It’s going to be the next month in Astrology and Numerology along with divination topics every month.
I’ll start offering the sign ups in the next week or two.
Starting January, I’m going to start a new once a month newsletter
The number one piece of advice I would give anyone who hasn’t had kids yet
Men and women are pressured, maybe equally, maybe women a little more to have kids. Once college is over and a career is started, a common question seems to become “when are you getting married?” Soon after marriage, the question that seems to come is “when are you having kids?”
It’s a concern a lot of women seem to battle with, for no real reason. Now, we have the ability to choose- whether using birth control, morning after, adoption and even abortion- women have choices about when or if they become moms.
It’s not a choice to make lightly. Many people do not want to be a parent, others give in to pressure and later regret. In reality, becoming a parent is a lifelong responsibility. It extends beyond the time they leave. You will always worry, want to see them as often as possible and want to spend time with grand kids.
The early years involve a lot of late nights, potty training isn’t smooth, you will grow comfortable with every type of bodily fluid (although I still have to ask my husband to clean up if someone pukes most of the time- just the smell alone can make me join in). When I was pregnant, I had to have other people change poop diapers due to my extreme sensitive smell and how prone I was to queasiness. (once again, unless I wanted to puke)
You can deal with colic, temper tantrums over everything, there will be times they don’t want to eat anything and times they only eat one food for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and you’ll deal with all types of bad but the good should outweigh the bad. You will feel a strong maternal bond, but not every woman feels it- even after kids. You will feel a strong love and bond and the good times will quickly outweigh the bad.
A lot of people try to justify the why behind why they want kids. To me, it sounds like they’re talking themselves into wanting instead of actually wanting to be a parent “just because.”
This is my opinion alone, I always wanted to be a mommy. I wanted to be a career mommy (career and kids) and I never had a reason. Over the years, I read a lot and all the reasons people gave for having kids sounded more like they were trying to convince people or themselves they wanted something they were unsure of.
After looking at the realities of having kids, the numbers of women living in regret, I never give advice without being asked but if I was asked, I would always tell someone if they have a reason or a list of reasons to hold off on having kids.
What are your thoughts?
Blogmas Day 9- A look at our Christmas Tree
Each year, my Christmas tree gets less and less “decorated” by normal decorations.
My girls go out and make small ornaments or we make ornaments at home and I have been using less store bought ornaments.
I have a whole collection of old (antique) ornaments that I’m thinking about trying to sell (keep a very few but sell the rest) that I got from my grandma after she passed. She passed nearly 15 years ago and she had had the ornaments for a long time, most are actually older than I am.
We bought a pre-lit tree, and instead of having lights or beads around it- we have a paper chain my oldest daughter made a year or two ago
I bought a beautiful wreath off of Etsy that I was more than happy with. It was much nicer than i thought it was going to be (I bought it, so I already knew it was going to be good, I just was surprised by the material they used as the base)
Instead of using actual candy canes, I’m using the pipe cleaner candy canes I made and posted on my other site, and instead of using store bought ornaments, I’m using some my girls made with other people or that we made at home like my pipe cleaner Christmas trees. You can find both tutorials clicking on the links.
I have a few tutorials coming up with some other decorations I’m using. These crafts are kid tested and approved, if you’re interested in checking out the tutorials, click here and in the next few days they will be going up.
I’ve read one of the best ways to blog
Is to set a certain schedule and post blogs on certain days.
This one is fine- some days I make 2 or 3 and other days, none.
My other site is based around kid crafts and allergy friendly recipes (focus on dairy and gluten free)
Right now, I have a bunch of Christmas crafts planned but after that, I’m wanting to start 2 days a week coming up with a craft and recipe. What would a good plan be that wouldn’t be too much like everyone else with a similar website?
Blogmas Day 8- favorite Chrismas/winter drink flavor
I guess since it is December and my last post was about Christmas, I’ll be joining in the Blogmas trend.
I will probably not be posting about it daily, I already missed the first 4 days (never heard about it until Twitter, to be honest)
Today is day 7. I work my day job in product demonstrations. Yesterday I was sampling cocoa- it was a variety pack with 5 different, mostly seasonal and holiday flavors. I had to taste two flavors- white chocolate and mint.
They were the best tasting hot chocolate I have ever drank. I buy peppermint mocha coffee creamer every year and drink the Peppermint Mocha almond milk lattes. Last night I also made myself some peppermint hard candy.
To me, not too much else says “flavor of the holidays” than peppermint chocolate.
Day 7 Blogmas- gifts I got myself for under 50
I was given 50 to spend on myself right after Thanksgiving.
I had just recieved a catalog from NY and Company, my absolutely favorite clothing company.
I hit their Cyber week sales- 70-80%off plus free shipping and got myself two new sweaters. Later, I returned and grabbed this jacket.
I’ve been wearing it near daily since. Its light enough to keep me from frying when it’s slightly warmer but warm enough for snow.
I also havent really got a new purse for a while and the price was too good to resist so I grabbed one
I also needed gloves and found these. The glove and scarf set ended my 50
The price was so good, I grabbed several sets to give as gifts.
All these were a grand total of under 120 and I got a bit of gift shopping finished as well.
The sweaters are perfect, the coat cost a total of 21- an 80+ value if I had paid full price. I really think NY and Co has some of the best prices
Christmas Traditions
Since starting a family, almost 8 years ago, I’ve been thinking about different holiday traditions.
