Mabon 2014

Welcome to all and a blessed Mabon. Last year I posted lots of food and craft ideas. I also posted several poems. This year has been a rough year and I have been busy but as Mabon is approaching I need to take a time out. Mabon is the time to look at our blessings and be thankful for what we have. My family is growing again. Aubrie is pregnant again and I will be expecting my 2nd grandchild. I wont know what it is for couple more weeks but it wont matter as it will still be my little one. It will be hard financial but I know we will work it out. We may be behind on all of the bills but we still have a roof over our head and food on the table. Our pantry is thinned but it is not bare. We are all have our own health problems but we are still in good health.

On Addie's last doctors appointment, they said that she is healthy and is right on track. They tested her cognitive responses and she is a head for her age group. She is a little dare devil and is starting her terrible twos a little early but she is still a cutie.


Aubrie and the baby are doing good. Kody got a promotion at work and is doing good. Mom still hurts but is still moving along. Destry and Moo are still as spoiled as ever.

I am hanging in there. It is hard sometimes as I am now the responsible one that has to worry about the bills getting paid and making sure everyone is taken care of. It is not easy as I have to take care Aubrie and Kody's bi-polar problems. It also does not help that I also am bi-polar. We really are a house full of nuts.

Even with being one day ahead of bill collectors I still keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. We may be struggling but we are surviving. I am thankful for the fact that we may be treading water but we are still afloat. It thank the God and Goddess for giving us the life preserver to help us keep going. I have a beautiful family and some outstanding friends and that I am thankful for. I have been truly blessed.

So take the time and think of your blessings. Things may be dark but there is a light of hope is still burning for us all. The God and Goddess is all round us and we only need to open our hearts to see the blessings. The fruit of the God and Goddess are ready to be harvested as Winter will soon be here. Take the time to stop and enjoy the what the world has to offer. Change is in the air and I am going to embrace change. I will admit that I don't like change but change part of the cycle of life. So I am going to light a candle and accept the changes that are coming. I know that the God and Goddess will give us the strength to endure. So accept your blessings  and be happy. I hope you all have a great Mabon this year.

Coriander Bats 2014

Water fun for a Hot Summer Day

Summer is coming but today it is still Spring. It is a Spring that feels like Summer, her in Utah we have reached the 90's. Addie is still one but she is starting her terrible two. She is hot and miserable and her cousin Ryan is staying with us for a while, so I broke into the piggy bank and bought them a swimming pool and sprinkler. It was a great buy for the long Memorial weekend. Shanti was spending some bonding time with her Aunt Dru so she missed the fun. There will always be another time for water fun so I am not worried about it. Who knows we might do it again this weekend. It makes the kids active and entertained for a couple of hours.  

 So here we are, Aubrie, Addie, Ryan and me having some water fun. We got some water gun sticks from the dollar store. Addie already broke one so she play with that while Aubrie and Ryan ganged up on me.




Next we have our new water sprinkler that we got for the kids. Addie was not too sure about it, but Ryan loved it and ran and jumped for at least an hour.

Our first water fight of the season but it wont be our last. I will have to come up with some more ideas. I found these water bombs on Pinterest. I hope you like the idea.

 

So lets be safe and have some fun.

 

Book of Shadows

When we got our two puppies, I decided to take lots of pictures. We bought disposable camera after disposable camera and took lots of pictures. When I printed them out, I always got the cd so I could download them to my computer. I took the pictures and edited them. I put captions on them and made them cute. Aubrie on the other hand loves to scrapbook and now that we have Addie, she scrapbooks a lot. So Aubrie does the books while I do my scrapbooking style on the computer.

So you ask, what does this got to do with the Book of Shadows? Well I have decided to take my electronic library and create a nice Book of Shadows. I use the computer because I have lousy handwriting and I have OCD and I am the type that does it over and over and over again. So I will be using Power Point and my creativity.

Now there are a lot of people that say that a BOS must be written by a persons own hand but I am putting my creativity in it so I am still empowering it. I also have a 16 GB flash drive full of information and pictures and I think it will be good to have things laid out.

So this is the start of my project to create my physical Book of Shadows. Now I have a new project that to do and I can also share it with you. So the first thing to do is figure out how I am going to sort everything.  So I am off to the internet to find BOS table of content list. This will help me in making my own section. We are all different so some sections will be bigger than others. For example in my Symbol section, the Ankhs will be as large as my pages on the Pentacles and Pentagrams as the Ankh is one of my main symbols.

Right now I am putting together the Charges, the Reed and other stuff together. I am leaving the pages plain as I will print them on special paper. I have stock of scroll paper and it is about time I put it to good use. One thing that you must take in consideration is your margins when you bind the pages in a book. If you are using a three ring and going to use a hole puncher to bind it then most programs are already have the margins set. If you are going to put the pages in page protectors then you will not need to worry as much but you will need to understand the printing margins. I have special paper that I will be printing on. If you go on line and use wallpaper and add your stuff on top then print it, then you have a white border as printers do not print the entire page.

Always print preview everything and I will be printing everything in black and white to check the margins before printing it on my paper. The design is has the rolled up scroll on the top and bottom so I will need to make sure I get my borders right. If you are computer savvy then you can always set your own borders to make sure the paper prints good.

