If you’re Happy and you know it write it down.

I have been meaning to share this for a few days but the cold/ sickness has gotten the best of me. So here it is. I sometimes worry that all the fun little details will be lost in the hustle and bustle of life. We will do something have a marvelous time and then months or weeks or even sadly days later we have moved on and forgotten the enjoyment. So I covered an old coffee tin (my tins are actually cardboard) and wrote on it “If you’re happy and you know it write it down” I stuck it on our side board in our dinning room next to some pens and added a pad of paper. Little has now added a plethora of bright-colored post it notes there too.
The plan is to daily or as often as we think of it. To write what is making us happy. what we are grateful for and pop the note in the jar.

This goes beyond the family though as I am encouraging guests to use it as well. I plan to look at them and read them aloud on new years eve.

ok that’s it for today!

Domestic Goddess Guide Book aka your witchy Home Management Binder

well another year has come and gone and so as I like to do during this quite time between years, I am assessing and analyzing how my systems are working for me and figuring out what changes need to be made. There are A LOT of changes that have to be made! We have moved to different house and Little has started preschool. So I have modified my original Homemakers Binder so that it will better fit my needs and my family needs. There are a lot of pictures and a lot of links. I have taken a week or so to put this together and I am still working on it.

What you will need:
A binder I have a one inch binder with clear covers so you can slip papers in for the cover
tabs
post it type flags
paper
a printer (if you want to print out the links)
and a hole punch
and tape I always need tape.

I wanted a homemakers binder or home management binder that fit me better. Yes I clean my house but I also cleanse my house. Lots of magic things happen here and so just like my BOS this book starts with a few little tie bits of magic.  A prayer for patience and a picture of Cerridwen to bless my home hearth and endeavors.

I then have two sets of tabs one is the typical down the side type and I have used the set of 8 from Martha Stweart avery line.
They are:
1. Launch pad (don’t worry I will explain it)
2. Cleaning
3. Menu Planning
4. Food storage
5. Projects
6. Financial
7. Garden
8. Cleaning Recipes.

1. Launch Pad Section

I have those extra post it tabs across the top in just my Launch pad section.  So lets walk through what I have in there. First up is this daily rhythm which I made based on this one.

next up our weekly Rhythm. This one is still in flux but since Little and I have had our schedules changed this needed to be changed as well. As you can see I’m still literally penciling it in until I find a rhythm that really works for us but its still a good example. 

Next up is our Yearly Themes now if you have followed me on here or in my life you realize I am sure that I am crazy and like to plan things out. So much so that my wonderful fellow admins at The Pagan Mama have started calling organizing Poppy-fing. So you might know, or might not be surprised to see that I have monthly themes for Little and I. We try to plan activities with them in mind and check out books from the library within the theme.  These themes have been the same since she was 10 months old or so. Each year it feels new though as each year what is age appropriate is changed.

Next up is the 30 day challenge which I got from here. Go check it out because it is really much prettier. She did it all in color but my printer was acting up and I just can’t wast paper. Anyway If I’m am trying to establish a new habit I like to do one at a time, one month at a time. It helps solidify it for me. So I will be printing out one for each month. 

Next  I have an sheet for important dates. I didn’t show it to you as there are you know personal dates and names on it but you can find one here.

Next up is a to do list. there are lots of pretty ones out there but I just used a sheet of scrap paper (again I hate to waste paper) and scribbled January to do List at the top.

Next up is the 52 Weeks to an Organized Home challenge from Home Storage Solutions. 

Which of course is followed by A donation tracker. Because I am sure as I go through each area I will be purging items and passing them on to a new home. Might as well use it the numbers for our taxes. 

I have a calendar in her too. This one is just for tacking cleaning and house to dos. I am not sure if I will keep it like this or not as I do use a Flylady. Wall calendar and my personal Filofax which has this same calendar in it. I just LOVE this calendar! It is from Lime Tree Fruits and all of her printables are just beautiful!

2. Cleaning

Ok next up a cleaning schedule and hey i’m still working on it.  I also have a smudging prayer taped on the inside of my cleaning divider.  You can find this daily/ weekly  sheet here along with one that is filled in for how she does it.  After that I have a Monthly Zone sheet from here. You might also like this weekly sheet  I am not sure which one I will end up using myself. I say check them both out and see what works best for you.

Because as I said I cleanse my house not just clean it I added this sheet that I originally wrote for my Facebook page. 

