Happy Eostre

Our family had a great time together on Eostre.  (Minus my husband who was at work and Duckling who is with her mom)
It started off as any other school day.  The kids got up and left for school.  I then proceeded to fill their baskets with goodies and hide about 42 eggs through out the house.  I also left a note saying to leave all eggs where they are until I got home.  Then it was time for me to head off to work.

When I got home all was normal, Boys watching tv and Ladybug playing on her Ipad.

M is for The Morrigan

Letterbox carving/stamp of The Morrigan
from the Warrior Women II postal

The Morrigan was the shape-shifting Celtic Goddess of War, Fate, and Death.  Her name is interpreted in various forms..."Great Queen", "Phantom Queen", or "Queen of Demons."  She was said to hover over battlefields in the form of a raven or hooded crow.  She frequently foretold or influenced the outcome of a battle.  The Celts believed that, as they engaged in warfare, the Morrigan flew shrieking overhead in the form of a raven or carrion crow, summoning a host of slain soldiers to a macabre spectral bane.  When the battle had ended, the warriors would leave the field until dawn in order that the Morrigan could claim the trophies of heads, euphemistically known as "The Morrigan's acorn crop".

~Earthy Mom

Wordless Wednesday

From https://www.facebook.com/PaganComingOutDay

Faith ~ Pagan and Scouting

Three of my children are in Scouts; Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Cub Scouts.  Scouting can be very religious focused.  And I've heard that it can be difficult for non Judeo-Christian families.  I have been very fortunate to be with Scouting groups that are open and not overly religious focused.  With the Boy Scouts I assume it is because our Chartered organization isn't a Church, but an amazing group of people who love scouting and started the Thirty Six club.  However being a Pagan Scout does come with it's challenges.

Pagan Blog Project ~ D is for Dreams

 Dreams can be very powerful.  They help your subconscious unwind at the end of the day.  They are what you are striving for in your life.  Messages can even be found in your dreams. 

When I was in my late teens, I started doing dream work with my therapist, Pat.  I was having recurring nightmares

Pagan Blog Project ~ C is for Coming out of the Broom Closet

I was brought up Catholic.  We went to church every Sunday and I attended CCD classes once a week.  When I was little I couldn't wait till I was old enough to go up for communion with my Mom and Grandma.  When I reached the ripe old age of ten; I started to question the beliefs I was brought up on. Because at ten you have to

Pagan Blog Project ~ B is for Binding

I was reading the Project newsletter to figure out what I wanted to write about this week.  And this is what popped out at me.

Binding: Binding magick is a tricky kind of magick to work. We often talk about doing binding to try and stop people from doing something we don’t like, but when we bind someone we never truly bind them to themselves, we always bind them to us in a way as well. What are your thoughts and experiences with binding magick? Have you ever worked a binding and had it go poorly?

So I will be writing about

Pagan Blog Project ~ B is for Brigid

Brigid - a stamp I made for a Goddess
letterbox series.

I'm a little late in starting this project, but then that's the story of my life.  Perhaps it was meant for me to start with the letter B, since Brigid is one of my favorite Goddesses. 
I'm not completely sure why I've felt drawn to Brigid, so I thought I'd take this time to get to know her better.  One of the biggest reasons

Blessed Yule!

Hoping everyone has a wonderful Soltice!

We are celebrating ours all over the place this year, due to work and family stuff.  Wednesday night we had our big Yule dinner and invited over family to join us.  Saturday we will be going out to watch the sunrise and write messages in the sand to the sun.

The kids have been very understanding.  We almost never miss the actual soltice.  We know it's important to celebrate and do our ritual even if it's not on the exact day.  Looking forward to better planning and the ability to celebrate on the soltice, because I can just feel it in the air.

