Lifestyle

LuxEco Lifestyle is an ongoing conversation about the convictions, philosophy, challenges, choices, attitudes and spirituality that create the framework through which we view the world and define our lifestyle.

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A Healthy, Sustainable Easter

Let's get healthy this Easter with some sustainable, non-toxic alternatives to the usual holiday traditions. By Brooke Rewa, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Filled with treats and trinkets...

First Electric Highway In U.S.

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Come fall of 2010, Washington state will begin construction on the U.S.’s first-ever electric highway. All being made possible by a $1.32 million federal grant, 10 level-3 charging stations will line the Interstate-5 at 80-mile intervals, from Oregon to Canada. Electric car commuters—now behind the wheel of newer versions, such as the Leaf and the Volt—will have plenty of leeway along the I-5 before the 100-mile charging range of their vehicle runs out.

The Chesterfield Palm Beach: LuxEcoLiving’s # 1 Hotel in Florida

It's a jewel of a hideaway in the confines of one of the wealthiest locations in all the world...   Palm Beach Florida. What The...

How Facial Hair Is Helping Cure My Depression

I’m a white hipster in his late twenties with a strong political opinion suffering from depression. You know, the antichrist. I’ve spent a good deal of my life finding ways to deal with my depression.

The Brothers Red Barn Brings Back That Lovin Feelin…Again

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World   The Brothers know how to bring home the...

My Vegan Picks At This Year’s Natural Foods Expo

By Brooke Rewa, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Being vegan can be a chore; constantly checking labels, feeling left out at gatherings, salivating over things you can't have. However, at the Natural Products Expo I found some exciting vegan products that will make even the biggest meat and dairy lovers drool.

For Hillary: Roar Like A Lion And Never Give Up

I was hoping to wear a white dress and walk into town to share my heartfelt joy with my friends. I wanted to roar like a white lion with pride and share the passion of OUR WIN TOGETHER.

Billboards to Travel With

By: Leslie Harris, Interior Designer, Leslie Harris Interior Design and LuxEco Advocate. I’ve never given much thought to where billboards went after they are taken down but luckily a product design and manufacturing team called Artecnica created The Billboard Project with 3 great looking and sustainable products. Impressed by Artecnica’s Designing With Conscious program, Media Arts Lab (MAL) part of TBWA Advertising Agency, requested the designers to recycle their large format billboards.

If I Could

Hands by Guido Daniele Hands by Guido Daniele By Florence "Flip" Ross, LuxEcoLiving Advocate and Contributor If I could bring the planet Earth, back to its natural beauty If I could sing its praise, and make the world assume its duty If I could make the industries clean up their foul pollution Our air, our water, would be clean, and would be the solution If I could force our corporations to help clean up our planet

Great Organic Food: From Sides Hardwear and Shoes to A-RU Sushi

By Nancy and James Chuda founders of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World Heading Sideways in Santa Ynez Valley from Los Olivos to Buellton Two Great...

The Hemingways Nairobi:LuxEcoLiving’s #1 Choice for Luxury and Cuisine

There is only one place in Nairobi... The Hemingways is historic. The grounds are magnificent and the view of Ngong Hills from your terrace translates the love and passion that Karen Blixen held for the land she so dearly loved.

A Review: S.Y. Kitchen Rounds Em Up Italian Rustica Style

By Nancy and James Chuda founders of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World A Restaurant Review: S.Y. Kitchen is a dream come true! We...

Slavery, Chocolate-Coated Slavery

Forrest Gump may have been on to something when he compared life to chocolates. You really never know what you’re gonna get in a box of chocolates, do you? The truth behind chocolate is more bitter than sweet. The Ivory Coast produces 40% of the world's chocolate, and it just so happens to also be notorious for this little thing called child slavery. Children, both local and from other third world countries, are sold to farms in this area where they are physically abused while working in risky and inhumane conditions. Some children are sold into the trade by parents who are tricked into believing their children will have better lives at the farm. Others are trafficked, stolen from their families, lured by the promise of…chocolate. In these farms they are forced to work 60 hour weeks with little or no food (depending on their performance on the field). These children lose their fundamental human rights when they enter these farms and “modern” society turns a blind eye to the atrocities. Every time we buy a box of chocolate that is not fair trade stamped, we (often unknowingly) endorse child slavery.

