Hippy Grandma’s Top Ten Unique, Green & Groovy Gift Ideas For Hippie Babies!

Send ‘hippy love for generations’ to a new baby with these eco-friendly and unique baby gifts and help Mother Earth too!

1. An ‘old fashioned lace or chenille baby bonnet’

2. A pair of ‘lovingly handknit by a real grandma’ bamboo hippy baby socks!

3. A natural bamboo and organic cotton blend baby blanket!

4. An adorable, exquisitely finished & lined vintage chenille baby jacket!

5. Soft & cozy “Shoo Foo” bamboo blend footed sleepers!

6. Spicebodhi Baby Ayurvedic Aromatherapy Package with Handmade Soap

7. Commission an “Angel Heart Art Doll” part of the Kraggelys Family by artist CD Good

8. Bamboo & Organic Cloth Diapers

9. A Dream Child CD including a magical bedtime story!

10. Hippy Love Welcome to the World Bundle!

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations!

Zoey ~ founding hippy of Hippy Grandma Eco-Boutique and life coach for women

Are you a heart-centered and “soul-filled shopper”? Know of a new baby arriving or are you looking for hippy baby clothes? Keep the heart, soul & hippy love flowing for generations with purchases from Hippy Grandma: an Eco-Boutique selling fair trade, one of a kind, earth friendly treasures.

Through your purchases, you help local artisans, hand-crafting grandmas on a pension, women’s fair trade co-ops and programs designed to support vulnerable mamas & babies. Please share the hippy love news widely and wildly with your soul brothers & sisters (copyright held by Hippy Grandma Ventures Ltd.). www.hippygrandma.com

I personally have been ‘clean and sober’ for over 16 years, however, did have a pretty great ‘hippy brownie’ recipe in my younger days.

These days, my favorite cookbook, “rebar modern food cook book” by local BC chefs, Audrey Alsterberg & Wanda Urbanowicz has the most unbelievable recipe, which is my new ‘hippy grandma far out and fab’ brownie recipe.

Check out the ‘vegan fudge brownies’ on page 218 of their cookbook and let me know what you think! While you are cruising through the cook book, also try the ‘wilted spinach salad’!

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey ~ founding hippy at the hippy grandma eco-tique

Are you a heart centered and soul-filled shopper? Have a look through our on-line eco-tique featuring unique, green & groovy baby gifts and treasures. Our suppliers are grandmas on pensions, women solo-preneurs and women’s fair trade co-ops. Your purchases help care for Mother Earth and vulnerable pregnant moms and babies! Please share this information widely and wildly with your soul brothers and sisters!
www.hippygrandma.com

We strongly believe in paying a fair & honest wage and wholesale price for beautiful treasures. This is honors the entrepreneur and supports socially conscious and aware purchasing and gifting!

Our ‘hippy love welcome to the world’ bundle is our ’signature treasure’ and I used it to show the hours of ‘woman time’ that go into this gift of love.

This love bundles includes the following treasures with approximations of time:
- a baby jacket made from vintage chenille ~ 6 hours of labour
- a bamboo blend baby towel ~ 1 hours of labour
- tie dyed onsie ~ 1 hour of labour
- Ayurvedic Aromatherapy oils for mama & baby and soap and shampoo ~ 4 hours of labour, including wildcrafting the herbs
- hand-made toy ~ 1 hour of labour
- a bamboo blend wash-cloth ~ 1/2 hour of labour
- Dream Child CD ~ 1 hour of labour
- packing, promoting, marketing, wrapping and shipping ~ ~1/2 hour of labour

Total: minimum of 15 hours

Sending this love bundle to a special baby not only makes a unique & extraordinary gift; it also supports women entrepreneurs who are paid a fair wage for their beautiful works!

See more of our treasures at our hippy grandma eco-tique.

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey ~ founding hippy

Are you a heart centered, soul-filled & green shopper? Have a look through our on-line eco-boutique. Our suppliers are grandmas on pensions, women solo-preneurs and women’s fair trade co-ops.
Your purchases help care for Mother Earth and vulnerable pregnant moms and babies! Please share this information widely and wildly with your soul sisters!
www.hippygrandma.com

This month our “far out and fab” featured treasure is our “Mother Earth Bags”. Hand-made by Janet Auty-Carlisle, these versatile bags are made from re-cycled sari fabric and have a multitude of uses.

