Spencer Lapidary Give Away

I am VERY excited to announce the very first Hippie-Witch give away!  Luckily for me, right here in town is Spencer Lapidary.  Family owned and operated, the lapidary has been in business for 24 years at their great shop in Elwood, IN, and now offer online shopping.  They offer a wide variety of rocks, minerals, gemstones, fused glass creations, books, figurines, jewelry, and more.  I have been finding treasures there since I was a kid, and Jiji starts to get excited when we pull into the drive.  With the help of Mark Bennet, who took over the lapidary with his wife, Tina, in 2005 when Glen Spencer retired, I have chosen three prize packs for my winner to choose from.

Option 1: Chakra Package

The Chakra Package contains the Chakra Rainbow stone mix a stone corresponding to each Chakra, as well as an elastic Chakra bracelet.  Useful for both Reiki practice and meditation, this is a great starter or travel kit for Reiki.

Option 2: Clarity Package

The Clarity Package contains a mix of stones for Clarity spells, meditation, or cleansing, as well as an elastic Quartz bracelet.  Ideal for mental 'spring cleaning'!

Option 3: Intuition Package 

The Intuition Package contains a mix of stones for developing Intuition, as well as an elastic Lapis Lazuli bracelet to help develop self-awareness.  Great for divination!

All Packages come with the Spencer Lapidary logo stone bag.

So, now you wan to know how to win it, huh?  Well here ya go!  For each entry, leave a separate comment, with your e-mail, on this post letting me know.  The winner will be chosen Thursday, April 8th by random number generator and contacted by e-mail. Entries close Midnight EST, April 7th. Now, for the ways to enter...

1.) Follow my blog.

2.)Blog about this give away and link back to this post.

3.)Grab a button and leave me the link to the blog you put it on.

4.)Tweet this give away, up to 2x a day with a link to this post. Please leave the permalink for this entry method so I can find it!

5.) leave a comment letting me know which package you want

6.)visit Spencer Lapidary online and tell me something you saw that you can't live without.

So get busy, kids, and best of luck!

H.W.

Wordless Wednesday

Missisenewa Reservoir

One of those...

A while back, I was changing Mojo in a restaurant bathroom and a friend of mine who works there offered to take the diaper and throw it away for me.  When I pointed out it was cloth and stuck it in my very fancy and expensive wet bag (a plastic grocery bag lol) she said "Oh, you're one of those."  It really made me smile, and I will tell you why.  I have always been a bit of a weird-o.  If you are reading this and know me personally, I am sure a story of my uniqueness has sprung to mind.  I see this as a good thing.  The one constant thing about my weirdness has been that it adheres to my own Hippie-Witch logic.  I am never really trying to be weird, I am just doing my thing and always seem to end up there.  My weirdness tends to also be very buffet style.  I will not protest something for the sake of protesting, I have to really feel it is wrong and that I can make a difference.  I will not wear my faith on my shoulder, daring someone to comment on it so that I can "defend myself", but I will wear my pentacle proudly because it means so much to me and I will graciously explain to anyone who asks what is means.  I will also not jump on every granola parenting trend just because I say it on a parenting forum, and beat it into the ground to anyone who might have (gasp) chosen not to do the same thing.  I do cloth diaper. The biggest reason for that is that I got a little obsessed about it when I was on bed rest and had only the internet to entertain me, and I needed a project.  I have stuck with it because I had no idea it was so easy and because we have saved SO much money at a time we don't have a lot of money to spare.  I breastfed both kids, Jiji for only 4 months due to illness and circumstance, and Mojo for nearly 10 now.  I am weaning Mo onto formula now because my grooming business is starting to get busy, pumping is a disaster for me,and because, frankly, she is starting to bite...hard.  We are getting serious about gardening and urban homesteading because I have always wanted a big garden or farm, and it makes me happy.  Having more and more veggies to eat, can, and freeze, along with fresh eggs will also help our tight budget.  We compost because buying compost is expensive, and it really helps the garden.  We home school because we felt it was the best choice for our family and our situation, and because we are in a position where even when I am working, I am home with the kids 80%-95% of the time.  We are Pagan, and raising our kids Pagan because both my husband and I found the Pagan faith and our hearts felt they had come home, and want to teach our values and beliefs to our kids.  They may not chose to follow our faith, and we expose them to other religions, but for now we are raising little Witchlings.  Don't want to cloth diaper?  Cool, I have a few packs of disposables I was given and never used, help yourself.  Don't, or didn't breastfeed?  Awesome, I promise not to tell the boobie Mafia who thinks it should be a crime to not breastfeed, if you promise not to tell them I quit early on both kids.  Think all good veggies and eggs live at the store?  Right on, can you pick me up a gallon of milk when you're there?  The point is, I make my choices, and they tend to be a little outside of the norm. (Like maybe choosing to be such an openly weird, Pagan, Hippie in a very small, rural, Mid-Western town...) and I believe you have to make yours for yourself and your family.  The weirdest part is...I don't even expect you to explain to me why.  I will take it for granted you did what works for you.  I am a grown-ass woman and assume you are a grown-ass person yourself, and I think we all left any obligation to report in on our conduct to the "cool kids" behind a long time ago, at least I did and if you are a reasonably happy and well adjusted person I suspect you did too!  And if you are one of the "cool kids", please remember the person you are condemning because they made different choices than you is a real, live person with a brain, and you might simmer down long enough to ask them about their choices.  People who yell the loudest are not the winners, and you don't have to convince someone else they are wrong in order to be right. So three cheers for being one of those, which ever one of those you happen to be, cause someone is always the weird-o so it might as well be us.