~Earthy Mom

He finally gets it

My seven year-old is finally gets that we celebrate Yule and the rest of our family celebrates Christmas.  I know it's not that big of a deal that they confuse and merge the two together.  Because reallyboth holidays are about spending time with family and friends.  My parents even

Celebrating Lammas

Just like almost everything in our hectic lives, we celebrated Lammas late.  (It's even taken me over a week to finish this post.)  But that is ok.  I've learned to accept that fact and move on.  What's most important is that we celebrated and enjoyed two awesome days together as a family.  (part of our family was gone one day)

The kids and I made spiral cookies.  I really enjoy baking with my kids.  It's one of the few times when I slow down and let go of the control. 
Everybody gets to read the recipe, measure out ingredients, pour ingredients into the bowl, and st
 ir/mix everything together.  And lets not forget about the best part licking the spoons!  We chatted

Is God Real...

A debate by children ages seven to twelve.

The debaters:

Potato - my seven year old son

A - my eight year old cousin.  Her Grandpa is very involved with his Church.

J - my nine year old cousin.  They're family is mostly Sunday Christians.

Monkey - my ten year old son.

B - my twelve year old cousin and J's brother.

Ladybug - my thirteen year old daughter.  She's very outspoken about being Pagan.

There were many raised voices the other morning at our campsite.  For a while I just stayed in my tent to listen, until the "debate" became heated enough that I felt I should step in.

Thoughts on Faith

What is Faith?

The dictionary tells us Faith is

–noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3. belief in god or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

Reusing junk

My dad is a collector of junk.  He likes to save everything, so our yard is full of stuff.  You can look out the window and see old barbecue grills, lawn mowers, metal scraps, plywood, decorative stone, etc.  I had three fire place grates just sitting outside my door.  I decided since he's never going to actually use any of the stuff he's saving "just in case we need it", that I would start reusing it.



fire grates before



my new flower garden

I just finished turning two those fireplace grates into beautiful planters.  I cleared out an area just to the left of my walkway.  Since they are obviously grates, I needed to come up with something to line them so the dirt didn't fall through.  Next stop the store, where I picked up a peva/coco liner ($5.96) and some flowers to plant.  The liners wasn't as wide as my grates, so I slid some flat rocks behind it to fill in the gap.  I already had potting soil left over from our Ostara celebrations.  The kids helped me pick out some flowers to plant.  We decide to go with annuals, since we weren't sure if perennials would make it through the winter in a raised bed.  I'll be looking into that for next year, since it would be nice to have our flowers come back every year.  The entire project cost me about $15.  And the best part is I don't have to look at those ugly fire grates any more.  Next year the kids want to paint the grates before we replant.  They think it will look prettier.



my birthday frogs



Since I now have the time to garden, the kids decided I needed garden decorations for my birthday!  I LOVE frogs.  Don't know what it is, but they are just so adorable.  My new garden decorations are some very lovely frogs.  A few years ago we had to dig up our yard, so we happen to have some slabs of concrete laying around.  I had my dad help me move one of them next to my new planter so my frogs could have a home.  This is still a work in progress.  I want to transplant some moss onto the concrete.  Thankfully my parents have a neighbor (at their summer campground) who has done this with her garden.  As soon as I get a chance to drive out there, I'm going to ask for her help.



beginnings of an altar



My final project, at least until I come up with some more ideas, is an outdoor altar.  I've always wanted an outdoor altar, but I didn't have any idea where or how I was going to make one.  Today all that just fell into place, while I was looking for something else to plant in.  I found my dad's pile of concrete bricks and a slab of decorative stone.  Put slab of stone on top of two bricks and you end up with a nice looking flat surface.  Yeah now we have our own outdoor altar.  It's definitely still a work in progress, but I'm hoping to put it to use next week during the Solstice.  The stone just gives me a good earthy feeling.

~Your Earthy Mom

Children, Book of Shadows ideas

As a family we have a family Book of Shadows.  We keep our favorite Sabbat's stories, recipes, and traditions in it.  Each of my children have their own binder with age appropriate pages.  I make or print pictures to color, crosswords, word searches for them.  Also I'll add information I think they'll like or learn something from.  I try and keep these fun and low key.  My boys (being younger) really have alot of fun coloring, doing activities, and reading with me.  My daughter (a teenager) at this point isn't as interested in the "fun stuff", so I've had to get more creative.

