Chinese New Year

We had a little celebration of the Chinese New Year yesterday.

We started with a visual re-telling of the story of how the Jade Emperor decided on the animals of the Chinese calendar. I told the story, read from a powerpoint presentation off my laptop, and acted out the story with toys and a little scene made with tin foil, a couple of chiffons, some pebbles, bits of wood and some plastic stone and tree ornaments.  The boys were engaged, but I learnt it would have been better not to have the powerpoint presentation, for some reason they were more drawn to looking at the pictures on the screen than the story I was acting out for them.

After I told the story a couple of times (again on their request)  they had a go at playing around with the toys on the river, and tried acting the story out too. 

Later we made some Chinese lanterns.  I had to give quite a lot of help with some parts of the lamp making but they were pleased with the results. 

(My example)

Biscuits effort; he mostly did the cutting and I did the rest.

Boris' effort; he had a real go at making the lantern himself, though got frustrated at times when things weren't going exactly his way. 

And for dinner, well a Chinese stir fry of course. 

I hope you all enjoyed a happy Chinese New Year!

Happy New Year!

Well what a year 2015 was.  Unlike some of my friends I can't honestly say it was an amazing year. My word of the year last year was "Enjoy"  and 2015 did have it's moments of joy, our holiday in France, camping with best friends, seeing S Club 7, and I nurtured some wonderful friendships, but my general feeling of the year was that I just about made it through by the skin of my teeth with my sanity more or less in tact.

I was basically treading water for the whole of the year, just keeping my head above the surface, just surviving.  Nothing much happened on the Home Education front, almost nothing happened with my creative biz, and my diet and self care have been pretty appalling.  It is with this in mind that I have decided on my word of 2015:

I want the coming year to be a year of growth and development, with my biz, with my spiritual life, with my home life, I want to feel like I am thriving not just surviving. Moving forwards rather that just treading water.

So I am hoping for an exciting year next year, I have lots of plans in mind for my creative biz and lots of intentions for being more organised and planning things better.  I have been using my Shining Life books to set my goals and intentions and plan how I will get them done.

If you want to join me on this exciting journey and make 2016 your best year yet, get on board with the Shining Life programme, If you click on this link Leonie Dawson, who designed the Shining Life Programme gives me some thankyou money!


I have already started updating my Etsy shop with new items, this gorgeous vase:

and this painting:

(More paintings to come I hope.)

We are throwing another little thing into the mix as of sometime between the end of May and the beginning of June next year.  All being well another little life will be blessing our family, it's certainly going to be  busy year, but I am optimistic and excited.

I opt out

I used to pride myself of being reasonably knowledgeable regarding current events.  I enjoyed listening to radio 4 and would watch the news in the evening.  If something big was happening I might even watch a news channel for an hour or so to keep up-to-date with what was happening.

However in the past few weeks it has become apparent to me that this practice is damaging a part of my soul.  Only bad news is reported on the TV and radio, only what is sensational, and it is becoming harder and harder to listen to.  Particularly recently with the news about the Paris attacks, the refugees in Calais, the bombing of Syria and another mass shooting in America, I have engaged emotionally with these topics and spent time weeping at the telly, having that horrible feeling of compassion in watching a terrible situation and wanting to help but not really being able to do anything about it.

Other items in the news just make me angry, politician's behavior, they way money is distributed, the way the media spread damaging misinformation, the way the environmental issues are marginalized, I could go on. It's all bad, bad, bad.

I used to engage with the sad situations, and the infuriating situations, by feeling sad, crying, getting passionate, getting angry, I might sign a petition or two, write a letter to an MP, moan to friends and spend time thinking about it.

In some strange way I felt like if I felt sad for people, if I felt empathy for them, I would somehow be helping them by acknowledging how bad their situation was.

But I realise now that I am not helping them at all by feeling sad.  All I can do is what I can here, where I am.  I am not in a position to travel to other countries and physically help other people, nor am I in a position to be able to donate any significant amounts of money.  But what I can do is make small changes to my little world right here.

I recently read an essay by Thomas Moore from a book called the The Soul of Nature, the essay is called Ecology:Sacred Homemaking,  It talks about how important it is for us humans to have a sense of home and how if we have a strong sense of attachment to a place of "home" we can extend that feeling beyond the walls of our house into the rest of the world.  It says:

          "Once we have the imagination that sees home in such a profound and far-reaching sense,                    protection of the environment will follow, for ecology is a state of mind, an attitude, and a                  posture that begins at the very place you find yourself this minute, and extends to places you              will never see in your lifetime.  The description of divinity ascribed to the mythological                      magnus Hermes Trismegistus and repeated by Neo-Platonists down the centuries applies to                  our view of ecology: "God is a sphere whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference              is nowhere."  The object of our ecological concern is nothing less than that sphere, and yet it is            felt as the most intimate enclosure and embrace."

The message I got from the essay was that if we create a sense of home (which is something we love and care for), close to us then that automatically extends into the world through our consciousness.
Although this is referring more to environmental concerns I feel it extends to issues such as peace as well.

Mother Teresa said:

               "What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family."

To me this is so profound and meaningful because it is something that I CAN do, and feelings of helplessness with the state of the world dissipate when I focus on what is close by and achievable.  Why would I want to poison myself with the negativity that is happening in the world that I am out of control of when I can focus on the positive changes I can make in the environment and with the people around me?

So I am opting out of watching the news, the soul destroying, emotionally disabling, rotten, horrid news.  And focusing on things I can do, just like Theodoor Roosevelt said:

                               "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

It's not about burying my head in the sand and pretending bad things aren't happening, I know bad things are happening and will always happen, it's about self protection, self preservation, I can't be a positive influence in the world if I am feeling miserable and desperate and negative all the time because of what is going on.

A water colour painting I did in the wee hours of this morning.

So here's to positivity and doing what you can, I CAN heal the world, but it starts at home.