simple.green.organic.happy.

Blog

  • Giveaway: #GetAfterIt Reebok Tees (5 winners)

    Giveaway: #GetAfterIt Reebok Tees (5 winners)

     

    If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else,
    it will spread into your work and into your life.

    There are no limits.

    There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there,

    you must go beyond them.

    –Bruce Lee

     

    I’m looking back at this year and I’ve done a lot. It doesn’t feel like it, but I have.

    I got on a plane. All by myself.

     

     

    That may not sound like much, but to a girl who has been vaguely agoraphobic all her life it’s the equivalent of backpacking solo around the world.

    I ran a fun mud run. And then a timed 5k the day after.

    I ran the Color Run with my family. And I talked dozens of friends into joining us (and thousands of other colorful runners).

     

     

    I ran another mud run that was pretty grueling. I was filled with accomplishment that I had done something that was so hard for me…. and enjoyed every moment of it. I’ve run a bunch more 5ks since then, and plan to run 13 races (stepping out of my 5k comfort zone) next year.

    I was recognized by BlogHer as a Voice of the Year, for the most difficult post I’ve ever written. A post that was zero craft, zero technique, but just me trying to understand.

    I modeled, for the camera and the runway. I’ve actually done this before, as a kid, and it did such a number on my body image that I’ve avoided mirrors, cameras and trying to look “pretty” ever since. (I have no problem looking like an idiot on camera. You see those shots here all the time.) I admittedly felt dumb and self-conscious and out of place, but I managed to keep the self-loathing to a minimum.

     

     

    I entered and won a photography contest, and my photo was placed in the Picaboo calendar given to each attendee of the Type A Conference.

    I split the driving to Type A, by the way. All the way to Charlotte and back. Have I mentioned I hate driving, especially when I don’t know where I am? I didn’t crash or anything. And then I went and mingled with people I didn’t know. I even captained a team for a danceoff. That’s crazy! Robin pre-2012 would never have done such a thing.

     

    photo credit to Sarah

     

    Hey! I lost a lot of weight. I gained some muscle. And I wrote about it in a place where people would actually see it.

    I coached basketball.

    I did some videos. I talked about some hard stuff to talk about in a couple of them.

    I helped grow FitFluential into the company it is today: with over 800 Ambassadors, 7000 members, 26K Twitter followers, 12K Facebook fans and catapulting into 2013 at breakneck speed. Being part of a startup with only 5 employees is tense work with long hours, and it has been worth it for this moment, looking back and seeing how far we’ve come. (Kelly Olexa is a powerhouse.)

    And now I’m learning to swim. The decision to sign up and show up was terrifying; right now it’s very frustrating. But I have no doubt that sometime soon, I will be able to move through the water without touching the bottom. Without drowning.

    It has been a year of stepping out of my comfort zone, and as a result I’m stronger in every way: mentally, emotionally, physically. And the best part about that is knowing I’m being a role model to my girl… she knows no limits to her abilities now, and I hope that her age, her gender, her insecurities never get in her way.

     

     

    2013 better hold on to its hat.

     

     

    GIVEAWAY!

    I want to know how you’ve stepped out of your comfort zone and grown this year! And how you plan to take 2013 by storm.

    Reebok sent me a few #getafterit shirts to give away. These tees are emblazoned with the #getafterit logo in Vitamin C orange to give your workouts a shot of energy 🙂 I get a lot of “I like your shirt!” when I wear mine to the gym. My hope is that maybe some of those people check out the #getafterit hashtag on Twitter and tweet out their own accomplishments after a cathartic sweatfest.

     

     

    I have 2 of these in size medium, and three in large, so there will be FIVE winners in all.

    Just follow the directions in the Rafflecopter widget. Here’s to a fierce December… and a 2013 to remember.

     

    a Rafflecopter giveaway

     

  • Green Gifts for Kids: PlanToys

    Green Gifts for Kids: PlanToys

    The child amidst his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force…

    -Ralph Waldo Emerson

     

    This is my niece Eva. She is so freaking cute, I can’t pick just two photos to include in this post.  Enjoy the onslaught of adorable.

    When picking out toys as gifts, for my kids or someone else’s, I like to look for the following:

    1. educational value combined with play value
    2. hardiness combined with longevity (is the toy going to become boring in no time flat?)
    3. the eco factor: made with non-toxic materials by a company with sustainable practices
    4. general loveliness/ aesthetic value
    5. awesomeness.

    It’s rare that I’ll find something that fits all five points, but the catalog over at PlanToys hits the mark time and again.

     

     

    Lots of my favorites toys for our kids have been PlanToys. Cass still breaks out the Unit Blocks from time to time:

     

     

    We loved the water blocks. These are nice and chunky and big and seemingly unbreakable, not to mention mesmerizing for little kids and tired parents alike. Stack one on top of the other and you’ve got a handy dandy lesson in primary and secondary colors.

     

     

    The Miracle Pounding toy was a favorite. Basically, you feed a ball into one end, and one pops out the other. Great for developing motor skills, and pretty sitting on a shelf.

     

     

    One year each kid got a Moving Mouse in their stocking. These are the sorts of toys you pull back and then they race away; these suckers were fast and darted around like real mice. They were a lot of fun.

     

     

    The Sort & Count teaches hands-on math skills.

     

     

    (We’ve never owned this one, but I have to ask: how cute is this shopping cart?)

     

     

    That’s just the beginning. PlanToys has train sets, dollhouses, cars, cities, “cuttable” play food, rattles, walking toys, musical instruments, mobiles and more.

    PlanToys are made from environmentally friendly materials:

    • organic rubberwood
    • non-toxic non-formaldehyde glue
    • waterbased dye and soy & waterbased ink (no lead paint concerns here!)
    • recycled and recyclables.

