our home – however, this year we don’t have family coming into town to visit so we decided to travel for Thanksgiving. We booked a week at a fun, red cottage on Sanibel Island. We are meeting the mister’s uncle and aunt there for a little fun in the sun!
On our way there, we plan to pick up Thanksgiving dinner from Whole Foods and of course, we will pack our favorite wine too! Our week will be spent outside beach combing (Sanibel is known as the best place to shell in the country!), biking the island (you don’t need a car!), checking out the local shops and eateries, and taking long walks with Noodles and Olive. We are super excited! While I love hosting Thanksgiving dinner, I think it will be nice to sleep in late on the big day (no housecleaning or cooking!) and enjoy Thanksgiving dinner outside next to the ocean.
How about you – do you have an unconventional Thanksgiving planned? Are you traveling? Where are you off to?
NOTE: This post wasn’t written by me – thank you for supporting the companies that help keep Sweet Greens in business.
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The holidays are right around the corner! In fact, Thanksgiving is over a month away. If you are taking a vacation for Thanksgiving or the upcoming winter holidays, you should consider a green retreat. Green retreats are great alternatives to the usual vacation; whether they are at exclusive hotels, glamping yurts or whole permanent communities, there are so many benefits to this new and gentler way of life.
What are green retreats?
Green retreats are hotels and communities that take moral responsibility for their immediate environments, living off the land and the resources it provides without destroying its capabilities or reducing its ability to regenerate. Green retreats are lovely places to live and stay with facilities that emphasize the well-being of those who use them. Green retreats are beautiful communities that work together to reduce waste, reduce pollution and to allow living in the most eco-friendly way possible.
As you can see, one definition probably doesn’t fit all, but even with the diversity of many types of green retreats, both temporary and permanent, you can already see what they’re aiming for.
What are the benefits?
Obviously, there’s a huge environmental benefit, and while it might seem like a pointless effort against the crazy amount of pollution still being pumped into the atmosphere across the world, every little helps.
On top of the very real, quantifiable benefits of environmental improvement, health and well-being, the community aspects of these places are really the cherry on top. There’s so much missing from life in the world, that a feeling of community is often the first thing to go. Living permanently in a green retreat when you have small children growing up is some kind of idyllic dream, because everyone is vested in ensuring that the recycling is sorted, the gardens are kept beautiful, energy and water are saved, and that the dream remains a real utopia. Think how it could change your children’s lives right into their futures.
Much of the value of green retreats lies in them being little oases of calm, with each one of them being a safe, secluded place where you can live or holiday without fear of the outside world ruining it. They’re naturally places that promote health and well-being, because looking after the earth goes hand-in-hand with looking after yourselves. And that’s where the facilities come into play.
Great facilities for everyone
Some of these places offer the finest in community health and wellness, from amazing gyms to outside yoga, and because they’re often in beautiful places, you can take advantage of the environment and keep fit by cycling and hiking through glorious countryside and rugged mountains.
Many green-stay places are geared up very well for the modern family, so often you’ll find fitness and well-being classes in yoga, Pilates, bocca, and other up-to-the-minute exercise classes.
If you’re not too fitness-orientated, but you still like to feel good about yourself, many communities have shared gardens, where they grow fresh and often organic vegetables; imagine being able to pick the veggies for dinner instead of just busting open a packet of indeterminate green leaves!
If you don’t even want to handle a gardening level of strenuous activity, why not check out the spa?
Of course, not every eco-hotel or green retreat will offer everything on this list, but there’s a strong chance they’ll offer many of them. Some places are aimed at families with young children, and they’ll have access to schools (if you’re looking at a permanent green community in which to live), toddler groups and hospitals, as well as child-oriented facilities from swimming pools to sports pitches and courts.
There’s often a strong emphasis on community as a way of life, not just as a convenience, so there are likely to be group activities to see and do, committees to join, and events to put on and to attend. The aim, of course, is to provide a fullness of life and a richness of community, of the type you just don’t see in the outside world.