Several weeks ago I was reading a post by Mrs. B that really peeked my interest.  She has a BOS that she passes back and forth with her child.  I knew right away that my Ladybug would love the idea of us sharing a notebook full of information.  We just started at the beginning of this week, so it definitely still a work in progress.  She even asked me this morning "Mommy, when are you going to write in our book again?"  (And yes my teen actually still calls me Mommy)  It was just too sweet.  I'll have to post again once we get things more solid. 

Several months ago, Ladybug borrowed my book To Ride a Silver Broomstick, by Silver RavenWolf.  I was curious how her reading was going, since she hadn't been asking very many questions lately.  She informed me that, this past month of school she's been very busy and hasn't had time to read anything that isn't school work.  I can't even begin to tell you how pleased I am that she puts her school work first!  But I'm also kind of sad that she hasn't had time to pursue other things.  We chatted and came up with a plan.  School will be over in two and a half weeks, with lots of free time in the summer.  We are going to start the book from the beginning together.  Writing and sharing our thoughts about what we're reading.  I'm looking forward to this special time Ladybug and I have carved out of the day for each other.  With the size of our family, sometimes she and my stepdaughter get looked over too often.  I think it's because they are growing into independent young women, who don't want their parents hovering.

~Your Earthy Mom

Gardening an Family affair





Dumping the dirt

Our family decided at Ostara to grow a garden in our backyard this year.  I haven't had a garden since I was a young teen.  This has been a great experience for us as a family.  We started with finding the right spot and arranging boards into a rectangle shape.  Even Poppy came out to help with the project.  They boys love digging up the dirt inside the garden area, to get it ready for our plants!  We have an over abundance of tomato plants started.  Also ready for planting the cucumbers and zucchinis.  In a few week the peppers my sister asked me to plant and the green beans should be ready to move outside too.  I'm hoping the kids will stay interested in gardeing and continue to help out and have fun. 

They certainly have lots of plans.

• Monkey wants to build a fence to keep the deer out.  (Not happening this time, maybe next year)
• Potato has informed me that "We have to pull the weeds from our garden mommy."
• Ladybug and Duckling are looking forward to helping pick the veggies.



Ready to go!



  

Hope you enjoy the pictures of our labor.  And we hope to enjoy the fruits (rather veggies) or our labor later.

~Your Earthy Mom

Tiny tomatos

Beltane Handfasting...

with non-pagan guests.

As some of you may know, I was recently handfasted to an amazing man.  The challenge being that we're Pagan, we wanted the ceremony and reception to capture the essence of Beltane, and most of our guests aren't Pagan.  This was made easier because most of our friends and family know (to some extent) that we're Pagan.  The day was beautiful and everything went perfectly.

We wrote our own ceremony.  One of our debates was whether or not to have our officiant say "Goddess and God".  It was important to us that our guests enjoyed the day as much as we did.  In the end we decided, what harm could come from those words.  And it was very important to have the ceremony reflect us, our beliefs, and incorporate our children.  A very special part was our family sand ceremony.

Now we will celebrate the creation of a family. The couple will first pour their sands into the vase, showing that their marriage is the foundation of this family. Their sands mix together and symbolize their bond of love and respect that can never be separated. Now as each child add their sands, we are reminded that though we are all different people, it is our individuality which adds a unique color to the tapestry of a family. Like the sands poured before it, so these sands will also mix and be unable to be separated.

We poured our dark green and blue sands.  Then each of our four children added their sand.  Bug light green, Monkey red, Duckling purple, and Potato yellow.  This was a tangible way to show how even though we are all separate and different people, together we make an inseparable family.



Belanos Table



Maypole on Var Table



 For our reception, we gave each table a God or Goddess name.  I had read somewhere (while I was working on the seating plan), that numbered tables could hurt feelings.  That was a good enough reason for us to add different Deities to the decor.  The center piece on each table was a small Maypole.  The May Poles was definitely part of the plan from day one.  What better way to celebrate a Handfasting on Beltane than with a May Pole.  I suppose if we had the time and space, it would have been lots of fun to have everyone dance around a bigger Maypole.  We did keep one to use on our home Alter. 

