I hope that you have had an awesome and amazing weekend! This past week was truly bliss for me because the weather was SO wonderful, and I got to spend my Tuesday, Thursday, AND Saturday in the sun with many of you! Thank you for coming out to celebrate the coming of Fall. J This coming week we have one special fruit that will be arriving in all of our boxes, and I cannot wait to share the surprise! Although we will have TONS of more dates coming in…it is not dates! Ha! You didn’t think I was going to tell you, did you?!?

I want to make sure that I announce to everyone that this coming weekend is Halloween! Therefore, I want to invite everyone to dress up on either Thursday or Saturday for co-op! Bring your kids to sort, and we will have the best time! I will be dressing up, and I am excited to hand out organic apples to all of my little trick-or-treators! Also, if you are looking for something fun to do this Halloween with your families, the Houston Arboretum is having an all-day event called the ArBOOretum!

This coming week, we will have about 7 new varieties of dates coming! Many were shocked last week when I mentioned that there are dozens of varieties of dates! They are one of the best ingredients to use to make holiday dishes (or simply to satisfy that sweet tooth!). The varieties will be the jumbo barhi, the barhi, Medjool, honey, halawi, desert jems, khadrawy, and possibly some sugar sticks! Oh, and don’t forget that we will have more pomegranates and pie pumpkins on the table as well!

If you are nervous about this week or overwhelmed with all that you have going on, don’t be! This week is a week to celebrate and have fun! It is our last week of October, so lettuce enjoy it as much as possible! Take deep breaths and just know that everything will work out perfectly. Get excited! If you are having a hard time pumping yourself up, here is a list of the top ten reasons why I love Halloween!

1. Halloween kicks off the holiday season! From this point on, it’s one long celebration until Christmas time!
2. The weather is absolutely calming, warming, gorgeous, and enigmatic.
3. There are tons of holiday shows, plays, and events in which to participate downtown or in the Houston Green Scene.
4. You see so many people reveling outside at this time of year, sharing recipes, walking dogs, riding bikes, and chasing after kids! It’s officially running season, so I don’t feel so out of place running everywhere all of the time!
5. Pumpkins and fall décor line up at nearly every doorstep.
6. You get to decorate and carve pumpkins!
7. The dates are in now in season, so you can make tons of raw pies and raw holiday treats!
8. Fall fruits and veggies like pomegranates, persimmons, dates, pears, heirloom tomatoes, golden beets, collards, and other yummies will soon be available if they aren’t already!
9. This is one of the weeks during the year where you are allowed to dress up in your favorite super-hero spandex and individuals will love you for it!
10. I now get to spend three days out of my week co-operating and getting to know each of you! This brings so much joy to my heart, and I am so blessed to be able to share it all with you!

Hope to see you out this week for some Halloween fun!!!

Hugs,

Kristina

I hope that you have been enjoying this absolutely perfect weather! I cannot express how amazing it feels to walk outside and feel the sun on my skin, or the wind carry my hair across my face. Leaves are starting to fall, and pumpkins are appearing at every doorstep.  We even saw our first pomegranates in the boxes this past week! And, don’t even get my started on our juicy, wet dates! Yes, we are all busy, but we must never be too busy to give gratitude for such amazing abundances in our lives.

When it feels like so many things are changing, I always like to go back to my roots—I like to look back at where I began and why I began doing whatever I was doing. What was my motivation in starting? What was my passion? What was my goal? The past 5+ years that I have been 100% raw 811 have been the most adventures and abundant years of my life. I have definitely grown into a woman with a completely different mindset than I used to hold. I find that I have let go of so many negative generational patterns that were passed down to me, and I find that I have learned how to make life “work” joyfully for myself. They journey will never end, and change will always come, but it is about the journey. As my next-door neighbor Wes quoted to me the other day, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

With three locations now at co-op, two of them being new, I have had infinite people approach me with inquisitions, opportunities, and requests.  I am learning that unless there are ten of me, I have to prioritize. There will always be a million things to do, but unless I keep focused on what I truly want—the message I want to convey—then nothing will truly succeed.  I am sure that this can apply to all of our lives.

