Howdy! I'm Ashlee
I'm a Texas mom of 2 (Morrison & Mabel) and wife to Ryan. I love tap dancing, pickles, sour gummy candy, fermenting things, hot Texas summers, camping, and essential oils.
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How The Moose Began
The Crunchy Moose kinda happened on accident. And what a happy little accident it's been! I adopted my son in 2012. At the time, I owned a retail store. I quickly discovered that I didn't want to be a mom that worked 50+ hours per week. So we sold the store. My plan was to stay home with Morrison for a handful of months then start a new career. I have an undergrad degree in Mathematics and a graduate degree in Finance with entrepreneurial experience. I knew I would have options when my son was a little older.
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Those first few months at home were challenging. Transitioning to being home & being a new mom was lonely, hard, frustrating, and amazing. I started to blog as an outlet. This was before social media was all the rage - everyone had a blog. Come on, don't lie! If you were a young adult in 2012, you probably had a blogger account, too! I named the blog "The Crunchy Moose" because one of my son's (short-lived) nicknames when he was a baby was Moose. And "crunchy" is sometimes used to describe all things hippie and natural.....you know, crunchy like granola! ;-)
This was my first logo. A crunchy, granola filled moose ;-) Yall, I was so proud of these PhotoShop skills!
At the time I was recovering from 3 years of spine surgeries holistically. My adopted son was born with health problems & severe allergies and I was working on healing him holistically. I was blogging about what I was doing, what was working, and what wasn't working.
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After a few months, my little blog I was creating during nap time started to get traffic. I decided to give it more time before going back to work to see if I could create an income and a little at home business from it.
After a couple years, my blogs (The Crunchy Moose and The No Poo Method) had over 400,000 page views a month. What the what??!! Thank you to everyone that stopped by my little place on the internet! The first time one of my posts went viral was when a group of knitters got mad about coconut oil ;-) Read about that experience here.
In 2015, my daughter was born (she's biological -- read about her birth story here). I had a toddler and a newborn. I decided to slow down from blogging and focus on being home with them for a few years. My blogs were still active and passively carrying on.
In 2022, about a decade after publishing my first blog post, it was time for a total overhaul. I deleted my sites, upgraded my platform, revamped all my posts, content, ebooks, and courses. It took about a year to complete the process.
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What's Next
Now that The Crunchy Moose is new & improved, I'm excited to get back to what I love most -- creating content and engaging with you! Join my email list to stay up to date with our Crunchy Community!
I'm so glad you're here!
Ashlee
Most Asked Questions
The internet gets weird sometimes and so do the questions that I get! As a no poo-er and crunchier than average mama, inquiring minds are curious about some things. I have your answers!
- Q: Do you stink? Are you greasy?
- No. I pinky promise! In fact, when people irl find out that I have the grooming habits I have, they are shocked! I often get comments like "you don't look dirty" or "how are you not greasy and covered in acne."
- Q: How tall are you?
- When I get to meet a reader in person, they almost always say, "wow, you're taller than I expected!" Everything is bigger in Texas and this Texas gal is 5'10".
- Q: Why did you adopt your first kid?
- When I was recovering from my spinal fusion, my husband & I were ready to start a family. I was not able to carry a pregnancy at that time and was told I never would be able to. Fast forward a few years later and I had a fantastic pregnancy (read Mabel's birth story here).
- Q: Where have you been for the last 8 years??
- With my wonderful family. During my pregnancy with Mabel, I was exhausted. I never had morning sickness (yipee!) but I replaced nausea with extreme exhaustion. And I had a toddler boy to keep up with. The blog was put on the back burner. After she was born, I decided to focus on being home with my kids. Thankfully, I had loyal readers that kept my blog afloat with steady traffic for about 5 years and a successful Young Living business that I continued to serve during my very extended maternity leave. Then when Mabel started school, I was left with the decision to revamp the blog or work outside the home. It took about a year to rebuild & I still have a lot of content to bring over & new stuff to create, but I'm back!
- Q: How do you balance working from home and parenting?
- Not as well as I would like! Which is why I took an extended break. When I started blogging, I woke up early before my son woke up and blogged at 4:30 in the morning and during his nap time. Thankfully, he was a fantastic sleeper so I was able to sleep through the night and had reliable nap times to work. Then Mabel was born. She was not a fantastic sleeper and I didn't have reliable work time. So instead of doing both things (parenting and blogging) with half effort, I decided to focus on parenting. Now both kids are in school and I have dedicated work time during the week and I'm able to volunteer at their school a lot. While I wish I had a secret formula I could give you on how to do it all, I don't and didn't even attempt it.
- Q: You make money doing this?? How??
- First of all, thank you for supporting my small business! Every page view is appreciated and I am so glad you are here! These are my main sources of income:
- As a content creator, advertisers and sponsors pay me to rent a little space on my website. Ads that you see on websites pay fractions of a penny per page view. If your content gets seen by a lot of people, those fractions of pennies add up. And if someone clicks on the ads, the content creator gets paid a click rate.
- I am an Amazon affiliate and Amazon pays me a small commission when a reader clicks on my Amazon link and makes a purchase. There are no additional fees to the reader. It's Amazon's way of saying thank you for the shout out!
- I have eBooks and courses I have created that provide value to my readers and the reader's pay for the premium content. Check out my no poo book here.
- I am a Young Living distributor. I am proud to work with this fantastic company and be a brand partner with them.
- First of all, thank you for supporting my small business! Every page view is appreciated and I am so glad you are here! These are my main sources of income:
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Howdy! I'm Ashlee.
I'm glad you're here! Let's chat about holistic, natural, and happy living. Learn more about Ashlee here.
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