So, did you start a piggy bank??? Back at the beginning of the month I asked you to start collecting your spare change and setting it aside. I didn’t tell you why, but asked that you just trust me. Easy enough, right?

So did you save? I did! Aside from continually emptying my coin purse for the homeless fellow who hangs out near my hospital (I go twice a week these days), I meticulously collected each and every coin from both me and Damian, each night. And I managed to secure over $35! That’s pretty good for one month, no? If I could keep it up, that would be over $420 each year!!!

So what’s this all about? What to do with the scrilla we’ve scrimped?

Well, have you ever thought to yourself, “I would really love to volunteer for that charity, but I just never have enough time!” Or maybe, “I meant to go to that rally but I had to work that day.” Or something else along those lines . . . we all wish we could be doing more. I know I certainly do. But we push our best intentions aside as we resign to live with that prick of guilt that tickles us every once in a while.

Well no more! Now you can do something. In fact, you already did: you raised money for charity! That’s right, this month we all raised money for our favorite charity. All that’s left is to donate it. Voilà! You made a difference!

Consider it passive activism. Each month you keep on saving your change. Then monthly, or biannually – or whatever works for you – you cash it in and give it to your favorite cause.

All of us, together. Hundreds of dollars apiece. Thousands and thousands of dollars each year. Now THAT, my friends, is a good chunk of change!

I’m making my first donation to an animal sanctuary (haha, surprise surprise, right?) So what about you?

Happy Birthday to this no-longer-wee website, and Happy Birthday to all of you, who make up her heart!!! Part of me still can’t believe a year’s gone by already. I’m still getting the hang of this! I’m still just getting started!

Another part of me can’t quite believe it’s only been a year. Was it really just 13 months ago I was working my unfulfilling day job? Has it only been 12 short months of covering such diverse topics as gardening and urban farming, sustainable fashion and an ambitious manifesto, backyard chickens and indoor seedlings, tons of vegan sweets and savory treats, ten life-changing challenges, and so much, so much more? And of course, a year of inspired contributions from each and every reader – the blog comments and personal emails and dialogue with each other throughout the site. You all have grown this little seed of an idea into something greater than I’d ever dared to dream of.





For the first 6 months of Bonzai’s web life, I posted every. single. workday. (whew!) Since then, barring medical breaks, I’ve maintained a schedule of 4-5 posts per week. All in all I’ve written over 250 entries and articles. And we’ve received hundreds of thousands of visitors!

Articles I’ve written have been featured across the internet, most notably on sites like Lifehacker and Apartment Therapy’s green blog Re-Nest. The most popular posts continue to be for DIY hygiene and cleaning recipes, like deodorant, drain-o, laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo, and hair gel. Who’d have though!?

I’m so proud to say that I’ve done all of this without accepting any advertising offers! Bonzai Aphrodite operates free from external financial influence, and will continue to follow the PBS/NPR model of ‘viewer/listener supported’. You’ll never have to question my integrity – I can promise you that.

Finally, I must give some thanks. Firstly, foremostly, and foreverly, to my AMAZING HUSBAND who was the catalyst and carrier for all of this. Damian encouraged me over and over to quit my job and pursue my passion, and he has continued to support me unfailingly throughout this crazy, oftentimes incredibly stressful, process. It is absolute truth that this site would not exist if it weren’t for him (hell, he designed it!), and I cannot thank him enough for that.

And then, of course, YOU GUYS. Thank you thank you for making my dreams come true! You all amaze me and inspire me and make me excited to wake up and ‘work’ every morning, and I just can’t thank you enough for that. I wanted to show a little gratitude (and support one of my favorite local businesses in the process), so I’m giving away these adorable, special addition underwear from Herbivore Clothing Co! All you have to do to enter is visit the Herbivore site and then leave a comment here. I’ll randomly select one lucky winner next week. Boys and girls are welcome to enter (there’s boxer-briefs as well), and non-vegans can play too as long as you don’t mind sporting ‘Veganism is for Lovers’ on your bum! Good luck everyone!





