All posts tagged site updates

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I keep thinking of a TV character saying “Housekeeping!”  I know that’s silly.  But this post is about blog housekeeping.  As in, there are several loose ends that I’ve meant to take care of (like announcing future projects, contest winners, etc.) that I’ve let slip.  I’ve kept it all going on the back end, but I haven’t let you all know what’s going on.  So now it’s time to buckle down and just do a big post taking care of all of it.  Are you ready?

Contest Winners

Green Pastures Winners

Don’t worry.  They were emailed weeks ago when I promised I would.  So if you don’t already know you won, you didn’t.  Sorry!  I’ll probably do another giveaway in the fall, though, so stick around for it!  Winners were:

kimcox@…

ashleyschooling@…

gmofree@…

Congratulations again, ladies!  :)

Trilight Health Winner

She was also notified last week.  Winner is:

lanae.trevino@…

Congratulations!  You’ll all see more from Trilight Health this month — we’ll be focusing on seasonal allergy products (since so many of you seem to be interested in this — and yes, ’tis the season and all!), and we’ll be doing reader reviews on their products.

Forum

If you haven’t dropped in on Facebook lately, you’re missing out.  The community has been extremely active since I started re-posting questions.  So much so that I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed…I spend much of my day reposting and, when I can, responding to questions.  I feel like we don’t get to have post-related discussions anymore!  But I love being able to draw on the support and knowledge of such an awesome community.  And so….

Forum!

This went live last night and we’ve already got a couple questions there, waiting for readers to answer! If you have a health, wellness, food, budget, parenting question…or even want to know where you can get kombucha starters or share your excess of kefir grains, this is the place to go!  Registration is free, so head on over there today.  You can register with a screen name, or you can connect via Facebook.

Another awesome bonus of the forum is that you can ask as many questions as you want…and the wonderful answers you get will be searchable.  Certain topics tend to come up a lot, so I can ‘sticky’ them so that all the resources are easily accessible and we don’t have to repeat questions too often.

Notice the pretty design  We waited a couple weeks to launch just so we could make it look nice for you!

Contributing Writers

I put it out there a couple months ago that I was searching for new writers.  I got a lot of applications and it was so hard to choose!  Eventually, I did.  They’ve been around for a few weeks now, actually, and you’ve seen posts from a few of them already.  Today I’m going to officially introduce them to you.

Sara Shay of Your Thriving Family

Sara began college focused on focused on History and Women’s Studies and eventually graduated in 2004 with a BA in Theatre Arts, with an emphasis on design and directing. Now a reformed feminist, she is now a first time stay-at-home mom of 3 amazingly bright and joyful children. Married for almost 8 years, her husband is a jack-of all-trades teacher at a K-12 Christian School. With his great heart for the youth, they have always been a part of their life and in their home.

When their oldest was two-years-old, Sara began training as a doula. She is constantly educating her self in the areas of birth, natural living and baby raising. She still occasionally takes on scenic artist jobs for her husband and the University she worked at for 6 years. But mostly, her life is now filled with contributing to their home; nurturing their daughter, son and new little brother; taking care of their aging cat, now 13 chickens, an expanding garden and the daunting finances.

In a perfect world they would be eating all organic, homemade foods, be eco-crazy, and exercise fiends- but for now she is finding balance between health, economy and time. You will find her blogging about family, food, stewardship, marriage, kids, miscarriage, pregnancy and God. Pushing her family to THRIVE not just strive to survive!  Follow her at www.yourthrivingfamily.com.

Malissa McClintock of Tryin’ To Evolve

Malissa is a thirty-something crafter/artist, blogger, and mommy of two sweet girls.   Virginian born and bred, Malissa attended all-female Mary Baldwin College in the Blue Ridge Mountains. While there she continued her love of learning and was able to”focus” her studies in Philosophy, Religion, Art History, History, and Women’s Studies. After graduating, she spent time working with children as a teacher, Art Museum educator, and mentor. Upon completing her Master’s Degree at Hollins University, Malissa relocated to Northern Virginia where she met her husband.

After marrying Andrew in October of 2008, the couple began their life together and welcomed their first daughter, Miss Moo, in October of 2009.  As their life evolved, they moved to Richmond in 2010. They settled in quickly and welcomed their second daughter, Miss Roo, on Easter Sunday of 2011.

