In Reality.

It’s the first catch up for this years yarn along today and I am so looking forward to linking up.

So, what has happened since we last connected? Let’s see… I posted a little of my thoughts for this coming year. I opened shop and I chose my word!

In all of that I added a few more rows to my first pair of socks with the sock wool that I was gifted from my beautiful family for Christmas and finished off a Fungi Friend for our Forest Friend Collection I have started on for Danika.

It has been a wonderful, tearful, exhilarating and soul searching week to say the least. There have been emotions felt that I never thought that I had. We had to come to a decision this week, being the first week of the month and as my maternity period is so rapidly coming to end. Over the past few months there have been emotional conversations as to whether we could manage our home with one proper income or not. In a perfect world I would be home raising our children, tending our garden, feeding our chickens, knitting up a storm and adding homemade goodies to our homestall. But, in all reality, its not that perfect. It would not be fair to add such a burden to my soul partner to carry alone. So, I will pick myself off from the self pitiful fetal position on the floor that I have found myself in a few times over the last few months and dust myself off and really partner up with my life partner so we can do this all together. I can still raise my children, tend my garden, feed my chickens, knit up a few more rows here and there and add a couple of homemade goodies to the homestall just not all of the time. I will be contributing a little extra by going back to a day job away from the home and aiding Rob with the finance that is needed to keep a home with 4 Adults, 3 boy children, a little baby girl, dogs, chickens and a tortoise., oh and lets not forget about the gang of monkeys! I’ve come to the realisation that it just as important if not more important to provide this way for my tribe. Although secretly I wish it wasn't.

I promised myself that this year my updates will be more real without just the fluff of all the prettiness that I so dearly love.

It will be more REAL.

So while I mull through all this and try an ease my way into a new routine of expressed milk and leaky engorged breasts and the emotions that come with that and setting up play dates for a new member to our tribe ( I will share all about that soon) and welcome our eldest home for a little longer and get Joshua and Garren ready for their first day back at school…. the list does go on a little longer… I will count my blessings and know that in the end I will do anything to make our home work and my tribe happy and healthy.

Until, next week my special yarn friends… Blessings a plenty from my heart to yours.

Angie xx

INTENTION

So, on my post Sock Wool last year… last month, I had mentioned that I was considering New Years Resolutions (of sorts) for the year. I had given up on them so far back – that in truth I was kind of at a loss as to how to go about starting them all again. Then the very lovely Finding What I Am Looking For suggested I have a look into OneWord365.

I am ever so glad that I did. The whole concept behind it just sings to me. It didn't take me long to come up with my Word, but it has taken me a few days to feel it and set my intention for the new year. To go forth with intention in all that I set out to do every day of this year. I intend to be more present in everything I do and with everyone I am with.

This piece from Living With Intention by M.Tamara really resonates with me.

Truly living with intention involves engaging all of your energies and strengths, not merely your mental ones. It means activating your inner helpers, however you get them out of bed. It means both affirming what you want and being satisfied with being on the journey. It means honoring your intention, even if you have not yet reached your goal.

Living with intention means pushing your comfort zone, but it also means appreciating every nuance of your life, and appreciating yourself for being conscious as you live it. It means recognizing that the act of envisioning itself, that moment of connecting with your intention, counts as much as the more visible actions that you take. The first step to making your world different is imagining it so, and envisioning yourself in the new paradigm.

Living with intention means persistently and actively affirming your goals. Not merely so that you don’t forget or diminish their value when you face a challenge, but so that you are sending out into the universe your connection with both process and outcome.

…. read more >HERE<

It really is a beautiful word isn't it. Not only does it ring true in all things magick but in life and how one lives. I truely hope to focus on that.

At the end of this calendar year, I hope to come back to this post and be able to show how I added intention into my life each day for the year. So, here is to living a life less out of habit and more with intent.

Do you have your Word?

hugs a plenty all round.

Angie xx

thoughts going forward.

I cant say this is one of the prettiest photographs out there of me. But this is me, right at this very moment. Babywearing, smudged attempt at one handed make-up application (just so that I dont look like death itself) and regrowth of my hair that hasn't had a touch of dye in over a year.

This is me! This is all me in my life right at this very moment.

I've had plenty of moments like this over the past couple of months. Moments where I have had time to reflect as to were I am going with all of these moments. Moments were I have thought were am I going with my shares, with this blog and the dreams I had before all these moments came to be.

Although, I still fiercely believe in the magick of the seasons, I am also fiercely walking the stepping stones of a mama with children in various stages of life. Tristan will be handed his key to his life this coming new year, he will be 21. Joshua at 16 still figuring out if the subjects he has chosen at school will be relevant in his dreams for his future, and consciously trying to figure out how to get away from the noise that is his younger brother and baby sister. Garren anxious about who will be in his grade three class next year and if another kick to his older brothers shins at the dinner table might go unnoticed. Danika.. well lets just say I am doing all the figuring our for at this moment. Rob and I trying tor juggle and balance the bliss of family life with the stresses of work. These are all real feelings and thoughts and milestones not just for me but for all of us.

So, where am I going, where do I want to be? Not 20 years from now- cause that would make me like.. almost 60 something or other. But where do I want to be right now, tomorrow and the next day. What do I want to share with you today, tomorrow and the next. These are the kind of thoughts that twirl around my head now that we have welcomed a little baby girl into home and our lives. After being a mama to boys for twenty years, I thought that it would be just the same with a little girl. But, I am not too sure about this anymore. They are very different - aren't they? Like a delicate little flower? They kind of change all those perceptions you had – dont they?

So, I am going back and forth in my mind and can feel change not only happening within me but change within our little tribe now that our boy tribe has a growing little flower, a little lady.

I have hopes to keep this little blog going in the same direction, with shares about our family and shares about what is cooking in my kitchen and growing in my garden and of course shares about whats all knitting up on my needles. But, I think its time for me to also share my intentions and my personal traditions as I, we... us... live by the seasons here in South Africa.

So that is what my plans are for the new calendar year. Intention.. Intuition.. Family.. Magick… and trying to keep it all constant, with a dash of smudged eyeliner. 

Who knows maybe those smudges may start a new tradition out there.

Thank you for sharing in all these with us my friends. May the new year bring all your intentions to life and bless you with not too much or too little but rather exactly what you need.

❤ Angie