Healthy Happy Loving Life: Favorite Food Blogs

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at choice, Blogs, Celebrating the good, chocolate, free, GF, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, Theme song, UpBeat Living

© 2020 Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M.  World Rights Reserved. 

In the last several days, I was asked both what I do in my “spare” time, and what my favorite blogs are.  And it just so happens that my favorite fun is creating delicious foods.  And two fantastic blogs definitely involve cooking, baking and often chocolate!  As a writer, I have seen hundreds of blogs, and for me, these two stand out as the most fun:  Gluten Free Homestead and Chocolate Covered Katie.

For me as a cook, I need to be able to prepare treats and meals that fit a lot of different diets and sensitivities, especially gluten-free.  These two favorite blogs are both about cooking and baking and treating for whatever factors.  I love that!

Today’s email from Gluten Free Homestead is, of course, another outstanding one.  Labeled simply, “New Recipe For You”, it offers an Easy Creamy Broccoli Cheddar Soup, with video.  Created by Barbara Bianchi, this blog is also now offering  an ebook cookbook, with 50 low-carb and gluten-free recipes.  You can find the Gluten Free Homestead on Facebook and Instagram.  And you may want to subscribe.

My other favorite blog is Chocolate Covered Katie.  Katie is a baking genius who never stops experimenting.  She creates delicious treat recipes, most often chocolate, and often in small batches.  So you don’t have to have dozens of those gooey chocolate almond cream-filled cupcakes with something rich topping them…in your kitchen, tempting you until you’ve gained many pounds.  You can make a few.  Katie is kind.  She also gives you options with every recipe: which fat or oil works best, when to substitute in avocado or applesauce, what flour gives what results with this recipe, what “milk” to use, or whether this matters.  Today’s email features Low Fat Chocolate Muffins, together with links to recipes for Banana Muffins, Applesauce Muffins, Oatmeal Muffins, and Pineapple Muffins.  You can find this blog through her eponymous Facebook page, or through her website, http://www.chocolatecoveredkatie.com .

It’s important to have pleasure and fun in life, and I have fun just reading through these recipes, then pleasure eating my results!  I hope you’re having fun and pleasure, too.  I hope you’re entirely:  Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Your Theme Song

Tags

at choice, Celebrating the good, free, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, Theme song, UpBeat Living

© 2020 Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M.  World Rights Reserved. 

I have heard this question a few times in recent years:  if you, or your business, had a theme song, what would it be?  I was totally stumped the first time I got the question. In fact, I was terrified, because we were going around the table, with a group of authors, and the moderator wanted each of us to give forth about our theme song.  She thought anyone who didn’t know their theme song was, basically, a doofus.

She had a point.  Shouldn’t we be able to encapsulate our business goals and qualities briefly? But do most of us have the talent to do that in verse, then make it a song?  Hey, I don’t even enjoy picking songs for weddings or other theme parties.  But finally, I realized there are a couple of songs that might represent me and my practice.  First, I teach people specific ways to dissolve and finish with their pain: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.  I teach people how exactly to find their inner gratitude and to move into joy.  I say we are in/joy/meant.  Second, I teach people to develop a strong core of Peace Within, so that stressors don’t bother them.  Then, I encourage people to take that into their relationships and into the World.  But more on that in a moment.

Victor Hugo, the author of Les Miserables, said,

Music expresses that which cannot be said on on which it is impossible to be silent.

And actress Zooey Deschanel has said,

Everyone should have a theme song!  It should make you feel like a million dollars.

 

Finally, one day, I was walking along, feeling great, when a song started playing in my head:  “Something’s been happening to me/I can’t believe it myself/suddenly I’m up on top of the World…never thought I could feel so free/flying away on a wing and a prayer…could it be me?”  This turned out to be, “Believe It or Not” by Joey Scarbury. I realized, that’s the feeling I want my clients to have: free, at choice, feeling great.

Photo by Francine Masterson

My other theme song would be about peace, for the individual, leading to peace with others and peace for the Planet.  If a  billion people all had Peace Within, and a desire for peaceful relationships, how could there be rioting and war?  Fortunately for me, someone has already written that song: Jill Jackson and Sy Miller wrote, Let There Be Peace on Earth (And Let it Begin With Me), and Vince Gill performed it in a Christmas album of the same name, released in 1993.

Do you have a theme song?  Or have you thought of developing one?  I would love to hear about it. I would love to hear that you, too, are living in the state I call:  Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Fall Pleasures

Tags

at choice, Celebrating the good, Fall pleasures, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, UpBeat Living

© 2020 Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M.  World Rights Reserved. 

