Travel Log 10-1: IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S FINALLY HERE!!!!!

As you can tell I'm excited that it's the first day of October, lol. SO many things  this month and I love it.It's even starting off on the right foot with thunder and lightning storms all day!
      With the merchandising frrenzies going the rest of the year, this is the one month that is really dedicated to fall. I love all the Halloween stuff that is out in the stores. I love the anticipation of Halloween and all the fun that comes in that with that. To quote the Pumpkin Song -"life's no fun without a good scare". That's what this month allows us to do. It allows us to revel in the dark. To let our dark sides free to revel, whether your dark side is a vampire or a fairy princess (hey- that much pink in one place is pretty scary). The monsters come out and broomstick rides aren't just fun they are mandatory.
     Considering how candy coated most of the year is this one month for horror and magik to reign is extra sweet to me. This is the time of year when I feel like a kid let loose in a candy emporium and no adults to supervise *insert manic grin*. When I was growing up my parents were not big on social interaction. I hardly ever got to hang out with kids my age, and pretty much lived inside my own head with my imagination. Halloween was the one time of year I got to let my imagination out of my head and play with it in real life without anyone looking at me like I was even weirder than they thought.
     So it's no wonder that this time of year imparts a sense of absolute childlike wonder in me. I feel comfortable and free and love every minute of it. So now the count down begins to the big day, but I'm going to have fun all month long and enjoy the journey that is October!
     And in that spirit I'll be starting my month long project tomorrow! Last year I did a serial writing project here on the blog and this year I'm going to do the same with a little twist! I'll be posting a choose your own adventure story for the first time this month and all of you will get to choose how the story is going to go! That will be interspersed with some how-to's on my favorite Halloween type crafts(with pics finally if everything goes right=). So it shall be a busy month for me and hopefully an entertaining one for you!

Travel Log 9-26: Of Lemon's and Things

 I have discovered the nectar of the gods. It is not up on Mt. Olympus as once believed, nor is it hidden in some fairy raft. It was, in fact, hiding in plain sight in a recipe listed by the wonderful, genius woman who runs the Down To Earth Blog. I made some this afternoon and had to immediately make toast just to have something to eat it on. If you get the chance try this. It is really not a lot of work for the 2 pint jars of sunshine yellow heaven that it produces. If you can't tell I like it, lol.
     Also on a more personal note I had an interesting experience last night in the spiritual realm that was, well, a first for me. i was doing a meditation session with my hubby and I let my mind drift into the directions that my life has taken lately. For once I had what I would call a full blown subconscious visualization, with list of complaints and demands for promises to do better. I'll probably give you all a detailed account later, but for now I was just wondering if things like that were common with other's practices?

Travel Log 9-22: Merry Mabon!!!!

I hope everyone is having a falltastic day!
   This is my absolute favorite time of year and as soon as I find a country that has fall all year round, that's where I'm moving, lol. But that aside we didn't do much today, as it was a school day, but we had a great dinner filled with foods we picked or made from scratch when we would normally have bought it. We put some of our home made apple butter on rolls we made, and made salsbury steak from scratch (a recipe I stole from Jazz at Octoberfarm =) and then finished it with home made pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie.
    This year we are giving a lot of thanks for the upswings our fortunes have taken, as well as all of the challenges we have faced and will face. Without challenges we can't grow, and if we can't grow what's the point?
     The past two days have been grey from most of the day, and there has definitely been a bite in the air. I almost thought the weather being so mild most of the year was an ominous sign of summer ravaging through autumn and winter, but instead it seems that at least this year we here in the desert of southern California are going to get all 4 seasons this year! That is something to definitely give thanks for!

