About

Hi there!  I’m Sheri, mama of this crazy Green & Crunchy bunch.  Thanks for visiting!

I write this little blog from my home in Ohio.  Originally from Canada (and miss it so!), I’m now an Ohio-transplant and am becoming used to life in the Midwest (though I am most certainly NOT a Buckeye fan and really do not understand that whole football craze that has swept Ohio).

I’m happily married and I’ve got a smokin’  hot hubby who I’ve been with for half of my lifetime.  After all these years I still think he rocks.  He’s a tenured University Professor at a medical school;  however, unlike the typical Professor-stereotype, he does not wear pocket-protectors or tweed blazers with elbow patches,  nor does he have tufts of hair coming out of his ears. Yet.

I’ve got five very loud and lively kids.  The noise in my house is at maximum level all day long.  It’s a great big beautiful noisy life.  With a side of Crazy thrown in there some days.

We believe strongly in attachment and natural parenting — babywearing, co-sleeping, extended nursing, cloth diapering, gentle discipline…it all works well for our family.

My kids are TV-Free and have always been.  When our firstborn was a baby we made the choice to cut the cable TV, and we’ve never looked back.

We’re also a Video-Game-Free family — we intentionally don’t own a single video game or handheld video-gaming device.  This choice falls in line with our TV-Free philosophy, though I will admit the Wii looks kind of fun…

Our five children are homeschooled and have always been.  I suppose we could be described as eclectic homeschoolers — we use and enjoy curriculum materials but we still have one foot firmly and actively planted in the Unschooling camp.  We live in a very homeschool-friendly city where I shuttle my kids around in Mom’s Taxi to the many classes and activities geared just for homeschoolers.   Despite it being called “home”schooling, some days we’re not “home” all that much.  Homeschooling is a great lifestyle for us, and our children are all thriving and learning together.  And rumor has it they have a pretty awesome homeschool teacher.  Ahem.

Several years ago, I read some fabulous, life-changing books on voluntary simplicity, frugality, and simple living.  Those books spoke volumes to me (no pun intended!), and we quickly adopted many of the simple living concepts into our lives.  We visit the thrift stores for clothing and household needs as much as possible.  We don’t indulge in fancy vacations.  We rarely eat out.  We have an organic veggie garden (surprisingly productive for a little suburban veggie patch!).  We make all of our meals entirely from scratch.  Family dinners every single night. To keep the grocery budget under control and to reduce packaging waste, we’re huge fans of bulk-food shopping, buying most of our organic food in very large bulk amounts (by the case or the 25 pound bag).  We hang our laundry on the clothesline.  We “no-poo” our hair.  Make our own household cleaners. We make conscious and informed lifestyle decisions regarding everything from childhood vaccinations to what we put both in AND on our bodies, and try to make eco-minded choices whenever possible. We’re a bunch of granolas, we are 

Diet-wise, our whole family is Vegan — we enjoy a whole-food, high-raw organic vegan diet, all 7 of us.

We’ve been vegans for many years, but we used to eat much differently.  My diet during childhood consisted of canned food and lots and lots of Spam (literally).  Fresh veggies were served only on special occasions.  My husband grew up in a German household where sausages and Weiner Schnitzel were regularly served.  When we became parents we decided to skip the Spam and the Weiner Schnitzel and instead subsist on fresh, healthy, whole foods, with fruits and vegetables playing the starring role at each meal.

Move over Weiner Schnitzel, make room for the broccoli!

Over the years, our journey away from the Standard American Diet was motivated by profuse reading, trial and error, and heavy research.  We slowly transitioned from the Standard American Diet, to vegetarians, to vegans, to whole-food vegans, to high-raw vegans….which is where we happily remain.  We could best descibe our diet as organic whole food vegan — we eat a plant-based, (tofu-free!), whole food, organic vegan diet, with a good amount of our food remaining raw.  I’m a pretty hardcore vegan mama, and I feel very passionately about our planet-friendly, cruelty-free lifestyle and diet.  It’s an indulgent way of eating and we are all happy, healthy, and thriving.  I’m always reading and researching the topic of diet and nutrition, and have an impressive collection of books on the topic.  I acknowledge that there are many healthy ways to eat; this is just one of them, and this is what works for us.  Raising healthy vegan children CAN be done — I’ve got five veggie-powered kiddos to prove it.

I’ve got dust bunnies under my couch, a kitchen that is always messy, and I’m never caught up on the laundry.  I have a weakness for chocolate and adore groovy green smoothies.  I also have a wee little obsession with filling all the sections in my kids section-plates.  I’m a section-plate junkie. I just can’t help it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sheri