Observing Lent

I think I’ve talked before about my Grandmother. The woman who may just possibly be the sweetest woman in the whole world, until you take her picture one to many times that is. She has Alzheimer's, and is quickly fading away from us. The worst part is that while she isn’t really her, she isn’t gone either. It is strange to get inherited items from someone who is still alive. But as she vanishes I cling to all I know. When I helped clean her house I picked some strange things to keep, aprons, a pressure cooker, books, and her Catholic supplies. My Grandma is super catholic, she’s traveled to see the Pope and spent the last 10+ years going to mass 6 days a week, even volunteering for hours everyday. As she vanishes and fades away one thing I feel like I can cling to is her Catholicism. As her old possessions blend into my possessions, and her old plates become my new plates, one thing that will never blend in is her catholic stuff, it will never be mine. I’m not catholic. Until the day I die I will know that those saint cards, rosaries, and medallions were hers.

And for two reasons, that being one, I am observing Lent. The other reason being that I write about families, and Lent is something many families observe together. Many people pick a family thing to sacrifice, as well as a personal thing. So I wanted to observe it, to honor my Grandma and to experience it with my catholic readers. 

Then I started researching Lent. I found out that exactly when it starts, how long it lasts, and what you have to fast depends on what liturgical calendar your church uses, and also where you live. Eastern Lent is much stricter then Western Lent. Americans get to sacrifice anything we want usually, but in some countries you fast, truly fast. Some starting with removing one thing a week and ending with only bread and water. I decided since I’m not using a religious calendar I’m going to start on Ash Wednesday and go until Easter Eve. No sooner had I given up the idea of more info on Lent than I got my newsletter and an article on Pagan Lent. It isn’t Pagan when you get down to it, it is just secular with well rounded information on fasting and it’s spiritual and physical benefits, especially at this time of year.  For example, the fact that by this time of year fasting could be more of a necessity historically than people realize, since stored foods would be expiring and fresh foods haven’t grown yet. It also talks about healing and the seasonal change during this time. Even the concept of allowing yourself something instead of sacrificing something.

My favorite quote in the article is from Brooke Medicine Eagle, who leads people in fasting and doing vision quests. “Whatever holes in your life you fill with food — or anything else you’ve included on your fast — will become very obvious when you begin to do without them.”

And so, I will finally announce what I am fasting- Drinks. I am only allowing myself water and coffee. No juice, tea, milk, or soda (the big one.) So I drink a cup a day (sometimes two) of coffee with powder creamer, no milk, and the rest of my drinks are just water. Originally I was just going to give up soda, which I only drink once a week or so. Then I decided to give up more, so here I am, writing to you, sipping a glass of nice cold ice water, and counting down to the Dr Pepper I get on Easter.

Valentine’s Day Wreath

One day I was killing time at the craft store and discovered Deco Mesh rolls were on sale. I had intended to get stuff the next week (payday) to make a spring wreath, and maybe a Valentine’s Day one. Since deco mesh was half price I sucked it up and went ahead and got my supplies. I know deco mesh is a big thing in the design world right now, and I felt confident buying two colors for two different projects. Well, I can say now after this wreath that I don’t like deco mesh! I’m not a fan. Love the finished look, but hate working with it and getting just the look I like. It took me 5 times to get the right amount of puffiness. It may get easier each time, so we’ll see if I still hate it after I do my spring wreath. Which I’ll be tackling in the next few days.

And here it is! It’s pretty simple really. Pink deco mesh with sparkly bits in the weaving, and then I tucked in heart picks I found at Dollar Tree. Just by tucking the picks into the mesh, the mesh sucks around the stick and holds them pretty well. Then I cut off any pick ends that show. Total cost less than $7, including the pipe cleaners I used for the framing.  I used a coat hanger for the frame, but I might buy a frame for the next one, see if it helps me like deco mesh.

 

Have you used deco mesh before? If you have any tips I’d love to hear them in the comments below!

Roadblocks

My son is almost 6. When I decided to get married, settle down, and have kids I wanted a gaggle of them, 4 minimum. Call me crazy but I would have been ecstatic with 6. I don’t have 6, or 4, or even 2. I have 1, and there is no sign of more in the immediate future. People with kids know two things, 6 years old comes way to fast, and at 6 your kids are so different. They can DO things, really do things. Go to friends houses alone, play in their room alone. (Many people send their kids to school alone, but we homeschool.) At 6 your child has an independence from you that is both terrifying and joyous. “AHHHHHHHH” you can breath, you can pee with the door shut, sometimes. You can go back to work, or tackle a hobby.

At the end of 2012 I reached the point where I questioned “What do I, Alicia Simon, do now?” I could run a craft business. I could go back to blogging, something I’ve done on and off for over 10 years. I could start some other business. What do I want to do? If I run a business, what do I want to do? to make? to sell? If I blog what would I write about? Now, there is one thing you need to know about me, and this is no doubt going to be a running thing, I am a slacker. I trained my kid to pick snacks in the morning so that I can sleep until 10. We unschool. It is January 27, and my Christmas decorations are boxed up sitting in the living room. I joked that I could run a blog called “The Seasonal Slacker” which was all about NOT doing all the seasonal stuff the “perfect” blogs do. Linkys could include things like most out of season wreath.