To make your own Maypole - Altar Maypole Centerpiece

I wanted to have a bonfire, but that wasn't possible at the location for our ceremony and reception.

All of my concerns about completely coming out to all my friends, family, and his family I didn't have anything to worry about.  Everyone enjoyed a day of celebrating, singing, and dancing.  I couldn't have asked for a better day.

My advice to any of you partially or fully in the broom closet, make the day about you and your love, don't worry too much what others may think, and enjoy your day together.

~Your Earthy Mom



To Read what my sister thought of our Handfasting.

Thanks to Victoria Chapman, Melissa Meadows, and Shana Boss-Hill for the pictures.



My bouquet





Late to Spring!

Spring time is actually here!  My family just celebrated Ostara last weekend.  We have been so busy with planning our wedding that the actual date came and went.  So being flexible with these kinds of things, we planned our celebration any way.



Tomato Seeds



Cucumber and Zucchini seeds



This year we did a split two day celebration.  Saturday morning was spent eating candies and starting plants for our garden.  We are planning to make our first garden this year.  So far we have cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes.  The kids loved getting in the dirt and planting the seeds!



Beginnings of a garden





Cutting Blackberries for dye



Sunday we made natural egg dyes for the first time.  This project was very time consuming, kind of messy, at times frustrating, and most of all Lots of FUN!  Grownups started with doing the cutting.  Our oldest wanted to help, so we figured why not.  We showed her how to use the knife safely and let her go for it. 



Pouring the Dye





After we cooked up each dye all of the kids helped with straining and pouring into bowls and cups.



Smelling the Dye



Onion Dye

Commence the egg dyeing extravaganza!



Beet Dye



Blackberry dye





Blueberry Dye



Spinach Dye







Onion Dye

Since this was our first time making the dyes, it was kind of an experiment.  Here's what we did.

• Fresh Blackberries - light purple - finely chop and boil in 1-2 cups of water then strain.
• Fresh Blueberries - dark/light blue - finely chop and boil in 1-2 cups of water then strain.  (one of our favorites)
• Fresh Spinach - very light green -  finely chop and boil in 1 cup of water then strain.  (we didn't like how this color came out)
• Onion - golden yellow/orange - Take the skins off two onions.  finely chop them and boil in 1 cup of water then strain.  (one of our favorites)
• Beets - light pink - We used canned beets and finely chopped.  We boiled the beets and the juice from the can.  (Next year we plan to use fresh beets if we can find them)

All in all we had a great weekend and are looking forward to watching our plants grow.  In a few weeks we should be able to move the plants outside to the garden.  Keep your eyes out for posts on how our garden is doing.

~Your Earthy Mom



Letting Go...

Of Stress?

 Is it even possible?  We live such busy lives, always running here and there.  Family, work, the news, and even finding time for yourself produce stress in our lives.  Stress consumes us and takes over our lives.  It's time to stand up to stress and say "No more." (or at least lets reduce it)

My mother invited me to attend a six week class about stress management, taught by Diane M. Foster of Mystic Hypnosis.  Let's face it we all have stress in our lives, even the most "put together" person.  This past year has been incredibly stressful for my family, since my father has spent the majority of that year in the hospital.  First with a spinal/brain issue and then cancer.  So I thought why not learn some techniques to reduce my stress.

Diane uses and teaches meditation and hypnosis to reduce stress.  I've been mediating for years now, but it's always been sporadic.  The biggest thing, about meditation, I learned from Diane is to be consistent; Same place, Same time everyday. Since this is a beginner class we started from the beginning with breathing.

Belly Breathing: Focus on your breath, the air moving in and out of your body.  Place your hand on your belly to feel your belly rise and fall, breathing in through the nose and out the mouth.

There is just something refreshing with just breathing.  It actually helps you relax and reduces stress.  Think about a stressful situation you've had.  You may not have noticed it then, but most people will let out a deep breath to help calm themselves.  This is your subconscious taking over and trying to reduce your stress level.