Now when it comes book binding, well that is another story and complicated. I took graphic design in High School and my father was a silkscreener, so I have experience in making bumper stickers and note pads.  Book binding is similar to making note pads but different. You first need to know which kind of binding you want to do. There are several different types of book binding. It also depends on how big your book is and if you want to add to it or not. The list of different kinds of book binding are too endless to go into here. You will need to so some research if you want to go this route.

Another type of book is just plain report folders. They come in a variety of styles and colors. You can divide up sections into their own folder. I started to do this when I started out as I read better with a paper instead of computer screen. Funny now that paper is becoming obsolete but there are those of us who still need the written paper.

So I know that I have probable left you with more questions then answers and I am sorry for it. I do hope that I have given you something to think about.

Family fun on Ostara

Here is Addie's first Ostara celebration. My granddaughter is just the cutest little girl. It was a cold Ostara so we had to bundle up.

We spent Ostara at the park. I used the tables to put all the baskets out. There were lots of kids at the park so I used the tables.

As you can see I spoiled Addie. She loves to watch Shanti play with the hula hoop, so I found a smaller one for her. I also got her some books and socks.

I spoiled Aubrie and Aunt LaLa too. I got them head bands and butterflies. Aunt LaLa love Hello Kitty, so I got her Hello Kitty candy and cookie.

Cousin Nae likes to write so I got her a book and a superman puzzle. Superman is her favorite superhero.

Here is cousin Shanti and her box. Nae and Shanti will be getting an Easter basket from their mom on Easter, so I asked Shanti if she wanted a container. She said that she wanted a lunchbox so I got her a groovy lunchbox that even flashes. It is so Shanti and she loved it. I filled it up with lots of SpongeBob stuff. I only pray that Addie does not like SpongeBob, I went nuts with my niece Kaitlyn watching it everyday and I now have to put up with him when we are watching Shanti.
 
As I said before there were kids at the park so I had to hid the eggs on the table. I put Shanti and Nae's eggs on top and put Addie's eggs on the bottom. As Addie is in a throwing stage I used plastic eggs and put money and candy inside. I put socks in some of Addie's eggs. I could not find a lot of small items for the eggs so that is why I stuck to money and candy.

Aubrie and Aunt LaLa helped Addie to gather her eggs. It was not easy but it was a good learning experience. Shanti and Nae gathered their eggs too and we all had fun. I found some chalk that were egg shaped that I put on the table as Shanti likes to draw. Our driveway is covered with her artwork.

 Here is Nana feeding Addie. I was explaining Ostara to Aubrie and she felt that because of the egg and theme that we need to eat KFC. She said nothing sound better then fried chicken for Ostara. Well I am not a big fan of chicken so I decided that we could get some pizza too. I made macaroni salad and deviled eggs so why not pizza.

I even mad a little alter for the event. I got the star lights for Ostara so I turned them on and put the chick and bunny on it. I got the cupcake holder from the dollar store. They have them for different holidays so I transformed as a make shift alter. Unfortunately I did not take in account the weight problem. They eggs kept rolling off and you have to be careful to distribute the weight so it does not tip over. I still like the idea of using it but I need to figure out how to strengthen it. All in all, I think it worked out for a family event.

After we ate we decided to let the kids play on the playground. That is one of the reasons to do events at the park, right. Addie has a pink swing hanging from the tree at home and she loves it. We put her in the baby swing and her and Shanti swung. Then we took the girls to the slide. Addie was not too sure of it but in the end she had a great time.

We all had fun but there was that cold nip in the air so we had to cut our celebration short. We went home to get warm and rest. It was nice that Aubrie and her sister help me celebrate my holiday. This year there was no Ostara event in the area to go to. I guess everyone was too busy and usually if I can't find a group that is celebrating the holiday, then I celebrate it alone, so it was nice to do a family event.

Happy New Years

I hope everyone had a good New Years. We had fun just staying home and watching movies. Nana got the Forever Knight season 1 and 2 for Yule and Christmas and she has been watching it for the last several days. I decided that I wanted to start my new year on murder and mayhem, so I got on Netflix and watch Charlie Chan movies. They only have a few but they were fun. Then after midnight I started watching Godzilla movies. It is quite funny what kind of different taste we have.

But alas I am rambling a little. So before New Years I posted my highlights of 2013 on Facebook. I have had a full year with the beginning of the birth of my granddaughter Addie. More or less most of my highlights were staged around her. This whole venture to go back to 2013 was a post I saw about the memory jar.



So this picture gave me the inspiration of taking a look back in the year. It would be a fun way to spend some time with the family to share nice memories. This little tip would make a nice stash for reminders that we could store until we are ready. My, myself and I got a camera so I like to take lots and lots of pictures. Just ask my family members and they will tell you I am a pain in the butt on the amount of pictures I take.

So I am suggesting that this might be a good idea to think about. You can just jot down some ideas and put them in the jar and then when you have time later you can come back and do something more. I like to edit my pictures and add the "sparkles." Aubrie really like to scrapbook on paper so I print of the pictures she want and she does her "sparkles." What ever works for anybody. I am also trying to keep up with a blog so who know what is to come. I might make this blog my jar. Who knows?

What ever you decide to do, do it with love and joy in your heart.

More of Addie and her 1st Halloween/Samhain

Here are more pictures of my beautiful granddaughter Addie.