Travel Log 9-20: A Very Squishie Day

Not only was today my tiny little squishie man's 2cd birthday, but today was also the day he decided to take his biggest stride into potty training yet- he peed in the big potty!
     Little man has been doing it for quite some time, but so far Squishie has been content to sit on the "little" potty and  try to go. But not today! Today he decided to earn his big boy training pants!
     It was kinda funny actually. He is not tall enough to go in the large potty so he started off doing some pretty impressive flat lifts of his body with his little hands on the rim of the bowl( which was horrifying from a mommy standpoint!) and lifting his entire body in an effort to get the weapon to its assigned target. This did not work very well, and once mommy had caught her breath from laughing the little potty was disassembled and turned into a step stool. He then proceeded to step proudly up and, now that he was tall enough, to begin to scream at me because he couldn't get it going right away. Then when he did and it was right on target we did  a lot of screaming and dancing in the bathroom!
     Which totally rocked because one of his presents was his first set of big boy pull ups (which of course got upstaged by the bizillion hot wheels his dad picked out for him, lol).
     The little guy went off to sleep like an angel, and tonight mommy and daddy shall go to sleep with visions of a diaper free future dancing in our heads!

Travel Log 9-15: Burnt Sauce, Picked Apples, and Pumpkin bread

 So this weekend my dear hubby and I went out to the apple orchards and took the munchkin hoard with us. Fortunately the buildings are still standing and only minor amounts of mayhem wreaked upon the unsuspecting populace. However a whole bunch of apples were sacrificed in a gratuitous and horrifying manner to allow us to bring home, along with our 10 lbs of child labor provided apples, 2 gallons of apple cider!
     So far the plans are to make a bunch of apple butter, but the apples are disappearing qucikly! We also baked a passle (what the heck is a passle anyway??) of pumpkin bread which has been devoured (I swear someone other than me ate some- a little). I was actually so filled with domesticated confidence and power I decided to make this weeks batch of spaghetti sauce all by myself, right after the older kids got home from school. Foolish you say? Bah!  I laugh at distractions and 3 year old trips to the potty!
      Which is probably how the sauce got burned, lol.

Travel Log 9-8: And the New Winner is......

Rue!!!! So shoot me a line and I'll get them shipped out to you!
     In other news it's been a really good week. My best friend is coming to visit for halloween, the weather has been awesome and overcast/rainy, Hubby is doing great at his new job, and the munchkins are starting to get used to me being home with them. Despite that fact that only about an eighth of my brain functions before 10am I've hammered out a routine for getting the older kids to school and the younger ones up and fed, so I feel like a domestic champion!
    On top of that, this weekend I used the mad money I had saved up and bought myself some books I have been dying to have off of Amazon. And they got here today!!!
    I know a lot of people look down on llewellyn's, but I got their witch's calendar for this year and next year, as well as their spell-a-day almanac and can say that so far I really like them. The almanacs are an interesting blend of multiple personalities, paths, and insight and I like the variety. The calendar's, while not heavy on my preferred style of artwork, do have all the high points that I always forget to mark on mundane calendars already filled in for me.
      So yeah, things are on a definite upswing and I am thoroughly basking in it!

Travel Log 9-7: Oh What a Tangled Web.....

It has been a bit like a hurricane over here in this little corner of astral space. A lot of changes have been happening so quickly it has pretty much knocked me off of the web for a while.
  Change number one is that my hubby has finally landed what appears to be the perfect engineering position! It pays well above our expectations and is a solid, stable, family- owned and operated company where he can stay for quite some time.
   Change number 2 is that I am now a stay at home mom again. While there was some massive negativity from the management when I left the dealership I worked for (in fact they insisted on firing me instead of accepting my resignation), I am really happy to be home with my munchkins full time again. But the down side to be home and not bone tired, dragging myself to the bed, is that I got a chance to take a good look at the level of housekeeping my dear hubby had been maintaining. Yeeeeeaaaaah. I almost screamed. I gagged when scrubbing out the sink. I swear there was the scree scree scree of psycho music in the back ground when I got to the bathroom. It was pure horror....
    And now it's all clean and shiny. Some of the fixtures have been replaced because they were lost causes in my book. And now I am starting my domestic bliss, and the joys of potty training for the squishie man.

Oh and the winner of my giveaway hasn't responded, so I"ll be drawing another name out of the hat tonight!