Home Size: How Big is Too Big?

By Trish Holder Courtesy of Greenspiration Home “We’re going to die,” I pronounced. We were in the third hour of our drive to Folly Beach, SC for...

High Speed Rail in California’s Future

By: Molly Rovero, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Imagine a world without fossil fuel powered cars! This is what the Los Angeles chapters of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects teamed up to do when they created Rail LA, a group dedicated to "healing the wounds of past infrastructure projects" and helping transition from "an automobile based society to a transit based one." They seek to raise awareness about the myriad of benefits that high speed rail can have for Southern California, such as a reduction in emissions, mitigation of traffic congestion, and countless other environmental concerns related to society’s daily reliance on fossil-fuel-powered transit.

Why Now—The Guiding Principle of LuxEco

Giving Birth to LuxEco Living LuxEcoLiving incorporates three basic principles; food, shelter, and love. Each attribute defines and identifies a new cultural paradigm shift....

Chemicals May Be Sabotaging Your Diet

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant The old diet and exercise routine just doesn’t seem to be working anymore. You eat your fruits and veggies, avoid carbohydrates (well, you try to), and are physically active at least 3 times per week. Yet, when you step on the scale it won’t budge past your old plop-down-on-the-couch-with-a-bag-of-chips weight. What is it going to take to drop the next 10 to 15 pounds? Scientists have discovered that it’s not your diet or exercise routine to blame, it’s a little endocrine-disrupting chemical known as EDC’s or “obesogens” making it impossible to shed the extra fat.

Cleaning Doesn’t Have to be Toxic

By Jessica Borges, LuxEco Living Editorial Assistant I recently moved into a new apartment, and with that came a massive scrub down of both old digs and new. My roommates and I spent hours cleaning the old place after moving everything out, but the products we used were hardly eco or health-friendly. When scrubbing the Comet-filled bathroom tub, the smell was so overwhelming that I nearly passed out. While cleaning bathrooms isn’t normally an enjoyable task, it doesn't have to be one that puts people’s health and safety at risk.

Wayne Pacelle CEO of The Humane Society of the United States: Protecting The Rights...

In its first year, HSUS has started a program called Pets for Life (PFL) which is addressing this and other major concerns.By reaching out to the communities and offering assistance with service needs free of charge their mission is to not only change the face of poverty for pets but infuse optimism and inspiration for their owners.

Leading A Green Movement, One Well-Heeled Eco Step At A Time

By Rachel Sarnoff, Writer and Founder of EcoStiletto.com and MommyGreenest.com and LuxEco Advocate I’m a journalist by trade and I’d been writing about fashion and...

Prevent Cancer in Your Pet

By Lacey Szczepanik, LuxEco Living Editorial Assistant I have two beautiful pet babies; Diggs, my proud, empathetic and cautious boxer, and Mo, my silly, sleepy Staffordshire terrier. I take my role as their guardian very seriously. When my pet Diggs was two years old, he was diagnosed with mast cell tumors, a form of cancer prevalent among boxers. I was devastated. I went through all the stages of grief. Denial; “Excuse me Mrs. Veterinarian, my dog has a small ‘bump’ on his side. Bump. Not lump. Lumps are scary. This is simply a ‘bump’.” Anger... directed more at God than anyone in particular. I lost Diggs’ brother much too early in life and found it cruel to be faced with another premature goodbye. Bargaining. Depression; full on who-needs-food and why-would-I-get-out-of-my-pajamas-or-leave-the-house-when-I-could-sit here-and-stare-at-my-beautiful-dog kind of depression. And finally Acceptance, and by acceptance I mean he’s alive today and he’ll be alive tomorrow SO THERE. Maybe the anger and denial are still sprinkled on top of the acceptance. A shocking 20-25% of our furry four legged pets end up dying prematurely due to Cancer. (Perdue University Department of Veterinarian).

