Life's A Beach

  As most of you may or may not know, I have a huge distain for plastic water bottles and bottled water in general. It is a product of greed invented by major corporations like Nestle, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, to make money off of something that costs them next to nothing to produce. “Bottled water is the best advertising and marketing trick of all time.” - Tapped

“World-wide the bottled water market is $50 billion dollars. The country which consumes the most bottled water also has the most publically accessible and safest water sources- the United States. The next three largest consuming countries of bottled water do not have reliable tap water- China, Brazil, and Mexico.”

So why do we keep buying? Convenience. The ease of picking up a water bottle while on our way from point A to point B and the ability to dispose of the container when we’re through. The bottled water companies like to justify this convenience with the fact that the bottles are recycled and therefore produce less waste when the reality is that 86% of water bottles are thrown in the garbage instead of the recycling.

“You know plastic water bottles are bad. But do you know how bad? Americans go through an estimated 70 million-plus water bottles a day, and a mere 14 percent get recycled. It’s not just that they’re taking up space in our landfills. Vast quantities of oil are consumed to make, transport, and dispose of them. What’s more, the manufacturing of plastic bottles actually requires two times more water than the bottles will ultimately contain. We can easily get our fix another way: from the tap. Steer clear of hard polycarbonate bottles, marked with the resin code 7 on the bottom; they can contain bisphenol A, an endocrine disrupter and possible carcinogen.”

The issue of pollution doesn’t only apply to the landfills and oceans. A number of pollutants are present in bottled water brands across the board. Things such as bacteria, caffeine, acetaminophen, fertilizers, solvents, plastic making chemicals, the radioactive chemical strontium and even arsenic. A large portion of these pollutants come from the plastic bottles that the water is bottled in.

As far as regulations go, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and therefore the company is given the freedom to choose what, if any, information is displayed on their label about the source and any possible chemical pollutants that their water may contain.

Tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is required under the Safe Drinking Water Act to submit annual water quality reports that are made available to the public. These reports disclose water source and pollutant testing results. 58% of the 52,000 community tap water suppliers nationwide also disclose water treatment methods.

So which would you trust to hydrate your body?

“San Francisco’s tap water comes from Yosemite National Park and is so pure the EPA does not require it to be filtered. A bottled of Evian water at $1.35 could be refilled with San Francisco tap water once a day for over ten years before the cost would total $1.35.”

Personally, I’ve found that I drink more water throughout the day if I carry my reusable bottle with me. It helps me to avoid an impulse buy of bottled water and holds a lot more plus there are loads of options that are BPA free or better yet, contain no plastic at all.

These issues only scratch the surface of the real epidemic that is the bottled water industry. To delve deeper, watch the documentary ‘TAPPED ’, A film that examines the role of the bottled water industry and it’s effects on our health, climate change, pollution and our reliance on oil. (Available on Netflix)

- http://www.droptheprop.info/bottled-water-statistics

- http://www.wholeliving.com/136676/10-ways-eat-greener/@center/136755/green-home-guide#/55675

- http://www.ewg.org/health/report/BottledWater/Bottled-Water-Scorecard/NewsRelease

The day has arrived!! Insomnia Cannon Beach will be open as of tomorrow (Thursday May 3rd!).

I would love to see everyone’s pretty faces soaking up some sun, sipping coffee and munching on scones. Hopefully you all will be able to make it out soon!

Thanks to Joy The Baker, my afternoon was brightened by the delicious-ness of these oatmeal raspberry ginger scones. If you enjoy baking and are always on the search for great new inventive ideas, check out her blog or better yet, buy her book!

Cheers!

It’s been months since I have written an update and that kills me! So to anyone actually following this crazy whirlwind I call my life, I apologize.

As for an update, obviously we’re all moved in. We’ve been here since the 25th of February and enjoyed a lot of down time while the shop was still being constructed. We were able to familiarize ourselves with Seaside and have grown to love it. There’s a lot more to it than what you see from a tourist standpoint. We’ve also fallen in love with Astoria. It has tons of great food and a plethora of vintage shops. It was a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’ until the beginning of April, when we were able to actually get into the space and start work on things like laying the floors, painting, installing crown moulding and so on.

It’s been crazy hard work but things are beginning to take shape and come together. David and I both feel so blessed that we were able to be a part of piecing together the shop from the ground up. We feel we have so much more invested and we’re able to take a deeper sense of pride in the place we’ll be working for the next however many years.

The official opening date is still TBA but I can tell you that it is RIGHT around the corner! I would love for All of my friends to come out and visit, grab a scone and an amazing cup of coffee and share in this wonderful new beginning with us.

Educate yourself, take a stand and spread the word!

Here we are, four days until our big move and I have yet to fully comprehend that this is a reality. This will be David and I’s biggest move together and we are definitely jumping in head first but God has definitely cleared the path for us.

Today was my last day at Thatcher’s, Wednesday will be my last day at Lapellah, our apartment is down to it’s bare bones and for whatever reason I can’t seem to grasp that in four short days we will no longer live in Vancouver, let alone Washington! I guess I thought it would feel a lot different. That it would be more difficult. I imagined feeling torn between excitement and sorrow but instead I just feel like it’s any other week. Don’t get me wrong, I am beyond excited for this new journey and I am saddened that I won’t be fifteen minutes away from the majority of my friends. I guess I just thought it would be a lot harder emotionally but instead God has me in the greatest state of peace, and for that I am thankful.