Janet donates the proceeds from her sale of these bags to programs devoted to helping women and children who have suffered abuse.

Join our facebook group and add a wall post to enter to win one of these fabulous bags, or you can puchase one directly from our on-line boutique to help a wonderful cause!

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey – founding hippy of hippy grandma eco-boutique

Are you a heart centered, soul-filled & green shopper? Have a look through our on-line eco-boutique. Our suppliers are grandmas on pensions, women solo-preneurs and women’s fair trade co-ops.
Your purchases help care for Mother Earth and vulnerable pregnant moms and babies! www.hippygrandma.com

I recently read “Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother Daughter Story” by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor. This book is “a wise and engrossing book about feminine thresholds, spiritual growth, and the relationship between mothers and daughters” and I loved it!

The sections by the mom, Sue explore many facets of aging and deepening spirituality, while Ann’s chapters are lighter, exuberant and achingly truthful.

Being the mom of three daughters and personally going through many of the mid-life questioning and questing that Sue is doing, I am savoring this book as one would savor a big, round ripe pomegranate! I am finding a deepening and an enriching of my spirituality emerging with the reading. It also gives me distinct pleasure to be reading this book in an area of the western world that has welcomed Eastern spirituality and religious freedoms. Vancouver, with it’s partner city San Francisco, spawned the hippie movement, which provided a gateway for the emerging Eastern spirituality and the furthering of a differentiation between religion and spirituality

First, here are some definitions from Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org ):

“Religion: A religion is a set of tenets and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, or religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience. The term “religion” refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.”

“Spiritual: Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit, a concept closely tied to religious belief and faith, a transcendent reality, or one or more deities. Spiritual matters are thus those matters regarding humankind’s ultimate nature and purpose, not only as material biological organisms, but as beings with a unique relationship to that which is perceived to be beyond both time and the material world. Spirituality also implies the mind-body dichotomy, which indicates a separation between the body and soul.

As such, the spiritual is traditionally contrasted with the material, the temporal and the worldly. A perceived sense of connection forms a central defining characteristic of spirituality — connection to a metaphysical reality greater than oneself, which may include an emotional experience of religious awe and reverence, or such states as satori or nirvana. Equally importantly, spirituality relates to matters of sanity and of psychological health. Spirituality is the personal, subjective dimension of religion, particularly that which pertains to liberation or salvation.”

So, while spirituality may be connected to religion for some, it can also be the subjective sense of “a power greater than oneself, a sense of expansiveness, connection and awe” that is experienced outside the realm of organized religion. It is this sense of expansiveness and connection that guides hippy grandma to keep the hippy love flowing for generations so our children and our grandchildren and on and on, may also catch some star dust!

“The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched” – Henry David Thoreau

Enjoy your day.

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey – founding hippy & ceo (chief enthusiasm officer) at hippy grandma & life & biz coach for women

Are you a heart centered and soul filled shopper? Through your purchases, you help local artisans, hand-crafting grandmas on a pension, women’s fair trade co-ops and programs designed to support vulnerable mamas & babies. Please share Hippy Grandma widely and wildly with your soul brothers & sisters.
www.hippygrandma.com

Love Your Self: Self Care is Not Self Improvement!

I hope you enjoy this article, have a wonderful February, the month of ‘love’ and share your hippy love with your friends and family!

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey – founding hippy & ceo (chief enthusiasm officer) at hippy grandma & life & biz coach for women

Do you ever find yourself wondering exactly what does “unconditionally loving one’s self” or “self care” mean? In my coaching practice, I have many women ask me, “but isn’t it selfish to put myself first”? In the following coaching conversation I often use the phrases “motherly love” and “compassion towards yourself” as capturing the essence of self-care! Another word that fits into this discussion is “maitri.” Maitri is a Sanskrit word often translated as “unconditional friendship with oneself”.

What strikes me is that as we can develop “unconditional friendship with ourselves”, we bring compassion and gentleness into our “self-care” practice. Starting from the perspective of gentleness and respect allows life to flow forth in quite a different way than striving towards the completion of projects.

Self care is not self-improvement!

In coaching, my clients and I also talk about self-care and how the tendency is for many women to start making lists of how to improve. The lists often include: eat better, exercise more, start meditating, spend less, get organized, do more yoga, pray more, lose weight, spend more time with elderly parents and on it goes.

