Blog - It's Simply Lindsay

10/10/18

Healthy Pumpkin Spice Latte

It’s fall, the best time of the year for so many reasons, especially pumpkin spice lattes. You don’t need to spend a small fortune on a sugar-loaded coffee house drink because you can easily make a healthy pumpkin spice latte at home! My love for pumpkin spice runs deep, and I set out to create my own because of the following serious quandaries.

I want pumpkin spice lattes every day.
I can easily take a route to work to pass popular coffee shops.
$5 a cup can start to add up.
I’ve been actually starting to care about the junk that’s in my food.

I also have various specifications when I order, and sometimes I forget to mention my preferences (my old order was a tall skinny decaf pumpkin spice latte with coconut or almond milk). While I used to think the “skinny” part of my order meant healthy by cutting calories and fat, I realized that any sugar free foods are more dangerous for you. You can read about the dangers of popular sugar-free substitutes like Sucralose here. If you think you’re being healthy by ordering a sugar-free drink, think again – it would be better to have real sugar than a sugar substitute (that goes for your own cooking, too).

09/26/18

DIY Pumpkin Centerpieces

We all love fall, the most wonderful time of the year, filled with pumpkin lattes, pumpkin candles, pumpkin pie, pumpkin facials, and oh yes, what about good ole’ fashioned plain pumpkins?! When my mom told me she was having a fall themed dinner party, I offered to make the tablescape and centerpiece, with what better than…you guessed it… pumpkins!

Place “Cards”

I’m a gold girl, and to me, gold screams fall, so I spray painted miniature pumpkins gold for the place cards and tied hand-written names to the stems with twine.

Accents

Vary the sizes of your pumpkins for visual interest. I chose two medium sized pumpkins, spray painted gold, for the accents to the main attraction – a naturally seafoam green pumpkin used as a vase.

Continue reading to learn how to make this simple DIY fall tablescape – great for dinner parties, everyday decor, and Thanksgiving.

09/12/18

Why beautiful is not a compliment (and what to say instead)

Everyone likes to feel beautiful, right? That’s what the media tells us; that’s what our inner nature tells us; it’s what we instinctively tell any little girl we see and the way we measure our attractiveness against other people’s, whether intentionally or subconsciously.

After finding myself telling my daughters this all the time, I had to stop and realize what I was doing, because telling someone they’re beautiful may be a true statement, but it’s not exactly a meaningful compliment.

If someone is, as you deem them, beautiful, that’s the way they were made. They didn’t do anything (short of extreme plastic surgery gone right, in which case you can compliment the doctor) to look like that. And even so, a compliment towards one’s beauty is merely a statement on their outward appearance, one they had no control over.

09/3/18

Two popular health fads to avoid and two to try instead

Guest post by: Lucy Wyndham

The health and weight loss industry is worth trillions in the global market. Companies are realizing the huge trend in people wanting to lose weight, stay healthy, or get fit, and are making money from the demand. This is why you probably see a new fitness fads pop up every couple of months. However, not every diet trend that you see in the news is scientifically sound. Here are two of the worst popular diets to follow and how you can fix it up to provide a healthy and efficient diet for your body.

08/28/18

Easy toddler bath time routine

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #GetWhatBabyNeeds #ChooseGentle #CollectiveBias

With 3.5 and 1.5 year-old daughters (and another baby girl on the way!), having a bath time routine is essential in our house, and from playing outside and having (sometimes) multiple baths a day to my youngest having some dry skin concerns, our routine is ever-changing and flexible.

JOHNSON’S® has always been a part of our family since I was a baby – honestly, I tried other brands but nothing beats it. It just smells and feels like a baby should, and with their newly reformulated products with 50% fewer ingredients that are over 90% naturally derived, I’m more confident in these products than ever.

From my extreme aversion to dry skin to my girls’ curly hair, there’s something in this line for all of our bath concerns.

My girls love bath time, so getting them in is never an issue, and honestly when you’re out of things to do, bath time can be a saving grace activity!

07/24/18

Guys, stop calling everyone guys

You probably don’t even notice it – if you’re from the South, you probably don’t even say it – if you say it, you probably see no problem with it. But I’m here to share why one of the most common greetings has GOT to go: calling people ‘guys.’

It’s a simple, harmless greeting, a way to get people’s attention, a way to speak to a group of people – I hear it (and used to say it) hundreds of times a day – at the store, at school, in the office, to family and friends, anywhere there are people, you will hear the greeting ‘hey guys.’

‘Guys’ has morphed into what society uses and accepts as a gender-neutral term referring to men, women, boys, and girls, and it wasn’t until a year after having my second daughter that I somehow noticed myself saying it. I don’t know what it was that caught my attention from something that flew off my tongue without thought, but something made me pause one day.