Buying Basil

I mentioned in a previous blog Getting My Green Thumb Ready for Spring that I was going to be getting a seed list ready for the garden. I will eventually, but I want to start my basil seeds right now. I've been waiting all winter for fresh garden basil, and I am sick of being patient. Okay, patient may not be the right word. I am a lot of things, but patient I am not. With my impatience building, I went to the hardware/garden store in search of basil today. I bought 4 different kinds, I thought that was a good start. I can't wait to get them into the ground. The sooner this whole process gets started, the sooner I will have fresh pesto on my pasta, toast, eggs, etc... Grow basil grow, I'm waiting!

Missing My Moon Maidens

As the full moon approaches, I can't help but think about how my last Moon Party was a year ago, how did the time fly like that? Every full moon a group of ladies would get together to celebrate. It was different every time. We met for happy hour, made bath salts, set intentions, took walks, made meals, or sat out in the garden. What mattered was the getting together, the celebration of the passing of time. Luna (the moon's latin name) is an ancient time keeper. I have to stop myself right now, before I launch into a lecture about the ties between women and the moon dating back to the stone age. If you do want to know more about that, contact me. I'll seriously be over the moon about having someone to talk to about it (pun intended).

The point I'm really trying to get to is, I miss my moon maidens. Since I moved back home I usually celebrate by myself, but every once in a while I get a phone call or a text that says "Did you see the moon?" and I know I'm not the only one looking into the night sky and it's as if we are all together again.

New Dancing Squiggles in Copper

These are some new little cute earrings I will be posting on my Etsy site Willowlily this week. I am not settled on a name for them yet. I was thinking Dancing Squiggles. Yes, seriously, that's all I came up with. Any other ideas?

I'm a Street in Portland!

My lovely, sister, Bunni took this picture and sent it to me the other day! It made me so happy!

Spring Cleaning Begins!

I woke up a few mornings ago after a really stressful dream, which although I would love to go into detail about, trust me I would, for your sake I won't. The basic premise was that I was completely overwhelmed by the state of my room and my life. So when I woke up, I sat up and looked around my room and it dawned on me 'I don't really need most of this stuff.' Here's the thing, while most people get more organized as they get older, I've been steadily getting messier and more disorganized. I actually used to be very neat. It seems that the more I allow myself to be creative and express myself artistically, the more cluttered I become. Perhaps, these things have nothing to do with each other, but I kind of think they do. My creativity is pretty much the center of my life right now and I'm verging on slob status. I don't say that loosely. It is very hard for me to admit I've allowed my life to get this out of control. It just feels like other things have become more important. It's just more important to have access to three different journals and at least one or two laptops while I lie in bed. I mean what if I wake up in the middle of the night and have a genius idea? If I put all these things away I might miss out on tearing through my whole bed to find the right journal and then not being able to come up with a pen....okay, fine. I'm not fooling anyone, my messiness is not helping me at all, there is really no excuse. I am going to start purging and organizing. I don't need all this stuff holding me down. So tonight I am going to gather up all the journals, this could take a while I have a slight addiction, and organize them in a special drawer. Tomorrow morning I am going to go through all my make-up and beauty products. No point keeping things I haven't used in over a year.

Once I tackle my room, I might even dare take on the studio. My heart just started to have palpitations. It's so hard to get rid of anything in the studio, because I never know when I might need it one day. I need all the rocks I brought home from the coast and the hawk feather I found walking through the woods and that broken chain, well, one day I'm going to turn it into a masterpiece. I'm not allowed to think about the studio, yet. It's day will come. Right now I'm staying focused on my room.

Perhaps, after I finish all that I might think about purging some people in my life too. If you don't make me happy, I will put you in the give away pile and donate you to charity (if only it was that easy). So everyone better be on their best behavior, it's time to clean some house!

Getting My Green Thumb Ready for Spring

Been thinking about the garden again lately. It's nearly time for my favorite part of gardening. I love love love starting seeds. Something about the little seeds turning into little plants turns me into a 5 year old all over again. Even though I already know it will happen I'm still incredibly excited to watch the process happen every year. Unfortunately, I'm not so thrilled to do most of the other gardening things. Weeding is boring. Watering one or two times a day is time consuming. Even harvesting doesn't do much for me. I'm pretty much just addicted to the first part, but because I get attached to the plants I force myself to do other the other stuff. Before I even can start doing all that I really need to get the garden ready. I've heard of this thing called winterizing your garden, but I've never actually done it. Apparently, it's important.

This is round two for my Redding garden and this year is going to be even better than the last (not that that will be hard)! In the next week or two I am going to get my seed list complete and get the garden all prepped. It just needs to stop raining so I can venture outside. I really want to grow a lot more than last year. I want my garden to look like the garden in this picture, green and wild. I don't know if that is realistic, but that's what I'm shooting for.

Evening Glass of Wine & a History Lesson

Today was a long rainy day. The kind of day you really wish you didn't have to get out of bed and you actually run through your list of excuses for missing work and ponder how wrong it would be to use them. I actually thought to myself, 'when was the last time I called in with a migraine?' Despite all my efforts the responsible adult in me forced to get out of bed and face the day. The stubborn teenager in me did win one battle this morning. She refused to put on a dress in this weather, what's the point of looking nice when the rain is going to ruin it anyway. Her logic made sense and I let her dress me in jeans and wear my hair straight. So after soaking myself in the rain, sitting behind a computer screen all day, and standing in line at the post office I decided I was due a glass of wine when I got home from work.

