Celebrating the Dawn of a New Year Together

This holiday season was the first we celebrated with our new babe.  Now a family of three I find my husband and I are delighting in sharing the sweetness of the season with our little boy.  We decorated the house with sweet evergreens and lights he loves to watch as he rolls around on the floor in front of the ever-burning wood stove.  He marvels at the Hanukkah candles we lit for eight nights as we chanted the ancient prayers of his father’s father’s father’s.  He loved going to the forest for a long hike in the sun and snow, little does he know we came home with a tiny Christmas tree not much taller than him!!  The glow and sparkle of the season really seemed to enchant him fully and I lament as it may be the last Christmas of his life where the materialism is completely meaningless to him.  Alas…so it goes.  But it was magical to be able to share all that we love with him and we will continue to focus on the light of the season, creating meaningful traditions together.  One of our new favorite family traditions is going to the Wildlife Refugee in Bosque Del Apache in south central NM.  It is an amazing experience where you drive out to the wetlands in the dark to greet the dawn in 23 degree weather and have thousands & thousands of birds take flight right over your head.  Truly incredible and though it only last about 30 seconds, brings me to tears every time!!  To be humbled by the sheer beauty of the world and magnificence of creation is the best gift I could receive this season, every season.  It felt like such a blessed way to welcome the new year, and though our Christmas was quiet and cozy, it was a good cleansing for us to move forward into the new year with humblness together.  I recommend you all go see for yourselves, or at least witness some simple miracle of the natural world with your family this blessed season.  HAPPY NEW YEAR

Going into Red

As I was getting ready to go to town the other day I kind of startled myself with my collection of goods, or rather their color.  Everything I had was some shade of RED… the diaper bag I made, the baby carrier, the shawl, the coat, and even the couch I gathered then on was RED. 

As a jewelry designer and artist of many sorts, I have come to notice that in my creative process I am mostly guided by color.  I will be drawn into it and spend a lot of time in my studio just making jewelry with variations of one color tone.  Because the medicine of gems stones is so much based on color, I really get a full dose when exploring what one color has to offer and thus understand more deeply what I am creating.  I have come to call this process ‘Going into a color’ or ‘Going into a stone’.  By delving completely into it,  I somehow enter into it’s spell and come out knowing much more about it.

Being winter and an especially frigid December here in New Mexico it is no wonder that Red is the color I have been ‘going into’ lately.  It is the most rooted color on the chakra spectrum, being connected to our base, to the earth, deep inside the core of her and our own beings.  Red of the fires we light to keep us warm, red of the Christmas season, red seeking heat and roots on all levels….But it isn’t just this month that I have been ‘going into’ Red, no it has been a gradual process for, well a couple years now. 

I must start by saying that when asked my favorite color I have always really said rainbow, unless pressed to seriously choose…but a color seems like such an odd thing to favor, as they are all so beautiful, powerful and different.  Each color has it’s own place and purpose, magic and medicine and really without each other there would be no way to love the rest. 

That said, I do have those colors I prefer to wear more often, or decorate my house with.  I have stones that appeal to me more than others and tones and hues that spark my fancy, and let me just say, RED rarely made the cut. I never wore it, I never had it in my home in fact, I really didn’t want it around much at all.  In college I had a friend who only wore Red.  I loved her and thus loved red…only on her…but still had slight aversions to it myself.  Until about three years ago….

I moved in with my husband and he had a beautiful adobe banco with red and burgundy cushions that I really loved (he has great taste!!) and then we got married and I was gifted, upon request, a Kitchen Aid Mixer and a Stock Pot, both red.

We got married on a bright beautiful Bolivian Rug and then I put it in our bedroom and got cozy flannel sheets to match– all some shade of red or orange….

and little by little red started creeping in.  Now I look around the house and there are flecks of red in every corner, in every room, even in my closet!!

I am surprised, but not really, as along with my taste in color, I too have gotten more Red.

With creating a family and getting rooted in a home I am more grounded in a place as well as in my circle of people.  I have loved more deeply opened more completely than ever before and as a side effect I have become more passionate about what I protect and pursue, and of course passionate about loving too.  Giving birth sure helped me connect to my root chakra and to my humble surprise, anger has also become a strong side effect of child rearing.  With all the love, anger, fire, and roots has come a strength and love within myself that has really helped me grow into myself and who I need to be now in my life. 