Self-improvement as a generalization, starts from the place of being “not good enough”, and “there’s room for improvement” and certainly, there is a time and place for self-improvement (like, say, when you have just had a heart attack and there are a whack of new lifestyle changes to make). Yet, self – improvement is different than self-care.

Self-care is about starting from the place of “I am enough, I am good enough, I have enough, there is enough, I know enough, I do enough.” Self-care is about affirming “my life is unfolding perfectly, in the right order, with the right events, in the right timing.” Self-care is soft and gentle and respectful of your basic goodness.

Now, of course there are times in our lives when self improvement is necessary and important. The key part is in recognizing in oneself if there is a pattern of “not feeling good enough” and continually playing that out in one’s life. Practicing daily “self-care” can help to shift that pattern and deepen a sense of self-acceptance, peace and fulfillment.

So, from that soft and gentle place for the month of February, here are some exercises for deepening your “self love” with “self-care”.

1. Read the descriptions of self-improvement and self care again, then stop, go inside yourself and see if you feel the difference in these two important concepts. Use the following questions to help:
• if you had to give the two concepts each a colour, what colours would you chose?
• when you say the phrases self-care and self-improvement where in your body to you feel each phrase?
• what does your heart say about each phrase?
• what does your head say about each phrase?
• hold each phrase in your hand (metaphorically), which one feels heavier?
2. Write about the above exercise and your “learning”.
3. Explore the concept of friendship, and consider if you hold yourself to a higher and different standard than you hold your friends ie are you more critical of yourself than you are of your friends?
4. Be gentle with yourself and notice when this is easy or difficult.
5. Celebrate your wonderful heart! You may wish to buy a new journal or buy yourself flowers or design another ritual that helps you say “I love me”!

“May your life be like a wildflower, growing freely in beauty and joy each day.”

- Native American Proverb

Are you a heart centered and soul filled shopper? Through your purchases, you help local artisans, hand-crafting grandmas on a pension, women’s fair trade co-ops and programs designed to support vulnerable mamas & babies. Please share Hippy Grandma widely and wildly with your soul brothers & sisters.
www.hippygrandma.com

Are Your Business Values in Sync With Your Personal Values?

Enjoy the following article I wrote a few years ago as I was generating ideas and energy for hippy grandma! One of our business values and a strongly held personal value is ‘unconditional love’, hence our tag line ‘hippy love for generations’!

namaste,

Zoey

“Values” are the essence of who we are. Values are principles that you hold to be of worth in your life. Values are those things considered right, worthwhile, and desirable- the basis of guiding principles and standards. “Crystal values” are those values that are so important that if not present in your life will cause your life to shatter. Think of what would happen if you dropped a crystal ball. “Rubber values” are those values that you can drop for awhile with no problem and will come bouncing back when necessary. Think of what happens when you drop a rubber ball.

Getting really clear on the values that are most important to you personally and in your business will give you a framework for making decisions, taking forward movement and assessing dissonance in your life. Let me tell you about a client of mine. Carol had identified that she held “social responsibility” and “respect for nature” as very strong values. She found out that the company she was working for was pumping toxic waste into the local watershed. She decided that she could no longer work for that company and in fact, felt she needed to report the company for the poor environmental business practices. In spite of the fact that being unemployed was not attractive, Carol stayed true to her values and resigned. While she had to deal with some short- term financial issues, this decision was worth it to her as she gained so much in the areas of self-honoring and self respect.

Is your business in sync with your personal values? If it is, you likely feel great about the work that you do and love your business. If you started your business without consideration of your personal values, and your personal and business values are out of sync, you may feel unfulfilled, dissatisfied and unhappy in your work.

In our current business environment, it is vitally important that you, the business owner knows what your personal values are, what your business values are and has a marketing program consistent with those values in every way.

Clarity, transparency and communication with your clients around personal and business values leads to a happy and fulfilling life and business and a powerfully positive business reputation!

Do you know what your business values are? What about your personal values? What about your crystal values and your rubber values? Are you in sync with your values? Working with a life & business coach to support you to gain clarity on your values may be beneficial to both you and your business.