H.W.

Monday Message

Brightest Blessings for the week ahead! Time again for the Monday Message.  Let's see what the Faeries want us to know for this week.

Unity

The Soul Shrinker

Mickle a Muckle, inverted

We are all one, beings of energy united in a holistic Universe.  We are all each a Universe unto ourselves, and the smaller the Universe, the harder it is to achieve balance.  Unity tells us to work on inner wholeness and resolve conflict within ourselves to be a healthier part of the whole.  This can be hard with the Soul Shrinker right there in the middle, yelling all the bad tings we think about ourselves right into our ear.  We need to get him out of there, and out of our hearts.  Banish that curse energy by taking responsibility for ourselves, especially how we think and feel about ourselves and stop blaming others for our own damning self-talk.  A wiser woman than I said, no one can make you feel inferior without your permission...so let's stop giving permission!  Mickle a Muckle is hanging out there at the bottom, chastising us for listening to all that junk the Soul Shrinker told us.  He reminds us it is immature and self centered to be spending this much time wallowing in our self pity when we could be moving forward and working on making things better in our hearts and lives.

Go out into this week and strive to make yourself happy, the rest of the Universe is counting on you!

H.W.

The Wonderful World of Water!

Wow, two home school posts in one week!  I do like to get on a topic lol.  As I mentioned earlier in the week, we went to a home school program at the Indianapolis Children's Museum Tuesday evening.  Because our oldest, Lala, is on Spring Break she is with us till Thursday before going back to her moms and got to go as well.    The program about water was a little young for her, but she dove right in there with Jilly and they had a ball.  I have to say, it was a great time and a great program.  Apparently they are beginning to open up the programs they take to schools around the state to home school educators by offering them in the classrooms at the museum.  We started at the huge water clock in the lobby area and had a little mini-lecture about how it works, how it was designed and made.  I have been to that place 100 times and I learned things I never knew about that thing!  We then went up to the classroom, where we made family water clocks that timed out 5 minutes.  

We were all given bags to take out projects home, and were turned loose to work at our own pace on several other projects set up in stations around the big room.  We looked at pond water under the microscope.

We made nori rolls with seaweed and rice, which both grow in water, we made soap boats, which Jilly tested as soon as we got home in the bath.

We tested surface tension by counting how many drops of water fit on a penny...Lala got 41!

We planted seeds in peat pots soaked in water, we now have sunflowers, gourds, and sweet peas added to our seed starting.  We traced letters with a drop of water on a plate...harder than it sounds...

We tried, and of course failed, to mix oil and water and learned why we failed.  I think I may even be missing one.  It was very cool and well put on. They even sent home a packet for follow up projects and everyone got their own snazzy blue water bottle.Thank you, thank you Children's Museum for offering these programs and workshops, and thanks to Judy and Pam for presenting it so wonderfully.  I know we will be back, and I know I will be attending the health teaching workshop for home educators in May.  If you home school, or plan to, and live anywhere near go to their site, they have a lot to offer.  Not just these programs, but unit study materials based on exhibits and field trip planning materials.

H.W.

Reiki Thursday

Hey all you Mama's out there, this Reiki Thursday is for you!  This is a very nice Chakra Cleansing meditation for Mothers.  It only takes about 5 minutes, and will give you a boost to keep doing your Mama thing.  Please take the time, take care of your self, your children need their best Mama.

H.W.

