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Bestest Mommy Boss Cherri Dashields: Personal Vegan Chef

Welcome to Bestest Mommy Boss, a new section on the blog that will feature entrepreneurial moms who have turned their passions into lucrative side hustles and full-time businesses. 

Cherri Dashields, personal vegan chef

Cherri Dashields is a Philly-based personal chef who can make a mean vegan version of any meat dish.

Cherri Dashields, 45
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Business: Brown Veggie Mom,
plant-based personal chef
Profit: Between $500 and $1,500 a month
Reach her on Instagram @brownveggiemom

When Cherri Dashields tells people she’s vegan, the first question she gets asked is: “Oh wow, what do you eat?”

“Anything you can make with meat, I can make vegan,” she says, proudly. “Someone asked me about oxtails and I said, ‘come on over and I will make you some vegan oxtails.’”

Vegan oxtails huh? Cherri could sense I might be a skeptic. “If you lived closer, you could come over my house and I would feed you,” she promises.

And apparently, that’s how it starts. [Read more…]

Tired of Getting Sick? Try these 6 Essential Oils to Stay Well

Tired of Getting Sick?

When you’re a mommy, it feels like you’re the bull’s-eye of all the sneezes, snotty hands and runny noses your kids bring home.

So my nightstand is looking like a RiteAid nowadays; there’s multivitamins for women’s wellness, nasal spray and allergy meds, ibuprofen, kid’s Benadryl, DayQuil and NyQuil and zinc tablets for immune support.

Lately, I’ve been adding essential oils to my daily routine to stay well—with great results!

[Read more…]

Mommy-daughter “dress up” inspires Black History portraits

For the past four years, Chauncia Boyd Rogers and her daughter Ava have created photo portraits of iconic African-American woman during Black History Month.

Their work has become a viral sensation on the Internet. Pictures of Ava, now 8, dressed up as Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, and Oprah Winfrey circulate on social media year-round. [Read more…]

The Screaming Toddler is Asleep. In the Back Seat.

Sometimes I get the most done when the toddlers are asleep in the backseat.

Enjoying some quiet time. In the car.

Trigger Warning: This is a MOM RANT.

I am sitting in my car right now. In my driveway. Typing. Sipping Coffee. In bliss.

Because there’s a two-year-old snoring in her car seat in the back. And I dare not disturb her.

This is what it has come to folks. This is the only way I can find some time to myself, undisturbed, to make to-do lists and write and scroll through Facebook and Instagram and shop on Amazon and Imagine The Possibilities of whatever, collect my thoughts and steady my nerves to get through lunch hour, a bath, and hopefully nap time. [Read more…]

Food Allergies and the Flu Shot

There’s really no place to hide from the flu this time of year.

Honestly, it seems like everyone’s had it and a lot of my friends are on their second round of the illness. With a toddler at home and a four-year-old in daycare, I resigned myself to the idea that the flu would catch up with my family sooner or later.

So this week, it caught up with the most vulnerable and sleep-deprived member of the family: ME! [Read more…]

Easy DIY Hair and Scalp Moisturizer for Winter

Check out the Facebook Live video I did the other day for a quick, DIY hair and scalp moisturizer for Winter.  You will need to click on the read more tab to actually hear the video. [Read more…]

Finding Balance in 2018

FamilySo often as mothers, it feels like we’ve got the entire family on our back and we are teetering across a balance beam, trying to balance the load, struggling not to fall. If mama goes down, everybody goes down.

If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.

Why is this true?

Because we are the centerpiece, the linchpin, and the hub of our families. Whether we leave the house and work all day or we stay home—and work all day— we are still the center of it all. [Read more…]

Why everyone is using essential oils right now

There are a few health and wellness trends that seem to phase in and out over the years. Right now, essential oils are the craze.

Social media feeds, personal blogs and enthusiastic friends all seem to be boosting the popularity of using natural and plant derived oils for every ache, pain and pesky problem.

Got menstrual cramps? Try rubbing a little clary sage oil on your abdomen.

Stressed out—rub some lavender on your neck. [Read more…]

Our Wind-Down Routine

Life with a four-year-old and a two-year-old has gotten very hectic lately.

With a busy daily schedule, I’ve been trying to incorporate a calming wind-down routine in the evenings that is relaxing and transitions the kids to a quieter mode in preparation for bedtime. I’ve learned that our evening routine is much easier if we allow for transition time, which includes turning off the television and all media, picking up the toys, preparing for bathtime, storytime, prayer, and finally, the bed.

I wish it went as smoothly as that sentence I just typed. [Read more…]

6 Things I Wish I’d Known about Labor and Delivery

Doesn’t it seem like every woman who has given birth is now an expert on the subject?

Well, yeah. And rightly so.

Most mothers revel in their stories of long hours of hard labor and vaginal tears to push these bundle of joys out of tight spaces.

And as an award-winning two-time C-section mama, I carry my keloid scars like a badge of honor (although if I had the money to zap the scar away I definitely would.)

[Read more…]