Watch the video below and scroll all the way down for the written recipe and a printable PDF, too. Don't forget to let me know what you think in the comments below - would love to hear about your favorite muffin flavor combos!

This anti-inflammatory, healthy fats-rich smoothie is packed with iron, nutrients and hidden greens - and tastes AMAZING! It's become one of my favorites in the morning - and you'd never know how GOOD it is for you! Get the full recipe below or head to our YouTube page for more. Enjoy!

Anti-Inflammatory Avocado Smoothie
Ingredients:
1 ripe avocado
2 cups fresh spinach
2 cups non-dairy milk
1 cup frozen mango
1 frozen banana
1 cup ice
a few drops of vanilla stevia, to taste (optional)

Directions:
Blend it all together in a high speed bender until smooth. Serves 2. Enjoy!

We never planned on having a wedding video made. When we hired our photographer we were on a budget, and video just didn't make sense financially. I didn't think that it mattered to me until the day of the wedding, when all of a sudden I realized I really wanted some kind of video documentation that I could look back on and relive; there's just something about a video that evokes a million more feelings than a photograph could. To my surprise and sincere joy, Alex's brother Spencer had arranged for one of his closest friends, Ryan Todd, to come film our big day. We've known Ryan for years through hockey, so it was amazing to see him there and realize he'd be filming for us. And he killed it! Ryan and our photographer, Natalie, bonded and kind of hung together, catching shots and footage together all day. I couldn't be more thankful! It was the best wedding gift we received, and has made me cry every time I've watched it since. I love seeing all these people we love so much in one place. It was my favorite day ever!

I so hope you guys enjoy re-living a bit of our big day! Special thanks to Ryan Todd for filming and editing the video, to Spencer Owens for making it happen and for generally being the best brother (in law!). Check out both of their sites to see more of their creative work - they both rock. And enjoy the video! ❤️

Hi friends! This post has taken me a lot longer to write than it probably should have, between my crippling anxiety that dealing with this particular event gave me and the fact that my wedding was Saturday. If you wanna see some sneak peeks from our gorgeous, perfect wedding (posts coming soon!), check out my instagram page + story. If you're interested in reading more about my anxiety attack and how I am learning, in an ongoing way, to deal with it, you can check out my recent post on both subjects here. If not, then I'm going to dive right into this post and focus on the good: because that's really how I'd prefer to remember it! It wasn't a perfect weekend, but it was pretty great, and I'm really lucky that I had people there that had my back. 

The weekend kicked off in a caravan to Palm Springs and a visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum to see the new Jeffrey Gibson installation in the sculpture gardens. Our ultimate goal that afternoon before our AirBNB check-in would be to visit Desert X, his other running installation just a mile from where we were staying in PS. The sculpture garden was really neat, and I particularly loved the amount of blown glass artwork they had - so cool to see! 

After the museum we headed a little further into town to the Palm Greens Cafe, one of my favorite places to grab a meal whenever I'm in town. They have a great, super vegan-friendly breakfast, brunch, and lunch menu, plus a board full of fresh juices and smoothies that'll keep you cool in the hot desert weather. My favorite is their Pineapple Jalapeño Cucumber juice - it's sweet, spicy, and super refreshing. We met up with most of the rest of our group at the restaurant for lunch, and texted final grocery and alcohol orders to the stragglers meeting us at the house later. At this point I was getting super excited to see where we'd be staying and to finally head over to the Desert X exhibit. We headed to the AirBNB for check-in, and were a little surprised at how small it was; cute - totally! But also super much smaller than it looked in photos (isn't that always the case?) and a little dingier. But it would do the trick! It was a strange setup - like a house with most of the rooms combined, plus two attached in-law apartments.  A strange structure that made for even weirder sleeping arrangements, but it had a pool and hot tub! Not even the semi-creepy on-property manager (yeah, that definitely wasn't in the listing) could kill the vibe.

We split into rooms, my sister and I splitting one of the larger and more personal in-law apartments, and then headed back to the outskirts of town towards Desert X. The exhibit is basically a large house made entirely of mirrors - and it is super cool! Only about half the group made the trip, but we all thought it was rad and made sure to get plenty of cool photos. I mean, we had to! It was incredible to be alone in an entire room of mirrors - which you might've seen behind the scene footage of if you're following my instagram stories. 😉 

Since I want to be super transparent and honest with you guys, you should know that I was lucky enough to have some really great brand support the weekend through product donation from the following brands: Dandies, Eat Pastry, Harmless Harvest, YumEarth, Organic Gemini, Tater Tats, Larabar, Ozery, Juicero, Hippeas, NadaMoo and Utopia Farms. I want to give them all a HUGE shoutout for being involved and for sharing their products with us for the weekend. They kept us fed, hydrated, full and ready to party, and for that I am so thankful. I love and support ALL of these brands, and recommend their products for real: no paid advertisement needed! 

The snacks made the weekend a freaking blast - and saved us a bunch of time and money. Our fridge was fully stocked - it was truly a thing of beauty. I wish I'd gotten a better picture, but the lighting info ur AirBNB was total crap - lots of shade to block out that hot desert sun. There's a picture of every product on here, but the Ozery + Juicero (in the bottom right of the first photo set) are unlabeled - though were maybe the most eaten products! 😝

We loved using Organic Gemini's tigernut-based protein for our morning smoothies along with some fresh fruit (especially those that indulged in alcohol the night before, haha!) and munching on Larabars all day long between meals to keep us full-time on healthy fats. The Harmless Harvest and Juicero kept us hydrated around the pool, and the Dandies, Eat Patsry, YumEarth and NadaMoo made delicious desserts! Most of the attendees had never tried Hippeas before and they were and instant hit at the party. Utopia Farms provided the medicated edibles - which was AWESOME for me because I don't really drink, and Tater Tats gave us the temporary tattoo entertainment!