Sling recall

Just wanted to help spread the word, there has been a recall on certain brands of baby slings due to infant suffocation and fall hazards.  I know we have one of the slings,  the Infantino Sling Rider, although thankfully we hardly used it.  We almost exclusively use the one I made myself.  Here is the link to the CPSC recall site for info on the Infantino recall and a link to Parents for info on other carrier/sling recalls.

H.W.

Wordless Wednesday

Poultry Edition!

Homeschool Reveiw

As far as "official" record keeping goes, We are 3 weeks away from the end of our school year.  What does this mean?  Basically just the next school year will "officially" start in May this year.  I am what I call an "almost unschooler".  My home school style is we have structured activity like worksheets, reading time, a project, or a field trip about 3-4 days a week, and the rest of the learning is student-led.  If Jillian sees a frog, we spend a few days learning about frogs.  Jillian got to ride on a tractor, we are learning about farms that week.  I strive for some kind of learning to be happening every day, whether it is reading signs on a walk, or labels at the store, doing math with money or measuring while she helps me cook, or learning about nature through our animals, garden, or a trip to the park.  I only "count" the days I have a planned activity for the record, but making sure she learns something every day is one of the major reasons we are home schooling in the first place.  Our non-trip school day is the morning she gets to watch PBS kids (we are an evil, no cable/dish household lol) while I either work in the shop or clean the house.  Then at noon I watch the news while we get going on school.  She works on Starfall or another site if we have a "unit" topic, like the frogs for instance.  I help her with worksheets and/or a project and we read a few books (this is becoming more her reading to me than the other way around YAY!).  We have a work station set up, made of a lap desk, with all her work for a week in the pockets.  Worksheets, books, unit books with projects, and her journal ready to go, so I know what our goals are for the week and she can sit down and get right to work.  Here is Jilly hard at work at her worksheets. 

She also is liking her journal, which is an idea suggested to me by a home schooling friend, and I can see her really getting into the journaling process, even though it is mostly drawings right now.  I have also made her some worksheets in her journal about planning her own garden box this year. There are so many resources, either online, from books and workbooks, and field trips in the ares, I can always find something she is interested in for her to work on.  This is an on and off process through the afternoon with a lot of breaks, as I have found she works better that way and if I can't help her with something because of the baby or working in the shop it can pause till I can come help her.  We usually wrap up school work about dinner time, then maybe another book after dinner.  We have a few books...thank you retireing teacher on Frecycle!  The purple cube is full of supplies, i.e. paint, glue sticks, colored pencils, paper etc.  You can see our little seed box, all organized to be started inside or planted into the garden, and the pop bottle "greenhouse" project from a while back.

We have had field trips to Minnetrista, the Indy Childrens Museum (which we are going back to tonight for a home school program), local parks, etc.  I look back now to when we decided to get started with home school and realize I had nothing to fear with finding "curriculum"...it's EVERYWHERE!  I know as she gets older, I might need to buy curriculum for topics I am not strong in, like Algebra, but for now we are cruising along, the world is our classroom.  

H.W.

Flock update...a little late

Quick flock update, the ducks and chicks had some outside time on Saturday, just before it decided to get cold again.  I was not going to let the ducks out, for fear they would take off and we would never catch them, but no problems there.  The Hubs let them out and scooped them right back up when they were done.  Ducks are still growing like mutants, and the chicks are starting to feather.  

P.S. I found my camera, so look for some pics of the flock, and the progress of the coop construction on Wednesday.  Glad it was missing for a while, because now I am taking more videos!

H.W.

 

Monday Message

Good Monday morning to you all! On a former blog and mailing list I had a feature for the days Faery focus, in which I did a mini reading from my Faery Oracle cards for a general focus for that day for my readers. I have been (finally) reading again and thought I would start the Faery Focus readings back up on this blog. Well that was when I had one kid, fewer critters around the house, and was not running my own business, so now I am shooting for a weekly focus lol.  So, without further ado, here is what the Faeries would like you to know and work on this week...

The three cards are Nelys the Alchemist, inverted

Himself

Flaff the Flooter, inverted

Nelys is here to help us, but we are all getting in her way, and are our own worst enemies and biggest road blocks right now.  She is nudging us in the right direction, but we are swatting her away like a fly, and she is about to use that big old wand she is holding to herd us a little more 'forcefully', so we might want to get moving on our own. The third card is Flaff, who is also working hard to help Nelys get us on the Path. He speaks to the part of us who may feel that nudge from Nelys, and fly off into the clouds in a flurry in search of dreams.  Flaff is here to remind us that it is a good idea to follow dreams, but a better idea to learn how to fly before we take off up there. If we don't do the work first and know how to soar,  it is a long way back down, and a rocky landing.  Between them is Himself.  He energizes both his partner cards in the reading, and wants to do the same for us.  He is the Shaman, and the powers of healing and creativity swirl around him.  He not only wants us on this new Path, he wants to dance with us along it. Dance with Himself, and you might be surprised by what shakes loose from within you.