There are of course some things about the move that I am not looking forward to such as registering our cars and getting new licenses. I don’t think there’s a soul on earth that looks forward to spending an afternoon in DMV, getting told that you don’t have the right paperwork or that you have to take a written test to switch over to an Oregon license (yikes!). At least I get to have a new license photo taken. That is one thing that will make the process a little less dull. We will see if I am still saying that after it’s done!

My next update will most likely be as an Oregonian and a beach dweller!

Until then…!

 So it’s finally February first! January seemed to drag on forever but I guess that’s how it goes when you are looking forward to something.

Since our lease starts in February, David and I were able to drive down and pick up our keys to the new house today. We loaded up as many boxes and miscellaneous furniture as we could cram into his car and set out. The drive is becoming easier and easier the more we make it, but my opinion could be attributed to the fact that I wasn’t the one driving. Once we got to the house the sun was out and all we could see was blue sky. A wonderful welcome as we punched in our garage code and the door rose with a squeak. We were home!

We weren’t able to haul down all that much considering the size of David’s car but it was fun unloading the few boxes we were able to cram into his hatchback. We hung towels in our bathroom, set up some furniture in the office and even assigned cabinets in the kitchen (always fun!).

I was so sad when we had to lock everything up and head back towards Portland. I don’t know how I am going to wait another three and a half weeks until we, physically, move-in. All I know is that we are blessed beyond measure and that I am so excited to be on this wonderful adventure with my best friend. I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us in this upcoming season of life!

As many of you already know, David and I are packing up our life and heading West at the end of February. We are moving to the beautiful, scenic, windy Oregon coast. Seaside to be exact.

A few months ago (around the end of October) David and I were approached with the opportunity to help some good friends open a new location for their coffee shop in Cannon Beach. Knowing that I would be graduating culinary school for baking and pastry in January, they wanted to know if I would be willing to be their personal baker for the shop as well as sling some coffee. Our good friend Adam would be moving down and managing the shop as well. David and I had been dreaming of eventually moving somewhere for at least a year, finding jobs in our newly acquired culinary fields and making a life in a new place. This seemed like the perfect opportunity and we really didn’t have to spend too much time deciding whether or not we wanted to jump on board. We took a week or so to pray about it and ask the advice of some trusted mentors. After all, we wanted to make sure this was what God wanted, not just what we wanted. We felt that this was completely God ordained and the timing of everything was just too great not to have his hand in it so we took a leap of faith and committed the next year of our lives to the coffee shop and to the coast.

In the following months we scoured the internet for rentals in Cannon Beach. What we soon discovered is that long term rental properties aren’t easy to come by. Everyone seemed to be advertising short-term vacation rentals or selling and the few rentals we did find were too small for our needs. We had decided to go in on a rental with Adam since it made perfect sense to share the cost of living since we would all be re-locating anyways. Now the shop is located in Cannon Beach on 2nd and Larch (one block from the beach!). Cannon beach is a little bit isolated and I think that’s what makes it so great, but when it comes to commuting it’s a bit of a hassel. Ideally we wanted to be able to walk/bike to the shop. This meant having a commute that was relatively short and do-able in inclement weather (which if you’ve ever been to the Oregon Coast, you know it’s a regular occurrence). Now Seaside is roughly a fifteen minute drive along the highway. Not too far but not ideal walking/biking terrain. Manzanita is about twenty-five minutes South along a steep, winding, narrow highway. Not really something I want to bike, especially in the middle of torrential downpour and gale force winds. You can see why Cannon Beach was our ideal location for finding a house, but for months we had no such luck. Finally we decided to broaden our search into Seaside. We weren’t keen on the touristy feel of Seaside and frankly the feel of the town as a whole, but we were getting desperate as it was now the beginning of January.

It had been a few weeks since we had expanded our search, I was doing my routine prowl of Craigslist and I stumbled upon a house that seemed too good to be true. It was a new build, right in the heart of Seaside, a twelve minute drive from the shop, it backed a green space. It was perfect. David immediately sent an email to the owner about some basic questions and also about a possible time to come and see it. Within a week we were headed to take a tour and talk to the landlord. 

God had once again opened the door and we found out days later that all we had to do was sign the lease papers and it was ours. She told us that we could meet with her husband and sign the papers since he was already in Vancouver for work, knowing we lived there. To make it convenient for us, she arranged that we meet him at a local coffee shop called Thatcher’s, to which David and I laughed and thanked God for having such a great sense of humor (I currently work at Thatcher’s).

So we’re over the first hump of our adventure and we can rest easy knowing we have a place to live. We ended up having to pay rent for the month of February even though we won’t ourselves move in until about February twenty-fourth but it gives us time to slowly haul our stuff down there, which is nice. I am extremely excited for this new chapter in our lives and I can’t wait to see what God has in store!

Until next time, 

Jordyn

Just hangin out

These two things make me a very happy girl.