VEGAN FOR 1 YEAR & A GIVEAWAY!

So we did it. Vegan for 1 full year. A year ago we watched the film Forks Over Knives on a whim. Little did we know it was going to change our lives so drastically. It effected our everyday food choices, the products we buy, the way we view the world and our overall well being. Since going Vegan I view life completely differently. I don't feel like I have an empty VOID anymore. I feel like I have a life to live and it's full of things to live for.


The one thing I find frustrating as a Vegan is people always saying to me, "I couldn't do it." OR "I can't do it."
I can't give up Cheese.
I can't give up MEAT.
Etc..etc..

I get it, I understand. The difference for me I think is I watched a film on a complete WHIM and it simply just made sense to me. I didn't have a blogger or a Vegan sit there and tell me I needed to change. It all happened by chance. FATE I guess you could say. :) I ate meat, dairy, and everything else for the first 30 years of my life. The way I look at it is, I am living proof. Don't ever say that you CAN'T do something. You should never underestimate yourself or set yourself up for failure in anything you do in your life. I've lived my life both ways and I gotta say if someone would of gave me the information I know now SOONER, I would of went Vegan years ago.


I will admit that there are side effects to being Vegan. I do however feel like the side effects are different for everyone. My friend Kara who I inspired to go Vegan (woot-woot) has a hard time giving up Twizzlers and Mac N Cheese. (Twizzlers probably are Vegan, but loaded with sugar and chemicals. Which we also do not eat.) Giving up the food from my old life was NOT hard for me. There are so many great meals that imitate meat and dairy products that help you to fight your cravings. Being Vegan to me is not hard. It just seems hard till you try it out yourself.

The main problem for me is being judged by all the HATERS out there. If you follow my blog you may have read about it HERE. I get very emotional over people who DON'T know me at all, criticizing me for my lifestyle. This is not just a diet or food choices, it's the core of my being. It's becomes practical a religion. May sound crazy, but it just happens. I remind myself of the Grinch from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. At the end of the movie when his heart grows like 5 sizes bigger, that's me. Being Vegan has made my heart full of love for life.
It's amazing.

My last side effect would be the sadness I feel over watching all the people around me everyday NOT be Vegan. Sound crazy? You seriously judge the world so differently and it makes you sad when others don't seem to care about the things that you do. Again, this could just be me NOT all Vegans. For me I would love for my family and friends to adapt to my lifestyle. The health benefits is the number one reason. Of course second being animals rights. I want my family to live a long healthy life and being Vegan can help do that.

The way I look at it is, I went my entire life NEVER knowing about Veganism or evening knowing what a Vegan was. No one was around to tell me about it or educate me about the food choices I was making. Now I have the knowledge and the tools and I want to spread awareness. Especially to the people that I love. Like I said above, if I would of know about this years ago I would of changed then. When I watch the videos of how (most) farming is done in this country, it rips my heart out every time. This brings me to my last topic I want to talk about...


In my daily life I know lots of people who LOVE animals. Have many pets of their own, can't stand animals being beaten and abused and just have COMPASSION in general for animals. If any of this is you, I believe from the bottom of my heart that you could be Vegan. All it takes is COMPASSION. I recently have been debating on getting a Vegan tattoo. I lean towards just getting the word compassion tattooed on me instead. It's all about loving all living creatures. I went Vegan for the health benefits after watching Forks Over Knives.


Months later was when I started learning about how abused farm animals are. It's disgusting. How any human being can throw a LIVE baby chicken into a machine that grinds them up I will never understand. My heart aches for those animals that die such painful deaths just to end up on someones plate. I can say that up until last month when I watched Vegucated, I didn't realize how bad the treatment of farm animals is. So needless to say, I'm going into 2013 even STRONGER. I don't like to go into details on my blog posts about animal abuse. I know if you are interested, you will make the decision to research it yourself. In conclusion, for me the word Vegan and compassion have basically the same meaning. I also want to give a shot out to all the awesome Vegetarians out there!!! :) Now let me lighten the mood a bit and move on to my giveaway....


