Happy New Year! (Sticks and Stones)

The Sticks and Stones

Your Guide to the Month of January

Hey guys, it’s Alyssa and Louise here to wish you a happy New Year! The new year symbolises a time for new beginnings, new possibilities and more fun. So, with that said, welcome to our brand new blog series “Sticks & Stones”! We have so much in store for 2015, and we hope that you will join us on our journey.

January is the national thank you month, so we’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has helped and supported us on our journey so far;

• Frankie
• Matthew
• Bridget
• Devon / The Love Spreader
• Megan 
• Brittany // RecoverySpirit

We really appreciate everything that these people have done for us, we are so grateful for all of the support and guidance that these people have provided for us over the past year and a half that we have been on this blog.

It’s so important to thank people for whatever support they give us, and to show that we are grateful, which is why we now want to challenge you guys to make a list of everyone that you were grateful for in 2014! We also want you to make a list of everything that you hope to have accomplished by the end of the year. Here are ours:

• Be able to do the downward dog
• Be able to hold a headstand 
• Be able to do the splits
• Reach 10,000 blog views
• Write a book
• Continue to be happy

Now I suppose we should tell you a bit about what Sticks & Stones will entail…

• A new smoothie recipe each month
• A yoga pose to help you relax
• A lesson we learnt last month (life lessons)

Did you know: the 3rd of January is “the festival of sleep” day? Haha! This holiday is celebrated by learning about and experiencing a sound sleep after the busyness of the holidays is over! Take this time to sleep in and give your mind and body the rest it deserves!

Smoothie Recipe of the Month

Winter Berries

• 1 cup of organic frozen berries (any kind)
• 2 cups of fresh spinach
• ginger
• Water (add depending on how thick/thin you want it)

This smoothie tastes great with ice cream, just make sure you don't overdo the ginger! 

Yoga Pose/Stretch

Tadasana (The Mountain Pose) to welcome the new year

• Stand with your feet together, big toes touching, spine straight, and head erect.
• Lift your kneecaps, activating your quads, and press the tops of your thighs back as you point your tailbone down between your heels.
• Lengthen your spine up, broaden across your collarbones, let your shoulders slide down your back, and stretch your arms down alongside the body, fingers spread and active.
• Hold for 5 to 10 breaths.

image source:http://iml.jou.ufl.edu

Benefits of Tadasana:

• Improves posture and relieves tension, aches, and pains throughout the body.
• Develops strength and flexibility simultaneously, especially in the spine
• Increases awareness and steadies breathing
• Increases strength, power, and mobility in the feet, legs, and hips 
• Develops strength and flexibility simultaneously, especially in the spine
• Improves blood circulation
• Encourages healthy digestion and elimination
• Leaves you feeling refreshed and rejuvenated
• Expels dullness and depression and harmonizes the body and mind
• Increases energy and enthusiasm

Did you know: squirrel appreciation day and Thomas Crapper day both fall on the 27th of January! A day dedicated to squirrels and the man who invented the flush toilet, wow...

It’s almost time for us to sign off, but first we’d just like to share a lesson that we learnt in 2014;
We’ve both learnt how to become more conscious; of our time, feelings/emotions and workload. Both in school and here on our blog, neither of us were managing our time well, which meant that school work stressed us out more than we should and we neglected the blog. We had some sort of an epiphany and decided that we need to spend more time on our school work (we’re both in our last and most important year of school before we are left to venture off into the wider world on our own - ahhh) and manage our ‘blogging time’ more efficiently, which is why we came up with this monthly blog series; this way we have at least one post a month. We’ve also come up with a timeline, which gives us a list of blog-related things we hope to have accomplished by the end of each month/year. This has really helped us both manage our work, as we used to spend some of our study periods focusing on blogging instead of studying, because we now know exactly what needs to be done and by when, and if we have any free time we can make ourselves ahead of schedule!


Thank you all so much for reading our blog, it means more to us than you will ever know. We are looking forward to continuing our journey on Perks Of Recovery with all of you.


“Since everything is a reflection of our minds, everything can be changed by our minds” - Buddha.

Don’t give up,

Alyssa & Louise