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Have you ever wished you could just push the reset button and start your life over?
Just because there’s no reset button on life, doesn’t mean that you can’t make big changes to live a better life. Anyone can revamp their lifestyle so they can live a life that they love. It’s never too late to start over.
Welcome to Mom Revamped!
A blog about a mid-30’s mom, who’s making big changes to her lifestyle to live a healthier, more natural, happier life.
About Me
I’m Heidi.
For the last 14 years, I have enjoyed a career in Childcare. I started out by running a home daycare, which was great when my own kids were young. When I got tired of the mess of a daycare in my living room, I went back to school to get a diploma in Early Childhood Education. After college, I got a job at a daycare center, where I spent the last 5 years.
I have always been a creative person, which is great when you work in child care. When I find the time for it, I enjoy doing some scrapbooking, making homemade cards, gifts and seasonal decorations. I also love to travel (really who doesn’t?). For me planning the vacation is just as much fun as actually going on it. I always manage to find great deals on hotels, lots of fun activities to fill our days, and, with my great organizational skills, I manage to make our trips go as smoothly as is possible when your traveling with kids.
About my Family
The Husband and I have been married for 12 years. When our kids were young, he went back to school to become a computer technician and now has a job working on security systems and some other tech stuff. He enjoys anything to do with technology and spends his free time playing video games or ripping apart old computers to fix them up. He’s a great dad, the get down on the floor and let the kids climb all over you type. He is also a very supportive husband. It doesn’t seem to matter what crazy idea I have, whether it’s a major career change or a complete overhaul of our diet, he always supports me and tells me to go for it.
Big Sis is our 11-year-old autistic daughter. While she is verbal (something we are extremely thankful for) she still has severe speech delays and often speaks in echolalia (which means she will repeat the same phrase over and over and over). Despite all the challenges she faces in her life, she is the happiest kid I have ever met. She loves technology and can figure out how to do things on a computer that I didn’t even know you could do. While she is happy spending as much time as we will let her playing video games or watching YouTube, she also loves the water. A day at the waterpark is a day in paradise for her and she currently wants to be a lifeguard when she grows up.
Lil Sis is our 9-year-old chatterbox. She speaks a mile a minute and doesn’t stop until she’s asleep. While she can get a bit intense at times, she is also a very loving and caring child. She is the type of person who always notices the small things (like a bug on the floor) and sees the beauty in everything (also like the bug on the floor). While she looks just like The Husbands, personality wise she is all me. She is creative, has a great imagination, and her sarcasm skills are coming along nicely. She loves all animals and currently wants to be an animal rescuer when she grows up. Or a lawyer, because she also plans on being rich.
The Dog is the newest member of our family. He is 2 a two-year-old Golden Retriever, who came to us in the summer fully trained to be Big Sis’s service dog. Since Big Sis is a flight risk, his primary job is to keep her safe. When we go out, she wears a belt that is attached to his vest to make sure she can’t take off on us. He is also trained to apply pressure to her, by putting his head on her lap or laying across her lap, to help her feel calm when things get too overwhelming. When he isn’t on the job, he enjoys spending his time getting cuddles from the family or chasing his tail.
Why I’m Making Big Life Changes
I have always been that stressed out mom. Last year was particularly rough though.
While advocating for Big Sis’s needs, my husband and I found ourselves in a legal battle with her school. With no money to pay for a lawyer, I was left trying to figure out how to file legal papers, prep for a hearing, and argue against all the objections from the school’s (very experienced) lawyer. The stress and pressure from all this led to me going off work on stress leave, while I struggled with severe anxiety and panic attacks.
By the time the case was over, I had learned a lot about myself. While so often that year I felt like I couldn’t keep going, I managed not to give up. I came out of it stronger, realizing that I was capable of doing anything I put the effort into. In the months that followed my anxiety slowly faded, the panic attacks stopped, and eventually, I was able to stop taking the anxiety meds. Finally, I was able to go back to living my life.
That was when I realized that I didn’t like that life.
Even before the legal battle started, I was living a life that was too stressful. I didn’t eat healthily and was overweight. I never seemed to have any time for me. Nothing about mine and my family’s lifestyle was healthy. I just wasn’t happy.
I realized it was time to make some big changes.
Why a Blog?
“We teach best what we most need to learn”
My goal is to not just live a healthier and happier life, but a more natural one too.