So what’s next for Bonzai Aphrodite? BIG THINGS my friends! Damian and I are scheming to expand, and I have more ideas than I know what to do with. I always tell my readers to “Dream big – no, BIGGER”, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

On the first Monday of every month, we take on a ‘mission’ – a shift or habit or inspiration – to work on together. There’s strength (and support) in numbers! On the last Thursday of the month, we reconvene to see how far we’ve come.





#10

Today is the first anniversary of Bonzai Aphrodite (!!!), and it also happens to be the 1st of February. That means it’s time for our tenth Monthly Mission (ten already!). But I wanted to do something more symbolic this time, something very special to honor this little blog’s birthday.

What could we do to represent the values and ideals that we aspire towards here? What single step could epitomize :

Certainly not something as focused as composting or going no-poo. These are awesome acts, to be sure, but they’re too directed to represent an entire ideology.

Bonzai Aphrodite is all about simple changes; about understanding the truth that altering our actions can add up to impactful magnitude. So, here’s your challenge for the month – Start A Piggybank.

That’s all. Easy as pie. We’re all going to start saving our change, in order to make some change! I’ll tell you more at the end of the month but for now you’ll just have to trust me.

So start saving those coins! To move things along, get in the habit of breaking bills instead of fishing for exact change. You’ll hardly notice the difference in your wallet, but you’ll end up with a lot more weight in your piggy! Try to get change from each transaction, and aim to contribute to your bank every single day. Of course, you needn’t break dollars into quarters just for the sake of adding coins! You want this to be natural, to become a habit.





Stash your coinage at the end of each day. If you don’t want to invest in a ‘real’ ceramic piglet, that’s fine! There’s tons of other wonderful ways to stylishly save. You can custom-make a piggybank out of old plastic bottles, as evidenced above, or an old coffee tin, shown below.





As well, you can always just decorate a glass mason jar! Cover it with a favorite fabric, or decoupage it with lovely images clipped form magazines. Hell, you can toss your change in a cereal bowl if that’s what works for you! The point is to begin collecting ‘change’, in a mindful and meaningful way. Because we all know that ‘change’ is more effective, when it’s collective!

So, will you accept this mission and join in??





BONZAI!

*** I had a lot of trouble finding sources for these photos and I hate not acknowledging artists. I apologize, and if anyone can help me give credit where credit is due, it would be much appreciated. Thanks! ***

My Closet: ‘like items’ grouped into boxes; clothes coordinated by color.

You know, it’s really hard to save the world if you can’t even find your keys. And believe it or not, sometimes the ‘Socially Conscious’ part is a whole lot easier than the ‘Totally Fabulous’ side of things.

But just like I didn’t always suffer from Hyper-Productivity Disorder™, I wasn’t always compulsively organized either. I had to teach myself to think systematically. In college I would take sloppy notes in lecture, scrambling to get down every essential piece of information. Then, each and every night, I would re-copy all my notes, in perfect script, color coded. It took hours, but it forced organization as a habit. These are learned behaviors, see, and that means anybody can adopt them.

After college Damian and I somehow managed to buy HQ. That was over 2 years ago, and our time since then has been spent renovating the place. We do all the work ourselves while maintaining full employment, which means 1) our living space is constantly under some degree of construction, and 2) home improvement is tailored around our jobs, thus relegated to nights and weekends. Projects tend to take a *long* time.

So, what’s the key to a smooth operation? Of course – organization!

Believe it or not, this is spread is meticulously arranged.

There have been times when our entire kitchen is emptied and under drop cloths, the cabinet contents laid out, exposed, on makeshift plywood picnic tables. Another few months where I kept half my clothes, and did half my dressing, in a separate room from the bedroom. And yet another 6-month period where we slept in our bed . . . in the living room. That was interesting when guests were over.

The bottom line is that maintaining order matters: for your sanity, for your sense of balance, and most importantly to enable you to do what you need to do. I never could have made home-cooked meals through a kitchen remodel, without sticking to strict system. And I’d never succeed at running a website if I didn’t plan everything ten steps ahead. Orderliness can turn farce into the best adventure. I’ll always think back fondly on the summer we ‘camped in the dining room’.

The hall closet is utterly uncluttered.

