17 years

We celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary yesterday...lovely lovely lovely day.

Hmmmn

This is the tree they had to cut down from our Garden.They cut it down while I was ill weekend before last...I'm not sure if I'm pleased to have been spared watching it happen, or sad not to have said goodbye.

Just Hmmmn

and there she was gone

Just realising that the light in my workspace is only suitable for sketching...I need to work downstairs for anything finer...especially working with colour...still gives me time for tapping on the laptop.

Today isn't officially a work time for me, but i've really not been getting much done recently...to busy getting involved in more physical aspects of life...as for blogging! I currently want it all to appear here so I can read it and enjoy it, but I have less time for writing it!

When I get on-line I want to be learning and reading and exploring, but I miss this too. I've been hopewitching as well, which means less writing here..

I think I'm off to write somewhere else now...about home, for Beth at The Vitual Tea House.

Big kiss

Home

one of my mum's pics from home

There is something caught within beauty, as though it is trapped there, or I am trapped here, away from it. It silently sings and moves me with it's stillness. The second I witness that something, I am home.

At the moment I am lucky, love and the summer have me open, home is everywhere and I can welcome people in constantly. Generosity comes from being home, authentic action comes from being home, and unconditional love springs abundantly from this space, clearing path after path to doors which had been blocked to me before. When I am home, the world is an easier place to live in, and sharing it with others is a doddle.


I am not home when things are too rushed, when I act as though there are more important things to attend to than my sense of peace and connectedness, when I allow myself to become one of my roles instead of fulfilling a role.


Both of these states are easily slipped into, but coming home takes a little mindful focus and it's preciousness is balanced by the seeming un-importance of focusing in a dutiful life.


It's a good thing life is so beautiful.

Pink

Spending 48hrs in bed at the weekend seems to have done me an amazing amount of good!

I feel as though I've been reset. Quite sublimely reset.

And I've been given a little question to ask myself, It's a simple little question, but the answers I have been finding in myself are subtle, complete and freeing.

2008 is a gracious year.

Big kisses and a Universe of Love.

Wow! And then a week is gone.

He he!

It's Monday again! I had a couple of almost chances to post during the week, even got pics ready...then here I am it's Monday again! I shall miss the delight of coming back and delving throught this last week. Blogs can truly be a source of treasure and self-enlightenment when kept regularly. I still go back to my hopewitch blog.

What can I remember in brief?...

Have to work backwards

Sick as a dog most of the weekend
Spoke to the Gorgeous Goddess Lisa.

Mother and baby group Thursday AND Friday...so sitting around chatting with friends.

Weds night out to another most wonderful friends, walked both in the sunset and the dark, always good to acheive either.

Tuesday mother and toddler group...that's more run around and talk to toddlers, but they're friends too.

Monday...hmmm
I'm sure we squeezed friends in there, oh and a super early visit to my sister! luxury to have her so near by, so scrumptious week all round.

After a thoroughly ill weekend, I finally came on-line last night to find the picture above...it's the first of my pictures I've seen in a proper frame. I cannot describe how incredibly happy it made me! How stylish too! I keep going back to look at it because it seems a bit unreal and too lovely to be true.


Drawing has been one of my little dreams my whole life, bursting out in odd places, but essentially for my own joy and pleasure until now...there is something in being able to give pictures to others that is an amazing connection to the simple joy of giving that we /I had in childhood...drawings are a child gift.


Big kiss.


Life is like this often.

Mostly

Mostly, If you find me on here I should actually be off doing something else...


My house needs tidying, my paperwork needs doing, I've drawings to work on, and even people I could be having coffee with...never mind the pile of laundry waiting for me.


Of course mostly I have my littlest to keep me from those things, but he's actually not here at the moment, there's not another soul in the house...so I'm sat eating pick-your-own strawberries and talking to no-one on the internet...oh and listening to Lou Rhodes.


If only the whole world had my problems.


I hope that Love opens you more each day.


Big kisses

Helena's cards

TRUTH
Speak your truth. Is there anyone on this earth that is really worth betraying your own honesty with yourself for? Regardless of whether you are trying to save another's feelings or avoiding a conflict, a mistruth is a mistruth and you will have to suffer the betrayal of yourself if you do not have the courage to liberate all involved. The truth will always, ultimately set you free..

TRANSMUTATION
You are in a great time of change. You are shedding the out dated aspects of yourself for a greater perception of who you are as a person. Allow the healing to help you to come to higher understanding of your sense of self.