Gaia Retreat and Spa offers Health Beauty and Serenity

Introduction by Nancy Chuda Founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and Co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World. If you haven't had a chance to...

Poetic License

By  Florence “Flip” Ross a LuxEcoLiving Contributor         I never thought I could disclose My deepest feelings, held inside To put them down in honest prose Would...

No more oil drilling in our oceans. Please!

By Florence "Flip" Ross, LuxEco Advocate As I sit here, and gaze proudly at all my "going green" products, I feel I am doing something...

Louisiana’s Barataria Bay Suffers From BP Oil Spill

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant The iconic Barataria Bay, a Gulf of Mexico bay located in southeastern Louisiana, is being destroyed by oil still gushing from the Deepwater Horizon blowout. The formerly thriving estuary, rich with virgin cypress trees and an array of wildlife, has been known historically—as the site of an original colony—and literarily—as depicted by Kate Chopin in “The Awakening.” It is beloved by its inhabitants, who knew it, not so long ago, as some of the best fishing in the region.

Undersea Oil Plumes Affecting All Sizes of Life

By: Molly Rovero, LuxEco Editorial Assistant For the majority of the time that the BP oil spill has been happening, company officials as well as...

When Angels Cry: Jennifer Edwards New Novel Promises More Than Fifty Shades of Grey….Sexual...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World           The movie, Fifty Shades of Grey is meant to be...

The Hotel San Régis Paris France: LuxEcoLiving’s Best Hotels in the World

By Nancy and James Chuda founders LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World This magnificent 5 star Hotel is one of the most precious finds in...

The Quin is Manhattan’s Quintessential Luxury Boutique Hotel and One of the Best in...

By Nancy and James Chuda founder of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World New York City 57th and 6th Avenue, The Quin Hotel         When...

Sake and Seaweed: Sushi Ran in Sausalito reels in the raw and gets big...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Reporting from Casa Madrona in Sausalito California A Restaurant Review           ...

Up a Stream With A Broken Chinese Paddle

By Lacey Szczepanik, LuxEco Living Editorial Assistant I was born into a generation which, when it comes to consuming products, ‘Built to Last’ was long...
never doubt yourself

14 Reasons to Never Doubt Yourself

By Alanna Rosette Brown, a writer/filmmaker, LuxEcoLiving Advocate, and author of Moonpennies. Follow her blog at alannarosette.com Self-doubt is one of our biggest gremlins, as...

The Compassionate Life- Is Empathy the Answer?

Empathy and Compassion in the Wake of Japan's Tsunami Crisis By: Marc Ian Barasch, author of The Compassionate Life and Founder/Director, Green World Campaign The aerial shots...

Part 1: Every California Community College Campus and Student Gets a “Helping Hand”

By Merry Elkins, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Best known for being a star-maker, Ken Kragen, who is also an author, teacher, and film and television producer, has charted the career course of some our most celebrated entertainers including Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Tricia Yearwood, Olivia Newton John, The Bee Gees, The Smothers Brothers, Harry Chapin and more; but nothing he has accomplished in his illustrious career has ever achieved the significance or the scope of his philanthropic work. For breathing life into Hands Across America in the 1980s where young and old alike joined hands across the country to call attention to hunger and homelessness here in the US; for setting in motion and organizing the recording We Are the World, that brought together 45 prominent recording artists including Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Bruce Springsteen to raise $64 million to feed people in Africa and for founding USA for Africa to distribute the money, he received the United Nations Peace Medal, something few civilians receive and an honor for which he is most proud.

A Manifesto For Change

By Nancy Chuda, Co-Founder of Healthy Child Healthy World and Founder of LuxEco Living Seth Godin is my hero. His book, Tribes has become my...

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