What I will be doing for Lent

When Lent comes around I often don't do anything, but this year I thought I should at least give it a go and see how it goes for the next 40 days.

What I am hoping to do:

• Pray
  I already pray each morning, but normally I rush through it and don't take that much time to think about what I am saying or praying about. I am also hoping to start praying at night as well.
• Meditate
  I used to love to meditate nearly every other day and then once the headaches started I couldn't focus myself to meditate, I couldn't sit still for long and just felt agitated. I am hoping to get back into meditating, even if that means doing Tai Chi each day, which I have found to be just like meditating.
• Give up sugar
  In my coffee, I am not going to go crazy and stop myself from having all types of sugared food because I like to take things slow which helps me to get used to one change and then I can add another change when I'm ready.
  I only have 1 teaspoon of sugar in my coffee, when a couple of years ago I didn't even have sugar in my tea or coffee but since changing to decaff I have found that adding the sugar makes it taste better. To help me get closer to having no sugar in my coffee I am going to change to sweetener as well.

Now I know what I am normally like when I tell myself I am going to be doing something similar to this, I normally fail within a week/2 weeks. Hopefully that wont happen this time and I can actually succeed.

Happy Solstice

Whether you are celebrating the summer or winter solstice, I hope you all have a wonderful day doing so!

My Beltane

For Beltane this year I had no idea how to celebrate it, normally I have these things planned out in advance but with all that had gone on within these couple of months I didn't really have time to plan. So in the end I stopped trying to plan and see how it all went on the day. Well it turns out it actually went really well and proved to myself that I should be trusting myself more so than I usually do.

As it is the end of the dark half of year and the light part is finally here, with the sun now shinning even more I thought it was about time I set two of my deities asleep/meditate/re-energise them selves for the next dark half of the year. And actually wake up my other two deities. (This all might sound strange but I will talk about this in another post).
So before I lit two candles which I set for my "lighter" Gods, I spoke out loud to The Cailleach and Nodens. Then as I lit the candles I again spoke out loud welcoming back Aine and Lir. After I done this I burned some incense which I made for them two and then went on to have a little talk with them.

On the afternoon of that day, me and my partner went to a couples house to see a puppy, we have been wanting a puppy for a long time and finding a house seemed the right time to get one. We were only going to see if we liked the puppy and if the puppy liked us. As soon as we saw him we knew he was for us. He is a Kelpy x Labrador, 7 weeks old and is the biggest one out of them all. We already knew what to call him, Merlin.

Spring

At last spring has finally arrived here, the daffodils have risen and there is baby lambs in the field and all sorts of plants are starting to sprout up again. I took this chance (while the sun was out all day, no cold weather either! Just pure warmth from the sun, it was brilliant) to go for a walk, as I didn't celebrate the spring equinox I thought I would do it now. Why should I celebrate it when I cant see the signs of spring, it makes more sense to celebrate it when you know it is there in your area.
For the celebration I basically went for a walk, took a good hard look at everything around me, seeing what is growing, anything changed etc. As well as listening to what nature had to say, whether it was a message I needed to hear or just simply a song/story that they wanted me to hear. I wanted to walk for miles but unfortunately I couldn't due to my condition that I have which stops me from being able to walk too far.


Since spring is a time for new beginnings and changes to be made, I thought I would share with you all a big change that is happening for me and my partner - we have finally found somewhere to live! So by April we will be living in our new home, but not too sure on how soon we will have the Internet back so blogging & vlogging will be on hold until I can get back on.

Imbolc

As Imbolc is about to be arriving soon, I thought I would try to do something more than a walk this year. Each festival I normally just go for a walk and look at my surroundings, see what is changing while giving respect and honouring everything near by. But this year I felt like I should get involved at lot more, so I decided to make some Imbolc oil - this can be used to anoint the candle you wish to use before lightening it, or on your temples before meditating or just simply putting a little bit of it in the oil burner.
I normally make incense for the festivals, but as I have so much incense sticks and little herbs to use I thought this time to use the oil and see what my outcome is after this festival.


I don't own that many oils either at the moment so I basically had to do with what I had. So it was basically, Rosemary, chamomile, mandarin and rose. I wanted to add healing, purification, welcoming back the sun as well as a little bit of love into the oil.
Maybe the oils are not what you expect to smell as Imbolc, but I don't really care. To me it smells uplifting, refreshing and clean, which is pretty much what I wanted for this festival - so I am pretty damn proud to manage to make an oil with the intentions I had in mind.

I think I may be sticking to my usual walk and maybe a meditation or just standing still listening to what the land around me has to say.

Imbolc

Imbolc is coming up soon, people normally celebrate it on the 1st/2nd February. I like to celebrate these festivals with 3 days, so I will be celebrating it on the full moon which is on 30th January up to 1st February.
I know I will be meditating within the 3 days, also some spring cleaning (I hope) and maybe a nice walk and hopefully I will find something nice that represents the festival :)

Anyways, I thought to come on here and share this and the incense (see other entry) and to say that I hope you all have a wonderful Imbolc :) (and if you celebrate anything else on that day then I hope you have a wonderful day)

Imbolc Incense

Finally made my Imbolc incense, didn't think I would do it as my coffee grinder hadn't arrived, but it did today so I made some incense to try it out :)

Didn't really use any measurements, just took a wild guess with everything..Sometimes things turn out better like that :P
Anyways, here is what I put in the incense in case anyone wants to use it :) Enjoy


Imbolc Incense
Myrrh
Jasmine
Basil
Sandalwood

Winter incense

So I finally made my winter solstice incense! The problem was that I didn't have any herbs that all the recipes were asking for, so I made my own, and it smells so good that I just want to eat it! lol




The incense is
2 teaspoons of dried sage
1 teaspoon of chamomile
1 whole nutmeg
1 small orange peel.

Hopefully I will be able to make more incense next year, just need to find some containers big enough. :) Yay