Travel Log 5-18: It's Too Quiet In Here...

I have the house to myself for a few hours this afternoon. The 2 older kids are at school, and my parents are having a farm adventure in the next city over with the 2 little guys. It is eerily quiet in the house now and I have no idea if I want to go sliding through the house in my socks or go take a nap (thus is the proof that I am, in fact, getting old, lol).
    But since I've been dealing with a nasty start of summer cold I've fallen behind on doing nifty stuff on here so I figure I'll  get some of this stuff taken care of.
   First things first- If you haven't had your palm read by Kijjet over at Dear Goddess Bless Me then you are missing out. She is doing readings for free out of the goodness of her heart, and let me tell you she is good.  She even pinpointed years that specific things happened that have effected me my whole life (often I think that my whole life is almost purely about these things). So thank you Kijjet, it was a truly awesome experience that it's taken me a few weeks to truly digest.
     And the next order of business is an award that The charming Magaly over at Pagan Culture gave me!

  Now normally I deposit these lovelies into my awards cauldron over to the right and thank the person, but since it's Magaly I'll give this one a shot, but with her rules =)

   3 Random Things About Me.......at Disneyland

1). One of my fondest wishes in life is to go to Club 33. I glare green fire at anyone who already has, and will invade a small country for anyone who can get me in.
2). One of the best parts of the day is sitting in lines for the rides and make up stories about the people in other parts of the lines. When I was younger my friends and I would have a competition for the best story matched to most unusual person (Bat's day was awesome for that- nothing better than hundreds of goths at Disneyland to make great stories). Winner had to buy dinner at the Blue Bayou

3). When I was growing up I was terrified of roller coasters. I shook and cried with fear of anything that went up and down, or even took me off the ground for any appreciable amount of time (except for some reason Space Mountain- loved that ride until the one time I was on it and they turned on the lights, couldn't go on it for about 5 years after that). My father was dead set that he was going to get me over this fear, so every time we went to Disneyland he would drag me onto Big Thunder Mountain. I would sit in my seat next to him and demand that he wrap his arm around me, and then he would go into his routine of trying to show me that it was silly to be afraid of it. His favorite part would be to point out one of the animatronic animals they have on the ride. It's this goat at the top of one of the hills that you go slowly up. It sits there rocking back and forth on a boulder with a stick of dynamite in it's mouth, baaing at people as they crest the hill and then drop. He loved to tell me that I was so silly the goat was laughing at me. I sometimes still dream about sneaking a baseball bat onto that ride and taking out that goat...

And now the 10 other people I'm going to tip the nod (or wink depending on what you do with it, lol) to make this a lucky 13...

1.A Witch In The Tea Closet
2.Broom With A View
3.Can We Have A New Witch Ours Melted
4.Dark Mother Goddess
5.Dear Goddess: Bless Me
6.Lost in the Trailer Park
7.Riding on a Broomstick
8.Step Away From The Cauldron..
9.Very Nearly Hippy
10.Wanna-B-Witch

There you guys go, Have fun! I'm off to do some writing while the midgets are out.

Travel Log 5-12: Oh the Strange, Strange World Inside My Head..

