Winter in Minnesota has a very limited palette. When it first snows, everything is brilliant white. It can be wonderfully beautiful. But all too soon it turns that muted brown grey that matches the leafless trees, the dormant grass, and most of our filthy cars. By the time we reach March, I. am. DONE! I will do just about anything to surround myself with color. And just when I have exhausted all of the colorful clothing options, Mother Nature helps me out by making the world around me begin to change from murky to magnificent.

When I was a kid growing up in Nebraska, there was never a year when we didn’t have daffodils, from our yard, in the middle of our Easter table. It didn’t matter when it fell in the calendar. When I moved to Minnesota the odds of that happening dropped dramatically. Easter snowstorms weren’t out of the question, and that didn’t do much for my “sunny” disposition. There is a definite expiration date on my tolerance for winter, and when that is reached, I need warmth and color. So seeing the haze of green on the trees and the peeking of the crocus through the leftover dried leaves just warms my heart. And there has been more than one winter where it has saved my sanity in the nick of time.

Getting to walk outside again, and take in the blooming trees and flowers, is one of my greatest pleasures. But the onset of Spring brings on allergies for many, and it is not so much delightful as debilitating. I used to be one of those but, thankfully, most of that has gone away for me. Working here at Moss Envy has opened my eyes to many different allergies and sensitivities. With our owners’ attention to detail and commitment to quality, we carry many wonderful products that can help make life a little bit easier and more comfortable for those who have these sensitivities…and I really like that.

I know it is still May, in Minnesota, and there is still a chance of cold and even freakish snow. But the fact that warmth and color is right around the corner makes it ever so much easier to handle. And, with that, my selective memory will set in, and I will be fine with living here in the frozen North for another 6 months. Check in with me again next March and you might find me packing to move to Tahiti, but, for now, I am staying put.

Savvy Rest Organic Latex Mattress at Moss Envy

• Less stuff: Let’s face it, do you really need a ton more stuff. Stuff to pick up and clean up. One big significant gift is SO much better! Better for you, better for your family, better for the environment. It will last 20 years – maybe more – and is warrantied to do so.

• Comfort: Moss Envy’s organic latex mattresses are incredibly versatile and customizable when it comes to comfort. Each side… that’s right… each side is custom created to match the needs of each individual sleeper. Usually when people buy a bed they get a mattress that really isn’t suited for their body type and sleeping style. Moss Envy’s mattress experts are trained to take the time required to deeply and profoundly match your needs to the appropriate mattress. Our sales people are not on commission, so you won’t feel the pressure to decide. We are real people selling mattresses, not sales people trying to be real! Your long term comfort and health are our top priority.

• Non Toxic: Think long term health effects. If you and your partner sleep on a mattress that contains chemical flame retardants and off gassing foams, you are absorbing these harmful chemicals like a sponge. And even if it is minuscule amounts, why take unnecessary risks? Moss Envy HAS the alternative that DOESN’T have these nasty chemicals. Give yourself and your loved ones every chance at a longer healthier life. Invest in one of our mattresses… invest more today to be well or pay more later in your life to be sick. The choice is yours. The solution is at Moss Envy!

• Mood: Wait until you see what a difference a good – a REALLY good and healthy night’s sleep can do for your mood! Not to mention your productivity, creativity, patience, etc. You’ll discover that there is a difference between simply sleeping through the night and the deep restful sleep that one of our mattresses can give you – see number 1 on the list here!

So think differently this Christmas (or other gift giving special day that you’re celebrating) and give each other a gift that can truly make a difference. SPECIAL OFFER – buy a Savvy Rest adult size organic latex mattress from Moss Envy by November 10th and get up to $500 in additional organic bedding! Answer our survey below for more information. Thanks!

