Tag: weekly musings

Weekly Musings #3 – Tired. My Name Is Tired. April 2019

Hi Lovelies,

Welcome back! And welcome if you are new here xoxo

How are all of you, I hope You are well?

If you read any of this kind of posts (see here & here) you will know what they are all about, but if not, let me tell you. in these kind of posts I am letting you into my world behind Green Life In Dublin. If you tried your hand at blogging, you might know how much of hard work goes into it – everything from taking decent pictures to testing the products (six weeks for skincare, no less in my case!) to hours and hours of research on newly discovered brands, products and ingredients, to actually finding time to put the review together – it is just a lot, man. And don’t get me started on the other side of blogging, the upkeep of social media! Sometimes I am on top of things for weeks, but other times I am drained, not going to lie. Coupled with busy family life and work with their own stresses and struggles – that’s a lot of plates to spin. And I feel deeply tired. Today is the last day at kids school before Easter Break, and I am typing this straight after the school run, even before my breakfast, all while trying to remember my today’s to – do list in my head and trying to mentally calculate how to cram everything I need to do in less than two hours, because today is a short day at school. All of the rooms need hoovering and mopping, I have a mountain of clean clothes on the dryer racks staring at me right now, with loads of washing waiting. Hello, my name is Renata, and I am never caught up with the laundry, ever. My mind is drawing a blank on what to prepare for dinner later today, and let me confess I am not looking forward to the kids playdate later today. The friend stays over for four hours at a time, so you can imagine the noise and the mess – I am feeling drained just thinking of it. Now that I am typing all of this, I am kind of realizing I have been running on empty all this year past New Year’s Eve. You know Blue Monday? Well, it kind of is still going strong for me.. I think I need a break.

Ok, pull yourself together Renata, people are not here to read about you losing your marbles – and besides, when you are tired, learn to rest, not to quit. I thought of quitting for a second, when I had hell after posting a bad reaction to a certain brand’s product. What happened next, the brand owner immediately flagged me to this green beauty heavyweight, who came down like a ton of bricks on me – her email hurt far more than my burned face. The brand has to deal with negative publicity because of my actions, I now lost all my credibility and so on. I will spare you the details and the names, but I won’t ever forget it.Being far away from everything and everyone in this Green Isle, I keep forgetting that everyone else is connected and can and will use those connection to shut mouths. So, all this aside, let’s look at the things I have been doing/ reading/ watching /brainstorming lately? In no particular order, here they are.

The latest reading list can be seen on my IG post here:

See my thoughts on these books in the comments. Any recommendations for good books in the health and wellness realm are always welcome, so please feel free to share. And thanks for the Dublin City Libraries for making this possible 🙂

I don’t know how about Your country, but here in Ireland climate change is happening in front of our very own eyes – it is 12th of April now, and yet the grass is frosted in the mornings, what is happening? I am not the gardener of any sort, but I think that is not a good news for plants &  I assume it will affect the produce. The wind stays freezing cold even if the sun is shining, I haven’t felt brave enough to ditch my winter jacket yet. Imagine feeling hot and cold at the same time? Yes, that’s me most days. The last winter jacket I had from Next was not wind-proof at all, so I spent the last two winters shivering cold, even though Ireland is blessed with mild winters, the temps dropped below 0 for about a week only. Now that we are technically well into the spring, there’s still so much of colds and coughs going around. We missed quite a bit of school due to illness in winter, so despite feeling majorly under the weather, we are soldiering on – I give the kids NYR Organic Elderberry Syrup & NYR Organic Thyme & Honey Syrup – feeling kind of panicky, because I am on my last bottles of both. Mentally taking note to watch out for 20% off NYR sale, haha! We have had a couple of storms this winter, but thanks God nothing like The Beast From The East last year – that experience has left me scarred. Up until then I was lax about the demand-supply of products, but funny (not!) how a bit of snow can stop the entire country in it’s tracks when they’re not used to it! I still remember camping in the bedroom for a week straight because out east facing living room was 5*C FRIGGING DEGREES WITH NOT ONE BUT TWO HEATERS ON! I had to wear a coat and a hat inside to go cook some sort of a dinner, which consisted throwing something into the over and then quickly running back. It was even less funny when we ran out of the food on the day three, ventured out into the cold only to find all the nearest supermarkets and convenience shops closed within ten mile radius. (except for one Russian shop, which saved us then).  So my mind, fuelled by the anxiety, is now panicky before every winter and I feel the need to stock up on absolutely everything I could possibly need to last us the winter. If you want to see what natural remedies, teas & homeopathic remedies I tend to stock on, let me know and I will be happy to put that blog post into schedule come next autumn. It wouldn’t make much sense before it, would it? For those of you with you with no patience (like me), there’s this post right here on my natural arsenal against colds & flu (with a fabulously bad pictures to match) and a post on OreganolP73, which is the natural antibiotic I use here. The products are mostly the same, if I find something that works, I stick with it.

