november days...

 i don't have much to show for november, despite its demands and chaos.  there was a lot that happened, but not a lot of photos of such things.

lots of time spent in migrainelandia, thanks to road construction and my infusion being on the waning end.  (i get my next infusion in a few days.)

there was a big meal cooked for the not a holiday/holiday but i forgot to take any photos.

this is what i do have...

the first lemon off my tree.  yum...

chocolate pound cake...

my s-i-l and i have expanded our baking game a bit.  in october we made a pound cake recipe that her nanny (grandmother) used to make for her mums' birthday.  this month she came to me with another of her nanny's recipes wanting to try it. so, we did.  the cakes aren't quite what i'm used to as a pound cake.  i'd always associated pound cake as a loaf, not in a tube pan.  but they've turned out pretty well.

and my last photo for today, is...

this month's cheesecake: caramel apple cheesecake 

this, by far, is my favorite cheesecake of the ones we've made so far.  it has a salted caramel sauce in it and brushed on top with a delicious apple filling between the crust and cheesecake layer.  it is soooo delicious!

well, i couldn't let the month end without a quick pop in to say hello, and to see off november.  hopefully i will find my way back here more in december and also to visit everyone blogs.

hope you are all doing as best as you can during these times.

love & kisses & magickal wishes...

~*~

a time for quiet and slow...

oh october, i'm sad to see you go so quickly... i'm not ready to say goodbye just yet.

things went wonky early on and we didn't really have a chance to play and bond like october demands.

and now it is the 2nd day of november (though i SWEAR when i started working on this post it was the 1st).

and i'm ready to move into the slow, more deliberate months.  i need slow and steady for a while, i think.  maybe you do, too? a time where we focus inside, quietly and slowly, instead of rushing and doing so much 'out there'.  

well...i'll be back soon, pinkie swear.

how are you?  did you have tricks or treats for halloween?  i hope october was good to you.

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

ps...i'll be around this weekend and this coming week catching up on blog reading.  xoxo 

 

Indigenous Peoples Day...

...not just today, but every day.  

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

 

 

expected, welcomed, and fascinating...

hello, my lovelies, 

i'm here with blurry eyes tonight to share a little about my trip from september.

i went back to what might possibly be my most favorite place i've ever been in the world, where a piece of my soul resides, and where i feel more at peace than anywhere else: 

yes, i made a trip back to ghost ranch, abiquiu, new mexico.  

i drove 4 days, to santa fe, stayed there for 3 then went to ghost ranch for another art retreat.  i'll share about the art in another post, this one is just about the trip.

i made my stops in smyrna, tn, van buren, ar, and amarillo, tx.  it's only a short drive from amarillo to santa fe, so day four was an easy drive.  i was on a mission to get to santa fe by a certain day as i had an appointment the following day and couldn't possibly miss it.

this is why i had to be there by a certain time...

this photo is from right after she finished, but it is healed up now and looks great.  i love it so much!  i've been wanting this tattoo since my first trip to ghost ranch in 2019.  the design is mine and the landscape inside the heart is from a photo i took on one of the earlier trips.  

if you are a tattoo person, the artist who did this one is Nikki at Rivers Collective Body Art.  best decision i made in a long time.  she was so awesome to work with and easy to talk to, everything about the experience was fabulous.  (i'm already thinking about what to get next time i'm out there. 😁)

then i had a couple of days to hang around and explore or rest (resting was a big thing) and shop, of course.  i found some fabulous places.  i went back to The Ark for some books/witchy type stuff.  then i checked out a bead store as i had forgotten to bring a lot of things for class.  Beadweaver is amazing and has more than just beads and jewelry makings.  i went a little crazy in the sticker section. haha.  as i was leaving there, i remembered a place i'd followed on instagram and it was right across the road.  it was awesome!  The Crow's Nest is fascinating.  seriously!  i found some pretty cool things in there.  plus, she has haunted dolls and they were telling me all kinds of stories!  i was also able to find several out of print books on Georgia O'Keeffe at a used bookstore not far from my hotel.

anywho, when i arrived at ghost ranch they had just finished a 3 day music festival so it was quite chaotic.  lucky for me, it settled down later that evening.  other than a couple of storms rolling through it was pretty quiet for the week, but it was monsoon season, so the rain was expected, and welcomed, and fascinating.

(the mountain that Georgia claimed - Pedernal)

(sunset after a storm)

(always looking for heart rocks)

our middle of the week outing was a trip to Taos, but i decided to stay in and go for a hike.  then i came by the above sign as i headed to a trail and decided to head to my room and do some painting instead.  i never saw the mountain lion but did see some paw prints.  and some of the staff were telling us about how they like to come up to the buildings and rub up against them at night while people are sleeping.  one night though, i did hear a pack of coyotes singing.  i thought they were right there it sounded so close.  but someone else who heard them said they were pretty far away or it would have been much louder.