Malissa spends her days with her two girls- running around, teaching, crafting, playing and enjoying life. Her philosophy is that spending time with her children is the most important gift she can give them.  As a family they are working towards living simply, buying locally, and reducing everywhere they can. She and Andrew believe in instilling a sense of stewardship and responsibility in their girls. Malissa has begun working towards homeschooling Miss Moo. In her spare time she cooks, crafts, reads, and blogs. A Southerner by birth and spirit, she carries a soft spot in her heart for sweet tea, large porches and gentle drawls. You can follow her evolution at tryintoevolve.blogspot.com.

Jennifer Hunt of Vibrant, Sexy, Strong

Jennifer Hunt married her husband Patrick nine years ago when they met at Brigham Young University. Prior to graduating in Marriage, Family, and Human Development, Jennifer and Patrick completed an internship in Portugal teaching employment workshops. She found a true passion in teaching underserved communities, motivating her to join Teach For America (Houston). Despite her love of teaching, Jennifer hung up her lanyard to raise her first miracle baby (a boy!) and then her surprising second miracle baby (a girl!) two years later.

Jennifer started living a natural lifestyle primarily because she was dead-broke and couldn’t afford processed foods, disposable diapers, and store-bought laundry detergent. Slowly, she converted to a Real Food lifestyle, finally settling on the Paleo diet as the best choice for her family. Prior to Paleo, Jennifer’s family had big-time health challenges. Jennifer suffered immensely from the autoimmune disorder PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), her son appeared to be on the autism spectrum, and her daughter could hardly sleep night or day. She became a believer in Real Food when nearly all of her PCOS symptoms were reversed, her son’s autism symptoms reduced dramatically, and her baby’s reflux and constant crying miraculously stopped.

Jennifer has a passion for health and will be offering lab work and nutrition consulting to help eliminate symptoms, balance hormones, and restore health. Until then, you can catch her blogging about her recovery from PCOS and journey with Paleo at Vibrant Sexy Strong.

Danielle Tate of More Than Four Walls

Danielle is wife, mom, blogger, homemaker and full-time employee.  There’s a bit of everything going on in her life right now! Until the Lord releases them from being a two-income family Danielle is learning to juggle her desire to be a fulltime homemaker with her reality of working full time.

Danielle is passionate about feeding her family spiritually, emotionally and with real food.  After she became pregnant with their son she soon found herself questioning everything conventional that she’s learned about nutrition and health and awakened spiritually to the Lord’s call for her life.  In a strange paradox of blind faith in Jesus and wide-eye skepticism of what society says is normal she is learning to balance every day life and let go of the stuff that matters not.

She cooks meals from scratch, enjoys a good NASCAR race and thinks 5 am is the best time of the day.  Home is certainly where her heart is.  Most days her faith in Jesus Christ and His promises are what get her through. Her life isn’t perfect but it is her perfect life!  Visit her at More Than Four Walls.

Cassie Laing of GAPS of Light

Cassie is a youth and worship pastor’s wife and stay at home mom, and she is brand new to the blogging world. She has two rambunctious boys, ages two and four. The oldest is a thinker, full of questions and ready to point out the smallest inconsistencies the world offers him. The youngest is a doer, constantly experimenting with the relationship between cause and effect, pushing boundaries like they don’t exist. The boys are the sunshine in her day and allow her to experience just a glimpse of her heavenly Father’s love for His children.

Due to food sensitivities in both children, she began incorporating the whole food/ GAPS lifestyle in September 2011 and is learning more everyday! She is starting to share these findings, as well as her thoughts on biblical living, education, children, frugality, gardening, and more at gapsoflight.com. She grew up in a homeschool family, married into a homeschool family, and is currently homeschooling her own children. Throw in two years of teaching special education in public schools, and she has unique perspective on the variety of educational options.

Her goals in life are to faithfully serve her Lord Jesus and her family, to make the most of every opportunity, and to one day own a milk goat. And some chickens. Her husband is now rolling his eyes, but it will happen because he is a sucker for her “pretty please” face.  Follow her at www.gapsoflight.com.

T-Shirts

We’re about to start another new venture.  We’re hoping to offer t-shirts for sale soon!  These will be real-food-themed shirts in all sizes (from infant to adult).  The response on our Facebook page has been pretty positive, so we’re going to throw out a few more details and ask for your feedback.

