Coming New Moon ~ Knowing What You Want

Namaste'!

The weather men are calling for SUNNY skies and 57 tomorrow, 75 Friday, 78 Saturday, 78 Sunday, and 73 Monday!!!

After all the cold rain we've been getting, I think this weekend will be the weekend that everything explodes into bright green growth. I absolutely ADORE this time of year. It's so clean and fresh and new and perfect. I'm going to be starting my landscaping this weekend. I can't wait to sit outside in the sunshine with dirt on my hands.

I know many of you write new moon checks and the new moon is coming up this Saturday.

Planting in the waxing moon has been shown to be very beneficial to plants, so I'm also looking extra forward to the new moon Saturday.

I've decided to develop a habit of working with a vision board at the new moon. The last 2 times I've poured some focus and creativity into a vision board, I got amazing results. I think I'll carve out some time, maybe Saturday and Sunday morning while I have my coffee, to think about and focus on what I'd like to manifest in the month to come. For me personally, focusing on intentions and goals in the morning works great. My brain isn't all cluttered up with daily activities. It's freshly rested and relaxed and wide open.

That's what it's all about, right? Knowing what you want and being able to actually identify it. We often find it much easier to identify what we don't want. Of course you know what you don't want to happen. It's the first thing we're taught and conditioned to think about.

We even gave it a name. Murphy's Law. If something can go wrong, it will.

Then we're taught to further over think it by planning AROUND what could possibly go wrong, and call it being prepared.

Do yourself a favor. The next time you catch yourself identifying what you don't want to happen, use your brain as the tool it was intended to be and allow the thought about what you don't want, to trigger you to identify it's counter... A.K.A. What you DO want to happen.

Just practicing this will help you reprogram your automatic thoughts. You know the thoughts I'm talking about too.
Eg. *This isn't going to work* *What if I can't do it?* *If that happens, I don't know what I'm going to do*

Even thoughts as normal and everyday as "Ugh, I hate doing laundry!"

This is one that I still slip on. I have to change that thought into what I WANT... cuz what I want sure ain't doing laundry! LOL I started to change this one by changing it to "I love crisp, clean, unwrinkled clothes!". That helped me to be SEEKING something instead of avoiding something. I will even go so far as to say "Today I am blessing my closet with an abundance of delightfully clean clothes!" I "Bless" my home as a whole and in it's parts and pieces often. This angle of thought is something I picked up from http://www.flylady.com/ (been hearing a lot about her lately too, oddly enough ;) By placing your focus happily on your task at hand, you are transferring positive, loving energy onto it. And in doing so, you're "Blessing" everything. It kinda shifts your perception a little and that little can be enough to start you on a roll.

There's always a way to express what you DO want. Your initial "Oh NO!" reaction is just your brain letting you know what you don't want. It's supposed to let you know. It's only doing it's job. You're the awareness behind the thought. You're the one running this show! If you take the brain's warning shots and then turn your focus to what you DO want and forget about what "might" happen, you'll begin to notice much more desirable outcomes. The Universe (A.K.A. God) can only give you what you ask for.

Take advantage of the new moon coming and set the tone for your month to come by thinking about and identifying what you want to see for yourself and in your life. Write a new moon check or work on a vision board or write a list or create new affirmations or whatever YOUR process is. And if you don't follow a practice... then this is the PERFECT time to start! Don't procrastinate! Take control of what shows up in your life by creating a monthly practice of identifying what you want and asking for it. We're in the growing light of spring and entering the growing light of the new moon... the energies around you are very conductive for creativity and growth.

Coming in Saturday's Waxing Edition E-zine:

• Featured Article: Finding Your Vision


• What's in My Recipe Box?: Grrreat for You Grrranola! Yum!


• Blog Spotlight


• Conscious Living Tip!


• Quotable Quotes


• And More!!

My 30th Birthday!

Happy birthday to me :) Today, I am 30. April 5th, 1979~

I stopped identifying with my age when I turned 22. My whole life, I was always striving for the next number. The next turning point. The next bit of growth. I remember when I was 5 years old in kindergarten and I watched the 10/11 year old 5th graders walk through the school. They nearly looked like adults to me! I wanted to be THAT age!

When I was in 5th grade and ruling the school, I was SO excited to get up to 6th grade to be in the middle school. THOSE kids were SO cool.

Once in 6th grade, I was 12. TWELVE! Oh MY GOD, soooo nearly a teenager, I could just TASTE it. I would even, at times, refer to myself as a teenager to be immediately corrected by my mother. I was on the cusp of something HUGE! I just KNEW it! I mean, just LOOK at those high school kids! They're like, practically my mother's age (They actually WERE. When I was 12, My mother was only 26~) and they're just SO grown up.

All I could SEE was 16. That was the NUMBER! Once I was there... I'd be able to DRIVE! Mom says she doesn't know what I think I'm going to be driving but I don't care. *sigh* sixteeeeen.