(sunrise on the last day)

(part of the trail between the mesa with my room and the main buildings at ground level)

when i planned this trip it was with the understanding that it would be our last retreat out there.  i had planned to take the long way home and stop several places so i could explore a bit more of things i'd never seen and do a bit more shopping.  but as it got closer i found that i'd spent too much money and so had to just come straight home.

the day before we were to leave, i found out that there will be at least one more retreat with this group out there and the dates have already been set for 2027.  so i KNOW i'll be going again!  i've already started saving and planning my 2027 trip.  woo hoo!!!

well, it's taken a couple of hours to write this and my eyes are so exhausted. i'll be back soon to share what we were making and some of the things i brought back from my trip.  

hope you are all having a great week.

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

it's a meme day!

 hi my lovelies, 

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

of pumpkins and mums and the best month of the year...

hello october, 

hello my lovelies, 

if you're still here following along, thank you.  i truly had not meant to be away so long.  an injury to my foot threw me off my game in august and made my planned travel in september questionable which resulted in quite a bit of panic on my part.

but, it all worked out and i was able to take my trip west.  it was lovely and i plan to share about it soon.  i'd planned to get here after returning home and share, but i've been completely exhausted and am still not up to full steam just yet.  i'm getting there.

with today being the 1st of october, my favorite month of the year, i figured it was the best time to come back to bloglandia.

so here i am.  the photos i'm sharing today are from previous years posts.  i've not decorated for autumn yet, that is on tomorrows plans, at least inside.  i need to run to the farmers market for pumpkins and mums for the outside.

well, that's all for today.  i'll see you back here soon.  and i'll be coming around to visit everyone as soon as i can.  it'll take me a while to get caught up, but i'll do it.  :-)

 

nothing added to the water...

'clink, clink'  hello?  

un...

two days in a row?  wt...

heeheeheee.....

that's right, babes!  i'm back again!  haha.

first off, you should know... there has been nothing added to the water around here.  but i'm a little... wait, what is that word?

hypnotic? no, that's not it

um, hippopotamus?

no... definitely not.

oh...yeah..  i got it now!   

SUPERDUPEREXTREMELYOFFTHECHARTSSWIMMINGAROUNDTHEMOON-HYPER!!!  Yep...that's the word.

y'all, i've been up since 4am, technically 3 since i just dozed for an hour before getting out of bed at 4 and have not stopped talking since.  litterally. i am talking.  constantly. to... myself.

there is no one here but me!  haha!  and on a silent sunday too!  freaking hilarious.

i've also done 3 loads of laundry, watered the gardens, started on the houseplants and done a whole long list of other quests for the day.  i figured it might be good to get a post in while i spent some time searching for what to do with a glut of cucumbers.  goddess, i tell you i'm giving them away and still can't get through them.

so today, i'm focusing (here on this post - if i can hehe) on an update on my book of me or mybome.

Here is where I started at the first of January of this year:

  and this is where we were in april:

and now we are in the middle of august, although this picture is of the tarot spread page i put at the beginning of august:

under my fingers on the right of the above picture is the front cover of the journal and above the current last notebook added (but not the last to be added!).  and yes, i have to fold it.  you'll see.

may i present... the leaning tower of mybome (my book of me)

when i added those last couple of journals at the bottom i put them in too tight.  it is bulky and unweildy and not at all how i thought it would be as something i could keep with me all the time and i still love it so much!

i made a collage instead of trying to get each picture in separately.  each day i draw a card from a selected monthly deck or tarot or oracle (more near the end) and i make a copy on my printer on card stock, write notes from the creator's guide on the back then tack into my journal.  my personal notes on the card go into the journal entry for the day.  it helps me learn new decks and remember things too.  i'm having so much fun with this.

i've been trying to figure out how to keep my imitation bullit journal quest days together, they always seem to end up spread out and then i'm searching and searching.  ugh.  i like how i figured this one out.  monday through friday plans.  (shopping for freezers a bonus!)

i think that second row kind of sums me up a bit, on one side i'm all spirit and woods and sacred and on the other, i know where you live keep you're damn mouth shut.  and in the middle alllllll the things that geminis like to experiment with!  hee hee

and the last two in the collage.  the front and i ran out of tape and had to switch it up and the book on it's side.

i actually made a video a while back to share, i think Debra might have asked.  but i can't get it to show here.  i've tried a couple times.  i was going to go the ytube route, but ... recent things there have me hesitant to even watch videos of some of my favorite creators, much less post anything.

i need to find way to contain the beast (keep it wrapped whilst traveling), so that is on this week's quests.  yes, i said traveling...  :-)

so... the card shown above is from the below gorgeous, and fantastically accurate and downright magical Witching Hour Oracle by the amazing and gifted Lorriane Anderson of Spirit Element.

if you're not familiar with her work and are the tiniest bit witch adjacent, is that what it's called now, please go check her out.  She is fabulous!  And her newsletter and blog are great.  She does a weekly newsletter tarot/oracle pull that i consult every day, after my own pulls and it is amazing to see how often they connect.  I was actually shopping for a different deck she had reviewed when i stumbled across this one and just could not put it down.  Sooooo glad it came home with me!

i think that's it for me today.  i need to go fold the last load of laundry.  i'm at the part of the house doomstashing where i go through every inch of clothes i own and decide if it is something to keep, repurpose, or donate.  

hope you have a marvelously fantastic rest of your day lovelies!

thanks for being here...

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

ps... if you want a chuckle and a little wisdom at the same time, come see what The Ancestors had to say to me this morning.