Growing up is hard to do. Especially if you’re an elf. However, I’m super excited to announce that after a lot of hard work, our lil blog is finally a real, legitimate, grown-up website!  (Which is made totally obvious by Will Ferrell’s presence in this post, no?)

Yep, gone are our childish ways – we fancy now ;) 

Ok, who are we kidding :) There’s no way I could ever make it through an entire study review without using cartoons or mentioning the Kardashians (speaking of which, um: what’s up with this year’s Christmas card?!) That’s why everything’s going to stay silly the same with the blog – but we added an entire new section focused solely on science. So basically: one part’s serious and the other part’s, well… as serious as you can get with pictures of Michael Bolton dressed up like a pirate ;)

What’s new?

The main difference is the new mind-body-spirit research database. Think of it as a mini-search engine that will only turn up mind-body-spirit type results. So, for instance: If you were to Google “exercise”, you’d get a Wikipedia entry for “exercise”, a couple articles on “good exercises” and a few advertisements for places to go and do exercises. However, if you enter “exercise” in the Prayers and Apples database, you get article results ranging from The acute effects of exercise on mood state to Exercise improves executive function and alters brain activation for overweight children.

One of the coolest (and yes, by “coolest” I mean “dorkiest”) parts of the new database is that every featured article is hyperlinked to its original source!  Now I know that might not sound like the most innovative development, but take it from the girl who’s had to search for every single one of these articles: this new way of organizing research is going to save you a lot of time. (I love Duke’s Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health – but indexing their non-hyperlinked directory is gonna be the death of me! lol)

What’s the point?

My goal in creating this database (and transitioning Prayers and Apples into a more fully functioning website) is to catalogue research from a diverse set of fields and make these various studies accessible in a way that encourages interdisciplinary communication and inspiration. I’m just getting started (there’s a little over 200 studies right now) but I hope to hit over 1000 entries by New Year :) And hey, if you have any suggestions: send them my way!

One more thing: We’re nominated for an award!

I’m also excited to announce that Prayers and Apples has been nominated for WEGO Health’s Best Kept Secret award! (Thanks to Prayers and Apples contributors, Judy and Bella, and readers, Bethany and Chet, for getting our name out there!) If you enjoy the site, it’d really mean a lot of if you’d head on over and click Endorse Prayers and Apples!

Of course, one of the downsides of being a best kept secret is that no one really knows you exist hehe :) so any tweets or Facebook mentions would be greatly appreciated!! :)

Til next time…

Ok kids, I better get back to Christmas decorating (priorities, priorities, priorities!) Let me know what you think of the new site (don’t forget to check out the home page)! And thanks so, so much for reading!! :)