Welcome 2011!

It has been one year since we started our Vegan journey and started this blog. We get questions all the time about what we are eating and that we are doing about clothing, products and how Addisyn is doing compared to other non vegan children. So we created a place for friends and family to go and see what we are cooking, what products we are using and how we are incorporating veganism into our lives. I haven’t been as good about updating as I would like to be and that is something that I will strive to do in 2011.


This year has been big, we have had allot of changes, we moved across the country and again had to leave wonderful friends behind. It was bitter sweet move, we were really excited to get back to the coast and back to family but sad to leave the life we had created in the north.

We went Vegan, and while at home it is a very easy thing to do, out in the world it is a whole other story. We are doing what we think is best for our family, we try to choose the best possible option in different situations and learn from every one of those choices good of bad.

For example this year after much discussion and debate we decided to be non vegans for the holidays. We intended it to be just the Thanksgiving meal and the Christmas meal but it ended up being a few days around each holiday.

Some of our reasons for choosing to do this was because we didn’t want to put anyone out, we didn’t want to be a burden to those fixing the holiday meals and we didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. In the end we fell like it was the wrong choice for us. The guilt that we felt was more than I anticipated and we were feeling very hypocritical. We want to set a good example for our children and while this year Addisyn doesn’t really understand what was going on what happens next year when she questions why we are going against our beliefs and choosing to eat meat or dairy. How do we justify that to her and how is that teaching her to be a strong independent woman and to stand behind her beliefs (whatever those may be) if we are showing her that we don’t?

I’m not going to say I regretted our choice of being non vegan for the holidays because if we never did it we would never be feeling this way and we would never know that this was something that didn’t work for us. This is all al learning experience, trial and error. Learning what realistically works best for our family.

We have learned allot in 2010, veganism has opened our eyes to not just things food related but many other issues that are going on around our world. We have become so much more aware of our environmental footprint, and while we are not perfect we are doing our best to treat lightly on our mother earth.

This year our New Year resolutions are much the same as anyone’s, be more active, get strict with a budget, more family time, less TV time……I’m really excited about them all and for the first time ever I know that we are able to stick to a resolution, we are able to make drastic changes on our lives for the better and I feel that 2011 is going to be an amazing year!

Happy New Year to you all!

XOXOX

Katie, Lonny, Addisyn and Toby!