Fall is a great time to cleanse, detoxify, and reorganize your health priorities in preparation for a long, cold winter. Sometimes breaking out of a routine is the best way to realign our intentions and deepen our commitment to wellness.

If you think a little change in scenery is what you need to give yourself that gentle kick in the butt to reboot your booty, check out the following yoga retreats. Everyone I know who comes back from a yoga retreat is more than refreshed and ready to take on whatever challenges life brings. Maybe it is time you take a much-needed break, reinvent your mind-body fitness strategy, and come home with a fresh perspective on life.

Not sure where to go? We’ve found a few locations that will satisfy your fun-filled yoga needs or more luxurious yoga dreams.

Via Yoga

With locations in Mexico and Costa Rica, Via Yoga offers yoga and Pilates retreats combined with surfing, snorkeling, whale watching, and margarita drinking. Love yoga, your workouts, and the pleasure of eating good food with great folks? Visit ViaYoga.com and check out the great offerings and specials for a fun-filled and adventurous retreat.
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I’m in New York City on business for a few days this week. Somehow all of my meetings worked out to be staggered perfectly around each meal time on a single day. It was positively gorgeous outside, so I walked about 60 blocks throughout lower Manhattan to get to each meeting. My second-to-last meeting was with the nice folks from Chobani and it timed out perfectly for a post-lunch dessert / mid-day snack.

“A first-of-its-kind Mediterranean yogurt bar in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood- this is @chobani like you’ve never had it before,” is how the @ChobaniSoHo Twitter page describes itself. It’s dead on. I was invited to meet the Chobani team at their six-week-old yogurt bar. I’m a total Chobani fanboy; a significant part of my grocery budget goes to their Greek yogurt. So of course I’ll meet you there!

The shop is nestled on the corner of a likable street in SoHo, just a few blocks from the brand’s NYC office. It’s got all the allure of most fro-yo shops, except this isn’t frozen. Barely. They say they keep the yogurt chilled to about 34 degrees, where grocery stores only manage about 41 degrees.

Since we eat with our eyes, the bright LED board displaying their ten menu options pulled me and my appetite in. Even with a simple menu, it was not simple to make a choice. Finally, I committed to the Pistachio + Chocolate. The brand’s tagline is not a lie… this was nothing but good. Frankly, nothing but amazing and truly indulgent.
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Last week I ran far, far away from home, where it’s been six-digit temperatures for the better part of the summer, in to the cool, loving arms of Portland, Oregon. I’ve never been to that part of the country and I can say it was just about love at first sight. To you Portlanders – well done! It’s one of the most beautiful, friendly, genuinely unique places I’ve ever visited.

I took in the scenic hikes at Mt. Hood, enjoyed tastings at local wineries, had lunch at the downtown food carts, and even picked up a bottle of honey (my go-to souvenir for any vacation). One of the things I loved the very most were the blackberries. They were very much in season while I was there, with many restaurants advertising all sorts of blackberry treats. The ones I enjoyed most were right out of a basket at the Portland Farmers Market on the PSU campus. Plump, juicy, and perfectly sweet… they were a far cry from any blackberry I’m used to having in Kansas.

When I returned home, I couldn’t get that sweet taste out of my mind. So this weekend, I made due with the blackberries I had access to and made what my husband called the best muffins I’ve ever baked. It seemed only right to share them with you.

I wanted a muffin that would let the blueberries shine, not be too heavy, and complement a breakfast rather than be the main course. I found a recipe that I could easily modify over at DozenFlours.com. Her recipe was great as-is, but I had to add a few of my own tricks to truly make it mine, make it a touch healthier, and help me savor that Portland blackberry flavor I was after.
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This weekend is Labor Day. For many families this is the final weekend of summer. Even if school has started, this weekend tends to be the last chance to get out of town and get one last memory in. If you’re also like my family this means time spent in the car; the necessary evil of travel. Thankfully, my crew has found simple some ways to enjoy our road trips and hopefully you can, too.

Our major road trip life savers have not been the portable DVD player, the satellite radio, or even classic road games. We’ve learned to let the trip be part of the vacation.

Traveling by car allows for some truly unique pit stops. There’s hilarious “world’s largest _____” sites all over. Just this summer we detoured to see the “World’s Largest Ball of Twine.” My son was able to officially add twine to his list of roadside oddities, we got to hear the history of the landmark, and we got to get out of the car for a nice change of pace. Plus, we took a million pictures and laughed the entire time.

We’ve had so much fun turning to the resource of Roadside America while we’re traveling. We loaded the app and just search for fun places to stop from our current location. Thanks to the app we’ve been alerted to sights like “Jurassic Art,” a small town resident’s personal welded art display in his yard. We stopped to see the “World’s Largest Mennonite,” a limestone sculpture in a public park. And one of our all time favorites was a place called “Prairie Dog Town,” a farm of sorts with prairie dogs running wild and a collection of five-legged cows.
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I’m kind of a soap box mom when it comes to kid nutrition. I just can’t imagine few things being more important than my daughter’s health and development of her eating habits. Like good manners, potty training, and a wild imagination, they are skills that will last her a lifetime.

Her very favorite foods include avocado, blackberries, shrimp, black beans, and peaches. She thinks dried apricots and pistachios are candy. And on the rare occasion we get a “real” treat, a bite or two of a shared ice cream cone is suffice. Given all of this, imagine how hard it is to take her out to eat with us. Between my refusal to give her fried junk, and her disinterest in eating it, the standard fare of a kids menu leaves a heck of a lot to be desired.

That is, until you visit the Hyatt. I often rave about the breakfast at The Hyatt’s Harvest Kitchen here in Wichita, calling it the best breakfast in the city. It’s the only Harvest in the country, but Executive Chef Paul Freimuth says another is in development in California with plans to expand further. I should think they’d want to – with locally sourced ingredients and attention to quality, the entire menu is like a work of art. While my daughter loves the yogurt bar, fresh fruit, and scrambled eggs on Sunday mornings, the Hyatt is now offering her and other kids many more options at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This past July, Hyatt introduced its For Kids By Kids menu. It’s a kid-friendly menu that is super healthy, to satisfy parents, and full of foods kids like best, to keep the little ones happy. Hyatt didn’t just dream it up on a whim, they partnered with 11-year-old Haile Thomas, a young chef who is committed to the health of herself and her peers.
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