Yuletide Blessings

Yule was all sorts of awesome when we picked up a swap package sent by the fabulous AlwaysInspired. Check out the loot!

A paper cemetery!



The coolest Monster Mittens ever.



A sweet Marie Laveau primitive dolly. She's absolutely glorious and I'm totally in love with her and her wee mojo and wanga.



Last but not least the most wonderful "Home Sweet Home" embroidery/watercolour ever! It's really and truly spectacular.




I've been a bit out of sorts lately... so much so that I had to take a week off on stress leave... and this package really cheered me up. I love every bit of it. AlwaysInspired's package has put mine to shame and for that I'm grateful and will exact sweet revenge upon her some how... some day :)

XMAS PANIC!!!!

I cannot believe that another year has passed and that I am still in the same boat I'm in every other year... last minute Christmas panic.

Today was a hard one because both the fellas were sick. The little one was up puking last night and the big one was asleep on the couch for most of the day. It's crunch time! There should be no sickness during the week leading up to 'the day'.



The wee fella, despite feeling cruddy, was in a rather crafty mood today so we did get some stuff accomplished. Rooting around my craft stash he came across some herbs and oils so we tossed them together to make a batch of pot pourri and tub tea! D even helped design the labels.



It's not often that my kiddo wants anything to do with making so it was a sort of Solstice miracle that he was the one pushing to do the crafting. Fingers crossed it lasts the week!

More craftin'

The noise issue continues... but so does the crafting!

I was organizing a Fairy Godmother Swap on craftster and swiped up the fantactulous Phizzychick for my partner. (NO PEEKING PHIZZY! THIS MEANS YOU! GO AWAY! AVERT YOUR EYES NOW!!!!)

When I packaged everything up the whole thing weighed about 2.5 kg and shipping was going to cost a whopping $90!!! WHA?!?!? Anywho, I took the package apart and sent in two parts instead which brought me down to less than half that, thanks be to the postal gods.

On to the goodies...

A Fairy Godmother Cupboard! It started life as a tacky thing found at the thrift shop for $5



Now it's home to a Star Duster...



... and an Official Fairy Godmother Wand



Here she is ready to be filled with goodies.



Some magic beans and buttons...



A Ball of Christmas Magic...



And Bottled Moonbeams too...



Lastly, what every Fairy Godmother needs... an Organization Kit which includes, slippers, a calendar, chocolate, a flask w/cozy and a tin of distractions.



Hopefully it doesn't take months to arrive and gets there safely. The shipping is always the most nerve wrecking part of swapping :)

Back to craftin'

Resolving our noise problem has sort of become a full time job for me and it's seriously cutting into my making time. Thankfully it's been fairly quiet around here for almost a week so I've taken the week off from complaining to get the creative juices flowing again.

Tiny things are so much fun to look at but totally finicky to make. With my little sausage fingers and tendency to be quite clumsy I'm surprised this guy turned out at all.

He measures just under 3" tall. His head is a carved bone bead, his legs are twigs, the left arm is a milagro, the right is a charm pin, his body is a small block of wood and all those gears are miscellaneous watch parts.

I think I may make a few more of these fellas... if I can get the knack of making them balanced so they don't fall over all the time.

A neat find...

This is a rather late Halloween post but I wanted to share the super cool book, printed in 1912, that I picked up for $2

Saint Anne and a Petition for Tranquility

Over the past few years I've come to have a deep respect and awe for the influence and power of the Saints.

Saints aren't just characters in Christianity, they are used by many religious, magical, mystical and folk traditions. Petitioned for special causes, revered for their unique abilities and honored by those they benefact, they truly are a fascinating and varied bunch.

Some well known Saints...
St. Nicholas - patron saint of children
St. Patrick - patron saint of Ireland and chaser of snakes :)
The Blessed Virgin
St. Joseph - patron saint of workers, and protector of the Catholic Church

St. Joseph is really interesting because there is a very popular 'spell' that involves him. It is believed that if you bury a Saint Joseph figure upside-down in your front yard that it will help to sell your property. You can even buy kits for this purpose! I've done this twice with great success and have my wee Saint Joseph standing in his place of honor by my front door.

The Saints also play a vital role in Afro-Caribbean religions. Very basically put, slaves, unable to worship their African gods and goddesses adopted the imagery of the Catholic saints and applied the personalities of their own deities. For example, Papa Legba is associated with St. Peter, the keeper of the crossroads/the guardian at the gates of heaven. (Check out Old Religion/New World for a much better explanation.)

I'm using the power of the Saints myself at the moment. I've built a shrine to Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother to Jesus. Saint Anne is the patron saint of Canada, housewives, seamstresses and whose speciality is tranquility.

The text you see on the sides are a set of prayers called a Novena. The prayers are for special petitions to the saints and are conducted for 9 consecutive days.

I have faith that Saint Anne will help to restore tranquility to my neighbourhood.

Complainy Pants

I'm going to rant again... this time it's serious.

When we moved into our loverly new place we were well aware of the fact that there was a factory of sorts across the street. We were willing to deal with it because we loved the house so much and we can put up with a bit of noise during the day. It's clear that things are not all sunshine and roses around here.

The building is called CB Freezers and they are a blast freezer facility. They are also a 24 hour a day business, something no one told us. No worries, how bad can it be? Truth be told it can be pretty damned bad at times.

I can deal with noise. I lived near a main road in a city of 500,000 people in a house that backed on to a bar and Harley Dealship. This is worse and no one in power seems to give a hoot. Imagine a continual loud hum that alternates 5-10 minutes on/10-20 minutes off from late at night to the wee hours of the morning. One night last month this lasted 9 hours. It's not every night but it's enough to get me pretty pissy.

Here is my problem. I've called the by-law office and have been told that there is nothing I can do because the building is zoned industrial they are exempt from the noise by-law. They can make as much noise as they want, whenever they want, no matter what time of the night or day. Despite the fact that I told the by-law gal that even airports and gravel pits have to adhere to certain guidelines I was told that there is nothin' for me to do but deal with it.

This is all sorts of wrong on so many levels. There ARE laws for noise contamination, so what gives?

A tired me is a mean me and I'm ready to do something. All can do is try right? Let's hope that trying actually gets me somewhere.