Hi everyone. I haven’t disappeared. I’ve just been enjoying the summer with my new hubby and making some lifestyle changes. Before I get into that here are a few teaser pics from our wedding. I have a full post underway with plenty of pictures and I promise to post it in a couple of days. But for now, here are a couple of my favorites:

So about those lifestyle changes. I have struggled with endometriosis for as long as I can remember having my period. Extreme cramps, heavy bleeding, 10 day long periods, chronic pain. It got to a point in my late twenties that it hurt so bad to bend over and feed my cats that I broke down crying. I remember walking tilted to one side from the pain in my left side. At that point I decided to have surgery, which was effective and I went on medication after that to control it. I had a few good pain free years, but then slowly, then pain started creeping back up on me.

Recently, I made the decision to have the surgery again and use a more natural approach to controlling the disease. I’m still researching like crazy on how to do this. I will be using diet, excercise, acupuncture, and some other holistic methods. I believe in Hippocrates saying “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”.

I have been researching and experimenting with healthy eating for years and I was surprised that I never came across eating for endometriosis. There is plenty of info and several books on the topic. The basics include avoiding gluten, caffiene, sugar, alcohol, dairy, and red meat. As you can imagine, I am deeply saddened by this list. I love all those things! But, I love my health and feeling good even more, so I’m going for it. At least by the 80%-20% rule to start. I will also increase greens and veggies, cut back on soy, make chicken bone broth to sip on. (It is supposed to be very nourishing to the blood). I am also taking vitamins and herbs, drinking red raspberry leaf tea, and using massage and castor oil paks on my belly.

So what can I eat? I have been eating lots of salads, seeds, nuts, fruits and veggies, salmon, hard boiled eggs, gluten free bread, quinoa, hummus.

Yesterday we ordered a pizza from The Gourmet Pizza Company. I got the gluten free vegan breadsticks and a gluten free, vegan veggie pizza:

And I got a Vitamix this week. Soooooo Excited!!!!!!!! This thing can do so much more than smoothies, but I have only tried smoothies so far. You can be sure there will be lots and lots of green smoothies in my future. This one had lettuce, spinach, kale, banana, peach, mango, kiwi, celery, cucumber and chia seeds:

So that is where I am in my health journey. At work, I am gearing up for the fall wedding season. In 2 weeks, we kick off the season with 3 weddings. Then we have weddings every weekend until the end of May. I’m going to be busy! But…I have a new assistant, yay!!!!! I feel like I can breath a little. She’s a God send 🙂

Again I promise, within a  day or 2 I will post the wedding pics. Stay tuned and have a wonderful night!!

We took a train from Paris to Amsterdam. It was a highlight that I had been looking forward to. It was a 3 hour ride through the countryside. They served lunch and snacks and drinks, and it was terrific!

We arrived with a little time to kill before we could check into our apartment, so we grabbed a Heineken of course:

Our apartment was our favorite of the trip. Great space, tastefully decorated and some goodies to enjoy. Love the gorgeous pink peonies!

Amsterdam was even more beautiful than I imagined with the charming canals and beautiful flowers:

We spent 2 and a half wonderful days there, wandering the streets, floating on the canal, eating some great food, and seeing some “interesting” things.

The first night we had “Mexican” food. I thought it was delicious:

The second night we had a unique experience at an Italian restaurant. This was an authentic small restaurant. The idea here was you get 5 small plates to share. The waiter ordered for us since the menu was written in Italian, we had very little idea of what we were getting. The wine came out and it was superb. Then came a bowl of melty cheese with honey in the center to slather on crispy bread.

Then we had a fire oven roasted potato and a bowl of fatty bacon drizzled with a balsamic glaze:

The pasta carbonara was rich and delicious:

The garlic bread was chewy and heavenly:

And finally the margerhita pizza…no words.

Even the giant bag of pig and the pig head laying on the bar next to us didn’t take away from this meal. If anything, I think it added to the authenticity. Every once in a while, they would go over and take some meat from the head and take it back to the kitchen:

Another memorable meal was the Thai restaurant we ended up at our last night. It was the best Thai we have ever had. We split a spicy soup, pad thai, and tofu curry:

This herring sandwich was memorable. Matt loves herring. me, uh, not so much, especially at 10:00 in the morning, ewww:

I’ll never forget this juicy kobe burger:

Or the deep conversation during happy hour:

Or the french fries with mayo:

Amsterdam is a very cat friendly city. Almost every establishment seemed to have a resident kitty. This guy has it made:

And this guy joined us for lunch one day:

We had a beer, fried cheese with mustard, and a salad;

A store after my own heart:

You never know what you will see in Amsterdam. We were just walking around and all of the sudden we were in the red light district and there was a woman in a window right next to me, of course I didn’t take a picture, but I did get one of the candy woman:

We walked and walked:

I loved the tiny cars!

We got silly:

We had a blast. Our honeymoon went by way too fast. It was everything I imagined and more! We grew closer, fell even more in love, and made the best memories.

Stay tuned, I got our wedding pictures back and I’m excited to share them 🙂