Sending good vibes for two lovely bloggers

I just heard that, by coincidence, Janet and Michelle, two great bloggers, got injuried at home almost on the same day and are taking a break from blogging... Life sucks sometimes, but I'm sure you are fighters, time will pass fastly! I really hope you both get well really really soon, girls!
Healing candles will be lit for you with bright blessings wishes! :)

Last post about Mabon, I swear!

Just to update about our altar and the cornucopy made almost entirely by Lucas with wrapping paper, using his own idea. It came out nice, don't you agree? The dried leaves and some coins were put inside to mark the changing season.

These photos were taken just after the ritual - finally! -, the candle is still lit. Lucas thanked the Goddes & the God for our blessings and the love of our family, asked strenght for my sis to make the crossing over as best as possible - and that was sweet from him... - and just before finishing, we had our baked apples with sugar and cinnamon, his choice for the ritualistic "meal".

Wish you all a great Friday, I'm not sure if I'll be able to post tomorrow, because we're traveling to my mom's to spend the weekend. Blessed be!

ABC Wednesday - J

Today at ABC Wednesday is letter J, and this is for Jorge, my husband! I always call him Rodrigo, but his complete name is Jorge Rodrigo, and his parents and some friends only call him Jorge. It's the best J post I could think of, because he IS the best part of my life along with our son. My man, my friend, my lover, my accomplice, my teaser, my silly guy, my composer, guitar-player, my chef - best cook! -, my harbor and my right arm for nine years already. Guess I'm melty today...

Mabon postponed

With my sister being discharged from hospital and going to my mom's place in other city on Thursday (nothing left for the doctors to do, it's way better for her to spend this last phase with family), and my hubby being sick since last Friday, life got incredibly busy and tiresome, and though I did decorated our altar for Mabon, we couldn't celebrate it yet. Simply too tired to anything at night. Lucas is asking for it, and I hate postponing, specially when it's something important for us like this, but, priorities, priorities...

Anyway, on Friday, after being sure Rodrigo was well enough to be left alone for a couple of hours, I managed going with Lucas early in the morning to collect dried leaves on the streets for the cornucopy, and we got a bunch of beautiful ones. He came with the idea of using wrapping paper for the cornucopy itself, and we bought a beautiful sheet of paper decorated with butterflies and brown leaves, everything chosen by him, of course. We filled it with leaves, coins, an apple and a pine, to represent the changing season and prosperity. I still want to make a ritual, even being so late, but it's the intention that matters, right? But it has to be a looong ritual, that's Lucas' request. He really enjoys taking part of sabbaths, and the most things he can do along the celebration, the better. I'll try to make it tonight, let's see!

One last thing: I'm curious about you guys, how it was for those who also celebrate the Wheel of the Year? And for those who don't, how was Easter? I'd love to hear about it... Here Lucas got chocolat eggs, from us, friends and relatives... now our fridge looks like a chocolat warehouse! :)

Mabon for me, Ostara for you

At home we celebrate Mabon, the sabbath to celebrate the first day of Autumn (bye, bye Sun... snif), its Equinox - a balance time for reflexion and resting, and the second harvest of the year. Mabon marks the harvest's conclusion and we give thanks for its abundance. It's also a time for honoring our ancestrals (that's why they say this sabbath is the Thanksgiving for the witches). I surely have many things for thanking, but also to ask, and that's for my sis.

I still don't know what I'll do this year. We'll celebrate it tomorrow, because tonight I have literary translation classes (on my way to get into this market again!), and I'll be home late, after Lucas is asleep, and he would never forgive me for making a sabbath ritual without him LOL! As tomorrow is a holiday - :)) - we'll have plenty of time to prepare something. I'll try to make a handmade cornucopy, filled with dried fruits and leaves, grains, coins... It would be fun! I'll probably prepare some apple pie & apples filled with sugar and cinnamon - Lucas' favorite.

It wouldn't make sense to me to celebrate Ostara now, for it would be the beggining of Spring... But for all of you at the other hemisphere who are so anxious for the sun to come again and the snow to melt down, and for those who don't share my beliefs but happen to share my friendship:

HAPPY OSTARA / HAPPY EASTER!! :)

Bright blessings to everyone!


*Images: Elsie & Pooka pages

I got tagged!

Turtleheart, one of my fav favorite bloggers, just tagged me after I tagged her, LOL

Thanks, girl, my first time being tagged! :) It's about the "I less-than-three your blog". We just have to tag three blogs we like (what a hard task!).

So I took these three blogs:

*Learning Mama: my friend Marcia talks about life since her sweet little daughter was born, and everything that encompasses motherhood. It's a great blog.

*Artopia: I got delighted by Janet's paintings of flower ladies and powerful, sweet girls. She's a gifted artist with a wonderful imagination.

*Foto Seasons: the Greek blogger Kostas posts photos from his beautiful country and teaches about his apiary. Worths visiting it.

And here we go again with a rolling list!