The top slogans from Facebook voting were:

• Real people eat real food
• I’m a Modern Alternative Mama
• Get Real… Get Raw
• Grow some (on the front)… Real Food (on the back)
• My mommy feeds me real food
• Keepin’ it real (with picture of food)
• Real Food…it’s what’s for dinner
• Free Range Mom
• Organically Grown
• Real Kids Deserve Real Food
• Natural Housewives
• Whole Food Junkie
• I Heart bacteria
• Got raw milk?

We’ll have a variety of styles available — baseball shirts, onesies, regular, fitted, kids’ shirts, etc.  Prices will probably be in the $20 – $35 range, depending on the style of shirt.

If you have any feedback about this, please let us know!  Max. price you would be willing to pay, favorite slogan, favorite color, etc.  It will help us decide what to offer!

Amazon

Right now, two of my books are available on Amazon, for kindle.  (They are a little cheaper than here, but they are in .epub format, which limits which devices you can use them on, and you can’t print them.  If you buy through us, you can do whatever you want with them — for personal use, anyway!)  They are Against the Grain and Treat Yourself.

If you own a copy of either of these books, we would be so grateful if you would go over to Amazon and leave a review for us.  If you own a Kindle and would like to see other books on there, please let us know!

And while we’re on the subject of books…if you have requests for future books, please let me know that, too!

We’re also talking about an ecourse in several months so if you would like to see that, let me know…and what subject(s) you would be most interested in seeing!

Your feedback is always important to us, so please tell us what you think or ask questions!

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It’s time…to look for more contributing writers!

I’ve worked with a handful of excellent women over the last several months, but as always — life gets in the way sometimes.  Some of my writers have had to leave because their own businesses or families needed them more.  We will miss them.  This leaves me with some spots to fill!

I am hoping for three women to join me here as contributing writers.  Contributing writers bring a unique voice and perspective to this site, increasing the value for readers.  This will make a total of 6 writers, and we work as a team.  (Current contributors are Stacy of Stacy Makes Cents, Justyn of Creative Christian Mama, and Debra from Sweet Kisses and Dirty Dishes.)

I’m looking for the following attributes in writers:

1)      Solid writing skills — All writers must be able to write well.  That is, free of grammar and spelling errors, requiring little to no editing from me.  Writers should use a good, conversational style appropriate to a blog, do appropriate research where necessary, and write well-thought-out posts (similar to the type I usually do in style).  This includes writing posts that use sub-headings, bullet points, bolded key points, etc. for easy readability.  Read my posts to get an idea of the style I’m looking for.

2)      Adherence to deadlines — I need writers who are on top of their schedules and don’t need any micro-managing from me.  The ideal writer meets all deadlines (submitting topics and finished articles) without reminders.  Writers will post once per month, will know their dates well in advance, and are expected to submit their posts one week prior to their post date directly into WordPress.  Topics and dates will be discussed in a private Facebook group.

3)      “Alternative” lifestyle — It’s important that we are like-minded.  I welcome having different thoughts and perspectives, but in general your lifestyle should be similar to mine.  That is, into real food, natural health, Biblical Christianity, and so forth.  My readers come for that type of information and I don’t want to disappoint!

If this sounds like something that might be a good fit for you, then Apply to be a contributing writer.  That’s the application form to fill out.  Please email me (kate@modernalternativemama.com) if you have any questions.

All applications will be read and prayed about, and we’ll make a decision and email the chosen writers by next Friday, Mar. 2.  Thanks, and good luck!

Price drop...$9.95!

I have lots and lots of awesome colleagues in the blogging world.

And these awesome colleagues are constantly working on awesome projects.  There are so many of them that as much as I would love to do an individual review for each blogger and each project, I simply cannot.  Almost every post would be a review of some awesome new thing that some awesome new blogger has done!

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to tell all of you about them.  I think my readers will love to hear about many of the new things that are out there right now.  So today I’m going to do one big post to give you all the best news from the blogging world.

Keeper of the Home

In mid-January, Stephanie of Keeper of the Home released a brand new ebook (her third), called Plan It, Don’t Panic, which is a complete meal-planning guide.  If you don’t know where to start with meal planning, or just need some new ideas, this is a great book to look at.  Stephanie also walks you through budget-friendly ideas and includes some ways to save on groceries through meal planning.  She also includes tips and hints for what happens if you don’t forget to stick to the plan.  Stephanie has two other books as well: Real Food on a Real Budget and Healthy Homemaking.