Ugh. 16 is so... yuck. I'm mature enough to do whatever I want to. If I was just 18, this wouldn't suck so much. I could come and go and do whatever I wanted to whenever I wanted to. I can't wait until I'm there.

Eighteen is total bullshit! Now I'm old enough to work full time and live where I want and go into the army, but they won't let me DRINK! This is stupid! I guess it ain't illegal if ya don't get caught! (Ugh, yes that was me... I shoulda been kicked! LOL But everything then made me who I am now so I'm not going to complain!)

YEAH!!!! 21!!!! PARTY!!!! Once in a while.... on the weekends.... Have that husband and child at home now. Don't really WANT to go out much. Making a life.

Twenty Two~ I had like, a mini breakdown. I was under big time stress with the dissolving of my mother's marriage to her second husband. We spent the entire day of my birthday moving all her things out of their house and into her new second floor apartment. I was SO depressed ALLLLL day. All I could think was.... "Yep, finally got to 21... now what? Now 22. Where to from here? THIRTY! Now I understand *over the hill*. There WAS a hill! It was 21. It was up, up, up, up, BAM.... all down.

I was SO identified with that NUMBER. My husband has always said he's 19. He was 27 when we met. He said that he hit 19 years old and stopped aging internally. The rest is just biology. I thought that was funny and couldn't really believe that he truly didn't care how old he was. How could he NOT care?

Now I get it.

I am SO excited to be turning 30. I am so excited about where I am in my life and what I'm doing and what my life has been about up until now and the family I've raised and where I've come from and what I've learned. I really have an honest to goodness enthusiastic embrace on thirty. I never finished high school. I never went to college. I never even managed to get a G.E.D (General Equivalency Diploma) in place of my diploma. I found my husband when I was 19 and was a mother and had wanted more than anything to be a stay at home mom and homemaker.

Kevin was born when I was 20 and Kyle when I was 23. They're 2 years and 4 months apart.

Kevin is now 9. He has beautiful handwriting and loves to write stories. He loves anything artistic but especially drawing and he's VERY good at it. He gets straight A's every quarter and was awarded a perfect attendance award at school last year. So far this year (with 2 months left to go) he's only missed 1 day. He had a stomach bug. I'm so proud of him. We spent so much time with him when he was young. He was with ME or SCOTT. That was it. We talked to him so much that when he turned 2, he could speak clearly and hold his end of an animated conversation with an adult. People were blown away by Kevin. Even people that didn't like kids liked Kevin.

Kyle will be 7 in thirteen days on April 18th. He was a much quieter type. Shy and sweet. Didn't really talk much until he was about 3. He knew HOW and could speak clearly.... he was just content to sit quietly and play with his cars on the floor. He's STILL that way. But at 2, he was adding. He's my number kid. Right now, he's in first grade and he can complete Kevin's 3rd grade math homework and in less time by HALF to Kevin pure discontent.

I'm always telling Kevin that he has his OWN amazing traits. Whatever you're good at, you're good at. That doesn't mean you give up on everything else, but play to your strengths! That's why you HAVE strengths! They'll lead you. Talent isn't accidental. And stop measuring yourself against where anyone else is! You are the only you there is and no one else could possibly ever be exactly where you are at any given time, so stop making it sound like you should be somewhere you're not.

My husband, Scott... The most wonderfully cheerful and respectful and laid back man I've ever had the great pleasure of meeting. I was always a superficial, gossipy type person. Always worried about what everyone else thought. He was this laid back, happy guy who just kinda went with the flow. If someone didn't like him, he didn't care. If someone had a problem with something he was doing in his life, he didn't care. The irony is, until I met him, I'd always been kind of searching for God, and it was through meeting him that I found what I was looking for. He was very anti-religion when we met and nearly denied the existence of any kind of God or higher power.

So... now Scott is in agreement with me on how God exists and what God actually is. We simply agree to not use the "G" word because he doesn't like it. If the only thing he can't get past is the word, I can accept and work with that! I'm more in love with him every day (for 11 years this August!!). I couldn't be more happily married. It just couldn't be possible. The two of us have made this wonderful home together and we're raising these interesting, smart, happy, conscious little boys.

I live a healthy life where whole grains and fruits and veggies abound. I have to most awesome dog in the world, which is a big deal as I don't like dogs. Charlie is the K-9 love of my life. We get lots of exercise together daily. I have 2 beautiful cats that I adore. We are all just one big happy family here.

Right now (I'll be blogging about it soon!) we're starting a remodel in our home. I'll be getting my "Master's Suite" finally and I'm SO super excited. I've been working on it for the past 2 days.