The first morning we woke up and everyone was a little hungover - except me - so I practiced a little yoga and made morning smoothies for the group. The rest of the day was the perfect pool day - lots of sun, drinking, poolside snacking, and floating around in fruit-shaped inflatables. I brought along a tie dye kit and we made rad, very nineties souvenirs take home. Turns out you can get a super easy, 30-dye kit with easy apply nozzles at Michaels for like $20. It was so worth it! The evening was a blur of games of Cards Against Humanity, late-night hot tubbing, and some serious dance sessions. We headed to bed late and got up early the next day for our 11 am check out. Everyone was sleepy, a little hungover, and tired of being in the sun. 

Lots of long and loving goodbyes later, we were on the road home. I was exhausted from the weekend emotionally and physically, and was so ready to get home to see (my now HUSBAND!) Alex. We cruised back past the Cabazon Dinosaurs and home. Over - a great weekend. My tips? I've got a few!

• Plan activities that everyone can actually commit to. My morning yoga mesh was a major bummer for me because everyone else was hungover and uninterested.
• Bring lots of healthy snacks! We wee lucky that we had help from such great companies. But buying healthy snacks in bulk is a great way to DIY on the cheap.
• Make time for you and your needs during the weekend. I didn't do that enough, and ended up feeling sad and stressed because of it. 
• Ask friends to keep it vegan (or veg-friendly, or whatever your thing is!) because it's your weekend. It's okay to be selfish! 
• Make sure you stay hydrated! That's half the battle in the heat. 
• Accept that things won't always go as planned. And that's okay.

And once it's all over, just remember - no matter how it goes - you are that much closer to marrying your partner and that part is so, so worth it. A snapshot of the crew below - thanks to all my friends for sharing my bachelorette weekend with me! 

Thanksgiving is 12 days away. Unlike in past years where I show up wildly unprepared, this year I'm playing host-and I googled, pinned, and planned my little heart out. We have a barrage of dishes to prepare on the big day, but I want to get as much done beforehand as I can. That includes the decorations.
Now don't get me wrong, going simple with a few candles and a cranberry garland would still be lovely, but I wanted to get classy and adult-like this year and do something creative. 
We needed a simple project with big results. 
And preferably one we could do with my sweet cousins who were visiting.
We picked some late-season apples from the orchard beside our house, dug out the cloves, and got to work.

We opted for a spin on an old classic: cloved-spiked oranges. Alex's Mom owns and runs an adorable French antique shop back in California, and her holiday decorations are the gold-standard by which we judge our own. She has an excellent eye and gets pretty creative with the table settings. 
We think our locally collected, eco-friendly ornaments would make the cut at her holiday table.

We loved that this was a project we could include our little friends in. Small hands are perfect for pushing those little cloves into soft apples, and just getting the apples themselves became somewhat of an adventure. We were lucky enough to be able to cross the field and pick some very late season apples from the trees and ground on a nearby orchard, keeping our costs and environmental impact low. You can always buy a cheap bag of apples at the grocery store, the softer the better, just not TOO soft- they need to last 'til the big day! 
No apples? Get creative with pears or grapefruit, or get classic with oranges.

First things first: decide what your message will be. The girls and I brainstormed words and phrases that made of think of Thanksgiving. Squash, Food, Pilgrims, and Family all made the list, but we settled on a simple, smart saying: 'give thanks'. We used 10 apples to spell it out, and used a couple extras as testers and mistakes. Our format for 'materials needed' will be set up to write the same message we did. If you want to write something different, simply increase or decrease your apples and cloves amount. The letters we traced were about 2 inches in height.

Materials Needed:
1/4 to a 1/2 cup whole cloves (we used closer to a 1/4 cup)
10 apples, plus a few extras for mistakes
a permanent marker

Method:
Wash and dry the apples to remove any dirt, or in our case, spiderwebs from the grass. Use a permanant marker to draw letters on the apples. We aimed for our letters to all be about 2 inches tall in uppercase lettering, so they would be uniform. Feel free to use fancy lettering if you can freehand it. Just remember- kids work best in straight lines. Once your letters are ready, push cloves into the lines, small flat end first. Push the clove gently, grasping more by the sides than the top, until it is completely pushed in and the ball of the clove is flush with the skin of the fruit. The tops can break off if too much pressure is applied directly to the top when pushing down- so be careful! A few broken cloves is fine, but overall the goal is to include the whole thing. 
Once all the letters have been traced over with cloves use a towel or rag to wipe any dripping juices from the apple.
 Arrange the apples onto a large plate or serving platter, or spread them around the celebratory table. They look great against wood and shades of cream and they'd be really cute hung from the ceiling!

We arranged our finished apples on a large white serving dish with accents of pine boughs and pinecones. The clove smell is surprisingly pleasant; you can smell a hint of fall all through the kitchen without being overwhelmed. The apples should last up to about a week once cloved. Remember, since you poked holes in the apples, they will turn more quickly. To slow this process store them in a cool place until they're table ready.

And now the video!  My two adorable cousins, Natalie (7) and Emma (6), love to talk. Especially on camera, where they can watch themselves. Its pretty cute, watching them preform for the camera. We started talking to them about veganism on camera and kept the cutest bits for you. Enjoy!