Umm, for some reason I can’t see the captions on any IG posts when I browse on my laptop, only on my phone – does anyone else have this problem too, could you let me know?

I have been upping my trusty Tea Which Keeps Me Well In Winters – that applies for any time of the year, plus it is delicious, so I think you would benefit from reading that post too 🙂 Other tea favourites of the moment include matcha, Yogi Throat Comfort and Numi teas with turmeric, which are the best kind of turmeric teas around. I scored them very cheaply from Holland & Barrett a while ago, and now seeing how good they are, I would be happy to pay their worth – only to find out they have been discontinued. Just my luck, huh? Something else I am looking into in natural health realm, is liposomal vitamin C, a thing that is new for me – which is supposedly the best vitamin C on the market, made in a way that it bypasses the digestive tract and goes directly into the cells?? I have to be honest, I balked at the price of it – 50€ for 30, way out of my price range as it is, You need to take two packets per day, which makes it last for 15 days, meaning it’s 100€ for a month for me alone. So if I wanted to get it for my family for four winter months, I would need to spend I-need-to-sit-down-for-this 1600€!! I know, I know, you can’t put price on health, the health is a foundation of everything. But even if I had that much money to burn, I’d put it away for a house deposit if I am honest. So my curiosity was piqued immediately if there’s any way to DIY it, and turns out there is! There are lots of videos on Youtube, which I am not going to link because I don’t have makers permissions to do so, but now that you know, you can search for them yourself. Unfortunately all of them used a sonic jewelry cleaning machine (say what?) and I don’t have it. I have left my research there and then, with a thought to come back to it the first chance I get, which never happened… Anyone knows anything about DIYing it? Any tips, clues or links to clean food grade Vitamin C (not produced in China) would be appreciated. Also, any holistic tips on exposed gums? that’s another thing worrying me greatly. I have been doing this DIY oil pull from the Nadine Artemis awesome book The Renegade Beauty, which is basically coconut oil with probiotics and I am experimenting adding things like turmeric and coconut charcoal to it. If you want to see the rest of my super simple DIYs, see this  post. Oh, by the way, this book is absolutely awesome, I highly recommend it. If you buy only one book this year, this is it 🙂 Your mind will be blown, promise.

I also took a bunch of new photos for my Natural Beauty In TKMaxx post on my recent visit to Blanchardstown store, so keep an eye for that, I am going to update the post really soon.

What else? I have been doing Oprah’s and Deepak Chopra’s 21 Days Meditation (it is still on, look for it on social media!) but I just can’t do it for the life of me.. Seemingly simple act of stopping my thoughts for 15 minutes is impossible for me. I try to do it while the kids are at school and I am home alone, but the monkey brain can’t be silenced no matter what I do – the best I have done is sitting still for about seven minutes and then getting up to continue doing stuff on my to do list. I have also been watching The Truth About Cancer The Eastern Edition and taking notes, but only from episode 6 only. Also I recently discovered Mark Hyman’s The Doctor’s Pharmacy podcasts, they sound good! Now that I think back, maybe I should have added all those with the reading list to my recent Favourites post?

What also should have been added to that favourites post is my new found love for creative journaling, something I also wasn’t aware of before. I always had a *thing* for cute stationery, notebook, diaries and such, finding them not quite suited for my needs, I am now jumping for joy at the thought of creating my own! I am working on my post of it, as I am still a beginner and not sure if I want to share my scribblings versus true art I see on other people’s pages. If you are like me and in any way inclined towards journaling, just search #creativejounaling or #bujo (short for bullet journaling) and your life will be forever changed 🙂 I predict you might part with your cash in your nearest art and craft store soon after, just like I did.

That’s it for today, see you here next Tuesday, my posting days. I think I will publish prepared posts in the next two weeks, but will skip the social media thing to give myself a bit of a break, I hope you are cool with that?

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Lots Of Love

Renata.

green life in dublin
Green Life In Dublin, green beauty and lifestyle blog
Enjoy my content? A  tip into my PayPal Tip Jar -  will get You my eternal gratitude and more awesome green beauty reviews Your way! I weed out all the greenwashing products so You won't have to.