Kitchen Stewardship

Katie from Kitchen Stewardship just re-released her most popular ebook: Healthy Snacks To Go, with several new recipes (now over 40).  One of the new featured recipe is several flavors of roasted chick peas!  One of the “old” classics is the Power Bars, which are like homemade Larabars — and she’s got 14 varieties.  Katie also has the Family Camping Handbook, The Everything Beans Book, and Smart Sweets.

Stacy Makes Cents

You may recognize Stacy’s name since she’s a contributor here (or from her own awesome blog).  Stacy’s husband, Barry, is a financial counselor, and he just wrote a book called From Debtor to Better, all about how to get out of debt.  Barry’s helped many families with his plan, and their family is also debt-free!  So he knows what he’s talking about.  I wrote the foreword for the book, so I’m very familiar with the material.  In addition to information, Barry includes several worksheets so that you can get started immediately on making a plan for a better, debt-free life.

GNOWFGLINS

Wardeh of GNOWFGLINS has recently launched a new ecourse — Basics II.  She’ll be building on basic skills and teaching more about natural sweeteners, traditional fats, organ meats, advanced grain preparation, homemade cream soups and salad dressings, super foods, and snacks (and more!).  Register any time!  Wardeh also teaches Basics I, Sourdough, Fermented Foods, and Dairy ( cheese-making, culturing, etc.).

Christian Mommy Blogger

You may also recognize this name — Nikki is also a contributor here (or was — her own projects are keeping her so busy now that she’s leaving us!).  Nikki is a tax expert, and that’s a subject many of us don’t know much about.  It’s confusing, it’s annoying, it’s… taxes, you know?  But Nikki’s written a new book called Your Blogging Business: Tax Talk and Tips from an Accountant Turned Blogger, all about how to do your taxes the right way to save yourself the most money (as a small business/blog owner).  And it’s written in a language those of us who are not financially inclined will understand.

Collaborative Book

This one’s been in the works for awhile.  It started out as a simple idea: collect a few already-published recipes from bloggers, create a short book, offer as a Christmas gift.  But the project quickly grew out of control, and is now a 100+ page book, including several new recipes.  It was created by me, Erin of The Humbled Homemaker, Nikki of Christian Mommy Blogger, Stacy of Stacy Makes Cents, Justyn of Creative Christian Mama, Rachel of Day 2 Day Joys, and Debra of Sweet Kisses and Dirty Dishes.  It was edited and designed by Erin and her husband (who do editing and design work as a business, called Your Ebook Resource, by the way).  It’s called Real Food, Real Easy, and it’s intended for all you real food newbies out there: basic, delicious, easy-to-make real food recipes!  This will be coming out in the next couple weeks, and we’ll let you know as soon as it does!

Prairie Homestead

Jill, from Prairie Homestead, has a new book coming out soon (Feb. 20) — it’s called Your Custom Homestead.  If you’ve ever been wondering about all this new homesteading business, this is a resource for you!   The book will be out in a couple weeks, so you’ll have to get excited as you wait.

Day 2 Day Joys

Rachel (another writer here) is featuring her husband, Dr. Jake, who is a chiropractor.  He’s answering questions weekly for fans who want to know how they can improve their lives, or on any health and wellness topic.  See the Ask Dr. Jake page for more information, and ask away!

Shalom Mama

Nina at Shalom Mama has recently come out with her first book — Simple Natural Health.  If you’re looking for a beginners’ guide to natural health topics, check it out!

Valentine’s Day Sales

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, wow!  And in honor of the sweet holiday, I have some specials for you.

First, we’re lowering the price of Wholesome Comfort to $9.95 — and that’s permanent!  I’ll also offer the first 40 copies on Monday (the day before Valentine’s Day) for 40% off, using code VDAYCOMFORT.  Grab your copy and cook your sweetie a healthy, comfort-food dinner for your Valentine’s celebration!

Second, I’m going to offer a V-Day-only sale on Treat Yourself: the first 50 copies will go for 50% off, using code VDAYTREAT.  That’s not a sale you see too often!

Third, get any book, or combination of books at 25% off with code VDAYSALE, now through Wed., Feb. 15.

Also…my book on feeding babies and toddlers is done (or will be this weekend), and is in the hands of the testers.  You’ll be seeing that in March!

That’s a lot of bloggy awesomeness!

What are your favorite new books or blogging projects?