Diane is teaching us Mindfulness Meditation.  The concepts of this type of meditation come from Pali: sati, Sanskrit: smṛti in Buddhist Meditation.  During the meditation we are being Mindful of our breath, using it as an anchor, allowing thoughts to pass through the mind.

Diane M. Foster's Mindfulness Meditation Instructions

1. Find a quiet and comfortable place.  Sit in a chair or on the floor with your head, neck, and back straight but not stiff or tense.

2. Close your eyes and gently become aware of your breathing, focusing on the sensation of air moving in and out of your body as you breathe.  Pay attention to the way each breath changes and is different.  Be aware of your breathing without trying to control it or alter it in any way.

3. Watch every thought and feeling come and go.  When thoughts come up in your mind, don't ignore or suppress them but simply note them and use your breathing as an anchor.

4. At times your attention may drift away from your breath to sounds in the environment or sensations in your body.  Whenever you realize you are not observing your breath, gently bring your attention back to your breathing.

5. If you find yourself getting carried away in your thoughts or other distractions, observe where your mind went off to, without judging, and simply return to your breathing.  Remember not to be hard on yourself if this happens.

6. Remember to let go of any expectations you may have about the practice.  If you notice that you are focusing on a mood or emotion, or looking for a particular experience, treat this like any other thought and gently bring your awareness back to your breathing.

7. As the time comes to a close (about 15 minutes), keep your eye closed and stop observing your breath for a minute or two, becoming aware of where you are.  Gently stretch, open your eyes and get up slowly before resuming activity.

I have been finding it difficult to meditate everyday.  Ironically, the days when I'm the most busy I make sure to take time out for myself and meditate.  It's the days when I have little going on (therefore less stress) that I don't make time for me.  I have been working on spending 15 minutes of every day meditating.  I know I need the time for myself to be less stressed, so I can better focus on my work and my family.

~Your Earthy Mom

To Contact Diane M. Foster

mystichypnosis@comscast.net

Tis the Season for Yule Decorating

The New Year is here and I've been looking around my house at all the decoration that need to come down and be put away for another year.  My oldest daughter wrote a poem about me, which stated I had OHDD (Obsessive Holiday Decorating Disorder)  It's true I do love to decorate and Yule is one of my favorite holidays to go all out.  I've been collecting winter holiday decorations since I was a child, so you only need to imagine what every available space in my home looks like.  So before everything comes down and I go thought the tedious task of putting it away, I thought I'd share some of my favorites.



Maiden, Mother, Crone and re-born Sun God




Pagan Nativity Scene

 







 





   
   I just made and added this "Nativity" scene this year.  I've been holding on to an incomplete Christian Nativity set my mother gave me when I was a child.  It just rolled around in a box because I only had these four pieces left.  With a little bit of time and some craft paint, I brought new life this special  childhood memento.



    I painted the Maiden, Mother, Crone triple Goddess white, red, and black.  Their faces are silver for the moon.  I still need to pick up some gold paint for our re-born baby Sun God, so for now he is just yellow.  We added the Stag to the group for the Horned God.  I planning to add more animals to the scene next year.





this year we used bright fun colors for light side of sun



Every year since my oldest was 3 years old my children have made sun decorations for us to hang from the ceilings.  We color or paint one side black to represent the days getting shorter and darker.  The other side we use yellows and oranges to represent the re-birth of the Sun God and the coming brightness.  I try and make our craft a little different each year.  We have used glitter, paint, crayons, foam to decorate.  To make the sun we have drawn our own, used a paper plate, or printed out pictures to color in.

   While working on our craft, we talk about Yule and what it means to us.  We'll re-tell the story of the Sun God is getting old and tired.  How during the longest night of the year he sleeps in the arms of Night, to be re-born bright, shiny, young and new!  This time we spend together has become a fun and wonderful family tradition.

My dancing reindeer definitely isn't a Yule specific decoration but he is one of my favorites.  The kids can't stop playing with him through out the entire month of December.  The funniest times are when my little guy and the baby I watch start dancing too!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!