Lately I've spent a lot more time inside there, and can I say I think I might have some serious mental issues....
     Since I've instituted the Get Me Off My Butt And Finish A Novel plan (also known as GMOMBaFN or BaF for short) I've been looking at all the work that I have started and stopped in the past 4 years. A total of 9 different novels with completely separate premises have been started and abandoned by me. 9. And the amount of blood and mayhem involved is outrageous (did I mention that my favorite genre's are murder mystery and fantasy?).
     Which leads me to my worry over my mental health. If these characters that I am killing off willy nilly are from my subconscious, am I really gruesomely killing myself? Or do I just have some seriously screwed up fantasies?
     Either way I can say that it feels really darn good to actually look at doing this and knowing deep down, by hook or by crook, I am going to finish at least one of these.
      Because I have a tendency to start and stall I've picked 5 to hop back and forth so that my momentum doesn't stall with a block on one. I know that sound insane, but hey, I'm pretty sure that no one I know is going to say that's anything new.
      However a big difference is that one of the projects is going to be non fiction. I'm seriously considering putting a proposal for a book based on my Thrifty Witch crafts, so I might be using you guys as guinea pigs constructive critics to see if my premise makes sense to anyone else but me.
   See something I've found while coming up with and doing these crafts is, to me, it's not just about saving the money by doing these things myself and cheaply. It's a bit deeper than that. It's about reclaiming something that is mundane and discarded by someone and turning it into something, yet again to me, holy. It's about finding pieces that are just right, and using my intuition to find them. And it's also about cleansing these things and filling them with my purpose and self.
    So yeah I may be showing you guys some of my work on that to see if others who have similar spirituality might get what I'm talking about or if it is in fact time for that tin foil hat.
   

Travel Log 5-9: I Ain't Ded

Sorry for the radio silence over the past week but I've been trying desperately to focus on my writing projects. I know I know, I'm constantly trying to actually work on those. But finally I think the hubby and I have come to an 'arrangement' that might just work. See normally I try and set up a regime of writing time that invariably gets broken into by every other member of my family. Constantly. Which (besides my near crippling fear of failing) is one of the main reason I keep giving up on finishing any of them. After about the 12th interruption to oversee something that the other adult in the house could handle I pretty much throw in the towel (sometimes aimed at my husband and wrapped around a brick...). He doesn't mean to, but he just doesn't understand that I can't interrupt my thoughts and then pick right back up after whatever the interruption was about (hence he constantly tries to hold conversations with me while I'm reading).
    So we've found a solution and worked our way around to figuring out how to make that solution work. 3-4 days a week as soon as he gets home I'm going to be heading out of the house to the library, park, or local starbucks (depending on if my son's laptop that I'm going to be borrowing needs a charge, lol) and writing until I can't write anymore. No interruptions and no breaks in my concentration, just 4-5 hours of writing and time inside my own head. Not as great as having all the time in the world to devote to it, but hopefully having a finite amount of time to do it will help focus me on the task at hand.
     In other news Mother's Day was fun. Got 2 e-books and some time to read not to mention breakfast burrito's in bed.
     I'm debating about actually starting another blog that focuses on my writing and keeping me motivated, but then I look at how long it took me to actually get another post up here and I'm not sure how that will work out.  
      We'll see. I hope everyone else had a great weekend!

Travel Log 5-1: The Thrifty Witch Rides Again!

First things first- Blessed Beltain everyone! I plan on spending the day baking and then end it with a nice little bonfire in the back yard. I hope all you lovelies out there are getting your May Day on in your own style!
   Second things Second I will be doing the drawing for my Witches In Fiction Sir Terry Pratchett Signed Discworld novel Giveaway tonight, so get those entries in!
     Do any of you remember my witchy broom tutorial? Well it's been featured in a brand spankin' new e-zine called The Witches Hour. I am so excited I squeed. Check out this month's issue with my little craft inside here (it's under The Thrifty Witch).
    And now on to current business, lol. In my quest to create a complete set of witchy tools as inexpensively as possible I've created my own Book of Shadows (henceforth known as a BoS since I can be lazy on occasion). I've actually made these for about a year now and I use them for all sorts of stuff, so it's yet again one of those versatile crafts I love.

Personalized Book of Shadows How To

What you'll need:

 1. A 3 ring binder (I got a few of these for $0.99 right after back to school this past year)
 2. Fabric you like (The one I used was actually scrap from my Halloween costume)
 3. Cardboard as big as the binder or bigger ( you will need 2 pieces so make sure to have enough cardboard- I've used cereal boxes before so it doesn't have to be thick)
 4. A hot glue gun and glue sticks.
 5. Scissors

Step 1: 
     Lay out your fabric and open your binder, open, on top.