3. Menu Planning

We eat. We eat a lot here and I cook a lot here. so here is my menu planning and shopping sheet.  There are lots of good ones out there but I made this one years ago and just keep using it. You can get the PDF here menu plan I also keep a few recipes behind this for things I will be cooking this week. I am also working a few other sheets for this section and I will share them when I finish them. 

 

4. Food storage.

I think a lot about food. I spend a lot of time with food. growing, buying, cooking, reasserting on and on and on. so this section Might not be for everyone but it is for me. I know some people are prepers and this will not meet their needs and some people for religious reasons feel they should have a years worth of food ready. I on the other hand lived through the 1989 San Andres earthquake. My house was 2 miles from the epicenter. My entire neighborhood pitched our tents and camp around our yard. While other people went to stand in lines for food and water for hours and hours I never had to. Mom being the good Girl Scout she was, was prepared and we had enough food for us not to worry and enough to share too. I took from that experience how important it really is to be prepared and so it is something I have been working on. I also have started canning, which means I need to take a better assessment of what kind of food my family eats and at what rate. Just how many pints of strawberry jam will they consume and how many pounds of tomatoes will it take to make 52 jars of sauce? These are questions I am working on answering. The following section has some sheets that help me track and figure it all out.

 

 

 

you can get this sheet here 

Canning Inventory here

I also have a Panty inventory and a freezer inventory which I failed to get a picture of somehow.

5. Projects

We all have them.  We all need to track them and think them through so we can complete them and do a happy Yay me I finished it dance! I found this cute sheet here to help out with that.

 

6. Financial

mostly what I have here is a sheet like this from Organizing Home life.

7. Garden. I found a whole lovely downloadable notebook for the garden section. Again I am trying to answer one of lives questions how many tomatoes do you need to grow to make 52 jars of sauce, have enough for salads and eating and not have too many?  And how many plants do I need to plant to get that many tomatoes. Not to mention all the other yummies that need to be grown and of course the herbs. What herbs can you grow to cook with and make potions with? You might want to make a list.

8. cleaning recipes.

Finally a section to keep all the fabulous diy natural cleaning recipes. Both to clean the house such as uses for lemon below or rosemary salt to bless the house and how to make moon water. All the good Kitchen witch recipes I need to know. 

There are a few more things but that is pretty much it for now. I know it’s a lot so what I think I might do is break it down now that I have given you the whole shebang maybe I will go back over each section and do a step by step for that section. This way I can add in all the extras.

also just for you I made a pin board with most of the links 🙂 http://www.pinterest.com/heleneliz/domestic-goddess-guide-book/

 

Learning about me

My best friend took this picture of me. She said it was nice. I think it sums me up well. Colorful and cozy scarf and uncomfortable with a camera pointing at me. Not because I have issues with cameras but because I dislike being the center of attention.  As much as I dislike it I seem to end up there though.  Because I seem to end up in charge. I’m a see things that need to be done and figure out a way to do them. I am a natural leader which really just means I don’t mind telling other people what to do.  I would much rather be like the Wizard of Oz pulling strings behind the curtain but I seem to be in front of the curtain much more.

So as uncomfortable as it makes me I have decided it is ok.  This is a big step for me. It means that I can be not just a natural leader, but a good leader.  I have struggled with the responsibility of a coven. I have struggled with leading a group of very special and wonderful people who look to me to create something wonderful and magical for them. I have struggled and stressed over creating the right ritual and experience for each one of them only to hear things later about how this or that was not good for them. Silly I know. I know you cannot please everyone all the time but it still hurt my feelings. I have struggled with the last-minute phone calls of “I want to do this” and then trying to work what ever this is into the plan that I had been working on for weeks. Mostly I have struggled with feeling like I was not doing a good enough job to provide them with the deep spiritual experience that they have been craving.

Do not get me wrong. It has been a great year for me and my coven. We have grown both in number and in-depth. We have all worked hard and created a rare find of a truly wonderful and supportive community. We like each other and as far as I know everyone get along. I think everyone is heard and I think everyone feels an ownership. This issues are just my issues. They are just about me.

And then I realized.

I am not really a creator or a provider. I am a connector.

I connect people to the things, the people, or the Devine they seek.

I do not need to reinvent any wheels I can simply help them find the right wheel for them.  As funny as this sounds it has been a relief and an eye opener. I don’t need to feel like I need to know everything I just need to know someone who knows what I need to know.