I really love where I am in my life. Every morning I wake up excited at what the day might bring. At the rate things are moving, my 30's might be even better than my 20's! I'm 30! Wow! I think the most important lesson I learned in my 20's is... No matter what, keep moving forward. If you dwell on the past, you'll only get stuck there. Forgive, forget, move on.

I hope you're loving your life! I know I sure am!

I Love a Snowy Night (Borrowed from Eddie Rabbit!)

Yesterday was the winter solstice here in the northern hemisphere. I celebrate the winter solstice as "New Years" basically. It's the shortest day of the year and acts sort of like the "New Moon" of the YEAR. I worked on planning out some intentions for the next year, but mostly I just spent the day being thankful with my family.

It was only like 15 degrees all day yesterday. There was a new, glittery blanket of snow just deep enough to cover the tips of the grass and thanks to a minor ice storm that blew through a couple days before, all of the tiniest limbs and biggest branches where coated in ice and sparkled so brightly, with such light, it almost seemed they were glowing from within. The wind whipped the dry grainy snow up into little frozen vortexes of white iridescence that danced in a pirouette from one end of my yard to the other. Through it all, the sun shone brightly, illuminating this day of fresh beginning and reflecting it's magnificence off every speck of my frozen wonderland making it almost too spectacular to behold.

"What a wonderful first day of winter", I thought. "It's so breathtaking, it's almost as though someone planned it this way." And I chuckled to myself :)

Today it is 10 degrees. The wind is gone, but the beautiful tree limbs remain. It has snowed about 3 feet in the last 11 hours. It continues to flutter to the ground in BIG, fat, lazily circling flakes. Still the sun shines.
There's been a number of gorgeous, colorful winter birds taking samples of the suet cakes that hang outside the picture window in my dining room. My warrior kitty, Patch, keeps launching herself into the window to catch the feathered visitors, but never succeeds at doing more than startling them into flight. I continue to giggle at her asking yet again, "Didja Getem?!?!" She just meows at me and resumes her place at my left foot. What a perfect start.

Winter is my favorite season, in case ya couldn't tell. LOL I always feel so overwhelmingly happy during the winter solstice. I think it's the new beginning... the fresh start. I looked back at the intentions I had for last year and BOY did I accomplish a LOT! The only things I didn't accomplish are things I'd lost focus on when my desires shifted to make room for new ideas. This year should be totally WILD! I'm REALLY looking forward to all the wonderful things that are headed my way!!

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Happy Winter Solstice!

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice.
The first day of winter.
The shortest day of the year.
The new beginning.

The Winter Solstice is like, the new moon for the whole year. It's a great time to set goals and create affirmations, mantras, vision boards or any other creative tool you find useful. If you are familiar with how to work with the Moon's energies, then you already know what I'm talking about.
If this is new to you, I'll explain.

When setting intentions, it's easiest to manifest working with the moon's light. At the New Moon (the day there's NO moon), write a new moon check or set your intentions another way. Work on vision boards or any other creative tools. Focus on your intentions as the moon waxes, or the light of the moon builds. This cycle peaks at the full moon.

Now the moon wanes. The light begins at the full moon and slowly recedes over the next 2 weeks. This isn't a good time for setting or working on intentions. Spend this time cleaning you house and your mind. Write in a gratitude journal and spend time being thankful for what you manifested during the previous 2 weeks and beyond. The end of this cycle is when the moon returns to new and all the light is gone. Then, we begin again.

The Winter Solstice is another natural cycle that works in the same way. The winter solstice marks the day of the year with the least amount of sun light. It's like the new moon of the YEAR. This is a wonderful day to plan and begin your creation. If you miss the exact day, don't worry. The winter solstice energies are present for up to 72 hours beyond the specific day.

This cycle will peak around June 20-23 on the first day of summer, which is the day when the light illuminates the day the longest. This is reminiscent of the full moon. From here, the day gets slowly shorter and the night gets progressively longer. The year wanes until the dark dominates again and we begin again.

I recommend you set your intentions according to the scale you're setting them on. When you set a new moon intention, set an intention you expect to see results on over the next 28-30 days. When you set a winter solstice intention, set an intention you expect to see results on over the next year. This is actually most likely where new year resolutions originated.

The strongest periods of creative energy is during the waxing moon from the winter solstice to the summer solstice because both light building cycles are working WITH you. The equinox in the spring and fall are the points where you should review you intentions and renew your focus upon them.

I don't claim to be an expert on this subject because, believe me, I'm not. I DO know, however, that people of all different religions, creeds, nationalities and belief systems have worked with the moon and solstices for millenia. Because of this fact, I decided to try it for myself. I was skeptical going in, but I noticed a marked difference in my manifestations when I consciously worked with the earths natural cycles. I now observe daily cycles, the monthly moon cycles, the seasonal cycles and the yearly cycles.

There is waxing and waning light and energy all through your life. Why not harness the energy and make it work for you!

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