Let’s be honest though, this isn’t going to be an easy or quick fix. Going from a life of process food to healthy real food, cheap toxic products to safer natural products, and a typical stress-filled life to a calm and happy one is going to take some work. I have a lot to learn about nutrition, environmental toxins, and personal wellness to be able to live the life I am aiming for.
I know I’m not the only person out there who is realizing that they need to make some major life changes. As much as we try to ignore the toxins in the products we use and the food we eat, most of us know that we need to be living more healthy lifestyles. We know that we need to reduce the stress in our lives, but we just don’t know how to do it.
That’s why I started Mom Revamped.
As I learn more about how to live a healthy, less toxic and truly happy life, I will be writing about what I have learned and my own personal experiences making these life changes. I don’t’ expect this to always be easy, and I don’t plan on making it look easy either. There will be many challenges along the way, after all in our society healthy lifestyles just aren’t the norm. So, I intend to share my experiences honestly, in hopes that I will be able to help others who are also looking to live healthy and happy lives.
What Mom Revamped Is About
Healthy Life
The first big life change I made was doing a complete overhaul on mine and my family’s diet. We all started out on the GAPS diet for a month, which eliminated all grains, sugars, artificial crap, and most packaged foods from our diet. Now Big Sis continues to follow the GAPS diet strictly (to help with her life-long digestive problems), while I have been doing the keto diet.
Lil Sis and The Husband don’t strictly follow either diet, but everything we eat at home is grain-free and sugar-free, with a focus on eating real, minimally processed foods. I will admit though, this has been a hard transition for the two of them, so while I still try to go for healthier options (like organic candies or fast food made with fresher ingredients), they do have the occasional not-so-healthy treat.
And, of course, trying get more physically active is a goal of mine as well.
Peaceful Life
Eating healthy and working out isn’t enough though. That’s why focusing on my mental wellness is another priority for me. If the last year has taught me anything it’s that I do not have good stress management skills. While I don’t exactly know where my search for mental wellness will lead me, so far, I have been working on getting my life organized and learning more about self-care, mindfulness, yoga, and meditation.
Natural Life
I haven’t lived my life completely oblivious to how harmful the chemicals in our cleaning products are. But I also haven’t taken the time to really research the safer products that are out there. And I never gave much thought to the toxins that were in our body care products either. While eventually I would like to learn how to make my own cleaning and body care products, for now, I am researching safer, and affordable, products I can swap for our current stuff.
I am also going to be learning more about natural remedies I can use to support my health and my families. While we have been using essential oils for a few years now, I have never been too consistent with them or taken the time to really research all the ways I can use them. So now I’m making the time to do the research as I slowly build my essential oil collection and find other natural products and food that can help us with our health.
Happy Life
Did I mention yet that I never went back to work after my stress leave?
Once that stressful year finally came to an end, I realized that my job was no longer as fulfilling as it had been. So, I quit. Now I am focusing on making a career out of something I really enjoy, writing. Along the way, I have researched and tried out other work at home job options too. While some have turned out to be too much time for the pay, I have weaned through and found a few legitimate ones that pay what my time is worth. Of course, this career change has come with a bit of a pay cut (for now), so I have also been working on finding ways to save money, make a bit of extra coffee money and fixing up my household budget.
There are many other things I am working on in my life to find my happiness too. With things finally settling down a bit around here, The Husband and I are finally finding time for each other, since our marriage has been on the back burner for way too long. I am also focusing on using more positive parenting strategies, so I can make sure that I have a strong relationship with my kids before we hit those teen years. And I have been working on making our house a more enjoyable place to spend our time, by getting things more organized, doing some minor renovations and working on a bit of decorating too.
Fun Stuff
Of course, finding more time to just have fun is playing a major role in my happiness too. From getting back to my crafty side by making my own home décor and gifts to finding some fun projects and activities to do with the kids and planning out some great vacations, I am making time for fun a priority in my life.
Recipes
I have to admit, cooking and baking have never been something that I enjoyed. But now that we are eating healthy, I really don’t have much choice. While my baked goods usually don’t look like something you would see in a recipe book, they at least taste good and that’s all that really matters to me (and luckily to my kids and husband too). I like to keep my recipes as simple as I can and take any shortcuts I find. While I mostly focus on recipes that are either SCD, GAPS or Keto, many of them would work for people following other diets like paleo, grain-free and sugar-free or just plain old healthy real food.
And that is what you can expect to read about on Mom Revamped.
If your interested in seeing how all these life changes play out, you can follow me on my journey on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
So how about you? What big life changes have you made to start living a better life?