As a young child, we got together with my mom’s side of the family a lot and not my dad’s that often.
When my grandma died (I was 13), we stopped getting together so much but I have a couple aunts we did get together with a lot- especially one who has always treated me like a daughter.
We still get together with her a lot.
Throughout the years, I have had jobs (especially 1) that had me so busy this time of the year (thank you, retail) so I barely had time to breath during the whole season. With the job change, I’m only working a few days a week so I have time to actually do stuff with my kids and it has me thinking on the lines of Christmas traditions.
I ran across my Facebook memories yesterday, after my 2 year old helped me bake cookies and found last year on the same day, she helped me bake cookies as well.
With our new found food restrictions, she and I can’t partake in events like cookie exchanges like my mom, cousins and aunts did one year- she couldn’t eat anything with butter or milk and I couldn’t eat anything with flour and certain other ingredients.
My mom and I were talking about both of us wanting to do our trees primarily in home made decorations and with a very few exceptions, mine is this year (we have a few football team ornaments and a few the girls really like but other than that, everything else was bought off Etsy or made by us)
We have the main celebration with my family on Christmas eve, his on Christmas day and ours Christmas morning with a few gifts on Christmas eve.
Over the years, I’ve slowly started incorporating some Yule rituals either privately or with my kids included and we’ll do that at home instead of celebrating Christmas in our home- since a lot of Yule traditions overlap with Christmas.
What types of traditions do you have with your kids?
I have decided that on January 1st
I’m finally going to commit to the 30-60 day Whole30 diet.
As of right now, even sticking with strict gluten free, I’m right back to feeling sick all the time. I’m not sure if it’s dairy or if there is something else I’m now sensitive to but the Whole30 is the best way to find out from what I can see.
I have failed multiple times, but I’m sure I should be able to commit to 1 simple month of whole foods. I have checked out so many recipes, it will just involve making my own birthday cake since my birthday is in January.
I just signed up for a holiday HIIT 3 days a week program. HIIT workouts have always been my favorites and with some really busy weeks, the 15-17 minute workouts should be feasible. My two year old has enjoyed joining me doing the Stronger workouts (livestrong website) and she’ll love joining these as well. I’m not trying to set any kind of New Years Resolutions, those are never kept, I just prefer starting things on the first of the month- it’s easier to track progress.
This month has definitely been crazy
I left my job of almost 3 years and went on to a lower hours/lower stress job.
I ended up starting the job earlier than I thought, and worked 7 days in a row, which wore me out that whole week (only 1 30 minute lunch break and standing in one spot on my feet for 8 hours a day, never knew that was so exhausting)
I am now to the slower schedule (1-2 days a week) and since I had the whole week without working, I looked at my NANO project. In the first 3 weeks of November, I managed to get a grand total of 10,500 words.
As of 1 PM today, November 30th, the final day of the challenge and after nights of going to bed around 1 am, I managed to squeak out 39k words, get 1 1/2 short stories finished and get a very large chunk of my main project.
I did the rebel thing, but one story pretty much ended the first day at less than 10k words, so I had to do something. Either way, between the two projects, it was my first time in 6 years that I won.
I’m making a personal challenge to myself to take all my unfinsihed rough drafts and finish them. Maybe not get them past the edit stage yet, but over the course of 2019, I’d like to see how many rough drafts I can complete. I have close to ten, if not more. I have 2 finished rough drafts and the rest are in varying stages. I just know I’ll never have the chance to publish if I don’t finish them.
Common Dream Theme- Running from Someone
If you are running from someone you do not know in a dream, that typically means there is a repressed aspect of yourself that you’re afraid of facing.
Running through a maze indicates confusion and being lost.
If you’re running away from someone (as I was last night- who kept trying to shoot me) and getting lost in a maze, it typically is trying to show you that there is some hidden aspect in yourself you’re trying to repress out of fear or anxiety. It is also important to take other emotions and other parts of the dream into context. In my case, they kept shooting and missing, there was a large group of other people (both men and women, all strangers) who were telling them they were overreacting, saying I wasn’t the bad person they thought I was and who were standing up for me) but the guy chose to keep shooting. In the end, he did hit me- in the arm and it barely left a scratch. (two small holes, my cat iwl has left worse marks on me)
What the dream seemed to be telling me was that I’m running from some aspect of my personality or self and that I feel a lot of fear and anxiety but it’s all too much of a reaction and if I accept it, it’ll prove to not hurt or leave as much of a mark as I am worried it would. Running through the maze shows confusion (I kept getting lost, stuck and held back from running). It had me literally running in circles and unable to escape the shooter who was right behind me. There were two colors that really stood out- red and yellow.
Red usually shows fear, anger, passionate anger (rage) and yellow can symbolize fear, betrayal, disease.
In retrospect, the dream I mentioned (I had it last night- it ended up lucid with me realizing half way through that I was dreaming that dream a second time) could be a warning about someone who I made mad who is trying to hurt me (betrayal) but other people aren’t buying it (all the strangers trying to talk the person out of shooting me)
When you’re analyzing a dream, it’s best to look at all possible meanings of the symbols, look at the major symbols, and either meditate (or pray) to try to gain clarity. I’ll personally turn to the tarot or even my crystal to gain better understanding.
If you have any dream themes you have that you’d like more insight, message me and I’ll create the same type of dream analysis (or blog post if I feel the theme could help others- I’ll leave personal details out and keep all themes anonymous)