ABC Wednesday - I

Today is letter I. As I just love incenses, speciall sandalwood's, here is my Incense can made by myself from the scratch a long time ago:

Scarecrows are another of my passions, so I took this model from a craft magazine and followed the instructions, once I'm not an expert with it. It came out quite ok, right? :) And there I save all my incense packs used in sabbaths, esbats, or simply to keep the house with their nice scents.

Of course Lucas had to show up and, just for fun, here's my little witch - a little blurred - Inside my wardrobe (he says he's pretending to be Harry Potter waking up in that cabinet, from the first book.):

That's all for the ABC today!

Waiting for the little Bunny

Lucas is out of bed and all active again, thanks gods! I believe that this time he didn't get so bad like before (his "sick-in-bed" time used to last almost one week with high fever and no appettite!) because we've been giving him a small spoon of honey and spraying his throat with propolis twice a day for two month more or less. Probably his immuno system is getting stronger due to this, I hope so!

The fact is that he is excited with the upcoming Easter. Although he knows about the difference between our Ostara and this Easter, he can hardly wait for the Bunny to bring his chocolat eggs, addicted to them like his mom... :) And with all the ads on TV, he's more than anxious - after all, he's got five aunts and uncles, plus grandparents plus friends plus neighbours that always give him chocolats - we have to keep most of them on he fridge or he would voraciously eat everything at once!

Last Satuday, a rainy one, we made our little nest, it's our ritual, so the Easter Bunny will find it ready to the eggs. He just loves it. This year it's a simple plastic bowl that he painted with water-color, filled with bits of blue wool and shredded paper, and the border decorated with illustrations of little bunnies we found researching in kids magazines. It got cool & sweet, just the way he wanted. Now we just have to wait...

Some days before we'll have Mabon as well! I have to think in something simple to do with the altar and the meals and a little ritual, because with my sister's condition I don't have the energy in the evening to do anything too long. Let's see what I come up with this time.

In bed again

So Lucas is again with a sore throat, poor sweetie... I just hate to see him like that, all feverish and weak. No matter how well he is raised up, with healthy food and healthy activities, his throat once in a while makes its trick and knocks him out. Specially at night, his body temperature gets high and high, and we give him medicine, put him under shower to lower it... It's heartbreaking! At least, like all the kids, he recovers really fast, and keeps the good temper (as you can see above by his incredibly smiling face even being 38,5ºC last night, under the protection of his giraffe Duda) so by tomorrow he must be almost healed. I take the time to pamper him the best I can when he's like that! :)

When I got home from work last night, he wanted to "read" Scott Cunningham's The Magik House book, he loves it because of all those illustrations, and this time asked me to color them, saying they were too dull without colors. What the heck, as long as he doesn't touch the letters, that's fine. Actually he gave it a touch of light with his polycromy.

I hope that by lunch time he is feeling better...

Links around the world

I'm getting addicted to the blogosphere's fun-stuff-to-do, semms like there's always someone with great ideas to increase blog traffic and helping us meeting new people! I just stumbled upon this cool idea:

1. Place your link after the list. If you have more than 1 blog, feel free to add them all here!

2. After placing your blog’s address/es, you must tag 5 or more bloggers that is not yet in the list, this is to keep the ball rolling.

3. Then leave a comment at the list creator's blog, so she can update the master list!

The Strategist Notebook, Link Addiction, Ardour of the Heart, When Life Becomes a Book, The Malaysian Life, Yogatta.com, What goes under the sun,Roshidan’s Cyber Station, Sasha says, Arts of Physics, And the legend lives, My View, My Life, A Simple Life, Juliana RW, The Callalily Space, Petra Summer in Blue, Confessions of an Army Wife Bless’ Sanctuary Happy Life, http://bless519.bravejournal.com/, La Place de Cherie, Chez Francine, Le bric a brac de Cherie, Little Peanut, Pea in a Pod, The Creative In Me, Me and Mine, Pinay Mommy, Expressions from the Heart, TeacherJulie, Sweetbites by Bang, Paul, Toni and Lance - Bridging the Distance, Our Growing Family, The Uncensored life of me, My Untamed World, Something Purple, A Detour, Something Purple, Wifespeaks, Changing Lanes Blog District The Chic Shopaholic Gracie de guzman, The Wifey Diaries, Kelli, Sindi, Mark, Mrs. Nespy , My Kids Mom, Bringing up Salamanders,

And I'd like to share this tag to Marcia, Turtleheart, Ocean and Storm.
Let's make it a huge list!

ABC Wednesday - H is for Herbs

Today is the "H" day, so I couldn't resist showing off how Lucas' Herb little garden is growing! We started it with 2 types of basil, camomile, strawberries and mint. Now we have, beside those, one more type of basil, lavender, oregano, thyme and little orange:

Before...

And now...

It's just touching to see how careful and concerned Lucas is about his herbs. He water them every morning before breakfast, move them to shade at lunch time, and already knows all of them by name. As we use a lot of herbs when preparing our meals, he's the one who picks what we need, and no need of telling him in which vase they are, he doens't make a mistake. And is very careful not to hurt the plant by pulling a bunch of leaves, just the necessary to season the recipes. Can't wait to add more to it!