Weekly Musings – November 2018

 

Hi Lovelies,

 

Welcome back! And welcome, if you are new here xoxo

Green Life In Dublin Weekly Musings

How are all of You? I hope life is treating You well?

I myself am completely knackered, but since I love blogging so much, I still wanted to get a blog post out. Having just sent my kids back to school, I finally found a minute to actually sit down and work in peace for a little while.  This is actually my second Weekly Musings post, and while I’d like to link to the first one, I can’t – I lost it together with my first website, and as a true professional, I haven’t saved it 🙂  In it I wrote a long and heartfelt post about my life, the actual reason I moved my blogging day to Tuesdays, to the blogger life not being so glitzy and glamorous as people imagine. Even if I tried to replicate it, I can’t, because I wrote it in a spur of the moment – and every time I sit down and try to re-write it again, it doesn’t come out right, it feels dry and forced instead of heart to heart post I intended it to be. I have to be in the right zone to blog, because when I catch the tail of inspiration, that’s when I am at my best creative self, the words flow faster than I can write them down, and when I proof read the post prior to publishing it, I am happy with it on the whole, whatever kind of post it might be. Whereas when I decide I need to work on the blog to get one post or the other, that’s when I hit the wall, the posts come out dry and not my best. Plus all hell breaks loose around me, I find myself pulled into a million different directions at the same time and getting irrationally angry at not being able to get the stuff done.   This leads me to my next point, my new posting days – after working on the weekends only I found myself with too much on my plate on Mondays, from a cr*loads of housework post “Daddy’s Day” – we don’t have a nanny or anyone to help with child care or anything, really, so it is down to us two. Long story short, daddy started minding kids while I went back to work a few months ago. My job is on the weekends only, but he thinks it’s my job to clean up after them when I come back to work. Obviously I am not happy with that at all – you would think I’d have this area of my life in balance after two thousand years of marriage? Not so much. I think like most women I’d done a huge disservice to myself holding three corners of the house while working full time in the past. Now trying to change it and get my family to pitch in, I am met with resistance, obviously. Because if they had it that good so so many years, why would they want to work for free, right? This reminds me of a meme I saw on Facebook ages ago – it reads something like this – ” It is so easy being a woman – you get up at 5-6am, you make breakfast, get up family, serve them breakfast, help kids get dressed, prepare lunches, walk them to school, go to work, pop to supermarket for groceries after work, come home, prepare dinner, serve dinner, wash up after the dinner, supervise your kids homework, play with the kids, walk the dog, put the bins out,  bathe the kids, read them bed time stories and put them to bed, clean up the house, put on washing, sort out and iron previous washing, check & reply to email, pay the bills – and the rest of the time you are FREE to do what you want!!!” Well, something like that, I think I should put it into a meme actually 🙂 So, with all this in mind, and the pressure to do all the things right and on time, I made a decision to move my posting day to Tuesdays after doing it for so many years on Mondays. Being the responsible person I am, I realised I was stressing myself out for no reason – blogging is like a full time job, but I am not at that stage where it pays for itself, so I should take my mental health into consideration and drop the weight where it is appropriate. As my family pointed out, why work for free? And put pressure on myself to post on Mondays if I have the rest of the week that is mostly stress free?

 

 

Well, I hope I communicated this point right, I am not someone who leads this glamorous life, party hopping with a champagne in my hand – far from it. I am just a tired mommy who is trying to keep all her plates in the air, blogging included! Not-so-recent changes in IG algorithms did my nut in, the engagement level dropped dramatically, as well as my page became invisible to the people who didn’t know about me already, meaning I was concealed from the masses. Lots of smaller brands and bloggers were affected, not just me, but it was so disheartening that I thought of leaving it all together a couple of times. I also noticed a couple of bloggers finding a way around it by buying followers, something I would never ever do. What keeps me going is the desire to help people to switch to natural and organic beauty – that is the exact force driving me and my blog – not the fame and money, I think these things should come as a “side effect” of your hard work. And it is hard work, anyone who tried his/her hand at blogging, will know that. I decided bumps like that not to let to get to me – Your messages telling me I helped in some way or form to find your best natural products is the best music to my ears – even all these years, it doesn’t get old. It gives me wings to keep going!

Well, having said all that, I think it might be my seasonal depression talking, as it always rears it’s ugly head at this time of the year. But then again, I think it is important that everyone in the family would pitch in in equal measures, am I right? Us moms tend to do the lions share out of love for our families, but it is a fine line to balance – family members take it for granted all too soon. I was listening to one of On Air With Ella podcasts, where one lady submitted her question and Ella and some psychologist, who’s name escaping me, spend the good hour talking about all the ins and outs of the situation. Basically, one middle aged lady with a husband and two grown up male sons found herself with a health problem that prevented her doing all of the housework she always did, and she asked her family to help and pick up the slack. Do you think they did? She soon found herself branded a nag and a killjoy if she repeatedly asked them to do what had to be done in the first place – how is that fair? And where’s the happy middle ground here? Comment below with your thoughts on this?

