Hey everyone! I just wanted to remind you about my live chat tomorrow at 4PM PST / 7PM EST here on The Kind Life. I’ll be answering your questions about how to celebrate a kind holiday season and sharing how I’ll be celebrating as well. Mark your calendars, and have your questions ready! Just log on to The Kind Life when the chat begins, and you’ll see instructions for participating.
 
I can’t wait to chat with all of you tomorrow. What are you looking forward to discussing? Tell me in the comments below!

It’s our two-year anniversary!

Two years ago, I posted this video, inviting everyone to join the community. Since then we’ve grown to almost 40,000 kind lifers! I’m amazed and overwhelmed with gratitude - I can’t even believe this community didn’t exist before! You’ve all become such an important part of my life, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your contributions to this site, and to the larger goal of helping everyone to live a kinder life.

From your success stories, to your unflagging support of our animal friends and contributions to important eco-causes, as well as your support for each other,you’ve inspired me time and time again. I can’t wait to see what the next two years hold! I can share with you that there will be some very exciting changes happening to the site in the near future – we’ll be adding more features, and refreshing the design so it’s even easier to interact and find all the features and info you need to know. As we move forward with the redesign, I’d love to hear your input! What do you love and what suggestions do you have for improving the site?

Win a Gift Basket Of Some Kind Treats

To celebrate our two-year anniversary, I’m giving away a gift basket containing the following items:

• 10-pack of lip balm from Hurraw! Balm
• 3-day test cleanse from Kaeng Raeng
• An eco-friendly bamboo cutting board and coupons for a year's supply of Earth Balance products
• Sprout Watch
• Paperwink journal
• Zoya nail polish
• Onion goggles from Delight.com
• Etsy vegan mug
• Jurlique tube ringer
• Maddison Avenue Soy candle
• Etsy luggage tags
• Michelle’s naturally cookies
• Sunspire vegan carob chips
• Love This Planet Bag

To enter for a chance to win, tell me what new features you'd like to see on The Kind Life in the comments below. Good luck!

Love,
Alicia

We wanted to give you all a heads up that we’ve closed the Kind Shop temporarily for renovation! We are switching to a new format that will allow us to feature even more kind items for you to choose from. Please bear with us as we make the necessary changes – you’ll be the first to know when the new store is up and running!

In the meantime, tell us what you’d like to see in the new and improved Kind Shop!

Just last March, I blogged about how excited I was that we’d grown our Kind Life community to 15,000 members.
 
Would you believe that our numbers have doubled since then? We just reached 30,000 members, thanks to all of you spreading the word about how to live a kinder life! And we are sharing The Kind Life with thousands more people who come to the site every month - people who may be too shy to join, but still get to see all the great info we post here!
 
I am so thankful and happy that all of you are here. We’ve accomplished so much this year, from our kind success stories, to lobbying for eco- and animal-friendly public policy. I am so proud of us!
 
The more we grow, the bigger difference we can make in the world!
 
Here’s to an even kinder 2011!

I know all you Kind Lifers are creative and opinionated – and many of you express yourselves in your own blogs. So, I want to share your blogs with the community by spotlighting one Kind Blogger per month. Leave the link to your blog in the comments below with a sentence about why you started it, and you may be featured on the homepage of The Kind Life! If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to tell me about your favorite blogs too!
 
Happy blogging!

Recently, I’ve received some requests for a section in the forum where Kind Lifers can connect with other veg-friendly folks in their geographical areas. So, I’ve created a section called Kind Connections, where you can post a discussion for your town or neighborhood, add a little bit of info about yourself, and meet others near you!

You can also post notices about any veg, animal, or eco-related events that may be happening near you. It’s a great place to share restaurant recommendations or grocery shopping tips, and maybe make some new friends too!

I have always wanted Kind Lifers to be able to connect with others in their neighborhoods. What if there is a cool veggie living next door and you just didn't know it? Or a flirt who is trying and wants support? You can have potlucks or share food, or whatever!
 
Check out the section here, add your city, and post away! I’d love to hear any stories about kind get-togethers that come out of this. Keep me posted, and let me know if you have any other great ideas for additions to the forum!

I am very excited to introduce the newest feature to The Kind Life – our very own shop!  

I wanted to create a space for all of you Kind Lifers where everything has been handpicked by me. Sometimes shopping, especially online shopping, can be so overwhelming, and I know that I always feel much better about buying something that has been personally recommended to me by someone I trust, who has the same guidelines as I do... So that is what I wanted to create here for all of you – a cute little store that has all of my absolute favorite things in it.

And right now, the store is pretty small and a lot of my favorite companies and products aren’t in there yet, but keep checking back because I will continue to add my favorite things and make the store bigger and better all the time!

I’ve partnered with a company called OpenSky to build the store, and they will make everything super easy for you. If you need help with the store or have any issues, you can call OpenSKy at any time... And with every product that you purchase, you’ll get their 365 Day Guarantee where you can return items for 1 full year at no cost to you!

To celebrate the launch of the shop, OpenSky is offering 15% off of anything that you purchase from my store today through Wednesday, December 1.  Just enter coupon code thekindlife15 when you are prompted during checkout.

Now I’ve said this before... I would never want any of you to buy things for no reason, and that is not what this shop is for! Many of you have said that it’s very hard to find some of the foods that I mention in the book (which I’ll be selling in the store), or just hard to know which beauty products are truly eco friendly, and so on... I just want to make shopping for kind products easier and more convenient for all of you, so that is the goal of this shop!

Check out the store here and let me know what you think! Also, I want to hear what products would you like to see in the new shop, as I’ll constantly be adding more stuff to the store. Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll see if we can get them in there.

As you’ve likely noticed we’ve been cooking up a lot of new, fun features on The Kind Life! Today, we’re unveiling two new updates that we think you’ll really like!
 
Update #1 - One less password to remember. Starting today, we’re making your login process easier. When you come to visit www.TheKindLife.com and click “Log In”, you will be asked for your email address. If you have a Yahoo, Google, MSN, or AOL address, you will be redirected to a “Sign In” page of that service.
 
Since you are now logging in using your personal email account information, you will no longer need to use the password you created when you first signed up with www.TheKindLife.com. Instead, you will use the password you normally use for your email account - one less password to remember!
 
If you do not have an email account with one of the above services, you can still use the email and password you created when you first signed up.
 
Update #2 - Easily import and share photos and videos from all your social networking accounts and place them on your profile on The Kind Life. We are changing the way you connect to social networks like Facebook and Twitter on The Kind Life to allow for more photo and video sharing and more social networks to be connected to your profile. You will now be automatically prompted to reconnect all your existing services (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr) after you login. When you login, a screen will pop up that will lead you through the steps to do this – it’s quick and simple!
 
If you run into any trouble, please email support@eqal.com, and let us know your thoughts on the new features!