Light on the Favors

I have finally been able to catch up on a few wedding projects over the break.  I don't have all of my RSVP's yet, but I have more than half of them so I was able to get cracking on my wedding favors.  Anyone whose working on this sort of thing might have realized that for some crazy reason most websites want you to spend around $2 a person for favors, which adds up quickly since most weddings are around 100 guests.  I was not ready to settle for that.  Especially when these $2 did not even seem very unique or personal.


I found a great site: save-on-crafts.com. This site has so many random craft supplies for all kinds of projects. It may not be the best organized website, but worth a look if you find something that will work for you. I managed to find some great natural beeswax votive candles, 48 for $25!  While plain looking, at that price I knew I could come up with something.  I later went to Michael's and bought a can of chalkboard spray paint.  I taped off the candles with blue painter's tape and with the help of a friend, we knocked out almost all of these in a weekend.

After all the chalkboard strips had dried on the glass, I used a chalk marker in a sort of sage green color to go with my woodsy theme to write the guests' names and the date of the wedding on them.  A vine flourish made them look unique, personal, and classy.

Nearly done now, I just have some pink/natural colored raffia strings to tie bows on them (pink for girls, natural for boys) and will top with lavender oil and iridescent glitter inside the candle to finish. I am trying to wait on the oil until the last minute so it stays fresh and fragrant :)  I can't wait to see these all over the room, marking the guests' places at their table and am curious to see if 90 lavender anointed candles will add a romantic aroma to the reception!

Season's Sweetenings

So as introduced by the last post, the holiday season is upon us.  Some of my previous post may have had some grinchy undertones. Although I must pride myself on my moral lesson of good thoughts to end with, today I mean to share one of the things I really enjoy about the season.  Baking!

It's great because although I enjoy baking, I never really want to eat much of what I make.  I don't have much of a sweet tooth and almost never eat desserts...but I really love making them for some reason.  I love that they are sweet, they smell great, and you can decorate them.  But the best of all, is sharing my sweet concoctions.  My latest drive is to make these wonderful guinness-chocolate cupcakes.

I found a terrific recipe for this batter which is set up for a cake, but I think cupcakes are so much more cute and convenient for serving to multiple people.  It describes a regular frosting but I use instead a Martha Stewart cream cheese frosting recipe.  I first found these recipes while looking for something to make for my fiance's cousin's graduation. She said she loves chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting so I started with that and tried to find something simple to make at home from scratch, but with a unique edge to it (thus the guinness!).  They must have been good because they were gone within the first 20 minutes of being set out with all the other food, and even my fiance who claims to dislike any sweets was pouting about not getting his own and having to share with me. 

This time around, as I was making them for a holiday party. I wanted to make the frosting green, but I strive to avoid artificial ingredients when possible.  Luckily I still had some matcha green tea in the cabinet and that stuff is pretty potent as a food dye.  I didn't add much because I was nervous about the flavor coming through, but I did achieve a nice pale green color. 

Completed with some festive wrapping paper by Reynolds and gorgeous gold sprinkles, they look great!  For someone else of course, I'm not much for sweets ;) But I certainly can't wait to share these!

I'll have a Yule-Christmas...

It's here! The holiday season.  While some are instantly excited, like my loving fiance, others find this time of year to mean instant stress and awkward conversation.  Do you call it Christmas or Yule? Do you wish Happy Hannukah to whom it applies, or resort to the generic Happy Holidays?

I'll admit that upon first becoming comfortable with calling myself Wiccan, I almost went super Pagan and decided that Christmas was offensive.  I felt "Christmas trees" and nativity scenes were signs of ignorance that the December holiday is really a remnant of the week-long festival Saturnalia, honoring the Roman god for whom our Saturday is named (among several other Pagan traditions).  Then I realized, I was no better than any other close-minded religious person.

What is the reason for the season anyway?  While I still feel a slight twinge at the "Jesus is the reason for the season" bumper stickers.... I try to remember they are just happy to celebrate their god and the season he represents.  If you take away the specific deities, Jesus or Saturn or Frey, and take away the presents and decorations...what is it about?  Winter Solstice marks the completion of the Wheel of the Year as the light of the sun returns.  There is no better time to share in thousand-year old traditions with loved ones.  The ancients celebrated the end of the cold, dark parts of the year as well as the end of their labor to rejoice in the new year and the new possibilities it will bring. So too, can we celebrate what we have reaped throughout the year and take advantage of this break from our work to prepare for a new year.  In that way, there is little between Pagans, Christians, Jews and anyone else.  We can all celebrate love, light and happiness by any name. For a Christmas by any other name, would bring gingerbread cookies just as sweet!

