There Are a Few of My Favorite Things - Asian Edition

There are so many beautiful items on Etsy, that I just felt the need to do another Etsy Seller Feature, this time with an Asian theme! So this week I have art, ceramics, mobile, decals, and votive holders, oh my! All beautiful, all creative, and all Asian-inspired home decor!

Japanese Chiyogami paper is beautiful on its own, but add some mood lighting to them and they shine! This collection, Wonderland Blues, of votive holders is a wonderful addition to any room! Small, unobtrussive but what a statement! Just put a votive candle in them and watch them glow! Gamiworks has many beautiful chiyogami paper-inspired items in their shop, each more beautiful than the next!

Origami is an ancient form of paper-folding that has been around for centuries. Anyone who had art-class as a child tried their hand at it themselves, I'm sure. Myself, I've never been able to fold much more than a napkin. These beautiful Floating Lily Hanging Mobile by SimpleSweetDesign is much more impressive than my sad and sloppy Artichoke Heart, I must say. Dainty, lovely, beautiful in shades of green and yellow, this would look so sweet above a baby's crib, over a home-office desk, or hanging in a nice corner of a room, drawing all eyes to it the moment you walk in. And if greens and yellows aren't your colors? She has them in every color combo you can imagine, along with dozens of other beautiful pieces!




Speaking of drawing all eyes to something in the room, this beautiful
limited edition glicee print of tcatalano's Catching Desert Dreams makes me think of a beautiful desert hallucination. It also makes me think how nice it would look above my desk. At 9 x 12 inches, this print is just large enough to brighten up the room without taking it over!

Whether you're looking for some beautiful ACEOs, glicee prints, or original works, all tcatalanos items are just as creative and inspired.

Looking for a fun, vibrant place to plant some herbs or flowers? Brighten up the room with these gorgeous red and black handpainted ceramic pots, dotted with sweet cherry blossoms. MonkeyJunkyGoods has several different styles and colors available, these are pots are 4x4 and the perfect size for your own mini indoor garden!

Want to spruce up your apartment but can't paint the walls? Wall decals are the next best option, and this Lotus Blossom - Mehndi is perfect for those seeking to bring a little peace and meditation into the room. They come in a multitude of colors and are anice and large (about 22x22). This piece is certainly not the only one that BadassCustomDecals has, in fact their collection ranges from meditative to entertainment, children's room to toilet! Check out their Etsy store, check out their website! http://www.dalidecals.com/

I hope you enjoyed my little feature of fellow Etsy artisans! Next time will be some lovely sellers at Artfire!

The Little Anger Monster in My Head

It's safe to say that my biological father has some really bad anger issues which is why I stay as far away from him and his family as possible. Unfortunately, since an early age I also had some pretty bad anger issues which I deal with on a regular basis. Meditation certainly helps, deep breathing, and 95% of the time I'm great, no problem, but when something triggers me it throws me into major anger for the rest of the day and I have now been dealing with this twice in three days. And they haven't been your typical "someone cut me off and I'm pissed" kind of situation, they've been those "what the hell is wrong with people, doesn't anyone have any sense of decency or humanity???" kind of situations. (it takes a lot to get me angry, which is good I suppose)

Friday I got on the train and three black men sat behind me and proceeded to call me things like fat whore, ugly dyke, and told me to do any number of things to them sexually. Had it been one man I would have turned around and vollied an obscenity stream that would make my father blush, but being as I was vastly outnumbered I clutched my bag and moved to the next train at the next stop.

This morning, as my partner and I were stopped at a light, minding our own business a man pulled up next to us and looked out his window at me. No big deal, right? People tend to look at those next to them when waiting for a light to turn. So I talked to my partner and no big deal, then she looked over my shoulder and said "what is his problem?" I turned and he had placed his head in his hands and was staring out at us again, staring. I gave a quizzical look and turned away to face my partner and said "he's probably off his medication." That's when she went nuts screaming "what the hell is his problem!?" I turned around again to see him giving us the finger and the ladies his was with were laughing. I rolled down my window and said "What the hell is your problem?" He rolled down his and began spewing curses, expletives, and suggestions as what we should do to his black manly items that would make his female relatives spit in anger. The girls continued to laugh. I, of course, reached into the back of our car where the 15 softball bats are hidden. At that point my partner realized my anger-monster had surfaced, the light turned green and we took off, but I already had my seat belt off and the door unlocked. It took me about 15 minutes to calm down enough to breathe normally and be able to get on the train without killing someone.

