2011's First Giveaway!

>>GIVEAWAY CLOSED<<



Wow! 2011 is flying already! I've been super busy lately recreating lost Yule orders (grr.. don't even want to remember this drama of mine, sigh... Thank the gods, it's over!), and making January orders. People didn't stop purchasing despite all the postal service madness last December, which made me very happy and relieved!

Anywhoo... I was here wondering what I could give at this first giveaway of the year. And I thought, let's make it different! So to enter the new giveaway:

*(mandatory entry): Be or become a follower of my blog, AND LEAVE A COMMENT TELLING WHICH GODDESS OR GOD YOU'D LIKE ME TO CREATE THAT IT'S NOT LISTED YET AT MY SHOP. It can't be one I already created. Challenge me with a new deity! ;)

For more chances to win (leave a separate comment for each entry, please!):

* Heart my Carioca Witch Etsy shop (1 entry);

* Blog about this giveaway, leaving the respective URL in the comment (2 entries);

* Twitter about it (1 entry per day - leave me a comment per Twitter with the respective URL, please, so I can keep track of them).

I'm thrilled to see what you guys will come up with! ;)

As usual, my little witch will pick up the winner from my witch hat, next Monday, February 7th. Good luck everybody!

Creating sweet memories

As many of you know, I live at my mom's, with my little witch, and with my big brother Evaldo. We sometimes have differences, specially concerning my spiritual path, which he simply can't agree, but this was already talked and solved.

He's an awesome brother, who will stop everything he's doing to help. He was the one who took care of my father along with mom when he was ill, before dying of cancer. He was the one who was with my big sister when she died at hospital. He's this kind of guy, always there for you, no matter what. He will foget differences, small silly things that happen between siblings, and his hand is the one you can always hold when in need.

And the sweetest thing is that he loves Lucas like the son he never had. He's always playing with him, teaching him about photography techniques, telling funny jokes and making my little witch laugh everyday. After shower, Lucas always knocks at his door wearing his bathrobe, just to listen to him saying out loud, "Pope!! Forgive my sins!", kissing his hand, making him laugh so hard he almost cry - a family joke that may sound weird for some, but it's totally funny for us.

So last Monday night, when we were already sleeping, Evaldo silently created and printed a treasure map written, "Map for Baron Von Shülts' coins" and below, "House 58 at Mosela Street", with a "X" where the tresure was. He burned the map's rims to make it look old, folded and hid it into a slot into the main doorjam, and buried outside a paper bag full of old coins (although without value, some are from the 19th century, from severa countries and really beautiful) that he found among my late father's belongings,

On Tuesday morning, he asked Lucas to help him vacumming the house, starting at... the main door! You can imagine the rest... I took several photos of his discovery, and they can't express all his surprise and delight at finding something so absolutely cool and special! We made our part, pretending not knowing anything about it, and Evaldo helped him to take the eleven steps required to find the right spot to dig his treasure out. It was so so fun and so sweet to watch how genuinely happy Lucas was, how lucky he though he was!

One special touch was that some French and Italian coins display pagan gods and goddesses, and he identified them by himself: Hermes, Athena with Nike, Poseidon... He really learned well about deities! ;)

He is very proud of owning a "tresure of his own", with his old coins now safely kept into a wooden box, that, according to him, will be sent to a museum when he gets old.

Things like this simply make me feel good. I know that when my little witch grows up, he'll remember this day with love and joy. My brother is a pigheaded sometimes, but he knows how to be lovely too...

Little witch's protection potion

Lucas is always amazing me with his initiatives, specially when concerning his pagan path. Yesterday, out of nothing, he decided to create his first protection potion all by himself. He took a handful of dandelions from our garden, detached the leaves from the roots (discarding the rest) and let them dry for one hour under the sun. Then he chopped everything to tiny bits using scissors - under my supervision, of course - and put them in my mortar with a good pinch of rosemary, smashing them well (mental note: getting him his own mortar & pestle, lol).





After that, he filled 1/4 of a plastic bottle with filtered water (he said rain water can be used as well), and added the herbs, vigorously shaking the bottle until getting lots of foam, the sign that it was ready to rest for one night during Full Moon (he was very enphatic on this).

This morning he filtered the potion, discarding the dandelion leaves and roots and the rosemary, and put the liquid into a plastic vessel with lid for storage (as you can see in the first photo). You can't believe how good it smells! It's to be used to splash outside around the house to protect it from negative vibes. It can also be used in protection rituals indoors, pouring some drops in the cauldron.

He wrote this "recipe" in his diary (yes, he also decided to keep a diary now!), which means that maybe it will be his first BOS, even without noticing. Let's see what he makes next!

If you have kids, do encourage them to create their own witcheries, even if the ingredients don't seem to fit, you'll be surprised how well the little ones' intuition works ! ;)

A new pagan shop!

You all know how I love to surf and find cool pagan shops to drool at their items and get some goodies. My dear friend Kallan just intoduced me to this really cool shop, Pagan Stuff Cheap, directly from Eye of Nuit. From altar tools to pagan books and decorative items, there's a long list of great stuff available at very reasonable prices!