Red has both fired me up but also anchored me, a beautiful color at a beautiful time.  So thanks to Red for entering in and surrounding me, teaching me and guiding me. Blessed are the helpers in all their forms in our lives.

I wonder what color are you ‘Going into’ these days?

Learning to Share

First snow day for baby boy

Snow days like today really get me crafty, mainly making gifts for my babe, the materials start flying, and colors start swirling and I am longing to get back to my jewelry studio, to weave stones and colors together, to dream on the magic of those shiny tiny treasures just waiting for me….But alas the studio is not really open for business most hours these days. You see it isn’t really a studio any more at all…. more of a desk, in a closet–

Open the doors to the magic closet

I know, it sounds a little bleak, but really I made it fantastic and inspiring; organized and colorful, and the best part is I can close the doors, leaving a project completely mid-way and then open the doors back up and just pick up where I left off.  When I actually had full run of a whole room for crafting, I insisted on cleaning up and coming back to a clean space every time I left, which made crafting hours  long and time in between long as well, not to mention the time I spent cleaning and reorganizing, which was fine, but not great for production.  Now everything it is kind of the opposite…The room itself is now the baby’s room and the time schedule too.

Where my desk used to be baby now sleeps

I had this very naive prenatal idea that I would sit at my desk while the baby sleep away and we would share the little room in harmony.  Well, yes I admit it, motherhood has surprised and humbled me in many ways, and this is one of them.  Though I have my great creative closet, as soon as I get him to sleep I sneak out of his room I get as far as I can, wishing him a deep, sound, long nap.  Staying in the room would be total nap sabotage at this point, I would be totally stressed about making the littlest noise, so….I create in the living room while he sleeps.

Taking over the living room to create

I still have yet to figure out when I will get my turn to use the room, as he prefers to play in the living room while awake and if I am in his room, well, he misses me…Anyway you get the point.  So here I am crafting for babe, by the fire, calmly, quietly, peacefully……though is miss my jewelry studio, this really is a delight!!

Crafting together

A New Blog for a New Life

I was lying awake in the middle of the night last night; you see sometimes I simply can’t get back to bed after nursing my four month old being a new mama and all, and in my busy mind this little blog was born.

I have blogged before, as many of you know me through my Seedybeans blog oriented towards high desert gardeners and others of you know me through Desert Diosa Jewelry blog, but how many of you know me as a well-rounded work at home, gardener, crafter, new mama that I have become?  I barely know myself as such and I have been torn these past weeks as to where to put my energy in life as well as in the blogosphere.  I have been really reclaiming my garden from a hard dry summer, and sitting in the studio creating some truly beautiful jewels but I have also been crafting baby clothes & canning & yes breastfeeding and baby rearing through it all.  I can no longer separate the many sides of myself, and I want to share it all.  I have grown to really love some the mama blogs that are out there and appreciate the connection to the world, as well as the inspiration they bring to us mamas who believe in nurturing ourselves, our families, our gardens, our creativity, our community and our economies from our homes. 

I am truly lucky to have a healthy, happy family, but even luckier to be able to be at home nourishing and nurturing them as well as myself, as this is what I truly believe in.  I feel that being well in ourselves, in our families and in our communities is the place for us all to create peace and well-being in the world.   How we choose to find that wellness is up to us.  I choose to be at home and do my “work” as a creatress, mother, grower, and wife.  This life does come with set backs, mostly financially, as we are now a one (inconsistent) income home, which means my husband holds the flame of family finances, bless his hard-working soul, and our consumer choices have to be all the more conscious, but we welcome such changes and are open to having less and being more.  I now care for my home and family more diligently and responsibly than I did when earning money seemed to be my primary contribution…  But so far so good.  This new life of parenting and homesteading and self exploration has really helped be look at things, question things, value things and nurture things in ways that have changed me and I think could be of use, or at least inspiration to you too; to grow, to create, to act and to be in the present moment of this gift of life to enjoy as well as to use a an opportunity to give, grow and be grateful.

So here it begins, an attempt to put all the pieces of my Aquarian soul together, to meld my growing garden spirit, my creative jewelry business,  my rooted mama homesteading self into one whole happy existence;  Seeds and Stones and Life Home Grown… from my heart to yours.. thanks for sharing this journey of becoming whole with me.