With the new year and new intentions on the brain, I’ve had a lot of readers asking for advice on practicing positivity and living a more mindful, fulfilling life. Let me tell you this: methodology is step one to getting everything on track. And careful organization isn’t reserved exclusively for the ‘big stuff’ like home improvement or education or activism. These principals apply to day-to-day living. They’ll free up tons of time, and allow you to put your energy (physical *and* emotional energy) where it really matters. Here’s three easy steps to get you started.

1) Keep a clean house. Everything, I mean everything, should have a place. Know what goes where, and make sure it gets there. Notice how your anxiety decreases when your surrounding are aesthetically pleasing (ie clean). We’re sensitive to these things, so don’t let it get out of control!

2) Make lists. I’m a notorious list-maker (another consciously learned behavior). I write a daily to-do list, lists of goals for each week, and long-term lists for a number of subjects (like ‘baby stuff to research’, or ‘upcoming posts on Bonzai’). I keep these in a notebook that comes with me everywhere (I like a looseleaf 3-ring binder ’cause it’s easy to shuffle stuff around, but your mileage may vary. Many are fond of the brand Moleskine) Try this, it will seriously change your life.

3) Have a vision. Sleeping in the living room would have been embarrassing and tragic if I didn’t have the image of our beautiful new bedroom to hold in my mind’s eye. Painstakingly copying notes would have been achingly tedious, were I not so damned determined to maintain my 4.0. Having these overarching plans will offer comfort when things get crazy, and ground you when you’re caught up in the chaos of life’s minutia. So dream big (no, bigger!), and then let that vision guide you.




And what about you, my dears? What are your methods for controlling the madness?

Everyone knows that the new year is a traditional time for starting over.

I was always the sort to eschew the new years resolutions. “Everyone always breaks them anyway,” I’d say. I think my friends and I all tried to quit smoking together one year. I lasted about 3 months – others didn’t even last the night.

But then in early 2008, I found myself in a very, very bad place. Would you believe I was a totally bitter, negative person? It’s true. I’d never dealt with depression before and it took me damn near a year to figure out what was going wrong. The sadness itself was brought on by a multitude of factors, but suffice to say it left me in a pretty bad way. I was lonely, lost, unmotivated, and squarely in the center of a quarter-life crisis. I knew I needed to do something radical, before I lost myself forever.

So I did. Not overnight and not without trial (and error), but I wrote a journal about the breakthrough, here, if you’re interested. I began to practice positivity as a lifestyle. I made sweeping changes, looked at myself critically, imagined what I wanted to become. A lot of the work I did during that time served as inspiration for this article. And of course, it led me here (among other places). Just a few months later I was launching Bonzai Aphrodite.

The turn of the year seemed a perfect time to put my vision down on paper. I do believe that having a reference point, the simple act of writing something down and thus entering it into the world, can be a powerful force in manifesting that goal. I had 10 new intentions that I kept in a Word doc on my desktop. It’s entitled 2009 – Living the Dream, and along with my ‘resolutions’, I record my strategies for happiness, my sources of inspiration, and a list of the books I’ve read (I always try to read more than I did the year before). I make sure to open it at least once a month, to read over my 10 intentions and remember the bigger picture.


Resolutions for a New Year:

1) I can be whoever I want to be.
2) CLARITY → VISUALIZE → MANIFEST
3) Practice being a good wife. Be good to Damian. Try to make sure that every day, his life is better because of me.
4) Make realistic, ambitious lists. Cross off everything. Then, allow satisfaction and relaxation.
5) GET PREGNANT IN 2009. Get happy before getting pregnant. Get happy.
6) Enjoy food. Eat healthily. Eat with intention and moderation and pleasure.
7) Walk the boys every day I am able.
8) Exercise every day I am able.
9) Worry less about money. Worry less about the future. Worry less.
0) Never get a ‘real’ job in 2009!




This year there are less intentions – I’m coming from a very different place, after all. But I still have a few (always will, I hope!), and on new years day I’ll write them down in a new Word doc.

What about you, my dears? Do you believe in setting intentions? Do you you make new year’s resolutions, or are you more the type to skip the gimmick?

Lots of Love and wishing you all the best and brightest year of your lives!