That is the first of our Monday Messages...and by the way the blue thing in the corner of the picture is my new, snuggly card bag. I LOVE it, it was hand crocheted and I bought it at Tree of Life in Chesterfield. It looks like it was made of Muppet fur lol. My Faeries are very warm and cozy in there, and it is a reward to them for me neglecting them for soooooo long.  Here is a closer look.

Have a Blessed week!

H.W.

Spring beginnings

Hello all!  This spring has been truly a time of rebirth and new beginnings here at the Hippie household.  As you may have noticed, we now have a flock of chicks and ducklings, and have started building the coop for when they can no longer live in the shop, as that might be slightly distracting to the doggies being groomed! :-)  Business for my dog grooming business has started to pick up, and the Hubs is about ready to begin his second job, which we are praying becomes his new career.  We are also still on our long journey back from the mess our lives were there for a while last year. The only, and I mean only, good thing about your life falling completely apart is that when it's laying there in pieces on the ground it is easy to really take a good hard look at it and make decisions about what not to put back. That puzzle is beginning to come together, and is looking beautiful. Naturally for times of high stress, I have spent time reevaluating my faith and beliefs. I had a little bit of a personal rumspringa and have been contemplating other beliefs to incorporate and help me move forward on my Path.  I have recently been spending a lot of time at Camp Chesterfeild, which is only 30 minutes from me. Both my husband and I have been there many times over the years for readings, events and fairs, the Hubs more than I because his mother was a regular there all his life for readings, but we had never been to a service.  I have been twice in the last two weeks to services, and went to a lecture on cleansing a house of undesirable spirits, and am thinking of taking some development classes there.  I have always loved the energy there, and have been recently very drawn there.  I REALLY need to find my still camera and post pics of the Camp...beautiful there! I don't know that I want to 'convert', if that is the right term, to Spiritualism but I am looking very forward to learning much more about their beliefs and practices. Before the services last night, we as a family walked the labyrinth they recently put in. I was so moved by the experience, such a long journey in such a small space.  It was so important to me to stand in the center with my family as we all said out own prayers and blessings in our heads.  We walked out again as a family, and it will be a memory I know I will treasure. The garden is planned out, seeds are started or waiting to be started, and our trees and raspberry bushes will be going in the ground soon.  Much to do, much to grow, much to learn...sounds like spring to me!

H.W.

Flock update week 1

Hiyas all! I wanted to post an week 1 update on our ducklings and chicks. We are really liking it so far...especially the ducklings daily swim in the shop tub. The ducklings are not as social as I hoped, and seem to kind of hate us, but the chicks are very sweet and like to be held by us. It is amazing to me how much they have changed in the past week, especially the ducks who seem to have grown a lot in such a short time! The chicks have all lost their egg teeth and their combs are starting to come in. I am still figuring, based on internet research, that we have 2 cockerels and 4 pullets...which means we will be able to keep 4, since our city ordinance is no roosters. We will have to see if our predictions come to pass. The neighbors lost one chick. They said it seemed weak from the get go, and they tried to nurse him along but lost him. They will be butchering last years chickens this weekend, as they got 'mutt' chicks last year at the feed store and did not get 1 egg out of the bunch of them. The Barred Rocks are supposed to be good layers, so we should be set for eggs as soon as they are old enough. That's all for now, I will post an update weekly, and am going to try to start blogging again regularly soon. Lots in the works! Blessings!
H.W.

Hippie Chicks

I posted yesterday about the ducklings, well today we got our chicks! We have 6 Barred rocks, only 2 days old.  Judging from the information I found at Backyard Chickens they are 2 cockerels and 4 pullets. We had planned to keep them in the brooder with the ducklings, but the ducklings are bullies and they had to be separated.  Click the link below for a video of the new flock, and if you missed it, click the link in the above post for Ducky bath time.  I will post pics later, but right now can only find the video camera!

Click here to watch Hippie Chicks!

Soon we will start construction on the "chicken tractor", so check back!

H.W.

The Adventure Begins!

We picked up two ducklings to begin our 'flock' today. We are waiting to heat from the farmer about chicks, will be this weekend or next. The ducklings are settling in and had a nice swim in the tub...enjoy!

Ducky Bath Time!

H.W.