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

“To succeed, you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality.” ~ Anita Roddick

I love this quote and use it for all elements of my life and business. Anita Roddick certainly exemplified living a passionate life and demonstrated this through her philanthropic work! I have found in both my coaching and with the artisan suppliers for Hippy Grandma Eco-Boutique, that most people joyfully engage in what they are passionate about, if they have figured out what this is! What some folks seem to struggle with is figuring out their passions.

I think the word ‘passion’ even scares people, due to some of the sexual connotations, however, the definition is simply ‘a powerful emotion, like enthusiasm, love or joy’. Of course there can be strong passionate negative emotions too and one can also learn alot about themselves from looking at these states as well.

Passion is very powerful and can truly “fire up” your life and/or business.

To gain clarity on your passions and how these can be integrated into your life or business planning ask yourself the following questions and then design accordingly so your life unfolds in alignment with the answers:

1. What makes me cry?
2. What makes me laugh?
3. What do I love?
4. If I could do and be anything in the world, what would that be?
5. If I didn’t have to work, what would I do?
6. What gives me the most energy?
7. What makes my heart ’sing’?

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). www.hippygrandma.com

Zoey’s Top Ten Tips for Green Sailing

Having just returned from a 10 day sailing trip to Desolation Sound, BC, where re-provisioning is tricky due to lack of marine stores, I had plenty of practical opportunity to add to my ‘green sailing tip list’. These tips have been gleaned throughout 23 years of sailing in BC waters (most recently aboard our 35 ft Hunter sailboat ‘Orion’) with my husband and daughters.

Here are my top ten tips for green & practical sailing from the first mate and chief cook & bottle washer’s perspective:

1. Sail as much as possible as sailing by nature is ‘green’ as wind is the power source!
2. Use the ocean for composting fruit & vegetable peelings and coffee grounds.
3. Prior to leaving home, pack dry goods in Tupperware containers and zip loc bags to avoid having to dispose of cardboard containers and to save on space.
4. Add an ice block to the freezer/fridge to avoid an excess draw on the batteries.
5. Freeze bottled water at home and use this first as an ice source and then as fresh water once unthawed.
6. Bring solar powered lamps for reading at night.
7. Consider having solar panels and/or wind turbine installed.
8. Use white vinegar as a natural deoderizer for the head and all purpose cleaning agent.
9. Conserve water by washing dishes once/day.
10. Don’t forget the following essentials for the galley which add zest to non-perishable dishes and meals: cinnamon, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, onions, balsamic vinegar and for a special treat towards the end of the trip: Pillsbury biscuits, croissants, cookie dough and finally a box of brownie mix.

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations!

Zoey ~ founding hippy of Hippy Grandma Eco-tique and a happy sailor

Are you a heart-centered and “soulfilled shopper”? Know of a new baby arriving? 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) .www.hippygrandma.com

Hippy Grandma’s Intuition: “Women, Intuition and Self-Care”

by Zoey Ryan ~ founding hippy of Hippy Grandma Eco-tique and life coach for women

From my perspective, elder women are sages! Being a sage includes: wisdom, intuition and gentleness, amoungst other qualities.

Intuition is an interesting one to ponder. Much has been written about “women’s intuition”, sometimes from the perspective of appreciation and depth, yet occasionally with a slightly minimizing and patronizing tone, discounting the richness and wisdom inherent in “women’s intuition.” One can sub-categorize this intuition as a “mother’s way of knowing”; “a nurse’s way of knowing”; “a healer’s way of knowing” etc.

Personally, I have experienced a little bit of trickiness when tapping into and planning to take action based on my intuition. This is also a “trickiness” that has been expressed by a number of my coaching clients. Since our egos/pain bodies/gremlins (one can use a variety of words to describe this type “energy field”) love attachment, continuity, the status quo, high drama, judgments etc; the trickiness becomes an interesting dialogue with ourselves to figure out if what we are “hearing” is our intuition or our ego. When faced with this dialogue, which can feel abit like a committee meeting with in us, the following phrase can be very helpful; “the body never lies”.

If you are interested, this week, tap into your intuition, your inner way of knowing. Be attentive to those other voices that may come in. Using your body as an indicator of intuition, where in your body does you intuition reside?

Intuition tends to be soft, gentle, neutral, flowing and centered in your body.

Ego/pain body/gremlin messages tend to feel strident, kind of whiny, negative and scattered.

Play around with this during the week!

Self-care Enchantments:

1. Think of a time that you experienced very strong intuition about something, and acted on it.

2. Think of a time that your ego, or pain body or gremlin was loud and insistent. For more information on “pain body’s” read any of Eckhart Tolle’s work like “The Power of Now”, or “A New Earth”.

3. Consider how intuition and ego feel different for you and learn how to tell the difference.

Peace, namaste & hippy love for generations!

Zoey

Are you a heart-centered and “soulfilled shopper”? Know of a new baby arriving? 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) . www.hippygrandma.com

Eco-Tip

This is a very simple, cool tip I just learned about recently from April Farrall of Angelscents Holistic Healing in White Rock, BC, Canada (I had an amazing massage as well)!

If you have a fish in a fish bowl or tank, add some live, curly bamboo, which will live in the water, provide natural aeration and you won’t need to use an electric pump!

Groovy!

peace, namaste & hippy love for generations,

Zoey ~ founding hippy at hippy grandma eco-tique

Are you a heart centered, soul-filled & green shopper? Have a look through our on-line eco-boutique 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 brother 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

Our wonderful suppliers, Lorraine Pond and Robyn Hardy (Bobs & Lolo) have received a Juno nomination for their wonderful ‘Action Packed’ CD! Far out and Groovy!

“Bobs & Lolo are dedicated to connecting kids to the natural world with music, movement and make-believe. Sharing musical stories that engage, inspire and educate, they teach kids to care about themselves, their neighbours and the planet.

Robyn Hardy – Bobs
With a background in teaching and linguistics, Robyn is an enthusiastic and caring individual with a passion for conservation education. On stage she loves to sing, dance, clap, snap and tap!

Lorraine Pond – Lolo
As an environmental educator and kinesiology major, Lorraine is an energetic performer with a flare for creating connections between young audiences and the natural world. On stage she loves to sing, dance, wiggle, slide and glide!

Growing up on Vancouver Island, Robyn and Lorraine have always shared a love of the natural world and a passion for working with children. Creating the dynamic duo Bobs & Lolo has allowed them to combine their diverse academic backgrounds with a mutual love of teaching and the creative arts.”

(from www.bobsandlolo.com)

Lorraine & Robyn, we want to send you a big green & groovy shout out on your nomination! Send a Bobs & Lolo CD to your fav hippy kid from our on-line store!

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

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