Click here to read more about this special and limited promotion. [contact-form] 

Challenge everyone who exchanges gifts this year to shop with sustainability in mind! Now I know that Aunt Edna may have some questions about this idea. “What does THAT mean?” she might say… Well, this could mean a lot of things. Here are a few ideas that you could throw out to the fam and see how they react…

1. Pick out gifts that embody the THREE Rs: Recycle, Reclaim, Reduce. This doesn’t have to mean something that is necessarily second hand. A lot of NEW gifts are made with resources that are recycled or reclaimed. There’s plenty out there!
2. Make it an ALL LOCAL gift exchange. That means that it has to have been made within a certain distance of your home. Or you could limit your buying to gifts made within your state – of which Moss Envy has many – for Minnesota that is!
3. How about a NO PLASTIC gift exchange. No plastic anywhere. In the item or in the packaging.
4. Are you proud to be an American? How about a Made in the USA gift exchange. You’ll really be surprised how many gifts out there aren’t made in the USA and how much of a challenge this one might be.
5. A Fair Trade gift exchange sheds some light on the importance of how the people who make your gifts are treated! Moss Envy is proud to carry a great selection of Fair Trade gifts.

Sometimes you just need an idea to latch onto. An eco friendly gift exchange makes everyone involved feel good! It makes you happy, it makes your recipient happy, and it makes the Earth happy! Want to ease your family into this… maybe you start with just the stockings. Are you going to try it? We’d love to hear about it. Please comment below or on our Facebook Page. Thanks!

Call Moss Envy at 612-374-4581 to schedule you own personal one on one makeup and color consultation with DeEtta! All of the products used in this video can be found for sale on the makeup page of our website.

Did you enjoy the video? Find it useful? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks!

2. Drink a hot beverage. Coffee, tea, or toddy – depending on the the time of day or your mood. Don’t forget to use the warm mug or glass like your own tiny personal furnace. If you’re drinking tea or coffee, we suggest something fair-trade and organic of course. Now some may say that the warmth gained from sipping on a hot coco may be all in your head, but I don’t care. I’m sticking to this one.

3. Jump around. Or just get active. This increases circulation that helps bring your warm blood to the rest of your body. Bonus points if you are “getting active” with a partner. Share in the body heat by snuggling and cuddling and getting close to another being.

4.  Get spicy with it. The right combo of spices can actually warm you up. Ginger does a great job of aiding in blood circulation. Also try black pepper, cardamom, cayenne, cinnamon, horseradish, and garlic. Bonus tip: a Chai Tea has some of these ingredients!

5. Put on a scarf on it. And when I say it, I mean your neck. Even when you’re just hanging out around the house. Think about it… your neck has to carry a decent amount of blood up to your head. This blood is moving from your beefier, more well insulated chest up through your skinny scrawny neck. It’s just like wrapping the pipes and vents down in your basement. Don’t let the precious heat escape!

So there you have it. Stay warm this Fall and Winter with tips from Ryan at Moss Envy.

But there’s one particular piece of equipment that I didn’t have in June of 2008… and it almost cost me my life.

It was early on in my quest to become an avid outdoors-man! I had spent most of the previous winter and spring, squirreling away camping equipment. A random purchase here and there and somehow the hundreds of dollars I spent on camping “essentials” managed to fly under the radar of my wife! The reveal was the perfect moment of excitement mixed with fear. Luckily, I have a great wife who was all in!

One night, post dinner, in her efforts to be the camping Robin to my camping Batman, on a 11th hour whim, she said… “Let’s go camping… let’s just go. We’ll figure out where we’re going after we leave.” Spontaneity! One of the spices of a great relationship.

So, off we went to a campsite somewhere near Marine on St. Croix, MN. It was dark by the time we got there, but no fear, we had plenty of lanterns, head lamps, and flashlights to set up camp. I think we had time for an in-the-tent snack and maybe a lantern lit game, but then we hit the sack. Before I dozed off, I remember looking up through the mesh ceiling of our tent to take in the awe of the thousand of stars I could see. Beautiful!

When I woke up an hour later… there were no stars.