Moving onto happier subjects! November is my birthday month, so I am actually on the lookout for a present for myself. After all, I’ve been really good this year, so I deserve to treat myself, right? I am looking at Ere Perez Colour Pot in Harmony, as I really like the way it looks on my blogger friend Jana from Small Bits of Loveliness (see the Natural Beauty post in my old blog here), as well as Ere Perez Almond Oil Mascara. I chose both products from the same brand as I really enjoyed what I have tried from them so far (see review here), even though I am a bit sad they discontinued one of my favourite blushes, called Bondi. You know I love my Nars Orgasm Natural Dupes 🙂 I am also looking at these duo lipsticks from Emani, Xanadu (described as peach and pink) and Shangri La (described as soft pink with hot pink) – not too sure which one to get, as the photos from online shops look different to swatch photos, I am a bit apprehensive and confused. Let me know if You have any of those and how do you find them? Any feedback would be appreciated, so please send me the link to reviews or your IG swatch photos, anything, really? By the way, do you want me to do a full blog post on what else I want for my Cake Day and plan on getting? Do let me know and I will be happy to do that post for you.

What else is happening? I am happily testing/ judging for The Beauty Shortlist Awards 2019 and just submitted my judging form for CertClean Clean Beauty Awards as well. The best jobs I ever had, and I am hoping to do lots more of them in the future! That’s a dream come true and proof that hard work pays off. I gets loads of questions about it, and yes, I will blog about it in my own good time, and yes, the opportunities came to me and not the other way round.

What else is happening? It is not announced yet, but I am happy to tell you I am the new Ambassador for Inner Senses brand – over the moon about this, as I have been a fan for a couple of years now. I have actually reviewed the body oils last year, see the post here.

My love of books is well known, and I was really happy to learn that I can actually request any book I want at my local library – how come no one told me that before? I went on thinking I can only choose from what’s available in my local branch, which is tiny. I am on the maximum 12 book at any given time, but have to scale down, because that’s one of the areas I was stressing myself out for no reason. From now on I will try to be on two or three books at once – which is a very manageable number. Anyone else reading multiple books at once? My reading list can be seen in my Instagram a few posts back for those of you curious?

So imagine my delight when I learned I can also read magazines online, also via Dublin library – I felt like I won the lottery or something! There were times in my past where I actually had a disposable income, or play money (something that is next to nothing now) and I was buying loads of magazines every month, but losing a job put an abrupt stop to all that. Kids needs and bills come first, am I right? Happy to re-discover my old fave thing – the first day was spent drinking tea and reading all magazines I could squeeze into the few hours when the kids were in school. Pure bliss! This will definitely help lift my mood and feed my endless curiosity in the dreary upcoming Sickness Season, umm, excuse me, I meant Winter.

Umm, I am also on a few audio books – yes you guessed right, from the library! I imagine you rolling your eyes at me at this point, and yes, I can totally understand that, I probably sound like a broken record by now. But if You are like me and are committed to constantly better yourself, you will get me. Currently I am onto Jennifer Kries Waking Energy and loving it! The way I can actually fit it into my life is when I power clean in the morning post school run. I can’t remember where I heard this idea of power cleaning your house every day for 20 mins in the morning, but I found this idea perfect! I am a big fan of putting all the things we used that day at the end of the day, while my husband is errr, make-a-mess-all-week-leave-things-where-they-fell-and-then-spend-Saturday-cleaning-it-all-up-while-blaming-everyone-around-you kind of guy. So this technique was kind of like a saviour to me, and if I can feed my soul while doing mundane tasks, then it is thousand times better!

What else? I am hoping to manage to squeeze a date night with my hubby to go watch the new Queen movie! Have you seen it? Is it any good? I am hoping it is good, because Queen’s was actually a first album I ever bought, aged 13. I hope my idols won’t fall from the grace in my eyes, as there were a few places I skipped while reading Freddy’s biography.

 

That’s all for today, see you here tomorrow!

Lots of Love,

Renata.

green life in dublin
Green Life In Dublin, green beauty and lifestyle blog
Enjoy my content? A  tip into my PayPal Tip Jar -  will get You my eternal gratitude and more awesome green beauty reviews Your way! I weed out all the greenwashing products so You won't have to.