Now is a perfect time to check that your pattern is going the correct direction. As you'll note I did not do this, lol. Go ahead and cut your fabric leaving about 2 inches all the way around the binder. You will need 2 of these pieces so doubling your fabric before you cut saves a little time.

Step 2:

Take your first fabric cut out and lay your binder back on top of it (make sure your binder is on the wrong side of the fabric if you have one sided fabric) and glue one side of your fabric down.

 

Repeat on the opposite side.

Step 3:

  Now fold the bottom edge of the fabric up, and then fold the corner again to make a triangle.

Then glue it into place along bottom edge of the binder, and repeat for the other corner and glue along the straight edge as well.

Repeat this for the other edge. Now it's time to work on the inserts.

Step 4:
Grab one of those cardboard pieces and position it on one side of the binder. Make sure to put the edge where the crease in the binder is, not right up against the rings. Mark where you need to trim it and snip snip.

Make sure you line up the cardboard so that it covers the edges of the fabric you already glued so it makes a nice finish later. You can go ahead and repeat this on the other side now if you want, just make sure you mark the sides so that you know which one goes where (I have so forgotten to do this before and it can be a pain in the rear).

Step 5:
Now we're going to need that second piece of fabric. Go ahead and lay it down wrong side up and lay your cut cardboard on it. This first piece you're actually going to cut longer than the piece of cardboard on the side that will be next to the rings so you want to make sure that you cut that edge long enough to go about 4 to 5 inches past the rings.

Step 6:

Glue down the three edges that are not going to be next to the rings just like you did for the binder. Go ahead and glue the edges of the fabric down on the long piece like you would a hem, so that no rough edges are showing.

 Oh hi mom..what ya doing?

 Can I help?

What's this?

Now is about when you move the cat away from the hot things he's about to play with and get on with the project.                                                                                                            

Step 7:

 Now flip your cardboard piece over and position it over the binder where it is going to go. You'll have that extra fabric laying across the rings.

 This is the part that can be kind of tricky. You're going to have to cut little holes and slide each side of the rings through the fabric so that the fabric covers the metal and lays flat along the other side.

This really is the trickiest part, and if you mess up you can always add some scrap fabric to the back and do it again. Once you have that done, go ahead and glue all the edges down all the way across.

Step 8:
Time to wrap that other piece of cardboard in some fabric. Now unlike the one we just did, this one is going to be fitted all the way around on all the sides, no extra fabric, so go ahead and glue all those sides down.

Step 9:
Now go ahead flip that over and glue it into place, covering up the excess from the other side as well as the rough edges from the covering of the binder itself.

And Viola!

   You can leave the outside plain , or decorate it any way that your imagination fancies!

I decorated mine with  some silver ribbon and a salvaged heart locket (that I can keep messages or wishes folded up inside) and pentacle pendant. As you can see, I didn't pay attention to the pattern on the outside, lol.
   All together this cost me about $5.00 and I can use this a ton of different ways, but it definitely gives me a unique and very personal BoS.
   I hope you all enjoyed it and I have some definite ideas for my next little project!

Travel Log 4-30: Witches in Fiction

First off lets get the business out of the way- GO SIGN UP FOR MY TERRY PRATCHETT SIGNED BOOK GIVEAWAY!!!!!!! you only have a couple more days but there is more than enough time to get in on that little bit of sweetness (and I may very well cry sending this off to it's new keeper..).