COMMUNICATION
People's perceptions of you are very much influenced by what you say to them. Make sure that you are communicating clearly and openly. Let people know where you are really at and there will be little need for conflict.

REBIRTH
This card signifies an emotional rebirth through the learning of major life lessons. Family issues that you have carried all your life are coming to the surface….soon you will be free.

REGENERATION
Your spiritual belief systems are breaking down right now so that they can be replaced with higher understanding and experience. This may be a shakey time for you, but in accepting this knowledge you can rest assured that just through this bit there is a whole new understanding of life as you know it.

Card for the day

Fairuza's Blue 4

I keep popping back to Fairuza Balk's new art website http://www.armedlovemilitia.com/
because I find some sacred peaceful space in her pictures, that is at the sametime somehow disquieting.


I feel as though, if I'm lucky, some secret will become clear to me while I gaze at them.


That is a good sensation to have.


This one, Blue 4, and this one, I love You Today, and Roots are my current favourites.

Blessed to know Leonie

My soul is open to you

You are the deep blessing that is

Life loved and lived joyously

Every gift opens me

With my heart singing so loud

That silence becomes flight,

Life becomes grace

And all light

The obvious secret.

You can meet Leonie too! Goddess Leonie.

Hmmmn

Life is strange.

Wonderful, especially when it's peaceful, and strange.

Or is it that I'm strange?...no, and I definitely considered it, it's just that the way some things in life work, including me, are strange.

Perhaps it's only when we first notice things that they seem strange though. If I read enough books, studied and watched life perhaps gradually fewer and fewer things would seem strange...but then, wouldn't that be a bit strange?

OK, I'm not stoned, but I do seem to be having difficulty being fully present today, with a slightly uneasy sensation that it may not be such a good thing.

I'm off to either clean/eat or meditate.

Big kiss...I could do with a hug actually...so Big Hugs to you too.

Today!

Today I made it to art class so I finally worked on The Perfect Bum (as named by one of my dads) The original image is out of Psychologies magazine last month?...Of course I was actually trying to draw her hands. I still have to work on it but at least it has progressed.

The guy above was a forty five minute sketch I did whilst watching (or pausing) an amazing video of Jason Baalman's.


All of Jason's videos are amazing, I think he is quite well known in America, and at the rate I've been introducing him to people here hopefully he'll be well known in the UK very soon too.
My mum Ed and I sat and watched several of his speed portrait vids when they were visiting recently...and I've been making my way through his video lessons on how to draw portraits.


All his stuff comes across intelligent, funny, clear, generous and inspiring. What more could anyone ask from a teacher?...Oh yeah, practical, understandable, repeatable skills...they are all there too.

Ok, I've just found out that Jason also has a myspace page and I'm off to make friends

Big kisses.

Happy happy happy happy Tuesday!

It arrived!

Mark reiki'd it's arrival for me...I'm so happy! My heart has sunk a little every day I logged on since the middle of last week, but it arrived yesterday and now my heart is happy and I'm very relieved.

I'm 38 and my emotions still surprise me. I am surprised how responsible I felt at the same time as feeling it was out of my hands and there was nothing I could do about it.

It's also telling that even though I could replace it with a second one if it were lost/stolen/damaged, I'm not sure I could ever have let the feeling go of the loss.

That sounds a bit serious but there are so many little things I remember losing in different ways over the years, from pots of glitter when I was ten, to the tenner I got conned out of a few years ago.

Perhaps it's the unpredictability of it.

Big smiles and kisses.

Nonsensical

I spent the evening by myself yesterday. I often do, but not usually knowing I was unlikely to have company much before 3am...it was an amazingly luxurious sensation. I had time to draw, read, stay up late watching TV (way too late!) and go to bed, meditate and write before finally falling asleep in a huge bed by myself. Mmmmm.


At the point today when my 'I didn't sleep enough' headache hit me I was halfway through my Great nephew's fourth Birthday party with half the girls in his class still queuing to have their faces painted. Tonight I shall be dreaming of pink and sparkly butterflies for sure.


I am still caught in some strangely suspended sensation and am beginning to suspect it's a suspended part of myself coming to the fore requesting to be un-suspended. I'm a trifle scared of that...and wondering where the time will come from to make space for another aspect of self at the moment. I guess the only thing is to throw the request to energy and wisdom greater than my own.


I have been playing with my friends camera so you can expect lots of nonsensical pictures in the coming days.


That's a very bitty post, but it is what it is...


I suspect you can expect old random pieces of writing to pop up as well for a few days.