Living in a green-oriented environment, you know that not even a single drop of water is wasted; where the sun’s rays provide one of several sustainable energies that can be used to heat and light your house; one where even your child’s kindergarten is run on eco-friendly diapers and solar panels; this is like some kind of special place. Even though you work hard to make everything you do as good for the earth as possible, knowing that for other people, this kind of thing is made easier, makes you feel good. The easier it is for people to be environmentally friendly, the more likely they are to do just that.
Before we left for our fall family trip to North Carolina, we made a list of all of the fun things that we wanted to do. The list encompassed all of our yearly must-do activities with a few new activities added in as well. I told the mister that the one thing I would like to do is visit a mountain apple orchard. He said to keep your eye out for one while on one of our many long drives on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Towards the end of our vacation, we still hadn’t come across an orchard, so I figured it just wasn’t going to happen. Then, one morning I thought we were headed towards another hiking adventure when the mister pulled off the main road down a very steep turn off. When I looked up I saw the Historic orchard at Altapass in front of us! Hooray! He was so excited to surprise me with this special treat and we ended up spending most of the day there. Read on to check it out.
After browsing around in the Altapass Orchard shop, and stopping to listen to a group performing mountain music we decided to venture out into the orchard. There are several different trails that you could take throughout the orchard, and of course we picked the longest one! We ended up so far into the orchard that all of the visitors (and there were a lot that day) seized to exist, we were completely alone. We were able to observe all of the beautiful butterflies floating throughout the orchard and even came upon a buck who was happily munching in the apple trees! He darted out of there too fast to catch him on camera.
There were so many different types of apples, small tart ones, and huge juicy ones that barely fit in the misters hand. It was really cool to visit an orchard that has been around for more than 100 years!
We walked so far that our trail eventually took us into a forest, it was still part of the orchard but so far removed that we didn’t even realize it was there until we were in it. We munched on apples as we walked (we paid for them later!), chatted and just had a wonderful time. By the time we made our way back to the apple-stand, almost everyone was gone except the employees. We bought a couple of root beer floats and sat on the deck relaxing after our 4 hour hike through the orchard. It was pretty amazing – I can’t wait to do it again next year!
+ The Historic Orchard at Altapass
Milepost 328.3 between Mt. Mitchell and Linville Falls.
For those of you I haven’t bragged to yet, I live with my boyfriend, cat, and dog in Costa Rica. Yes, it’s everything you’d imagine it to be! We recently moved to a beautiful space near the Arenal Volcano, with a view of the largest man made lake, Lake Arenal. I could write for days about how wonderful Costa Rica is, so I’ll start off with the basics, and some differences between Costa Rica and the U.S.
Costa Rica is so incredibly different that the United States in many ways. For one, it only has two seasons, the dry, high, tourist season, which runs from November to May, and the wet, low season, which runs from June to October. This means of course, no snow! But that being said, there is plenty of variation between the seasons to keep things interesting, although spending Christmas in 90 degree weather will be quite a change! We moved to Costa Rica at the end of April, after a very, very harsh winter in Cleveland, so being here during the rainy season has been such a great change. We’re excited to see what the dry season brings!
With no official winters, this means that there’s exotic fruit available all year round, and there’s always something tasty in season! We head to the ferĂa (farmer’s market) and buy pineapple, papaya, mangoes, oranges, star fruit, watermelon, cantaloupe, and the like and enjoy fruit as our snacks. It’s great! We also get raw chocolates, raw goats milk, and can buy handmade jewelry, as well.
The culture here is very hard working, but laid back at the same time. All people let the elderly and seniors get on the bus first, eat first, drink first, etc. People are all generally nice to one another, and will do what they can to help you.
And lastly, Spanish is the main language, and if you don’t know any, you can seem to get by on hand signals and pointing! We know a couple who literally know zero Spanish, and they’ve lived here for three years. How crazy! I on the other hand, prefer to know enough Spanish to get around, which makes things much, much easier.
Of course the United States is beautiful in so many ways, but Costa Rica brings a tropical beauty that is incomparable. It is one of the most bio-diverse countries in the world, aside from the Amazon rainforest, and brings with it an amazing array of plants and animals, some of which can be deadly!
All in all Costa Rica is an amazing place. I can’t wait to write more about what it offers and how we live a simple, green life here. If you have questions or would like me to cover a certain topic, let me know in the comments section above!