I personally loved this BOS, and this one, and this cute box... But there's so much to heart!

I know this is on my list of favorite pagan shops now, and I highly reccomend it! ;)

Drawing with the gods

If there's something my little witch loves, like most kids, is to draw. He's constantly creating (he's addicted to the pens and pencils my gorgeous friend Eva sent him, lol) from his favorites detailed monsters (with ability & power level charts) and skulls to castles, drgons, cars, and deities, many deities.

Right now he's working on a temple with Goddesses statues. I mentioned to him it's all black & white, but he explained that they're marble statues, so of course, there's no color... Okay... So far there are Artemis, Gaia, Nike and Aphrodite. I just love to see how comfortable he is with his spiritual path, and how natural it is for him to talk about it and to be connected to the gods in such a simple yet powerful way.

My current favorite is this "Goddess Tree" with a bed on its branches covered by a quilt with a Goddess embroidery, under a starry night and full moon - lunar craters and all. He says it can be used by the Goddess herself to sleep, go figure. I love it:



Some time ago he made two favorites of mine: Hestia and Cernunnos. These are colorful and cute, and obviously already on my altar's wall:




I end up with a folder full of his "creations", it's sweet to follow how he goes developing his "style" and how his vision deepens and gets more mature on gods and the thin veil between the worlds. Not to mention the fun of listening to his descriptions, just cute. I highly recommend to those with kids to encourage these moments, being around just to follow the artists's thoughts, lol! :)

A very Happy time!

**Warning: This is one of those loong posts, you know? ;) **

And soooo, you guys who know me over one year knows that I broke up with my ex, and that last year was the first time Lucas spent his January vacations with his dad, seven hours away from me. And you guys remember well how bad it was for me, who has never been away from my son for a single day. Oh well, lessons learned.

To shorten a very long story, Lucas decided by himself that he wouldn't go this vacations. He couldn't explain why, just didn't want to go, and decided spending January at home. Maybe the fact that in the first vacations, once he was put in a cab late night to meet his dad in the neighbour town, 25 minutes away from where he was had something to do with it, although apparently, it didn't leave any "traumas" in his mind and heart. I talked to him about how important it was for his dad and family to have him during this period of time, that they love and miss him, but he was firm in his decision, and I thought it would be wiser not to force him, I wouldn't force him to anyway. I have to confess that I got happy to have him at home, with mixed feelings of relieve and guilty, as if I haven't done enough to make him change his mind. At the same time, I know I did what I could as naturally as possible, and that he's getting old enough to start making his own decisions, feeling safe that his mom is always supporting him when he needs it.

Anywho... We spent New Year Eve in Araruama, at my cousin's beach house, where I've been last year. It was Lucas' first time there, and he simply adored the place. The famous, huge lagoon is breath-taking for adults, imagine for a little boy!





We walked along it several times, and he "fished" many shells on the way (still in the plastic bag to be washed and place in his altar).



He had a blast in the house pool, all proud that I didn't need to hold his hand, just watching by the edge. It was like a little fish, it was hard to convince him to get out of it, to eat or sleep, lol!





.. And of course I had fun too! ;)



The Reveillon night was beautiful, the lagoon beach was crowded but comfortable to be at, not that huge mass like Copacabana's. Lucas enjoyed his first fires!





Here, he's in front of candles lit in the sand for Yemanja, something very traditional at this special night:



Like many others, this man threw flowers on the lagoon for Yemanja, and prayed for a long time after each flower was ont the water... I wonder what he wished, and hope he gets it, if "harm none"...:



At midnight, I wet my fingers on the lagoon, and made a pentagram on his forehead and on mine, asking for protectrion along the new year, and thanking the old one that was leaving us. Then I hugged and kissed my little witch:



As well as grandma, ;)



Lucas made good friends in Araruama, like Nina:




And Julieta:



And the best for him: he went, also for the first time, to an amusement park! One of those itinerant parks was in town, and obviously, I had to take the chance! He had so much fun! Ghost train, bumping cars, rockets, trampolines... He had a bit of everyhting, and it was such a delight to watch him laughing and having so much fun. It's wonderful to see that light in his eyes and around him with such something so simple and irresistible. It was like seeing myself in him when I was his age.






Summoning it up, it was perfect! We spent some wonderful days with awesome friends, and got back home ready for 2011. I hope you all have a great new year as well, with batteries recharged for the new challenges that always come. I have a little list of resolutions that I intend to take to term this year... But this is for another post! ;)

Shame on this shop

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

I just can't understand how some people' minds work. Mrs. B. some time ago posted about this Etsy shop named You Stupid Bitch, and yesterday my friend Micael also posted about it, that sells awful, disgusting cards "celebrating" rape victims, AIDs victims, Down Syndrome kids' parents, and other hard-to-deal-with situations. The worse is that some people buy them! It's impossible to swallow this kind of absurdly cold-hearted people who wants to get money no matter what.
I just signed a petition to make Etsy to remove this shop from their site. It's the least I could do.