Ahhh...it is here and the holiday season is past. I always feel a sense of relief when I take down the tree, vacuum and re-arrange the furniture. As much as I love the beautiful tree and the happiness that is wrapped up in the holiday; I also feel the refreshing wave of release...it is gone. The rush, the expense, the demends, the build-up...is all gone and in it's place is quiet.

My day will be spent sewing. I need to sew together the quilt pieces I spent three hours yesterday cutting. My skirt will be long and spinny- made of blue calicos that were a gracious gift from a friend. As I sew, I meditate on 1) love 2) generous spirit and 3) my tribe: were are they? Are they looking for me? Do they know I am looking for them?

As I create my skirt, I concentrate. On learning the craft of clothes making as well creating intention. I want to wear as many long, flowy, spinny skirts as I can...my people will recognize my tribal garb from afar. I move about my day, serving my family and loving this life.

I will cook beans today. Beans and grains, straight from the Earth. I will sew with cotton; also a natural gift from our Mother. I will light candles and celebrate this cold, dark, restful period the world has fallen into and be faithful as I wait for the Sun to return.


Namaste'

Beautiful writing, mama.

May you have a blessed day, year, life.

Beautiful sentiment. And very well put.

Today I will spend getting my house back in order. Decluttering my life and cleaning my spirit along with my house. Meditating on being kind to my son and also getting back to the simple life. Neither are easy at the moment. Both are work I have set out to do becuase it will make my life easier if I can succeed.

Happy New Year, and Nameste' to you as well. Here, in this forum, is a bit of your tribe, even though we can't see your spiny skirts. ;)

Val

Hugs Val. I'm in the same boat with needing to work at being nice to ds1. He's almost 11 and quite challenging at the moment.

Decluttered the garage big time today. Lots of garbage and the back of my van is full of donation items. I was also able to organize a lot of things and make them more accessable. My biggest challenge at the moment is dh. He is very resistant to even going through his stuff and organizing. Whatever!!!

Tomorrow both the boys want their rooms rearranged. Maybe I'll post before and afters if I remember.

Nighty night.

Thank you for your beautiful writing!

I also have been deliberately making our house more comfortable, beautiful, and peaceful. In our main room, I added some blacksmithed iron hooks and to them put a hand cut branch across and added a hand dyed golden silk on each end... In the window I hung a hand made circle made of golden glass with a butterfly impression in it.... We eliminated as much "extra" as possible. I hope to do some watercolor "lazure" type painting to our "main room" as well.

I also take time to meditate/pray as I work - even while doing the dishes I pray for each of our children and imagine how it important it is to provide clean dishes for my family.

Warm wishes for a peaceful 2006!
Tonya

Thank you for sharing such a beautiful piece of writing.

Yesterday I rested and spent one last day with my whole family home (dh is a teacher and was home from Dec 22 through yesterday). I cleaned, and tried to move from the feeling of the holiday toward starting the new year, although our tree is still up and probably will be until Friday.

Today there is still more cleaning to do, and it is the last day my children are home all day, as school starts again tomorrow. We will also prepare muffins and snacks for the school week. And we will write thank-you notes to those who gave us gifts.

I'm glad you are making wonderful clothes for you. It's funny, because I had decided that this week would be the week I'd make myself some new clothes, put that at the top of the list. We need to nurture ourselves.