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey – founding hippy & ceo (chief enthusiasm officer) at hippy grandma & life & biz coach for women

Are you a heart centered and soul filled shopper? Through your purchases, you help local artisans, hand-crafting grandmas on a pension, women’s fair trade co-ops and programs designed to support vulnerable mamas & babies. Please share Hippy Grandma widely and wildly with your soul brothers & sisters.
www.hippygrandma.com

These are the jackets and this is the entrepreneur, who inspired me to create “Hippy Grandma”! For me, the 60’s are represented by my peach chenille bedspread and what a green & groovy way to pass on a legacy by gifting a hippy baby with a chenille jacket?

Joyce says…

“I began my business in 1978 in order to be able to stay at home and raise my daughter. I began making baby and children’s hair accessories and continued along that path for 25 years. This led to sewing Heirloom Baby Bonnets which also opened the door to Kozy Koats. I have always enjoyed creating beautiful treasures for babies and children. I enjoy searching for unique fabrics and especially searching for vintage material to give them new purpose. I love babies, can you tell”?

Joyce is an amazing seamstress. She creates her baby clothes from a home based studio and imbues her products with spirit grandma love.

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey – founding hippy & ceo at hippy grandma

Are you a heart centered and soul filled shopper? Through your purchases, you help local artisans, hand-crafting grandmas on a pension, women’s fair trade co-ops and programs designed to support vulnerable mamas & babies. Please share Hippy Grandma widely and wildly with your soul brothers & sisters.
www.hippygrandma.com

Canada’s National Parks exist to protect and present outstanding representative examples of natural landscapes and natural phenomena that occur in Canada’s 39 natural regions. Of the over 40 National Parks in Canada, possibly the most well-known is Banff National Park in Alberta.

In the summer of 2008 the municipality of Banff became the first in Canada to introduce an all-hybrid electric transit fleet. Not only are the busses in Banff environmentally friendly, they’re cute too!

James Marriott, a Canmore, AB based wildlife photographer, provided four images to decorate the ROAM busses; grizzlies, elk, goats and wolves, each representing a season of the year in the park.

“We live in a national park and Unesco World Heritage Site, so it is really important to us to always consider the environmental impacts of our decisions,” says Banff Town Councillor Stavros Karlos. “With these new hybrids, we’ll reduce emissions and lower our fuel and lifecycle costs. And the buses look amazing. I think people are going to want to leave their cars where they are, and Roam instead.”

The next time you’re lucky enough to be in Banff, hop on a bus to get around town and know that you’re contributing to preserving such a special place. And check out James Marriott’s photography anytime online – www.wildernessprints.com. A photograph of his was on the cover of Canadian Geographic in December 2009. (You can also read the heartbreaking story about the wolf who is on the cover, and featured on one of Banff’s busses, on the storybook on James’ web site.)

peace & namaste,

Zoey – founding hippy & ceo at hippy grandma

Are you a heart centered and soul filled shopper? Through your purchases, you help local artisans, hand-crafting grandmas on a pension, women’s fair trade co-ops and programs designed to support vulnerable mamas & babies. Please share Hippy Grandma widely and wildly with your soul brothers & sisters.
www.hippygrandma.com

So…how are those new year’s resolutions holding up? This is not a time to judge yourself, but maybe to ask: what other support do you need to achieve your goals, or dreams, or visions this year?

Here’s a quick suggestion from the category of eating in a more healthy and even more local way (see our previous post on the 100-Mile Diet). We can recommend an amazing cookbook that we just found. The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook by Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre, a personal chef and a nutritionist from Washington State. We made the Fragrant Lentil Soup and the Winter Quinoa Salad over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and they were both fantastic. Flavourful, nutritious and, best of all, they didn’t take an unreasonable amount of time to prepare.

We really appreciate this cookbook because it begins with several chapters explaining why eating more whole foods matters to both our bodies and the planet, and also has a ton of information for people with various allergies (wheat, gluten etc.). The authors have had tremendous success with some of their clients who had previously undiagnosed food allergies, whose lives have been transformed simply by changing their diets.

The book was recommended to us by a naturopath and it’s easy to see why. This naturopath’s favorite quote is “Let food be your medicine and medicine your food”: Hippocrates.

You can find the book and order it online at wholelifenutrition.net.

peace & namaste,

Zoey – founding hippy & ceo at hippy grandma

Are you a heart centered and soul filled shopper? Through your purchases, you help local artisans, hand-crafting grandmas on a pension, women’s fair trade co-ops and programs designed to support vulnerable mamas & babies. Please share Hippy Grandma widely and wildly with your soul brothers & sisters.
www.hippygrandma.com