I wanted to celebrate my 1 year anniversary of being Vegan by giving away one of my favorite cookbooks. It's called Happy Herbivore by Lindsay Nixon. She is like a hero to me. She is making being Vegan super easy for people worldwide. Many of the recipes you see here on my blog are from her cookbook. I figured if you won the book for FREE, you would be more likely to try some of these yummy recipes out yourself. (Free is always good.)

How is this giveaway going to work?
Well just leave me a blog comment below just like you always would and also tell me how you follow my blog. :) Simple.
I am using Rafflecopter for this giveaway. Make sure to enter below...
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I hope to offer my readers more personal giveaways like this throughout the year. This book will be purchased by me with my own money. Make sure that you leave me contact information or a link to your blog so I can email you if you end up being the lucky winner! The winner will be drawn on Friday January 25th! GOOD LUCK! :)

(I will ship this this book international!)

Cody & Me: Together for 9 YEARS!!!

It's hard for me to believe that Cody and I started dating today 9 years ago. People ask us often how we met. Well we were both working at Lowe's. Cody had been working there for awhile before I applied. One of my first days of work / job orientation the H.R. Manager was giving me and some others a grand tour of the store. We walked down towards the end of the store where lumber is located to see that area. That is where I first saw Cody for the very first time.



He was sitting on a forklift talking to one of the other guys that worked there.
As cheesy as this sounds, we both saw each other at the same time.
We were "checking" each other out I guess you could say. LOL
I think we were about 50 feet apart. Then we stopped looking at each other and my day went on.


Some time passed before we actually spoke. Sometimes I would be the cashier in lumber and be nervous knowing he would be working down there. Being new I needed help often and one day I had to ask Cody for help.
The first thing I ever said to Cody was,"If I was sheet metal, where would I be?"
He chuckled and said, " Aisle 12. " That was me trying to be funny. :)

The entire story is very long, I will spare you! All summer I dreamed of being with this guy named Cody. He was all I talked about to my friends. Oh, did I mention I had a boyfriend? Oops. I was in a bad unhealthy relationship, so Cody happening couldn't of been better timing. One day I finally got the courage to go up to him and just confess my feelings. Cody later told me as I was confessing that "I had a crush on him", he could see me shaking. I was so nervous. Cody was the first guy I ever had courage to ask out myself.


Cody turned me down at first, because he also was dating someone at the time. I was so crushed and heartbroken. I cried my eyes out. It took so much courage to even tell him how I felt. The connection between Cody and I was so strong even before we knew each other. I felt like I knew him already, without really knowing anything about him. It was strange really. About a month passed and Cody approached me to tell me that he dumped his girlfriend. A few days later we were dating and started calling ourselves a couple. It's been 9 years today!


A lot has changed and happened in 9 years! WOW, alot!!! We both have iphones now which is really funny to me. We have always hated cell phones and wanted to get rid of them! Now we have freakin smart phones. LOL Cody just got his first pair of "Chucks" as you can see in the pictures above.

It hasn't always been sunshine and rainbows. We have had some rough times when we both thought that we wouldn't be able to go on. We got through it though and it made us stronger in the long run. We have grown together. My views on the world have changed, yet Cody's have also. So many people say as you get older you can grow apart. I am glad we have just grown closer. We have moved 7 times, we remodeled a house together, we both went Vegan, he joined the Air Force and I followed him. He is amazing and I am so thankful for the life I have everyday!!

Our 6 year Wedding Anniversary

Today marks 6 years of marriage for Cody & I.  The first thing I said to him this morning was, "Isn't it weird to think about what we did on this day 6 years ago?"  Of course, I don't mean "weird" in a bad way, it's just hard to believe how fast time goes by!  Here we on our wedding day...
Probably one of my favorite things about my relationship with Cody is how supportive he is.  No matter what I want to do or what my beliefs are, he is right by my side to back me up.  I asked him one day, "Would you let me go to Antarctica to be Sea Shepherd?"  He said yes without hesitation.  He knows it is something so important to me and even though it's dangerous, he would let me follow my desire to go.  That was one of those simple moments when I knew what I had was so special.
Like any relationship, we have been tested.  I am so proud of us for pulling through all of our hard times and always sticking together.  The whole Air Force experience has brought us even closer.  It's amazing how right on we are with all our beliefs and values.  We have both changed, but together in the same direction.  This August we will have been together a total of 9 years.
It's so exciting to me to think we have been together almost 10 years!  Hopefully we can do something special next year for our anniversary.  Today we will just enjoy being together.

