Here we go!

Hello! My name is Matt {this is where everyone says "hi Matt}. I am a hardcore consumer. I am 33 and up until this point in my life everything I eat comes from a package and then into the microwave, a fast food chain, or who knows where. I have lived on high fructose corn syrup my whole life and was totally fine with it. On a average day I drink 4-5 cans of Diet Coke and would drink more if my income allowed. When I was younger this diet suited me just fine, but now that I am older I find that I am tired all the time and napping more than my children. My wife Keely on the other hand is not as bad as me. She eats semi-alright food including fruits and vegetables, something I never eat. But like me she too is addicted to Diet Coke. This is a joint blog so you will hear from Keely often. We have three children ages 3, 2, and newborn. Yes we are busy.

So Why Skinny Hippie Diary?

A few months back Keely and I watched a video on Netflix called Food Inc. What we saw shocked and disgusted us. If you have not seen this movie, you need to. We did not like what we saw and did not like the idea that we were feeding toxins to our children. Then we watched a movie called Food Matters. A bit less shocking but very practical ways to live wiser and healthier. These two movies combined by a number of friends, family, and church members that in the recent years and months that have been diagnosed with cancer moved us to make a change. We felt moved to find a simpler way of living and eat more like God intended us to. For us the first step was to try to grow our own food and grow it using organic methods. When we made this decision to try to live our lives differently I jokingly said we are going to turn into "skinny hippies". The funny thing is the joke became our goal. This blog is a diary of our life as we move from blind consumer to becoming skinny hippies.

Birthing Pains

When it comes to gardening, recycling, living simple and "being green" we are babies. And like babies learning to walk we are going to fall down, bump our heads and stumble our way through this change. This is the #1 reason for the blog. We started our journey by hitting the web looking for info and how to's. It is a bit overwhelming. Take composting for example, we knew it was good to do but do a google search and you'll find a million different ways and opinions on how to compost. So we felt we could help other consumers that are looking to make a change by documenting what we are trying, what works and what doesn't work, and showing all of our mistakes along the way so others don't feel so dumb. For consumers like us, you can feel like an alien when trying to make the change. We are already having friends and family make jokes at our expense. This blog is for others to come to and say "thank God I'm not the only one who did that". Now being that we are babies you might not want to try what we are doing but we intend to post links to other sites that do it right and explain it in ways that makes sense to us.

Community

I'm a Community Developer by trade and my wife and I moved into a "under-resourced" community intentionally to experience community with others that might not have as many options that many of us do. We intentionally engage others in our community, building relationships with the intent that we can learn from others and share with others. That is also what Skinny Hippie Diary is for. We want you to view this as your community, respond to our posts, make comments and suggestions, and share your findings with others. When we do "life" together we can accomplish so much more. So please do not make this blog one-sided by just reading what we have to say. Speak up! We need to hear from you.

So we hope you enjoy, laugh, relate and learn from our mistakes as we move from consumers to skinny hippies :)

~ Matt