The beautiful sparkly view was replaced by a blanket of dark grey nothingness accompanied by the sound of rolling thunder in the distance. Uh oh! No panicking right? Rain is an inevitable part of the camping experience. So, out I go to put on the rain-fly and just in time. Within minutes, the distant thunder became not so distant and brought its friends whipping wind, crazy lightning, and driving rain. It kept getting worse somehow. The lightning looked like there were about a hundred paparazzi outside of our tent. The tent was holding up quite nicely. Me, not so much. I kept having visions of the wind knocking over a tree and landing on top of us (they call those widowmakers) or lightning striking us dead or the St. Croix over running its banks and being washed away.

Around 3:30 in the morning, we called it. Too scary! We did as much pre-gathering of our tent belongings as we could and scrambled. Got the blankets and pillows in the car and the soggy tent deconstructed and in the trunk as fast as we could manage. Incredibly wet, we drove home. This same storm system sprouted tornadoes that killed 4 boy scouts in Iowa.

All of this drama could have been avoided with one piece of equipment. One camping gadget that I didn’t have. Something that is sold by Moss Envy! A crank powered AM/FM/Weatherband Radio/Flashlight.  If I had this little multi-function gizmo in my camping bag, I would have checked my local NOAA Weather Band radio frequency at the first sign of inclement weather and found out I should have gotten the heck out of dodge!

That was a mistake I will only make once. The radio you see above now lives in my camping bag. It’s also great to have one at the cabin, in the glove box of your car or in your boat. Get one for yourself and buy another one for someone you love and care about. It could save their lives!

For the uninitiated, the entire process goes like this; you stick your face under a curtain and into a box wherein “advanced blacklight technology” causes various irregularities in your skin to appear as brightly colored dots or streaks. Orange dots are clogged pores, purple streaks are areas lacking nutrients, etc.

Here’s what I saw: no clogged pores, no dry areas, no malnourished skin, no excess oil, no flaking. I can report that I have lovely skin….if you don’t count the ear-to-ear sun damage. Literally thousands of sun spots lurking just beneath the surface. Honestly, I am going to go to sleep some night looking like my normal self and wake up in the morning looking like an over-ripe banana.

And all this could have been avoided! Listen, I’ll be frank, I haven’t used sunscreen in years, YEARS! So sue me, I grew up in the 80’s. We used to slather our bodies with baby oil and lie on reflective, silver blankets to get that deep, San Tropez tan. Though my brain knows better, my heart continues to believe that a nice, toasty complexion is good… healthy, even!

And maybe, compared to the chemicals in some of the commercial sunscreens out there, it is. But I really can’t use that excuse anymore. There are natural, non-toxic sunscreens available now. Here at Moss Envy, we carry both the Suntegrity and SunStuff lines. Both use zinc oxide to block the sun and by using nano-particle technology, you no longer have to contend with that white zinc goo of yore. Although both have an initial white-ish cast, it quickly fades away, no fear of looking like a mime. But my favorite is the Suntegrity 5-in-1 tinted and moisturizing sunscreen. It moisturizes your skin without clogging, it is a sunscreen, sure, but also acts as a primer, or a dreamy, lightweight foundation, evening out small imperfections in one’s skin.

I better buy some immediately. Lord knows I’m going to need something to cover all these sunspots.

I was perusing the interwebs and I found the following tidbit; if every American family reduced their laundry by just one load a week, we would save enough water to fill seven million swimming pools.

Oh, crudders. Roughly 3/4 of my waking hours are dedicated to laundry- sorting it, doing it, folding it, yelling at children to put this darn laundry away or I swear to god, you can all go to school NAKED! I hate laundry very, very much. And now I find out that the (conservatively) 20 loads of weekly laundry I do are probably ruining the Earth. I wouldn’t be surprised if a small, doe-eyed child from one of those classically drought-ridden countries appeared on my doorstep, pointed a finger and gravely intoned, “You did this.”