What is it about anger? I can let go of jealousy, stress, sadness, depression, but no matter what I do (therapy, meditation, etc) I can't lick anger? And I'm not talking about just a little anger, I'm talking about so enraged I shake and grit my teeth and want to beat the daylights out of something. A therapist once told me that I should take boxing or karate to let off steam but my fear was that boxing and karate would only give me tools to use in my anger. It's bad enough that my partner is a softball coach (I know, very stereotypical) so we have a lot of bats in the car.
I suppose that the anger is good in some ways, as I have found when I am incredibly scared I can turn it into anger and it seems to get people to back off, like when I was babysitting and I took the baby for a walk through the park and this huge dog came up snarling and barking and no one was in sight. I went straight from deathly afraid to incredibly pissed off and I got in front of the carriage and starting screaming at that dog, matching snarl to snarl, bark to yell, arms up in the air to make me look bigger and eventually the dog went running off.

We were watching Twilight last night, as it so happens, and in one scene Edward, the vampire, goes into a rage at these guys who wanted to do some pretty bad stuff to Bella, the girl he loves. He gets so angry that all he has to do is look at these guys and they back off, then Bella has to calm him down so he won't go back and rip their heads off. That's how I feel sometimes. But I don't have the great excuse of being a vampire.

Supplies!!!

They are on their way! Woohoo!

So, I didn't wait like I had planned in order to buy some supplies for my next set of products. I just couldn't. So I decided to start small and work my way up, depending on how well they sell. Not a bad idea in and of itself, right? If they don't sell then I've only spent half what I would have. If they sell I'll have enough to buy more supplies! So I've decided to move forward with my bath teas but I think, considering how few people actually take baths these days, to market them as foot bath teas (and if someone wants to use them in a bath more power to them). After all, there are two lesser known Chakras in the sole of each foot.

What I'll be making is a foot bath tea using Dead Sea Salt (which is amazingly nutritive and soothing) and organic herbs specifically blended to help heal and balance certain Chakras. I also plan to start working on creating some teas that do the same...the trick is getting the teas to taste good even with all those herbs in them. The tea could work miracles but if it doesn't taste good no one will drink it.

I've also wanted to start working more with essential oils but as I have cats who get into everything I may not be able to. Essential oils are toxic to cats as they can't process it in their liver, even just smelling it is toxic...so I try to keep them as far away from my oils as possible. I can't NOT use EOs, they are just too wonderful, so I have to be incredibly careful. I wish I had a separate space from my cats where I could mix them...perhaps once I reach my goal and have my own office.

Oh, I have a request for all of you who read this blog. Please pray for me as I have been having real trouble meditating lately. I used to be able to meditate and really focus, but lately when I meditate I fall asleep! That's fine when I meditate to relax, but when I meditate to contact my guides and try to talk to spirits about readings or people's troubles, it is not helpful in the least! It doesn't seem to be affecting my readings any, as I pray for quite some time before doing each reading, but it's getting a little annoying. I could use a little help, and apparently more sleep.

Amazing Meditation Session Last Night

So last night I wanted to try out a new guided meditation that helps you meet your spirit guide. It's truly meant as an introduction and I had gotten it for my partner since she's been wanting to meet hers. I decided to see how good it was before having her try it. It was wonderful!

So, my main spirit guide, as some of you know, is Samantha. She is quite a wonderful, motherly woman with an incredible amount of patience. So she and I had a good 20 minute "conversation" which involved a lot of questions and answers. During the session I discovered that she and I had been together in a prior life, a life where we were Native Americans out in the mid-west. She was the tribe's medicine woman and I was studying under her to be a shaman. I was very impatient and wanted to have amazing skills just handed to me, I didn't want to work on them. She was, in that incarnation, Sitting Eagle. She made it clear that she chose to be my spirit guide in this life in order to continue the work I had started in that life. I was never able to perfect my skills because I always expected them to be better, to work faster, and didn't want to do the work. She said that this life I had to do the work.

I also asked her about the issues I have with my memory (which is that I have a horrible memory, for someone in their early 30s). She said that I've been holding onto the trauma from my past life, in which I was murdered and the killer basically bashed me in the head causing incredible trauma to my brain. She also told me that in that life I had been engaged to my current partner and that my partner became so distressed and depressed that she (at the time, he) got drunk and died in a car accident. When I told my partner this she began to cry immediately, suddenly things were making sense for us. This explained not only my poor memory but her hatred of all drugs and alcohol and her very over-protective nature towards me.

There was so much more involved in the meditation, but I left it feeling like life made so much more sense, that I had some work to do but now I had more direction. I also got on the train today and began to pick up so much information about people around me that I had to close my eyes and turn on my iPod. That has never happened before. What was interesting was that all I was picking up was what people were upset about. Very interesting...going to have to learn to shut that off in public places, was NOT fun.