My son in some recent snow. And yes that dead plant is in a Halloween Cauldron.

Then I looked at my son. My amazing nearly six year old boy, and I knew time is going to fast. When he is grown, gone, that could be it for me, empty nest. I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to create memories, create traditions. Traditions that he will continue on, traditions that he will remember, smile about, and perhaps even come home for. Traditions and memories that I can look back at, remember, savor when I’m home, alone. In six more years, that brief blink of time that has already passed he will be 12, and then when I blink again he will be 18 years old. 18.

I live over 500 miles from my parents. I moved away gladly, and I’d be lying if I said I enjoy visiting. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing my folks, watching my Dad be goofy, seeing what neat little trinkets my Mom has collected. But I don’t flock home for holidays, or even have any memories of them really. I don’t want that. Your children will grow up, they will not always need you, but you want them to want you. I want my son to move as far as as he needs to be happy, BUT I want him to call, to write, to remember.

And my blog topic was decided. I started doing blog set up, cool title, seasonal background, set ups with my name on everything from Google+, Facebook, Youtube, even Etsy just in case. I started brainstorming topics, pinning on Pinterest, making lists of possible blog ideas. Then it happened,

Road Block Number One.

I DON’T want to be another “perfect mommy blogger.” Posting pictures of how together I am, or at least am pretending to be. I have no intention of making an amazing cake pop bouquet for my kid’s friends for Valentines.Truth be told I hate cake pops. The baker does all that work, and the adorable yumminess is gone in one bite. I do not intend to make a wreath for my front door for every single frickin’ holiday known to man. When my son is grown will he care that I made wreaths and blogged about it? Every time I thought of a subject to share, to inspire you, I would research. I’d pour over pins at pinterest, pictures on flickr, google images searches, and I’d find perfect after perfect after perfect. If you want to read a perfect blog, there are so so many out there for you. I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be real. I want to create memories, I want to create a life, not a picture perfect idea of what life could be. And so writing has been hard. I sat at my work space every day, any spare moment I could, and I’d look at pictures, and I’d brainstorm, and I’d type, and I’d try so hard. Then

 

Road Block Number Two

My family, all three of us, got a virus of flu-like proportions. We don’ts know that it was the flu, but we don’t know that it wasn’t either. My husband is the only one that had a flue swab done, and his was not the flu. We laid in the master bedroom, all together, one big bundle of sick. We’d take turns chugging our doses of natural honey based cough syrup and we’d sleep in piles of blankets, one persons foot and another persons arm the only thing under one cover, and three feet and a cat under another. My desk became covered with medicine bottles, dirty tea cups, and abandoned toys. I didn’t write, I didn’t even attempt it, but when I was beginning to feel better I thought about it. I thought about my first roadblock. Perfection. The word stuck in my mouth like the nighttime-sleepy-achey-coughy-feel-like-I’m-dying- medicine.

How can I blog, about this subject that I care about, and not be another perfect blogger? How can I make it less about what others are doing, and more about me? I’m still not entirely sure. I know two things, I can start by living and doing, and I can write about what happens. I hope you stick around to read about it. I can’t promise it will always be good, I can’t promise it will always be inspiring, but I can promise I am not ever going to be perfect.

Candles

Candles can be everywhere in winter. Tapers at a holiday dinner table, or candles in the windows to light the way home, or just scented candles in a seasonal fragrance. I try to always have a seasonal candle ready to light in my kitchen. Candles can also be such a décor element. One neat thing about candles is that by switching the holder, or the color, or the decorations around it, they can cycle through the seasons.

Incidentally, My grandmother’s house was one of those places with candles that are never lit. Behind her chair was a clock with a frame and in the frame sat two candles, never lit. On the coffee table two tapers, never lit. UNTIL, one day my brother, a young teen or so at the time, says “How comes these are never lit?” And he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit them! It was like stepping on sacred ground. I gasped. And one of us, I forget which, immediately blew them out. Until the day when those candles were packed away they had just the tiniest bit of burnt black wick at the very top.

Did you know, you can use epsom salt as a fake snow indoors? Pour it into a candle holder, or vase. Or you can mix it with water to make a slush, then brush (use a bad old paintbrush) onto glass. But this next one uses something different, egg white and sugar!


I can picture this simple display shifting through the year. Take out the pinecones, add felt hearts, replace the greenery with roses, and you shift right from winter to Valentine’s Day!

What about you? Do you have any memories or traditions that involve candles?

Good Hours

BY: Robert Frost

I had for a my winter evening walk--

No one at all with whom to talk.

But I had the cottages in a row

Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went til there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering villages street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o’clock of a winter eve.