     And now for my actual post:

    Magaly over at Pagan Culture is doing her wonderful Witches in Fiction Blog Party, and ever since I heard about it I've been working on an idea that has been revolving around in my head.
    Lately the Pagan community at large (henceforth for purposes of this post knows as the royal 'we') have been kinda hopping from one brewhaha to another. We seem to be on a bit of a bitching fest. As it appears from as pseudo outsiders view( mine, lol, Other than your lovely blogs I don't hit up the message boards or forums so I seem to miss all the storms when they are happening and get the gist from you lovelies later when the crazy storms have cleared) it seems that we are constantly bitching about something, and it's usually something trivial. We're either bitching at someone for an inappropriate ad (I am sure WE ALL remember that debacle) or bitching at each other for not being exactly what we think we should be. Kallan has an excellent post on this here that I would love to refer people to.
    But what all this really made me think about was how far we've come. As much as we worry about our PR, and not being considered the lunatic fringe I think a lot of us have missed the really big cultural signs that we aren't the Wicked Witches anymore. To me, one of the biggest cultural thermometers for how something is accepted or viewed is it's fiction. Now a days that means movies, books, TV, internet fan fiction, comic books, etc.
    Fiction is like an over view of a societies collective brain. It's constantly changing and evolving to reflect not only the people who create it, but the people who consume it as well.
    So look at how often witches are cropping up in fiction these days. How many movies have women of power in them? How many books and comic books have witches as characters? And not just how many references we get in modern fiction , but look at the tone and tenor of those characters.
    They are human (well some of them are super human, but their psyche and emotional lives are usually VERY human). They are people dealing with problems and happen to have an extra facet to their lives that can help, or in a lot of cases complicate, said life. Even when we are depicted as villains these days it's still not as vilifying as it once was.
     And to me that is the biggest victory. That a witchy villain is not a villain because she is a witch, but because she is a person who made bad choices who happens to be a witch.
   Ladies and Gentlemen we, the Witches, are now cool. We're right up there with the sparkly vampires on the list of trends. And after about 3 decades of this I would have to say I think we are here to stay.
   And personally, while I adore Granny, the witch that I can point to and say did a large part of the work to make us people instead of monsters to scare kids is Samantha Stevens. She was a twitchy witch who rode her broom into peoples living rooms and LIVED. She wasn't in a fairytale, she was in a regular house that even had shag carpeting (shudder). She was every housewife, she just happened  to have powers too.  She was the change in the wind that started things blowing in our direction. And then real life witches took up where she left off and won us our acknowledgments and rights.
    Now we're everywhere and, as far as the fiction goes, we're fabulous. We wash dishes and talk to fairies. We kick butt and take names and still have to go clean the cat box. We are more than one dimensional characters scaring children and stealing dogs.
    So embrace fiction my lovelies! Love it ! Revel in it! For truthfully it has helped to make us real.

Travel Log 4-29:Witches in Fictoin #7(or my Granny-isms)

Hello all! This will be my last Granny-ism for Magaly's wonderful blog party. Since the Hubby lives (check out my last post to see how close a call THAT was) we're going to spend the weekend thrifting and crafting and I hope (crosses fingers that it works) a couple new tutorials on some thrifty ritual supplies- I still hope to outfit a complete altar. See I haven't forgot that, lol.
    So here we go-
Magaly over at Pagan Culture is being kind enough to host this little get together, so here is my contribution to Witches in Fiction.
   My Favorite Non Alive Person (or A Tribute to Granny Weatherwax).

Granny Weatherwax ( captured here by Paul Kidby the official Discworld portraitist check out his site at http://www.paulkidby.net)

Here's my Granny wisdom for the day:
    From Witches Abroad:
    " I'm going to give you the hidin' our mam never gave you, Lily Weatherwax. Not with magic, not with headology, not with a stick like our Dad had, aye, and used a fair bit as I recall- but with skin. And not because you was the bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop'ly, after you went I had to be the good one."

This is honestly my favorite Granny quote. She is taking on her sister who had become a rogue fairy godmother to a kingdom that is very similar to New Orleans, right down to the voodoo. I think it pretty much sums up Granny to a tee.

Travel Log 4-26: I Could Be In Jail Right Now....