Let's Party!

Thanks to my friend Marcia, when I was visiting her great blog, Learning Mama, I came to know about this blog party hosted by the site 5 Minutes for Mom, and got thrilled by the chance of being part of it! It's amazing how many cool things you can do at the blogosphere that I didn't know - I'm a new blogger, so I'm still on my first steps! Seems like this party rocks! There are great prizes as well to win, but simply getting to know new people fo me is the top point.

My top three would be the following (although all of them are worthy winning!):

*INTL 9 — Pocket Place Mat, by Comfort Joy Designs. They have such beautiful and creative stuff!

*INTL 3 — Ebook Prize Package, by Melissa O. Markham. Her animal ebooks are just cute!

*INTL 7 — 2 E-books, by Elaine Hopper. I scrolled down her blog and I have to read some more, she's cool!

Let me introduce myself: my name is Nydia, a Brazilian wiccan mom living in Rio de Janeiro, with Rodrigo, my husband for 9 years (not officially, but in our hearts), our sweet four-and-half-year-old son Lucas, and our crazy cat Baruck. I work as a full-time bilingual secretary, but thank gods I live 5 minutes from my place, so I can have lunch with my little family and take my son to school - exactly beside my woking place. I miss those messy guys, so all the chances are to be with them... :)

I love reading anywhere I am, specially when waiting in bank lines... :p, listening to the good & old rock'n'roll, walking through Nature and going to the beach with my pack, and can't wait to make new friends... I love meeting new people from all over the world, so feel free to get in here, take a chair and chat! Be welcome!

Of cats and boys

They have this weird relationship: Baruck, our eight-year-old cat, seems to tolerate Lucas' clumsy affection, sometimes trying to hide himself from my little boy, but when Lucas gets hurt (which often happens, being the restless little dude he is), he is the first one to reach him to comfort, rubbing himself at Lucas' leg as if to say, "hey it was so bad! I'm here!", and Lucas almost instantly calms down. When sick, Lucas knows Baruck is under his little bed and this also calms him down at those terrible night fevers. Often I get up in the middle of the night and find them sleeping together in Lucas' bed, and I have to shoo the poor thing to his own place, once Lucas' dad is a bit allergic and I don't want him to develop the same problem, so at least when sleeping he needs to be away from him.

When we're celebrating sabbaths, Baruck stands under the altar until we're finished and then waits to get his portion of the goodies I prepared for the ritualistic meal, always from Lucas' hands.

Sometimes I feel as if this kitty is Lucas' guardian, for he follows my son wherever he goes, on his typical superior feline way, not showing how much he cares unless when strictly necessary (those who own cats know what I mean...). I feel I'm detached from this connection and respect it. Who am I to be an intruder?! :)

The ABC Wednesday

So today I joined this fun collective weekly posting. Not a big deal, just for fun, and gods know how I need something fun to do these days! So every Wednesday (except for today) my couple of readers - LOL - will have to stand a weekly photo with the ABC. They're at the letter G, so here's a photo of Lucas showing off that he's Growing up on his wall height chart (I can hardly believe that he was a tiny baby not long ago!):

Pagan clothes

I just love surfing at Internet looking for different stuff. In one of these wanderings I've found this sweet site called Little Pagans, so cute!, with little t-shirts in pagan themes. They have all sizes and colors, including grown-ups tees, for those who want to match their kids (very tempting...), with good prices. I loved the tye-dyes and the little green man image. So hard to find something really cool available, there are many extravagant clothes or patterns, and it's not everyday the kids want to wear like Hary Potter... So this is a great option! :)

In the little things

I've been through the hardest time in my life, as I posted earlier, with my older sister's near death. She's got a few days left, and it's extremely hard to deal with this pain, for all of us in the family who love her so much. Theorically I know it's part of the cyle of life, that every soul has a specific time in Earth. But goes tell my heart about it. It's broken, bleeding, crying, shouting in pain.

Lucas knows about it, the little I tell him when he asks me his piercing questions, but I try not to go too deep, he' only four and half. What I mean here is that is absolutely amazing how comforting a child is, without noticing. One of the best things these days is when I'm with my son (f course, my hubby is my rock, but this isn't the point). When I get home after a day of hard working, and having worsening news coming every hour about my sister's condition, it's a blessing to see his smile and to feel his tiny arms holding me tight.

Then he comes and say that he could see the moon in the late afternoon, and that it was waning. Just afterwards, he pushes my hand to show me the surprise he and his daddy made for me: new vases with new herbs at our little garden. The mint is on a larger pot, there's the scent of watered leaves in the air, and I feel my heart slow down a bit.

Of course, he wants to play hide-and-seek in our little apartment, where all hiding places are already known, but how fun it is for him trying to find me again or to hide from me under the bed, again! He laughs in pure joy. And I laugh, too.

These are little things that make me go ahead everyday, even now that clouds are as if permanently over my heart.

*Image: Lucas last Ostara, at the little wood next our home we go almost every day.