A Few Things

First, I'm officially an Auntie for the very first time! On March 28, 2011 at 5:54pm my kid sister (seriously, we're ten years apart) gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl; Khloe Aiden!

While I'm 800 miles away and unsure when I'll be able to make it back home to New Jersey to meet her and give my sister the biggest of hugs, I'm a bit in the thrall of baby magic. Joe is heading home on a business trip this weekend and will be bringing the first official package of spoilage to my wee niece. He'll have a hard time fitting clothes in his suitcase after he puts all of the baby stuff in it. :)

In less happy medical news, my eye is acting up once more. It's feeling goopy and I'm having blurred, nearly double vision from it so I'm off to visit my friend the eye doctor for the first time since January. While that's good, the loss of vision is troubling and I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that it's something that can be cleared up, is not a new outbreak and is not serious. If you'd be so kind, send some good thoughts my way this afternoon.

Update: I don't want to taint to joy of my niece's birth with ugliness and bad news. For an update on my condition, please see the comments.

Furry Antics

We've only been in our wee cottage a week and I'm already head over heels in love with our back yard. Not only is it a place where I can go out, play, plant and relax but there is definitely magic a foot; homes for the fairer fae and goblins alike have already been spied. I'm not sure if it is the same magic that draws me outside or the copious amount of insects and seeds, but something brings a great variety of birds and small wildlife to my yard.

While I've enjoyed watching them all as we've gotten settled, none have I enjoyed as much as our one new friend;

The chubby squirrel!

He darts around the yard, hides in the flowering trees and the big bird house but nothing entertains me more then watching how he sneaks seeds from our bird feeder:

I know a lot of people complain about squirrels being pests that knock over feeders, but so long as this little guy keeps being so polite about not spilling the seeds, I doubt I'll shoo him away!

How could I, with a face like that?

Our House

After a few delays caused by a woman on the other side of the country, we closed on and got the keys to our very first home on Friday! As you can well imagine, life has been a rampant flurry of activity since and while extremely happy, I'm already a bit tired out.

As luck would have it, our lease on the apartment doesn't run out until the end of this month, so we have more time to move all of our stuff over then we've ever had before. That being said though, when you're a bookworm like myself moving can be an arduous task as numerous boxes of books are awfully heavy!

We spent the weekend cleaning up the house and yard, painting and beginning to move things over. We plan to have our bedroom and most everything else moved over by this coming weekend so we can have the house all to ourselves, my brother and his girlfriend can get a taste of having their own apartment, before the lease is up and we're all living together again for a few months.

Things have been quiet over here on the blog, as not only have I been moving house and packing, but we haven't transferred the internet from the apartment to the house yet. Probably a good thing as it's quite distracting! You can see more photos of the house on my Flickr page, here.

I'll be back super soon with some pictures of the house with a bit more furnishing and to play a round of Someone Help Identify the Plants in the Yard!

P.S. I hope you all had a beautiful Ostara! I typically plant sunflower seeds charged with what I'd like to 'grow' to celebrate, but as the weather has been erratic and there were some pretty wicked thunderstorms and hail over the weekend I haven't done so yet. Maybe tomorrow - better late then never!

P.P.S. I'd like to thank Polly, a.k.a, Green Witch from Pagan by Design and a certain 'secret' nominator for awarding me the Wonderful Web Witches award! If you hop on over and take a peek, you'll see that my admirer has been likewise honored! ;)

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Like a lot of holidays, I don't treat St. Patrick's day as a religious holiday nor do I celebrate it as the day Saint Patrick drove the 'snakes' from Ireland. On this day each year I choose to celebrate my Irish heritage, my love of history, folk tradition and lore, the coming of Spring and the existence of Guinness.

An Old Irish Blessing
May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!

May the luck of the Irish be yours today!

A Day at the Park

With the closing on the house scheduled for this coming Friday morning, the 18th, we took advantage of the beautiful weather Saturday to enjoy one last day out before moving and settling in to house dominates our lives for a few weeks.

We spent most of our day downtown, leaving the apartment around noon to fill our bellies with pizza before heading to the park for the afternoon. We wandered the pathways near the falls and along the river below, watching the ducks and skipping stones. There is a plethora of old weathered brick that litters the banks of the river from old buildings who no longer stand and I collected a few small pieces to grind down to dust.

We spotted a goblin hidey-hole nestled in a weathered tree's roots and obscured by brambles just off the river's edge.

I reveled a bit in the greenery that's exploded amid all this wonderfully warm weather, admiring the first violets I've laid eyes on this season. While oh so tiny, violets are some of my favorite flowers.

As we were leaving the park a few hours later, we came across a juggler whose banter and talents were tremendously entertaining.

It was a welcome and much needed break from packing, stressing and waiting around to hear back about day jobs; the perfect end to and start of a week.

P.S. I'm intending to start a botanical grimoire of sorts, filled with sketches, musings on and clippings from all manner of plants. My ability to identify flora of all manner has gone to pot through lack of practice as well as coming across things I didn't encounter when I lived up North. Here's where I need your help. I've started a set on my Flickr page to house all the mystery plants I find but can't seem to remember/know the names for. If you can identify them, leave a comment on the photo telling me the plant name and as each plant is identified I'll remove it from the set. Conversely, as I find new ones I'll add them.