   Sorry I took a bit of a break from blogging the past few days because the holiday was getting hectic.I'll get back to my regular schedule 9not that I really have one of those, lol) in the next few days. Oh and if you haven't entered my Witches in Fiction Giveaway of Sir Terry's signed work then hop over here.
    Now on to my title. I don't normally use my good 'ol blog here to vent about my life, but today is going to be an exception.
   Let me start off by saying I love my husband. I do. If I didn't he would have been dead long ago.
   Here's a little background on the past 2 days. Yesterday BOTH the little guys had doctor's appointments for checkups and shots (I waited until they were MUCH older for those so I got a lot of fun looks from the doctor and nurses). Now while their doctor is really good, she is also really slow. So we didn't get out of our 9:3o am appointment until about noon. Then we had to run to the pharmacy for some meds for squishie (who apparently had amazingly swollen tonsils) and treats for getting the big 'ol needles. When we got home everything was normal until around the time my Hubby got home from work when squishie started to spike a fever. Not a bad one, but one that was pretty much wiping his little butt out. Hubby made dinner while the squishmeister fell asleep on me on the couch holding an otter pop (they were always my favorite when I was little and wasn't feeling well). And knowing what the rest of the night was going to be like I headed to bed right after him, with the hubby telling me not to worry about everything else.
      Then for the rest of the night it was up every few hours for more fever reducer until it finally broke about  4am. Now here is where I have to tell you that I am not a deep sleeper, nor is it easy for me to get back to sleep once I'm awoken. So with that last wake up over, I settled in and started to go to sleep for the few hours until I had to get the kids up for school.
      Then I get woken up at 5am (an hour later) with "I need you to get the hell out of bed and find my keys because your desk is a mess."
     You can imagine how pleased I was with this.
     Now I am no  Donna Reid by any means. When my friends found out I was going to be a stay at home mom most of them laughed so hard they cried. When I was growing up I never even had to make my own bed, so keeping a household in order is not easy. Which is why the Hubby and I were supposed to have a system where we each had chores and kept the house clean together. While this was the plan, it in fact has not been the practice. I have taken care of my area (the kitchen and dining room which includes dishes everyday). His area was the living room included folding laundry. Now guess how often this gets done by him? If you said every couple of months you would be right.
    Normally I can't live with it long enough for him to actually get around to doing it so I just end up doing it and having a 'talk' with him about it. But recently I have tried to be stronger, and actually not do anything about it until he actually gets off his butt and does something with it because as long as I keep doing it for him he's just not going to do it.
     And that brings us to today, after finding his keys behind a paper (where he tossed them last night btw) and going back to bed for another couple of hours and getting the kids up, I walk into my kitchen.
    It is a gods awful mess. Dishes piled up in the sink, a dirty skillet still on the stove, and counter tops with gods above knows what all over them (it's sticky...and yellowish...ick). Then I walk into the living room and there are crumbs of some sort ALL OVER  THE FLOOR. And all the laundry I did yesterday piled on a chair and, for some reason, tossed over the floor. The trash has not been taken out and the kids toy room looks as if every toy they own is now in the middle of the floor.
     If he had been here I would have taken that dirty skillet and whacked him upside the head with it. Apparently his idea of  "taking care of everything" would be letting me handle it the next day. And honestly under normal circumstances I would leave a large portion of this alone and make him clean it up when he gets home but today I happen to have to take the Monkeyman to his cardiologist so my MOTHER is coming over to watch the other 3 while I'm at the doctor.
   So if I don't clean it all up this morning in a freakin' hurry my mother is going to come in and think we live in a pigsty. That and she is handicapped and uses a walker and int he current state she wouldn't be able to get far past the front door, let alone chase the kids around the house.
   And The Grand Poobah of Getting His Butt Kicked By His Wife calls me this morning to have me console him in the fact that his boss yelled at him. So I do the wifely thing and swallow the screaming I want to do at him, and give him support and there there's. Then he tells me he's sorry about his morning, and when I tell him I don't want to talk about this morning yet because I don't want to get him more upset at work, he gets pissed at ME!
   AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!
   I need to go light a  candle....