Happy Friday the 13th!
If your suffer from friggatriskaidekaphobia – the fear of Friday the 13th – this year will be a hard one for you since there are THREE occurring in 2015. At least you can be thankful that it won’t happen again until 2026.
A GREAT EXAMPLE OF SPROUTING BALANCE:
A Coat Closet Makeover Again | i heart organizing
Remember that Sprouting Balance is about creating new growth or ideas when we feel like something is unstable or not working. Jennifer Jones at i heart organizing creates beautiful organized spaces and features a variety of readers who have conquered their clutter. What I love about this post is the fact that the space has been reorganized numerous times. So even if you are an organizing pro, things can still not feel balanced and right. Jen writes, “This is about the 26th makeover the closet has received, so if this doesn’t work out, I may have to go into hiding…” – I don’t think she needs to hide … just sprout another idea!
SPROUT SOME KNOWLEDGE:
Three Friday 13ths in 2015 | Earth Sky
Learn a bit more about the folklore of Friday the 13th and the frequency of their occurrence with this article from Earth Sky.
SPROUTING HEALTH & WELLNESS:
Loblaws Sells Ugly Fruit at a Discount | Toronto Star
Real Canadian Superstore and No Frills will start selling ‘ugly’ fruits and vegetables. We are a society that seeks perfection so our grocery stores ensure our potatoes have no eyes and our apples are round and shiny. The disfigured – yet so much cooler – fruits and vegetables are often not deemed suitable for human consumption. There is no nutritional difference and by selling these products at a discounted price hopefully people will decrease the cries that eating healthy is expensive.
Remember: Giving your child a carrot with two legs turns into a fun eating experience and the odd shaped apple turns into a delicious crumble. The moral: don’t judge something by the way it looks!
20 Unusual Ways to Clean with Vinegar | Style Me Pretty
I admit that we only use vinegar for a handful of tasks and should be using it more. Style Me Pretty has a great (and beautifully styled) list of 20 ways to use vinegar in your home.
Homemade Gluten Free Cereal | Eating Bird Food
This looks incredibly delicious and I will be trying out this recipe ASAP. Homemade Gluten-free Cereal with Quinoa, Buckwheat & Dates from Brittany Mullins at Eating Bird Food.
Fitting in Fitness | Daily Garnish
Emily Malone’s post on ‘Fitting in Fitness’ is an excellent example of understanding what motivates (or does not motivate) someone to workout. This Daily Garnish post covers her Fitbit, the Barre classes she loves attending, and how at-home workouts don’t work for her.
p.s. I’m terrible with at-home workouts too! I love going to a class and interacting with everyone.
FEELING OFF-BALANCE:
source: PishPoshBaby
Daylight Savings Time | Wikipedia
Can someone PLEASE explain Daylight Savings Time to me? A mom did not invent this. It is harder to wake up a child in the dark and near to impossible to get them to go to sleep when it is light outside!
So I did a Wiki search and got a slight answer through their review of the pros and cons:
Pro: “it saves energy, promotes outdoor leisure activity in the evening (in summer), and is therefore good for physical and psychological health, reduces traffic accidents, reduces crime, or is good for business”
Con: “actual energy savings are inconclusive, that DST increases health risks such as heart attack, that DST can disrupt morning activities, and that the act of changing clocks twice a year is economically and socially disruptive and cancels out any benefit”
I think the answer is business driven. I think it still sucks to lose an hour of sleep and wake up in the dark. I think I need that cup of coffee.
GIGGLE TO SOME BALANCE:
Source: PishPoshBaby
In the comments, please share articles that you read this week that helped you SPROUT some BALANCE! And remember to follow us and SPROUT a conversation on Twitter – @sproutbalance
Sprouting Balance 
Great entry! My offer is in the form of a story from a podcast. The current This American Life edition tells stories of what it means to call a place home, surely a key part of everyone’s balance. I especially love the last story, about a woman in San Francisco who created a unique coffee shop called Trouble and a keen community that helped, in surprising ways that the story explains, her keep her balance. The story (“Act 3”) starts at the 40 minute, 10 second mark, at this link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/520/no-place-like-home. But only until Sunday when the next edition will replace it.
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