Harvest Magic

Busy much? Yes! I have been meaning to sit down and update this blog and here it is NOVEMBER! I honestly do not know where the time goes these days. The good news is that I have been busy streamlining my products in the shop giving customers more personalized choices! The bad news is that it's working and I am busy sewing! LOL 
Having my husband here in town on a job also makes life a bit more hectic since he looks to me to provide dinner at least a few times a week! The crock pot has once again become my good friend. Not only can I fix it and forget it, and get two meals out of it as well. With Fall upon us now I am really enjoying making the seasonal foods that we enjoy. Tonight I made an apple pie and last week it was a pumpkin pie. I started out the season making a few Apple Crisps which are my favorites. I use a recipe from a very old edition of the Fanny Farmer cookbook. The recipe I use is called Apple Candy and it is really yummy and simple using only flour, butter, sugar and cinnamon.

Our gardens have been harvested with mixed results. As always my pumpkins and ornamental corn did great. This year we tried carrots and got quite a few in purple, white and orange! We also got some beets but they were teeny tiny. We did not get as many tomatoes as we have in the past thanks to some hungry squirrels in our yard!

I love to grow the mini pumpkins to use to decorate my mantle and also to use for any fall rituals. The best part is that they last throughout the season as does my corn. This year I took my corn and placed them in a bowl with a set of tiny fairy lights inside the bowl. It was a nice effect! Since Fall and Winter are my favorite times of the year, I like to really savor all of the flavors, sounds and aromas of these seasons. My wish for you this Fall is that you too are able to slow down just a bit and smell the cinnamon and the leaves and all of the goodies baking in your oven!

Summer Love Spell

During the long days of summer, many people like to travel to the beach to relax and unwind. To me there is nothing more entrancing than watching the tide continually rolling in while listening to the sounds of the sea gulls and the crashing waves. I found this fun little love spell that  one could do when they are down at the beach. As our 40th wedding anniversary fast approaches, I was thinking how this spell could be modified to use as a renewal of love. Enjoy!

Make It Your Own!

Things over at my Etsy shop have been busy indeed! With the new year, came the introduction of more "design your own" items to give customers a chance to add their personal touch.

Customers can now choose the color they would like for their Zodiac symbol on their tarot cloth. This customer chose pink!

  I added three new pagan symbol designs on tarot cloths with some custom choices. Pentagram, Awen and Hammer of Thor are available

Customers can now choose between a Pentagram, the Awen or Thor's Hammer and create their own custom color pagan patches.

Winter Joy

2017 has finally arrived! With it comes the promise of wonderful days ahead since with this year we begin a new nine year cycle in the world of numerology. To add to the fun, we are just now out of the mercury retrograde and all planets are moving forward!
The store was quite busy throughout the holidays leaving me with no time to blog in between all of the extra holiday activities like cookie baking, holiday cooking and of course decorating the house and tree and wrapping gifts. This year I came up with the brilliant (and yes, lazy) idea of wrapping the boxes that came in through the mail of the the things I ordered. The heavier boxes served to keep the tree skirt in place from frisky cats looking to explore.
For Yule gifts this year I made my friends some body scrub using salt, coconut oil, peppermint and some dried mint from this summer's garden. I topped each jar off with a festive cotton top that was peppermint material.http://willowandsage.com/. It is my favorite magazine for finding some terrific ideas and recipes. I like the recipes I find because they are quite simple and easy to do, plus the magazine is a visual feast.

I got the recipe from the magazine "Willow and Sage".
I put away the Yule decorations leaving out my snowmen and deer. I redid the mantle over the fireplace and added some deer to the other forest creatures on the mantle. I added some lace snowflakes which I made on my embroidery machine. They look nice scattered along the garland. I love setting the house up in it's winter decor. The decorations add a feeling of coziness and warmth to the house. We do keep our Yule tree up through January because I like the look of the yule tree. It is decorated with owls, birds, foxes, pine cones and snow flakes. Wishing you all the joys of Winter!