You can view pictures of our Wedding {HERE}

My Wedding Anniversary post from last year {HERE}

5 YEARS of My Mod Style!

It's hard for me to believe that I have been blogging for 5 years. I honestly can't even remember how I stumbled across the blogger world! I think it all started when I opened a Flickr account. When I first started blogging I only followed Desire to Inspire, Making it Lovely, Creative Influences and a few other blogs. Most of these blogger's started when I did. I don't have 30,000 follower's, but I am still around and going strong!!! My blog started as a place for me to showcase all of our remolding projects for our house....
What a house and what an experience!! (See photos HERE.) My blog has had many looks and styles. I learned that I love designing things on Photoshop as much as decorating a room. Something I may have never learned about myself without my blog. Back in 2007 when I started my blog, I had also started my own decorating business. Here I am standing in my booth at the Cincinnati Home & Garden Show...
I was just proud of myself for getting into the show, not an easy thing to do! My business was Interior Design for nurseries and kids rooms. I had a few really good projects, but decided to go back to having regularly paying job in the beginning of 2008 when I was offered an assistant manager position at an antique mall. I was so overwhelmed with all the remodeling and decorating of my own home, that I was to drained to design for others. I ended up getting a job at the Ohio Valley Antique Mall working full-time. I have always been drawn to the antique business and hope I get the chance to work somewhere as awesome again...

My pink and black antique booth

My new job consumed my life. When the store first opened I worked 7 days a week. Which meant no time to blog. If you look back at my blog archive for 2008 it's pretty depressing....
Needless to say, I lost a lot of followers that year. I still kick myself for it. It was out of my control though. Blogging takes a lot of time, energy and effort. It also has to stay FUN. I still blog because I love to. I do struggle to keep up with it some days. It was much easier when I didn't have a job. In 2009 I was still working on our house so much that it really consumed my life. I started focusing on the exterior of the home. I was so proud of my landscaping...
In 2009 I also started working at IKEA and finally had most of the interior of our house decorated. Then as 2009 came to an end, Cody lost his job and our life got turned upside down! In 2010 that is when the direction of my blog totally changed. I decided it had to become more personal at that point. Since my blog had always mainly been based around the decorating of our house, I felt it necessary to be honest with my readers. We had to sell our home. Everyone needed to know why suddenly all the remodeling was done and our house was up for sale! It wouldn't make much sense to anyone if I wasn't honest about it, plus I am an honest person. Cody losing his job made him decide he wanted to join the Air Force, changing our life even more.
That kicked off 2011! I had a lot of cool stuff to blog about last year and it really inspired me to keep blogging. It's fun to look back on the last 5 years and see how much I have changed and the blog has changed! This year is the first time I have ever "celebrated" my blog anniversary, so I really wanted to do this post recapping the last 5 years. If you follow me, it means A LOT!! We all have such busy lives and if you take the time to stop by My Mod Style that is awesome. I can't wait to see what 2012 brings me! I may not have blog giveaways or be published in magazines, but I still plan on being here for awhile!

Please let me know what posts you love on My Mod Style.
What would you like to see more of?
Thanks for following and reading all my rambling!
Jessie

5 Year Wedding Anniversary

There was a time in my life when I never thought I would have a "normal" relationship. Then I found Cody.

Today 5 years ago Cody and I got married. It is the best feeling in the world to know that I found true love. That I am married to my best friend. That I have someone to experience the bad times and the good times with. Our love grows stronger everyday! I can't wait to see what the next phase of our life together brings us!
In California on our Honeymoon / May 2006
Living in California / May 2011
Love is Great.

7 year Anniversary

Today, 7 years ago, Cody & I started dating.  :) He left me roses in my car at work. Very sweet and I was surprised!

{ 4 Year Wedding Anniversary }

On this day 4 years ago Cody & I were married! Just goes to show that even Dr. Seuss Wedding Vows DO having meaning! We had our pastor read a little story about how it was love at first sight when we met. Then we did Dr. Seuss wedding vows to "surprise" our guests and lighten the mood. {VOWS HERE}