Fall is a special time in the U.S.  The pleasures of Fall have their own transformative qualities.  One of my most vivid and joyful memories in life took place in the Fall in New York State.  We were driving south toward New York City on the Taconic Parkway. (Above is a photo as the Taconic Parkway looked when I first saw it.) Leaves were showering.  The near sky was golden, copper, and red, flickering and ever-changing and seemingly infinite.  It was a magical experience I still remember vividly– a time of deep peace.

Shira Tamir said,

Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never seen them dancing on a windy day.

In the Fall, the summer flowers at homes are replaced with Fall varieties.  The endlessly beautiful leaves have their own woody fragrance. Streets sound different as the trees release their leaves and the pavement becomes padded.  Dogs bark at the falling leaves, and rakes try to keep up.  Dogs and children complete to leap into piles of leaves.  Back patios are redolent with the steaming fragrances of turkey or chickens in the smokers.  It’s the perfect time to stack wood and have evening fires.

Doorways now sport orange, red, and copper wreaths, and Autumn objects. There are now displays of crates, straw bales, and pumpkins, even straw people.  Skeletons and skulls for Halloween and All Saints Day.

Inside, there’s baking, the sweet smells of spices.  There are the sounds of baking pans clinking on oven shelves, cabinet doors clunking open and closed, open and closed.  Soups, chili.  Roasted potatoes and yams.  Gourds arranged on the dining table. Piles of fudge and cookies go into vintage tins.

Further afield, farms offer apple picking and corn field maze walking.  We hike old farm trails in Sedona, stopping at farm stands for corn to roast and apples to bake into pies.  There are evening hayrides with bonfires and singing, hot cider and roasted marshmallows and s’mores. Some are preparing their warm clothes in team colors for tomorrow’s football game.

Iconic author F. Scott Fitzgerald said,

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the Fall.

Let the Fall pleasures wash over you and shift your beingness into the next season. Embrace and savor the seasonal joys.  Let them bring you deep peace.  And now you’re in the realm of Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Why You Are Late

Tags

at choice, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, late, Lateness Stress, stress, UpBeat Living

© 2020 Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M.  World Rights Reserved. 

Let’s be honest about why you are late.  This a quietly hot topic, and a cause of stress, for the late person and for those waiting.  In the Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm system, we eliminate as many stress causes as possible.  So we need to be clear that most people like to be on-time and are secretly angry when others are late.  But sometimes the most careful planners are also late.  There are a number of causes and solutions.

I first started thinking about lateness, when, as a child, I realized I knew one chronically late adult person (CLP) and one chronically early adult person (CEP).  I noticed the CLP would go to everything 20 minutes late, thus—I finally realized—reducing the unpleasant event by 20 minutes each time.  That’s a savings of 200 minutes across 10 events.  The CLP would answer the phone, knowing that we should have left 10 minutes ago, thus ensuring that the 5 minute call made us 15 minutes late.  But then it was “time to change clothes!”   Sometimes, we got to the car door, and the CLP heard the house phone, unlocked the house and went back in, to answer it.  Pleading made no difference.   It was agreed to set the clocks forward 20 minutes, to help the CLP, but of course, the CLP knew about the 20 minute “grace period” and still was late.  It was part of the game, to cut short the time given to the thing the CLP actually wanted to avoid.  The CEP liked to arrive early by at least 20 minutes, which served wonderfully for medical and business appointments.  However, it caused an embarrassing strain for party hosts.

Chronically late people (CLPs) like to joke:

Being on time never killed anyone, but why take a chance?

However, the erosion of relationships is no joke.

I learned a strict view of lateness in a personal development course called Omega Vector Training.  The leaders viewed lateness as something unnecessary, which you had created, to sabotage yourself.  At the beginning of the course, you committed to be on time for sessions.  “On time” was clearly defined as “in your seat, ready to listen and participate”.  A one-minute piece of music was played to signal “move to your seats”.  Neither stomach flu nor a flat tire was an excuse; these were seen as factors you had created.  Participants not in their seats at the last chord of the music got to stand in front of everyone and be processed about their lateness.  I learned that when we agree to an appointment, we are setting a verbal contract. Keeping it shows respect for both the party we are meeting and for ourselves.

Let’s ask ourselves:  if we are late, is it possibly because we don’t really want to do that thing, or because we are afraid of something about that thing?  Is it too stimulating, too many people, too much noise, people who are too important, or too much potential conflict?  Might we be called upon to stand up and stand out to a degree we are uncomfortable with?  Did that agreement get made for a time of day when our metabolism really can’t go at a reasonable speed (i.e., a breakfast meeting)?  Looking at all the times we were ever late, if we’re honest, what were the causes?  Could one cure be to change the way we make our agreements?  Make notes for yourself with all your answers to these questions.  Who can change your time-based agreements??

Would we be happier if we were always on time?  Yes.  Would our relationships be better?  Yes.  Now you choose whether you want to clear this, to be more deeply into Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button