Preparations

Hello from the land of being caffeine free for nearly 36 hours and suffering from a terrible headache! Today has been... rough to say the least without my morning cup of coffee. The headache didn't start as soon as I expected it to, not until around noon, but since then, it's been going strong and I've been grumpy and tired. I'm going to keep trucking along though. I gave up caffeine with both pregnancies, so I know it does get better.

In spite of my grumpiness today, we're still busy changing habits, learning, and preparing for our fast. Here's some of the things we've done, bought or are working on:

• We quickly realized that we needed to add to our kitchen supplies to accommodate a largely fresh and raw lifestyle. With all the washing, scrubbing, chopping, cutting and so on, we needed a few things to make things easier. We purchased some new veggie/fruit brushes and natural spray for cleaning produce, a salad spinner, a couple of extra cutting boards (a big one for when we do a lot at once and another small one for quick snacks), and a couple of new knives. All of which has made our life a lot easier already. Definitely worth the investment. 
• I decided I want to grow my own alfalfa sprouts too. I LOVE alfalfa sprouts but the ones in the grocery store are pesticide ridden and my mom told me that it's super easy to grow my own. So we ordered some seeds off of amazon and a seed sprouter. Both items will be delivered in the next two days (gotta love Amazon Prime) and I'll be sure to post about my progress.
• Another thing I'm working on, and something I've always wanted to try, is growing my own herb garden. When we ordered the sprout supplies, we also ordered some seeds to give herb growing a try. This particular set includes 8 different types of seeds: Broadleaf Sage, Genovese Basil, Cilantro, Single-leaf Parsley, Common Thyme, Dill Dukat, Oregano, and Onion Chives. Yum!
• We both started drinking 20 oz. of water first thing in the morning before we do anything else. I don't know that 20 oz. is a magic number, but it was mentioned in one of the documentaries we watched, so we've used it as a guide. I really like the feeling of drinking a lot of water first thing in the morning.
• We're still watching more documentaries and reading as much as we can. We watched Food Matters last night and  The Beautiful Truth tonight. I've found a lot of great resources online as well, many of which are linked on my Pinterest account.

We still have a lot of learning to do, but those are the highlights for today. Our juicer arrives tomorrow and I'm ridiculously excited for it to get here!

For tonight, I made a 16 bean and veggie soup that was quite delicious if I do say so myself. :)