I am very excited for a new year where I can go back to sharing things, or people who are wonderful instead of feeling like I need to figure everything out 🙂

2014 Printable Sabbats and Esbats

image from http://happynewyearsms.org/happy-new-year-wallpaper-2014.html/15732588-happy-new-year-2014-message-over-black-background

Ok so I FINALLY got it done and here it is.  A few notes as this is the one I use for myself and my coven all times and dates are PST also you will see that I use the cross quarter days. Hope you like it and if you do please leave me a comment 😉

2014-esbats-and-sabbats

 

a few spots left

I am doing a new experiment I am going to try to teach online. I started a group on Facebook and there are a few more spots open so if anyone would like to join us please let me know 🙂

You can either like my Facebook page, and send me a pm with your email or you can email me at poppyunderhill at gmail.

I am super excited as we have folks of all level of experience and a small group so there can be a lot of interaction.  My class is more of a guided self discovery and I can’t wait to see where it all leads.

as I have in my BOS “Welcome all with open heart and open mind, what you seek you shall find.”

more lists to work on

Todays challenge for know yourself. is to write 2 lists or combine them as you see fit.  or if you don’t like lists write a paragraph or what ever suits you. The point is to do some self discovery as we work on “know yourself”

first list “what is important to me in my life”

and the second which might be a little more painful. are you living your life right now in accordance with what you have deemed important.

ok I shall be back with my list and if you want to share  you can leave it in the comments below or leave a link to your blog post if you doing this along with me on your blog 🙂

Know thyself lists

The journey unfolds. If your just joining me, welcome. I have decided (after a lecture from several people) to do a bit of a life overhaul. Not in the “I hate my life, everything must change”,  type of way but more in a I need to be more conscious of the choices I am making for me. So I decided to start with 13 goals of a witch and work thought them while bring my life more in line with what I want it to be. I have started with Know yourself.

I am still working on my lists but here is the progress I have made. I got to thinking about the various ways we can contribute to our health and having watched the movie Chasing Mavericks recently I kept thinking about what Frosty said about the 4 pillars of a person. So this image came to my head. As you know I’m not an artist per say but I don’t mind.  After writing the headings I decided to go back and write in some supporting characteristics of the categories.

I tried a few different ways  to write down a list of things I wanted to do every day but I don’t feel that either list is really complete and so this one is still a work in progress.

Then there is the long list of everything I have to do. I have actually gone back and added a few more things. I know this picture made some people (poor miss Jennie) freak out because it is too much.  Dear Jennie is absolutely right. It is too much, but currently this is everything on my plate.  So It is now a question of culling and delegating.  I still think without this list I still might feel like I should be able to get it all done and do more.

Having done the work to understand where I stand at this very moment I am choosing to move forward and start with examining and working on my Physical pillar. I am starting there as 1. my health is a little bit of an issue at the moment. 2. I tend to ignore my physical body more than I should. 3 this is the vessel for the other pillars so I want to sure it up.  I am starting this again just by observation. I am observing how my body is carrying out its tasks and recording some key information. I am keeping a food diary. I have done this before and it is always interesting. I am writing  down amounts of food I eat (roughly) but more I am writing  down what did I eat, why did I eat? When did I eat? How did I feel after and what did I think of the food, the flavor?  I am also trying to up my water intake as that always helps and I have yet to meet a person who drinks enough water. I will probably start adding in sleep notes too.

I have started a section in my Filofax called “a better me” and that is where I’m writing all this down. Btw if you’re wondering from the picture above with the big list that is a Personal Metropol Filo in Red and it has the Lime Tree Fruits calendar

What do I have to do

What do I have to do

Know Yourself a new journey begins.

The other day I was trying to film a video for The Pagan mama about how to deal with yourself and take care of your health.  I tried and tried and tried and just couldn’t do it.  See the problem was that I felt like a phony. I know I was not being authentic as I was not dealing with my health in the proper ways.  So I thought I would delve back into my self work and share it with you.  I think we are all on a journey and sometimes I get off my path and must get back on and I think others probably feel the same way.

I have talked about it all with you before, wearing to many hats.  I realize that I do have a lot going on in my life and it is high time I am honest with myself about it.  so to start getting back to being authentic or getting real with myself I thought I would make a couple of lists. Because I like lists and I will share them with you later tonight as I prefer to write them out by hand instead of type them. So I will share you my list headings and maybe you will feel compelled to join me and make your own.

List one: what are the things I HAVE to do?  that take my time what are my real responsibilities

list two What are the things I like to do daily?

list 3 What things do I feel are lacking or need to be added.

ok I’m off to list and will report back later 🙂