On that note, I have found a great blog post from one of my favorite authors about ways to reduce your stress this holiday season.
Enchanting the Day: Cut the Guilt
 I have definitely put the concept of foregoing gifts one year on my to-do list. I would love to focus on decorating the house with my love and hosting parties with drinks and food and fun for my friends and family rather than the best sales or parking spots at the mall.  I hope you all find a way to cut the stress out of your holiday season and remember that we all have the same goal here, to take a break from our crazy lives and remember to love each other.  And maybe for me, getting a few of those remaining wedding crafts done that have been laying around my office!

Happy Veteran's Day!

The weather is nice and the sun is high on this wonderful Sunday.  Time goes by so quickly and just as the summer has come and gone, fall is rapidly passing by.  I have three more weeks of the school semester until I am two classes and three days of intense exams away from completing my degree.

Usually this time in the school session I am in panic mode and lock myself away to finish whatever reports and papers I left off for the end but I am oddly at ease this time around. Maybe it's senioritis, or maybe I genuinely have less on my plate this semester. Either way, I have a high spirit and sense of drive and accomplishment about me.
Quite fitting then, I decided to draw a tarot card for the day and Hazaa!  the Ace of Wands - a card about hope, passion, and drive for accomplishing goals and welcoming new endeavors.  Reflective of this card, my attention has indeed been turned from mucking my way through books to developing plans and hopes for the future. I spend my days wondering what post-grad/married life will bring.  Unfortunately, there is still some time to go and tasks to complete before I will find out and hopefully my trip to Barnes and Nobles for this nifty new planner will keep me focused on the here and now. (I adore planners...the joy of writing things down and crossing them off when done is beyond anything. Don't you agree?) Or it may distract me just enough from class to keep me there by numbering days until winter, my anniversary, my wedding, exams, graduation....and anything else I can think of!

Halloween Adventures and Voting

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween, and again I hope the best for all those up north dealing with the Hurricane.  The holiday was filled with lots of love and good things for me, even though I did not make it to the Shadowfest (name for their Samhain celebration this year) at the Universalist Church.  I ended up taking a lot of the day into my own hands, which is hopefully a good sign for the year to come.

Just a recap on this day, Samhain (usually celebrated October 31st) is the Gaelic, or Old Irish, festival marking the end of the harvest and the start of the "darker" half of the year.  To the dismay of evangelist, this does not mean dark as in "evil" in any sense, but instead simply that the days continue growing shorter and during that time in Ireland the weather would grow cold and dreary, too cold to be outside for person or livestock.  The poor at the time had to hope that the final harvest was full enough to sustain them through these harsh months and just the same hoped that their livestock, which serves as a family's livelihood in such an agricultural community, would make it through the winter.  It was quite literally, the dark half of the year.  Thus the holiday moves to the April/May time in the southern hemisphere, which is when their winter begins.

We may no longer be in an agriculturally predominant society but in the eyes of pagans who honor the Earth, it is still fitting to use this seasonal marker as a designated time to reflect on the "harvest" of the year so far and reflect on our lives.  Have we been living the way we should or want to? Have we been allowing any unnecessary negativity to block good things that we deserve or need?  Now is the time to address these things.

Rightly so, I had baked delicious pumpkin bars for the fall season and taken them to my mom's office in the morning.  After dropping those off (which were very well received by her colleages) I set off to do my civic duty and vote in the presidential election.  Unfortunately, the benefits of early voting were not so much as I had anticipated and I still had to wait over two hours to complete the task. It still felt good to vote and be done before the eminent chaos of November 6th.  Although, I did end up missing my office hours at the college and subsequently completion of the work I intended to do there.  Oh well, sometimes we have to sacrifice for the greater good.  After some reflecting in honor of this time of harvest, I decided it was still a great day.

Dig, dig, dig, the whole day through

My yard has finally come a long way, from this dreary looking patchy mess to something I actually look forward to seeing.  The house was foreclosed for almost a year when we purchased it. That means: non-existant grass, sandy dirt, overgrown ficus (picture tree sized) in the backyard, and some random mix of overgrown, branchy bushes in the front.  By this picture, we put some sod down, planted the juniper trees (tiny pine looking thing by the driveway) and these 4 sage bushes (also tiny, and appearing to die soon after planting).  Thought it was hopeless.

And alas! With time (as the grass settled) and continued work in the form of a few landscaping stones to border the sage bushes, landscaping river rocks to line the driveway with some scattered dwarf pentas, two fountain-grass plants, and a potted knock-out rose bush between the sages....we have a visually pleasing space! Last thing for the yard: some sort of border to control these river rocks... And according to my mother, a fresh coat of paint for the house is nothing short of necessary.