    They’re also simple and open-ended, lending educational value recognized by Parents’ Choice Award and the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award.

    Are these toys a little more expensive? Yes. But each one I linked to above (aside from the shopping cart) I myself bought and my kids played with. For a loooooong time. And by that I mean,

    1. each kid would stay engaged with the toy for a good amount of time each time they played with it.
    2. The toy remained entertaining for a good span of time in that child’s life.
    3. AND, I bought them when Jake was little— they survived being passed down through all three of my kids and went on to be passed down to another child.

    That’s what I call value.

    As a for-example of longevity: I got to give Eva the new Sorting Board to try.

     

     

     

    She took it to her little table like any good Montessori child and got down to business.

     

     

    Eva’s just a few months past her 2nd birthday, but she has pretty decent fine motor skills for that age. She spent a fair amount of time playing with this right out of the box without getting frustrated.

    In any case, most kids will start by grabbing the pieces from the top and flat handedly forcing the pieces onto the pegs; as they grow more adept they’ll hold with just two fingers on one side and place onto the pegs that way.

     

     

    As the child masters one skill, you can take the toy away for a few weeks and then reintroduce with a new skill objective. So after figuring out the two finger hold, you could bring it back and ask for the pieces to be put on in order by color; first the reds, then the blues and so on.

    After that, you can ask for the shapes. Circle, triangle… then ask by the number of sides. Put all the shapes with four sides on first…

     

     

    And after that, you can use the shapes as tracing elements. Trace around the shapes and color them in. Master that, and then you can trace the outer shape and the small inner circle and color different colors.

    Go check out PlanToys and buy some for the kid in your life. They’re awesome, plain and simple.

     

    Disclosure: I received a Sorting Board for review purposes, but I’ve purchased many a PlanToy with my own cash money. All opinions are wholly my own and backed by nearly a decade of playing with this company’s product— long before I knew about or cared about their eco factor.

     

     

  • Fitness Friday: Turkey Trot, Ice Skating and 13 in 2013

    Fitness Friday: Turkey Trot, Ice Skating and 13 in 2013

    You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

    ―C.S. Lewis

     

    I don’t know. I feel sort of old to be starting all this; the running, the learning to swim, the itch at the back of mind that says maybe it’s not too late to take up skiing, rock climbing, tap dancing.

    I find myself driving by CrossFit boxes… that aren’t even on my way home. (Brownie points to whoever identifies the movie reference.)

    And although I deeply suspect I probably am too old… I’m going ahead anyway until somebody stops me.

     

    Reebok and Mizuno Wave Creations

     

    On Thanksgiving Jake and I ran a 5k for MS in downtown Wilmington; I’m going to call it a Turkey Trot although I don’t think it carried that specific moniker. It was sort of surreal to see all those people on a day where downtown would normally be a ghost town, even more so when Santa drove up on his Harley with the missus on the backseat.

     

    waiting to start. This pink top is also Reebok

    It was hella cold. I was never so happy to be able to run and get warm.

    It was fun to run through the streets I hadn’t seen in years, but this was no PR race for me. Jake had had a pretty bad head cold the week before; nosebleeds and swollen lymph nodes ever since. Although he hasn’t had an asthmatic episode in forever, hearing his breathing start to catch and wheeze scared the hell out of me, so I kept the pace slow and whenever he asked, we walked. Our gun time was something like 36:10.

    *shrug* He only came along because he didn’t want me to have to go alone, I know that. I wasn’t about to leave him behind to walk alone.

    So we had a lovely leisurely jog/run through the streets of my childhood and along the Brandywine. It was a lovely start to a family holiday.

     

     

    At the last 100 yards or so he hollered “YOLO!” and took off for the finish; like Cass, his top sprint beats the crap out of my top speed. He crossed several seconds ahead of me… brat.

    Then we all showered and went out with friends for Thanksgiving dinner, where I pretty much ate my own weight in turkey and sweet potato.

     

    I like this shot, it looks like we’re dancin’

    we clean up ok.

     

    Skating Shoes

    In other fitness news, Jacob recently got it into his head he wanted to learn to ice skate, so last weekend we took advantage of the university kids being away for the holiday and hit a pretty empty rink.

    The kids were all pretty confident they’d pick up ice skating like it was no big thing. The moment when they stepped on the ice? Priceless.

    I actually took ice skating lessons for years as a kid, but I’d gone my senior year in high school and found that ice skating strengthens specific muscles you don’t use on a daily basis. I walked in prepared to be humbled.  It came back to me pretty quickly, but my bum killed the next day.

    Jake could skate passibly at the end of two hours. Mav could stay on his feet. Cass fell a lot, but that didn’t stop her from keepin’ on keepin’ on or from putting skates on her wish list when we got home. Love that all three of them can’t wait to go back and get better— rather than give up.

     

     

    13 in 2013

    So I’m planning to run 13 races in 2013; I’m hoping at least one will be a half marathon. Hopefully it will keep me going steadily, so I don’t fall off the wagon in the cold months and the hot months. So far, I’ve got the Commitment Day 5k on New Year’s Day (in Philly, but these are happening in more than 30 cities across the country) and the Run to the Plunge in Lewes in February, which raises money for the Special Olympics (my friend Kelly talked me into this one and I’m sure I’ll be cursing her out the whole time).

    I had hoped to run the Princess Half at Disney in February, but that sold out before Jeff gave me the OK to go away that weekend. Bummer. Maybe in 2014.

     

     

    And…. I think I’ve bored you enough for now 🙂

    I’m getting after it. I’m staying active in as many ways as I can, in the time I have.

    How about you?