Dandelion Root Tea for Health and Weight Loss

I have been working for many years to lose weight. And since I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis in 2008 and began taking medication that affected my kidneys and liver, I've been striving to make dietary improvements that improve my health. Several months ago a friend told me about a drink that she was consuming that was helping in her weight loss. It was a simple recipe, mostly consisting of water. I did a little research and in the process discovered the health benefits of Dandelion Root Tea. Those benefits include the assistance of helping to improve your kidney and liver health. Combined with hope that it could help with my weight loss, I was sold. I've been drinking the recipe a few times a week for the past few months. When I was given the chance to try Kiss Me Organics Dandelion Root Tea, I said yes, immediately.

The recipe is 60oz of distilled water, 1 Tbl 100% pure cranberry juice (no sugar or sweetener added, non-cocktail), 2 Tbl lemon juice and 1 bag of Dandelion Root Tea. It's easy to make. I like it chilled so I make it at night before bed and stash it in the fridge over night.

I  get all of my supplies together and fill my container with water. I brew the tea with some of the water poured out of my container.

I add the cranberry juice and lemon juice. Once the tea is fully brewed, I pour it into the pitcher. My friend adds a little Stevia to her container but I like the tartness of the drink, so I don't add any sweetener. I mix the recipe and store it into the fridge.

Kiss Me Organics Dandelion Root Tea also contains cinnamon and hibiscus. The tea is a deep pinkish red color. I also enjoy the tea on its own. It's a tasty change to my traditional green tea.

In addition to my focus on eating whole foods and exercise, drinking the recipe has been a great addition to my weight loss. I bought the white jeans below in late September of 2014. I stored them for the winter and took them out yesterday to try them on.

September 2014

They are a favorite pair that I really enjoyed wearing, until yesterday. When I tried them on I knew they were destined for the donation bin. They are obviously way to big for me to even take in. Even though the drink isn't the only contributing factor to my weight loss but it has helped.

April 2015

If you're looking for a great tasting tea with health benefits or you'd like to try the detox water, you should give Kiss Me Organics Dandelion Root Tea a try. It's delicious and healthy!

Note: I was provided Kiss Me Organics Dandelion Root Tea in exchange for my review. The opinions and results expressed her are my own. 

Halloween Fun 2014

One of my favorite holidays has now come and gone. Our annual Halloween party was a blast. We finally decided on our costumes (thank goodness) and I love how they turned out. Our friends had a fun, which is really all I care about. There was great food, good drinks and all around craziness. I was so busy having fun that I didn't get photos of all of our guests. I think next year I'm going to set up a little photo booth to make sure I get shots of everyone. Now on to the fun.

I created this skull cake for my friend Kris' birthday, which happened to fall on the day of the party.

A spooky cocktail was in order. I found this vampire blood cocktail idea on Pinterest and modified it to my taste a bit. The original idea and recipe came from The Self Proclaimed Foodie. It turned out great and everyone loved it.

I attempted to create another Pinterest find, mini caramel apples. As you can see in the photo, they were a huge fail. When I first created them they looked great. After about an hour, they looked like this. The juice from the apples caused the caramel to slide off and created this watery, mushy mess. These ended up in the trash.

We ended up dressing as the Mad Hatter and Alice (a punk rock version). I think {msL's} costume and make-up turned out great! I decided on a rocker version of Alice, complete with a paint splatered dress, ripped hi-low tutu, floral Doc Martens, and tattoos. I already owned the dress and until last week it was destined for the trash. It has some stains and I hadn't been able to remove them. Instead I took Sharpies in shades of blue and created a paint splatter effect.

The Mad Hatter and our friend Kevin, the Prince.

Gaby and Mia look great as the women of Sons of Anarchy. No biker chick costume would be complete without attitude!

Kris (the birthday girl) and Lauren (her girlfriend), look amazing as Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. Kris did that make-up herself (including Lauren's scarred cheek). Kris is a scary and impressive Bid Bad and Lauren is a beautiful Red. Incredible!

It was such a great time. I'm a bit sad that I didn't get more photos. There were so many good costumes. I also missed getting a photo of our newest outdoor decoration, a posable skeleton (like this one). I hope you all had as much fun at your Halloween gatherings as I did.

Don't forget to come out and see me next Saturday at the Shopaholics Suite in Silver Spring, Maryland (DETAILS and TICKETS HERE). It's going to be a fab afternoon of fashion and bargains. I hope you'll be there.

photo credits: @peacfulsafira, @_gabillionairee, @daisybee45

Insprired by Pinterest - Party by Pinterest

On Sunday I hosted a Stella & Dot Trunk show.  It was a fun afternoon of jewelry, girl time, laughing and yummy food and drink.  I'll have details about the jewelry in a later post.  My Stella & Dot stylist, Kristin Biggs, advised me to go for easy finger food to make jewelry shopping and styling easy.  I decided to do some searching on Pinterest for ideas.  All but one of the recipes I made were created based on Pinterest pinned recipes or ideas.

First I cooked my own roasted red peppers to use in antipasto kabobs (see below). I knew the fresh version would taste much better than the jar version I could get at the store.

Using those peppers, I made antipasta kabobs. They were delicious and everyone loved them.  An easy, no stress recipe, for those who don't like to cook.

Just assemble the items you are going to use in your kabobs.  My choices were olives (black and green, cherry tomatoes, pepperoni (regular and turkey), mini fresh mozzarella balls, salami, and cooked tortellini marinated in Italian dressing. Then I compiled the kabobs. The great thing is that you don't need any special cooking skills to create them and they don't have to be perfect.  You can use any combination of flavors that you like. Pick your own kabob ingredients. I even created some without olives because some folks don't like olives. I also created a few kabobs without the tortellini and substituted roasted red peppers and turkey pepperoni for the tortellini, salami and regular pepperoni. I decided not to marinate all of the items in Italian dressing. The flavors of the items are great already and I didn't think they needed the dressing.

The suggestion I found to use a melon baller to create the cucumber cups was genius!  It worked great. I created my own recipe for the filling.  It was a bit watery and I will definitely use different ingredients next time.

The cheesecake stuffed strawberries were the hit of the party. I used a melon baller to scoop out the strawberries and it worked just as well as the cukes.  The recipe suggested using a pastry bag and star tip to pipe in the filling. I couldn't be bothered with that so I just filled a zip lock bag, sealed it and cut off one of the corners. It worked like a charm.

I served champagne punch that was inspired by Pinterest as well. The recipe I found called for champagne and vodka, which I loved.  I used a mixed berry juice as the main flavor instead of pomegranate. There you have it, you too can throw a party using recipes found on Pinterest.  Everyone loved the food. I didn't have any leftovers and a good time was had by all.

This post is installment number two for Saw Pinned Conquered.  Be sure to check out all of the other posts on Amy's blog, At the Pink of Perfection.