To be clear, I didn’t. It was the kids. Not to throw anyone under the bus, but I’ve got tweener twin girls who dress in a minimum of three layers of clothes, top to bottom, in the name of fashion. Tights, leggings, shorts, tank top, tee shirt and sweatshirt. Every. Dang. Day. I have a super-stylin’ 15 year old who would die rather than don a pair of previously-worn skinny jeans. Book-ending these three are the oldest and youngest– both of whom eshew dressers and closets of any sort, preferring to spread their clothes in a uniform layer on their floor. The better to see their options, I guess. Then, every Saturday when it is time to clean their room, they scoop up everything, worn or no, and dump the whole mess down the laundry chute.

I do my best to counteract their extravagant ways. These jeans? I’ve worn them at least four times since their last washing. Hey! COWBOYS used to wear theirs for a week of driving cattle and then still thought they looked good enough for the weekend’s barn dance. Sure, sometimes my house looks like cattle have stampeded through it, but in reality, my pants have got to be in better shape then that. Right? RIGHT?!!

Plus, I switched to Charlie’s Soap Laundry Detergent, figuring that at the very least, using a biodegradable soap might win me a few brownie points, but that seven million number has got me nervous. Time to perhaps find a few more tips for reducing my water usage.

Here are a few ideas I found;

1) Water your plants deeply, but less frequently to encourage deep root growth and drought tolerance.

2) Use a rain barrel to harvest rainwater from gutters for watering your garden.

3) Wash your car with a bucket and sponge, rather than a hose to conserve water. (Conversely, don’t wash it at all! A million gallons saved!)

4) Keep drinking water in the fridge, instead of letting water run to get cold.

5) When replacing your pet’s water, don’t dump the old water down the drain, use it. (I’m going to guess that they mean for watering houseplants and not, you know, making tea.)

All in all, the tips I were finding were all making me feel pretty darn good, since we already do most of them. Then I found this one;

6) Keep showers under five minutes and save 1,000 gallons a month.

Double crudders. Encouraging the kids to cut their showers short is just another area I’ve failed at. My oldest daughter went to take a shower and I haven’t seen her since last Tuesday.

Which is how I ended up right back where I started.

Crud.

Earth Day is an annual event, celebrated on April 22, on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. It was first celebrated in 1970, and is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and celebrated in more than 192 countries each year.

In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature’s equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later a separate Earth Day was founded by United States SenatorGaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award in recognition of his work. While this April 22 Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations. Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues.

We would like to think that every day at Moss Envy is Earth Day. It’s kind of what we do! It’s why we do what we do. In truth, our mission extends beyond environmental stewardship to include a social awareness of the supply chain of our products. We also care a great deal about how our products might impact the health and well being of our customers. But it’s all connected, right!?! It’s hard to be a healthy person on a sick planet.

So, yes! We think that Earth Day IS still relevant! So take a moment and reflect upon how you can do your part to make our Earth a better place. From your backyard to the steps of congress, there are a lot of ways you can get involved and make Earth Day important to you.

Moss Envy celebrates Earth Day by discounting many of our products by 20%! Our Earth Day sale starts today and goes through Friday, April 25th (2014). Shop online at www.mossenvy.com and use the coupon code: EARTHDAY. Read the full details on our promotion here.

So why, oh why, were all my knives dull, dull, dull? For someone that spent as many of her formative years toiling in food service as I, it seemed an incredible oversight.

No more! I recently replaced my knicked, dull knives with Rada paring and chef knives from the shop. Geez, I seem to be slowly replacing all my belongings with products from Moss Envy. I’d feel a little self-indulgent, except these were clearly such an excellent and useful purchase.

Super sharp and with a life-time warranty, they are light-weight and somehow nimble. I immediately ditched my other knives. (Let the kids use ’em! They don’t know any better!) But I get a small delight every night knowing that I’ve finally found a reasonably priced, Made-in-America, well- constructed knife. It makes the daily kitchen drudgery much more enjoyable.

Maybe this seems a little effusive for, you know, knives, but I cook a lot. A LOT. And I do not joke about kitchen gear. If you are similarly taken with all things culinary and are looking to replace your old, dull knives come on in and check out the selection from Rada.

We open at 10:00…sharp.