Greetings, gentle readers! We are officially halfway through winter, according to both the Wheel of the Year and the ever-accurate groundhog – huzzah! I talked about the spirit and tradition of Imbolc a bit last time, so today I just wanted to show you a little of how I celebrated this year in pictures: Bath with chamomile and lemon herb tea…
Category: Holidays
Getting Into the Spirit of Imbolc
Greetings, gentle readers! I have indeed been absent for a bit, but I’m going to claim my right to winter hibernation to excuse that lapse, because frankly, winter totally sucks. Well, maybe not everything about winter totally sucks (my kid was born on February 5th, after all!), but the weather certainly does. Especially after the holidays drain every last ounce…
Solstice Sojourn: Hygge Bags
Greetings, gentle readers! Today’s post will be short and sweet because I mainly just want to show you a nifty thing I made for those friends of mine who need a physical and spiritual recharge during the cold months to come. I’ve given homemade gifts lots of times before, but I want to start making it a tradition to put…
Lady’s Half-Assed Christmas, Part 1
If you’re like me, gentle readers, you love the idea of the holidays, but also dread them because they are a hell of a lot of hard work. When it comes to decorating, gift giving, and treat making, 99% of that hard work falls on me, no matter how my body feels or how worn out I am from trying…
Samhain Sojourn: A Different View of a Familiar Season
Halloween is nearly upon us, gentle readers, and for me this year, that means celebrating Samhain – the Pagan festival that marks the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half. Growing ceases and decay and dormancy begin – things in nature that need to die and break down into the earth so…
Mabon Wrap-Up: Seasonal Reflection and Gratitude Galore
The great thing about celebrating the Sabbats of the Wheel of the Year is that I jive much more fluidly with the seasonal calendar than I do the Julian one. The bad thing about it is that time seems to fly by within it just as quickly as it does in the traditional calendar! The end of Mabon is upon…
Keeping Mind, Body, and Spirit in Balance with Planners and Journals
As I talked about in my article about The Dark Mother, this time of year always sends my anxiety into overdrive and makes me feel very off-kilter – like walking-on-eggshells-through-a-minefield off-kilter – and it doesn’t help that everybody around me is probably feeling the same way, so they’re just as keyed up and touchy as I am. When my anxiety…
Mabon Musings: The Dark Mother
One of my favorite and most beloved axioms comes from a professor in college whom I could not stand in the least – which always kind of rankles me, but the axiom is SO GOOD that I still hang on to it anyway: There has never been a Winter without a Spring. No matter how bad things get, meteorologically or…
Mabon Merriment – Fall Feast and Ritual 2018
This weekend was absolutely PERFECT for some autumnal abundance here at Stately Salrin Manor, gentle readers – highs of 70 degrees in the daytime and nippy, crisp evenings that made spending all day in the kitchen with the windows wide open well worth all the effort. My good husband and I worked like crazy Saturday to make our Mabon…
Lammas: One Corny Sabbat Celebration
While it often plays second fiddle to wheat in Lammas observances, corn is plentiful during this season and deserves a little celebrating of its own. I experimented with this awesome cornbread recipe and fancied it up by stirring in a chopped jalapeño, some frozen sweet corn kernels, some Fiesta Blend cheese, and some dried cherry tomatoes. These gorgeous muffins were crumbly…
Groundhog Day and Imbolc
Firstly, apologies for the long absence. To keep it short, Winter sucks. Which is why today’s entry makes it all better…or at least starting to be better. One of my favorite fascinations in life is learning about the rituals that spawned the traditions we now follow around some of our weirder holidays, such as Groundhog Day (February 2 in the…