25 Whole30 Recipes to Help You Thrive (Not Just Survive)!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season–I took a nice little break from blogging in order to do my annual holiday stress out, complete with traveling, spending time with family and consuming a moderate to high level of wine. All in all, it was good–but, now I’m back home and ready to rock out this year with you all. Let’s start with a round up of some of my favorite healthy recipes!  […]

Is Your Skincare and Makeup Routine Toxic? Mine Was. Here’s How I Changed That!

I’ve always loved beauty products. When I was a tweenager, I would go into a Victoria’s Secret, or a Bath and Body Works, and come out smelling like a very cheap, very young hooker. Rude, but true. I mean, what thirteen-year-old girl can resist rubbing something called “Amber Romance” into her skin and topping it off with a Strawberries and Champagne body spray? Not this one. My father spent years making it very well known that I smelled like an unbearable chemical hooker bomb. Every morning after my daily lotioning and spritzing routine, he would remark in a disgusted voice, “Oh, GOD, Have you been creaming again?” As a teenager, I thought he was being a real oversensitive Daddy Doofus, but as an adult, and as someone who’s struggled with chronic illness and chemical sensitivity (and, honestly, as someone who has inherited that same very sensitive Italian Dad Nose), I can tell you that stuff was simply no good. Have you ever tried to walk into one of those lotion-y, cream-y stores as a sensible Italian-nosed adult? Not to be dramatic, but it’s essentially like walking into chemical cupcake hell. Okay, that was dramatic — but, like, totally correct. […]

How To Make an Epic Gluten-Free Cheese Board

This post is sponsored by the lovely people at Crunchmaster. All opinions, and cheese plate-ery advice is my own!
This Valentine’s Day I’ve decided to do something a little different. Instead of the intense steak and lobster-fest my husband and I usually spring for, I’m keeping things simple by making us a big ol’ cheese board with all the fixings. It’s the ultimate in snack-dinner dining. You guys know about snack-dinner, right? It happens when it’s late, and you’re tired, and you end up eating a bowl of popcorn and an apple for dinner. Or, maybe you throw all caution to the wind and hunker down to eat a hunk of salami over the sink while gently sobbing about your life choices? We’ve all been there. This is the MUCH less sad version of that. This is fancy snack dinner. This is something to look forward to. This, my friends, is romantic.

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A Few Words On Body Shaming

Body shaming is definitely a thing, and I did it to myself today.

This afternoon I wrote my Mom on Facebook, begging her to remove photos she posted on her Timeline of my recent visit to Los Angeles. They were family photos. Candids she had snapped while we were all in the pool together. I saw myself sitting hunched over in a swimsuit and I lost it. I cried. A little voice in my head woke up and began berating me like a mean girl in the high school cafeteria. “You’re disgusting,” it said. “You need to get these photos down immediately before anyone can see them–you don’t want people to know what you look like right now. Hide it. Take them down. Also, you’re worthless.” […]