I poured myself a glass of shiraz which tasted a little old, so instead of waste it I told my step-dad I poured it just for him. I didn't have t0 drink the foul stuff and he thinks I'm sweet and thoughtful, it's a win-win. After digging through the wine fridge I found the Ukrainian wine my friend, V gave to my parents. I mixed the dry red with the dessert wine and it was perfect. Who knew those Ukrainians made such good wine? I knew they made great vodka, a girlfriend of mine in college always had a freezer stocked with it from her Ukrainian boyfriend. Honestly, I had never really imagined vineyards in the Ukraine. Then again I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about the Ukraine. I just looked it up, apparently, by the 4th century BC a wine culture already existed in what is now the Ukraine. I guess I have some history and traveling to catch up on. Which are perfect things to think about while I pour myself another glass of wine and listen to the rain.

Women's Weekend

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a women's retreat this weekend with my lovely mama. The retreat was about 'loving well.' In essence being able to love anybody through anything, which is a pretty tough topic. Especially, when you think about really being able to love ANYBODY....yep, that person who drives you absolutely crazy is included. It is definitely a lesson I'm currently in the thick of, so I just tried to soak it up as much as I could.

Throughout the entire retreat I was very drawn to a beautiful hupah (chuppah) on stage. We were told by the coordinators that a hupah is a traditional Jewish wedding canopy. According to wikipedia, "The chuppah represents a Jewish home symbolized by the cloth canopy and the four poles." Just as a chuppah is open on all four sides as is one's home open for hospitality. I think this is a wonderful tradition and as if the retreat wasn't informational enough, I got a chance to learn about a Jewish wedding tradition. I'd say that's a pretty good weekend. I'm figure this gives me leeway to sleep all day tomorrow and be totally unproductive.

If My Goals Don't Work Out, Atleast I'll Have Goats

My last blog was about goals, but after reading the headline, my mom, though I wrote "Look Mom, I have Goats!" This didn't seem strange to her, in part because she expects me to say random things and also because she knows how much I love goats. I don't know exactly why I love them so much. Maybe because I am a Capricorn and our symbol is the goat or when I was really little my mom used to take me to a garden center that had goats and I used to let them suck on the hem of my dress. For whatever reason I have been dreaming about having goats for as long as I can remember. I love all goats, but pygmy goats are just ridiculously cute. There legs are so short they barely have knees, I don't know why I find this adorable, but I do. They make the perfect addition to my future lavender farm. I am really hoping to be that eccentric hippie lady with all the crazy jewelry living on her own organic farm, who shears her own alpacas and makes cheese from the milk her herd of pygmy goats produce.

Speaking of Alpacas, I LOVE them! They are so awesome. I just discovered there are a few alpaca farms nearby and I will be visiting them as soon as the weather gets a little nicer. I've heard alpacas dance under the full moon. This may or may not be true, either way I am fully choosing to believe it. The first time I met an alpaca was at a fair over 15 years ago and I just fell in love. While most young girls were planning their weddings, I was fantasizing about having an alpaca farm. A wedding is one day of your life, an alpaca farm is forever.

I'm not entirely sure what my obsession with farming is all about. I grew up in suburbia. We never even had a vegetable garden growing up. Maybe it was that Little House on the Prairie book series I used to be obsessed with. Quite honestly, I really don't know if I could handle farm life. I hate getting up early. I never scheduled a class in college before noon. Even though I love to travel I refuse to book a flight before 10:30 am. I also hate feces, not that many people really like it. I'm just starting to wonder if all my farm dreams are wildly unrealistic. I also never imagined building a website or sitting behind a computer all day for a job, especially since I never learned to type correctly, but I do that. So perhaps having a farm other than my one on farmville (facebook) is still a possibility for the future. I mean for the record, I am an awesome cyberspace farmer and that has to count for something.

Worse case scenario, I can always move to Seattle, WA, where pygmy goats are legal to own as house pets.

Look Mom, I Have Goals!

Tonight was our second Redding Handmade meeting, which is basically a group of incredibly talented Etsy people (basically women, but I'm saying people just in case a man wants to join. I would encourage males to join, especially if you are good looking, intelligent and love redheads). Anyway, our topic tonight was goal setting, you can check it out at the Redding Handmade Blog. This topic is very close to my heart. I love to set goals; goals I rarely keep. I'm a list maker by nature and when I find myself frustrated, bored, or avoiding my responsibilities I sit down and make a new goal list. I make a lot of lists and I do my best to make sure no one ever sees them. God forbid anybody hold me accountable, that would just take all the joy out of making the list, losing the list, and then rediscovering it two months later only to realize I can only cross off 'take shower'. So in the spirit of change I thought I would share my two goals related to my etsy shop and this blog.

My Goals:

• I will have 100 items in my WillowLily shop by March 30th

• I will write at least 5 blogs a week for the rest of the years starting before the 28th of February

I'm sure you are thinking these are relatively simple goals. Consider that I only have 22 items in my shop right now and I usually write about 5 blogs a month. This is going to take some serious focus. Which is my new mantra: I am focused and driven. I'm going to say it a few hundred more times and see if my brain buys it.

A special Thanks to Chrystalyn, the creator and organizer of Redding Handmade, and also one of the most organized people I've ever met. If I ever grow up I hope I turn out like her :)

Aphrodite Rose Quartz and Copper Earrings

These love inspired earrings will be included in the basket of goodies we will be raffling off at the Redding Handmade Open House this Saturday. Stop by Sweet Spot on Hilltop drive to enter the raffle and meet some the wonderful Etsy people here in Redding, CA. For more info on these lovely little earrings check out WillowLily Creations.

Happy Imbolc!

A friend (Hey Ian!) reminded me today that it was Imbolc. A Celtic and neopagan holiday celebrating the first signs of spring. It falls between the winter solstice and spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. No matter your beliefs it's nice to take a moment to notice the passing of time and watch as the seasons change. Spring gets closer every day.
Happy Imbolc everyone!