How To Make Your Own Candles

If you want to create a romantic atmosphere from time to time in your house, or if you like the perfumed scent some candles have and you can’t always afford to buy them, you have to know that you can make them yourself, with the help of some advice.

Candles are made from old burned candles or from new ones, bought in one pound packs; they are much cheaper that way. New candles are not made from wax as it is expensive and it leaves candles with a warm dark yellow shade. Still, it burns better without any smoke.

           

The candles will be melted in a recipient full of water. They will never be placed directly on fire, because it is dangerous.

At the same time we have to prepare the shapes the candles will take. We can make them ourselves or we can use boxes or paper glasses (like the ones from fast-foods that go with refreshments). We turn the shape upside down; we make a small piercing that will be used to keep the top of the candle separated from the rest of it.

 The straw that will keep the candle burning can be taken from an old candle of can be made out of white cotton straw. We turn the shape upside down, and with a stick, pen or pencil we introduce the straw so that it is placed right through the middle. More precisely, we wrap the straw around a stick that will be fixed by the edged of the shape.

 In order to color the wax we will use oil colors or coloring dust that is dissolved in the melting wax.

If we want a candle with horizontal lines, we will pour each line at a time in different colors, waiting each time for them to cool so that the colors won’t mix.

After they are completely cold we can remove them from their shapes. If we can not do this, we will place them in the refrigerator and wait an hour or so, and remove them after that.

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Nourishing our Body, Nourishing our Spirit

Many times our choice to become vegetarian isn’t only for health, environmental, or economical reasons, but also spiritual. There is a heartfelt connection between vegetarianism and the deeper side of nourishment. We must learn to nourish ourselves not only physically, but also spiritually.

The subject of nutrition is not simply a question of the food we eat at meals. Besides nutrients, foods contain scents, colors and invisible particles that attract pure light, light that is so essential for our joyful life and well-being. The choice we make is therefore always of consequential significance.

Grains, fruits and vegetables naturally grow and flourish in sunlight, and you could deduce they are actually their own form of light. In order to develop the qualities of the heart, we must eat not only peacefully, but consciously. Therefore it makes sense to consume food that is nourished by sunlight. As a result, our emotions and our essence are illuminated and nourished as well.

It’s long been said that your body is your temple and everything that enters that temple has a direct result in who we become. Therefore, when we choose to nourish our bodies with healthful, nutrient-dense plant foods from the earth, we are in turn nourishing our souls, our spirit, and our being. The quality of your food and its physical properties not only transforms our emotions and mind, but can actually change your appearance and personality.


By focusing our diet on fresh fruits and vegetables that are in season and organically produced, we are in turn connecting with nature and learning to live in harmony with it.  By committing and devoting ourselves to a vegetarian lifestyle, we’ve also committed to nourishing our souls and our inner well-being.  You can’t ask for a more perfect health food than that!

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The Environmental Costs of Factory Farming and Ranching

Long ago, eating meat was a good source of nutrition, since the use of hormones, pesticides and mass production methods was as yet unheard of. A family raised and processed their own livestock. Every morning the large golden eggs were plucked from the chicken’s nests, which were lovingly cared for and fed healthy pesticide-free grains..

Today's factory farms use everything, but in the process they leave behind an environmental toll that generations to come will be forced to pay. Raising animals for food requires more that half the water used in the United States each year and one-third of all raw materials, including fossil fuels. This industry is the greatest polluter of our waters and is directly responsible for 85 percent of soil erosion. Our country's meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water and air.

Of all agricultural land in the United States, 87 percent is used to raise animals for food. That's 45 percent of the total land mass of the United States.

Methane is one of four greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. The world's 1.3 billion cows produce one-fifth of all methane emitted into the atmosphere.

Raising animals for food causes more water pollution in the United States than any other industry because animals raised for food produce 20 times the excrement of the entire human population-230,000 pounds every second.

Of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the United States, more than one-third is used to raise animals for food.

Rain forests are being destroyed at a rate of 125,000 square miles per year. The primary cause of deforestation is raising animals for food.

Coupled with the inhumane treatments of animals that are raised for human consumption, the costs of raising and processing these animals for human consumption is becoming too high.  Make a commitment to reduce or eliminate meats from your diet, and learn to live from the plant foods the environment naturally provides.  The animals and your conscience will be better for it. 

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Diet Using Negative Calories

We can have a diet using negative calories. The main idea is that our body uses more calories to digest some aliments than the calories we know those aliments contain themselves by analyzing the combination of nutritional components of the specific aliments. If we burn more calories than we consume, then we will lose weight.

The theory is in fact very appealing: the body has to consume energy in order to digest the food. For example, an orange has about 50 calories. To process all nutritional components and vitamins that an orange contains, our body will burn more than just 50 calories.

The diet using negative calories is more a solution we can call on in some specific periods, when our body is overwhelmed with nutrition, like holidays, Christmas, New Year’s, birthdays, weddings, and less of a solution that can be used on a long term.

Some specialists say that the lost of weight is obtained mostly by losing parts of the muscular tissue, which is not recommended at all.

So if you decide to use the diet with negative calories keep in mind the following:

-          Make sure it is done in a period your body has already too many calories stored and you won’t be affecting your health by doing this.

-          Ask a medic if you can resist only eating this types of aliments and also ask him the time limit for this diet in your case so you can avoid getting sick.

-          Try to combine them as much as you can, do not eat just oranges or other fruits that contain citric acid as they are not good for your stomach activity when eaten in huge quantities.

-          Review your schedule for the days you want to use this diet and make sure you don’t have any important or stressful things to do. Stress also causes caloric burn and weight reduction and if it occurs during a diet that weakens the organism you can feel physically powerless. If such a thing happens give up on the diet and eat something with many calories and glucoses fast.

If all above points are checked and passed you can start a negative calories diet and give a try to actually eating something instead of taking slim pills and drinking tea.

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