In Need of Identification

I know some of you may be wondering why I don't invest in a good field guide and the truth is, I like to buy my books used and have yet to come across any at the local book shop that seem worthwhile. I'm aware that I will most likely end up with at least two field guides for wildflowers and trees and am fine with that, but if I'm going to put out the money for them I'd like them to be fairly detailed with good photos/illustrations.

Springing up

It's breaking through the Earth's surface,



springing out in buds and blooms from the tree tops,



heralded by feathered friends,



ushered in on grey rain clouds,



Spring is returning.

Believe and Nature

I've been keeping up better then expected with the 52 Weeks of Pagan Art Journaling. In fact, it's been my retreat from stresses and I've put together a basket of supplies amidst the boxes in my dining room and keep the book itself either in the basket or on my bookshelf so I can work on it even if folks are sleeping late and I can't get to my desk. It's my bit of alone time, even if I'm working at the dining room table; I put on my headphones and work. It's funny how headphones have become a sort of universal symbol for 'leave me alone' or 'I'm working'. My husband actually has a pair at work that he sometimes puts on when he has a lot of work to get done and doesn't want to be disturbed unless it's important - sometimes he doesn't even plug them in, just puts them on.

More on topic, I've finished a few more pages in my journal based on the topics 'I believe' and 'Nature'.

I Believe...

A page that speaks to just a few of the things I believe to be true or to hold value. Initially, riding the coat-tails of February's fairy fever I was going to devote the page to the wee folk however when I sat down to paint I was called to greens and blues and the Earth Mother and Sky Father took shape on the pages.

As a witch, I've always focused heavily on balance and the dichotomy of the Divine as relates to the God and Goddess/Male and Female aspects of Nature. Even before Lugh whispered to me that I should honor and work with him and I had no specific male deity that I worked with, I honored the God along with the Goddess during rituals and blessings.

I believe in divinity, in balance, in love, in magic and most importantly; in myself.

Nature

As you can tell from my previous art journal post nature is at the forefront of my path and has already played heavily in my journal. To keep from being redundant with my pages, I decided to use this page to highlight why I choose old novels to hold my journals. I blocked out this particular page with acrylics leaving only the blurb:

"This book has been produced
for the conservation of paper, metal and other essential materials."

You'll notice the block of white between the two sentences where it seems something was previously written? It was initially a line about government regulations which I chose to emit. I reclaim old discarded books for my journals in an effort to reduce the amount of wasted paper, if I don't buy a new book and keep an old one out of the landfill then I've made a teeny tiny step to conserve our natural resources. The government doesn't mandate that I do such and so I chose to white the line out.

I chose to keep the artwork simple, merely highlighting a small part of the reason I try to protect and do as little harm as possible to Nature. Nature is about connections; it is to be revered, protected, admired and nurtured. If you sit still, listen and watch Nature can teach you, or offer a safe quiet place to lean when you need it.

So my dearies, you know a bit about what I believe as well as a little bit about what role Nature plays in my path. What does 'I Believe' and 'Nature' spark in you? Feel free to share here in the comments or on your own blog, but be sure to leave me a link in the comments if you do so that way I can come visit!

Busy as a Bee

I've been buzzing around town and the apartment, looking for a day job with decent hours and preparing for the big move into our new house! The closing date is quickly approaching, only 13 days and I've officially turned into a bundle of nervous energy accented by extended periods of laziness. Sounds like a strange combination and I may not be feeling quite so if it weren't for the fact that I'm still adjusting to having people living in our space; more specifically in our second bedroom which for the past year has been my office. You see, while I love my brother dearly and am doing this to help him out while he gets settled in his job and finds a place for him and his girlfriend, I'm going a bit mad.

I'm an incredibly private person who needs at least a hula-hoop's worth of personal space and extended periods to just be by myself and ponder; just me, myself, maybe my house goblin, maybe the divine and I. These are the times I delve into myself and talk with my shadow, take time to unwind and fully relax, read, divine, make some magic and create art. The art thing is really what's getting to me, as I can escape into my bedroom to get some time without folks under foot but if folks are still snoozing away come noon and I've been itching to create something for a few hours - the creative bug is replaced with a sleepy sort of apathy. In two weeks time I'll have my creative space all to myself again and I absolutely cannot wait.

That's not to say I haven't created anything new however. I recently finished what will be my final swap for a while on Craftster : The Terribly Important S.O.B swap. In a humorous twist given my current flurry of activity, the universe paired me up with someone who I was able to gift with crafts featuring my beloved bees.

First up, a wee shrine to the Queen Bee herself!



The Queen Bee was made from a single wine cork which I dissected and painted.

Secondly, my personal favorite item and the one I was tempted for a brief moment to keep for myself:


Because seriously? What Queen Bee doesn't need a royal scepter to whack people with?

P.S. For the record, those diamonds were tedious to paint! I love the way they turned out though, so much so that the back of the spoon is done up in them as well.