One of my favorite bloggers, Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz.com, has written a fabulous gift guide for 2009.  Naomi's mission in life is to help little businesses by providing top-notch advice on marketing, social media, product launches and the like.  If you run an itty biz or would like to start one, I highly recommend checking her out.  She's also funny as heck – I often literally laugh out loud when reading her posts.

Back to her gift guide – Naomi includes lots of suggestions of gifts from small businesses owners and artists, like Tricia McKellar, whose spectacular photography prints would be a terrific gift for almost anyone on your list.  I particular like her "Through the Viewfinder" series and will probably end up buying some of her prints for myself! 

There's also beautiful stuff for your home (plus stationary and jewelry) at Bailey Doesn't Bark.  Is that a catchy, memorable name or what?? 

You can check out the rest of Naomi's gift sggestions here.  A word of warning – Naomi often includes curse words in
her posts (used appropriately, I think), but if that's something that
will offend you, you may want to look elsewhere for small business
advice.  But in my opinion, you'll be missing out!

Some of you who know me personally may have heard that I recently went on a completely gluten-free diet due to some health problems I’ve been experiencing.  I’ve been gluten-free for about eight weeks now, and it has helped my overall energy significantly, and is making a pretty good dent in the health issue that prompted the diet change in the first place (which was/is severe joint pain).

I’ve got a number of requests recently for a list of gluten-free resources and blogs, so I decided to go ahead and write a post here about it, especially because many of these resources are in the social media realm, anyway, so it fits in nicely with the topic of this blog and my business.  Any of you who would like to add some more gluten-free resources, please add them to the comments and I’ll update this post with the new additions.

My gluten-free investigation actually began with a wonderful book that I had the sheer luck to stumble upon in my public library.  It’s called “Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food that Loves Me Back, and How You Can Too” by Shawna James Ahern.  It’s a marvelously written memoir/foodie book by a woman who was diagnosed with celiac disease, and it includes lots of great inspiration on how to fall in love with cooking (cooking in general, not just gluten-free cooking).  If this book doesn’t make you want to put on an apron and start whipping up sautes and soups, I don’t know what will.

Imagine my delighted urprise, though, when I finished the book and THEN discovered that the entire thing was based on a wildly popular, long-standing blog called Gluten-Free Girl.  Shawna’s wonderful blog is now one of the first ones I check in my RSS reader every day. Side note – everything, and I do mean everything, I have made from the recipes in Shawna’s book and blog has been mouth-watering-ly delicious.  This woman actually made me love beets.

Resources for learning about gluten intolerance, celiac disease and the health problems that some folks experience when eating gluten:

Celiac.com – One of the biggest websites for celiacs.  Great information here even if you haven’t been diagnosed with celiac (I haven’t been).  Particularly useful is their lists of safe and unsafe ingredients, which you can find links to on the front page.  Gluten hides in so many products that I take this list to the grocery store with me now.  They also have a terrific monthly newsletter with lots of great news and recipe ideas.

Enterolab – This is the only lab in the country where you can order tests for gluten sensitivity and immune response to gluten.  This site is quite dense with information but it’s worth your while to dig into it.  TONS of eye-opening info here for me.

My favorite GF blogs, with great information and recipes:

Gluten Free Gobsmacked

The Whole Kitchen

Books and Other Ideas:

I have learned a an absolute TON from the “Gluten-Free Living for Dummies” book, which is written by Danna Korn. Yes, I like the Dummies series a lot.

If you’re local to Denver and Boulder, you simply must check out the to-die-for gluten free goods sold by Melissa, the owner and head pastry chef of Sweet Escape Pastries in Longmont.  I would never have been able to make it on the gluten-free diet without her pizza crusts.

Ancient Harvest Corn/Quinoa Spaghetti – the best GF Pasta I have tried.

Living Without Magazine – Although I find their recipes a little lacking, I *love* the resources and stories in this magazine. I find their online GF quick-start guide particularly helpful for the newly-diagnosed folks out there.

Farmo Pasta – Another really good pasta company. Their Fusilli is great for soups and stews.

The Cooking Light Gluten Free Cookbook – I haven’t actually purchased this yet, because I just found out about it, but I’m a huge fan of Cooking Light and I’ll bet it will be AWESOME. Let me know if you buy it and try it out.

Thanks so much for reading this post, which I know is of a more personal nature than most of my posts so far.  Here’s to your health!

A blogger recently registered for one of my teleseminars, and I followed a link in her email signature back to her beautiful blog, Bird's Eye View.  Elsa Kendall take breathtakingly crisp, clear photos of her life and home, like the one she posted on New Year's Day.  Keep reading and you'll find yourself wanting to visit her and her funny cat in Santa Fe.

She also makes pretty amazing jewelry, which she sells at her Etsy Shop.  

Check out Elsa and prepare to be wowed.