There is one thing that I am truly proud of since I have started this co-op: my reasons, goals, and passion for starting the co-op in 2007 are the same today as they were then. In my mind, the message has only spread, and I have held true to that message. In 2006, I wrote a newsletter entitled, “Not a Service, Not a Sale.” This letter struck home with many in the co-op. I addressed my reasons for my not writing myself a paycheck from the co-op. I also talked about how I want to be treated just as any other participant in our co-op—I am here to co-operate. I am not here to sale anything, but to spread our main message about living rawfully happy. Many individuals still cannot believe that I put in approximately 40 hours a week into our co-op home and still work an additional full time job. For me, it’s so easy to believe, and I would have it no other way. The message of our co-op would simply change if I started to pay myself and run our co-op like an official business. When we all make a purchase, we want the funds to go into THAT purchase. No one likes to see their money get spread all over the place. We all want to save and to get the biggest BANG for our buck! Hence, this is one of the other reasons why I started this co-op. All of our pennies go towards buying food, supporting farmers, and obtaining necessary supplies. If money were going elsewhere, it would be apparent, and we wouldn’t have as many people in our co-op! So much would change, and the fact that our co-op is completely volunteer based is one of the most special attributes to our family.

I love that our co-op is about community. I love when I come to co-op, I am there sweating and working with others who share the same love and passion for health and food that I hold within my heart. I love that we barter and swap food. I love that we are there to support each other, share recipes, and share common ground. There is no service here, but everyone is there to be responsible for his or her own self. We all offer ourselves to serve for the greater good. When we give from the heart, we receive something so much greater than we can describe. The message is about giving back and about spreading that joy with the world.

Life is about messages, not about money. When one starts off with a good message, it either becomes tainted by eyes glazed with money signs or it doesn’t. How often do you see businesses change when greed gets involved? Too often!!! It ruins the purity of the original purpose. Ever hear the phrase, “Why can’t things stay the same?” Things will never stay the same, but if we wish our messages to expand with goodness, we hold that within out power! Every time that I get the opportunity, I like to pay it forward. This keeps me feeling blessed and infinitely grateful. It helps me not to feel selfish. Imagine the joy or care that you can bring to someone’s day. Imagine the last time that someone did something small for you, and it made the biggest difference in your day.  So here is what I want to ask you:

In what message do you believe?

In what do you believe? What message do you want to spread?  Is it more valuable than money? How strongly do you believe in this message? I believe in co-operation. I believe in community, I believe in sharing, supporting local farmers, supporting those trying to live healthy lifestyles, gardens, hugs, recipes, flavors, colors, smells, emotions, and yes, craziness!  It’s about giving back and feeling good about what you share with others and with the world. For what are you passionate, and how can you share that passion with others?

This week, I pray that you help to spread a message, any message, for which you are passionate. Let that message of goodness be more important than money, selfishness, or pride. Give it as a gift, and feel the peace flow within you. There is so much positivity to spread—lettuce make it contagious! I hope to see you this week!

Hugs*

Kristina

Can you believe it?! Rawfully Organic is celebrating our 3^rd anniversary this week! It feels like just yesterday that I was still in college coming home early from class to unpack 40 cases of produce in my living room with twelve other friends! Haha! We have most definitely grown, and we now share food beyond the Houston city limits with over 2000 families! Can you say, “blessed?!” Or maybe say, “Whoa! Cool!”

I have a bundle of surprises planned for this week! I cannot express my excitement! Fall is officially here, and with it, come many fall yummies that are just arriving! Trust me when I say that you want to be able to pick up a box this week! Each day will have its very own special surprises!

We will kick off the week with our brand new Tuesday home at the Houston Arboretum! We have a whole new group joining the co-op, and I am so glad to be able to meet everyone and welcome them to the Rawfully Organic family! Houston’s 002 Magazine will be coming with party favors to pass out! In addition, The Fruit Palette will be coming to bring organic fruit popsicles for everyone to enjoy this day! The Houston Arboretum will also be there celebrating with us and will be promoting their super-cool ArBOOretum event for Halloween! Volunteer hours will be from 1-4 PM, and Veggie Pick-Ups will be from 4-7 PM.

Thursday at the Nottingham Forest Club will be moving up its pick-up times to be from 4-7 PM to match Tuesday times and to prepare for the time change. Volunteer hours will be from 1-4 PM. Prepare for a dancing party while sorting the veggies!

The times and volunteer hours on Saturday will remain the same!

Please come out to celebrate! I cannot express the amount of joy that I receive from sharing not only food, but also my heart with all of you. We have all joined to create something truly good and helpful to humanity. It is inspiring to see such a powerful, healthy message “infect” Houston! I am so excited to share this week with all of you, and I cannot wait to grow with love, abundance, and fruitfulness!

Blessings and hugs!

Kristina