2012-2013 Mantras

via

While I meditate and do yoga I repeat positive things to myself that are helpful throughout my day no matter what I am doing. To share (and so I remember!!!) here are some good ones:

"I am safe."
"Open my heart. As wide as it can be."
"I am love."
"Everything is as it should be."
"I am relaxed."

After taking a peek at my natal chart I realized that the "5th House" associated with children/first pregnancy... is empty. This doesn't mean I won't have children; this means I won't have to focus or try too hard... hopefully. There are signs very near the House however, that I feel are things to take into consideration while we are trying to have a baby. Based on these I am adding several new mantras to my collection:

"Take care of yourself."
"Be healthy."
"No guilt."
"Work hard."
"Do it your own unique way."

I love how they all kind of tie together; it wouldn't be hard to write a paragraph interconnecting them in some way. Do you use/have mantras?

Let the Sun shine... Let the Sunshine In...

Last month I learned something valuable that I will share at risk of sounding very young... even though I am very young.


via

A month ago today I shared that someone at my work's wife is suprise-pregnant... but I didn't share that this was announced the day after my first BFN (big fat negative)... Thursday night I was devastated, disappointed, sad, and so frustrated. I managed to pull myself together before work that next morning and continue on, sunflower upon my head and the skip in my step that is Friday. After that announcement I plunged back down to the place I had been. I didn't like it; I felt involuntarily miserable and thus more miserable.
After making it through most of the day I was finally at home, sulking to myself. One of my blog-sisters, Kim, emailed me to see how I was doing and I spilled the beans. I expected her to agree, to comiserate with me, and to tell me things I wanted to hear.  She didn't; she pissed me off.

She told me that she knows how frustrating it must be for me to be going through this in light of the announcement, but that I had to be happy for them.

WHAT?! But, but... ME!!! What about MEEEE?!

Her email continued, "the more joy you can let in your heart and less stress, the easier it will be to conceive."

WELL... hmm. Yeah... Maybe there's something to this...
So I thought about it. I examined where the pissed-off was coming from: me.
She doesn't know the people I work with; she knows and likes me. She wants to help me.
So I had to re-read the email with love in my heart. It sounded different in my head the second time.
"You know," I said to myself, "you'd want people to be happy for you."
True.
"So be happy for them; they're going to experience the joy of a child. This doesn't mean you won't..."

Also True. So instead of being negatively affected by the news, I chose to be happy and go towards all the feelings that ever make me sad/uncomfortable and get up close to them. Turns out that once you make that choice, to be happy, the negative feelings simply back down and fizzle; this last month has been the most joyous of my entire life.


Thanks for pissing me off, Kim. ;o)

Testing, Testing, Oh! It's on!

via

It has come to my attention via Blog Stats that I am gaining traffic via Bloglovin's Facebook app. This, to me, is exciting--and frightening... my blog can get purtttty personal, sometimes borderline TMI. Although I'm very open, there's some people I just don't want sharing in this exciting time of our life... I've learned that there are people to not include.
So while I am concerned that people will not be respective of my privacy and will choose to share whatever news I have whenever I have some, I cannot change myself for those people. And that is just another reason they are missing out on how awesome our family is and will be; they'll only get to experience half of it, as I do not share my everyday life with them.

If you choose to include yourself in this journey starting officially (OMGZ!!!) tomorrow, welcome.
This is gonna be awesome.

You Can't Always Get What You Want...

I realized a great many things this weekend, and then this morning as I began to incorporate them into myself, I received a phone call from the Doctor. It has only been 3 days since my appointment. But, yes.

My yes has come.

Yes, I am healthy enough to have a baby now.

I have no more cysts, no more precancerous cells and no more CIN1. I can have a baby!

I had immense faith that I would heal, but I didn't know if it would be "on time..." On my time is what I should say. I hardly ever get what I want when I want it. I either require growth, time, or both when they are one and the same. As soon as I want something I start to work towards it only for me to be set back waiting, waiting, waiting. This time is different, at this stage anyway.

I was running out of my Pill and I had no prescription. The doctor had me on some different than my old kind to see if it would help the cyst shrink before surgery. Now they are gone, and I have gotten this call.

Meant to be? Maybe. Feels that way...

Is it bad that I'm now way more excited about the Offbeat Mama meetup that I can be one?

Is it bad I can't stop happycrying? If it is, I don't care. I can't help that one!

SO Nervous! ...Kind of.

So tomorrow is the big day: my "Design Test."

It will determine if I am proficient in Adobe Illustrator and hand drawing, and will also determine whether I get an actual interview for this job. In any case, even if I fail horribly (not likely), I still have a job after the dust settles... and I could try again. So I'm trying to just be positive-nervous instead of negative-nervous by having faith in my badassedness and my mad drawing skills. I have been watching YouTube for Illustrator tutorials all of lastnight and into today, and my confidence is growing.
Besides, they have 2 postitions open that they need to fill; Why would they not want me to succeed and fill that spot?  I could be that person for them! Their search could be over with me!!!

My mantra: *Just Believe*

Wish me luck.

RAWRRRR, Pinners!!!

After not logging onto Pinterest for nearly months, I vow possibly to NEVER go back.

Ohh, teh pins.

The weight loss motivation that gives every reason to lose weight EXCEPT for being healthy and strong.

The millions of pretty, yet insignificant and make-believe homes and renovations that say nothing about the character of the people who call the space home. The lovely, very expensive homes and renovations that do not make us champion our own spaces we call home; they only serve to steal joy via comparison.

The women... the beautiful, perfect, PHOTOSHOPPED-ER THAN HELL "women," who we also compare to our own likenesses, which invoke feelings of lack and perpetual never-measure-up-ness.

And amidst the pins are actual gems of awareness, consciousness, Truth even.

Do these get pinned? Repinned? HELL NO?!

WHY, WHY DON'T YOU CARE, PINNERS?!

You give the testimony that you don't care dog food is made of rendered animals that found their ends with disease, euthanizing at the shelter, or being "4 D" cattle by instead pinning a lovely little wedding bouquet onto your FREAKING PRETEND wedding board!

You don't care that 1 in 112 children (and counting) now have autism... you'd rather pin a freaking nutella recipe that will just make you feel guilty 2 pins later--when you see a skinny bitch that makes you jealous-- not the pin of a starving African baby you passed up.

The people on Pinterest with effed up priorities scare me. Last time I checked my house is amazing just the way it is, I'm effing gorgeous just the way I am, and my heart knows what needs its attention most.

What I think of "For the Best"

Whether you are religious or not, to accept an outcome from any situation is a matter of faith. If you choose to be a positive person, these outcomes would be "for the best."

Then why do bad things happen to good people?

Because whether we understand why or not, it is "for the best."
I believe that the Universe/God/Jah/Karma/etc... has a definite order to the series of events playing out in our lives and how they are supposed to click into place with one another. I have faith in that.
So in our limited scope of human knowledge of the Universe, it is a matter of choice and of faith to be positive and to know that whatever happens to us is for the best. Even if we don't understand why.

Everything is always as it should be. Everything happens for a reason. I trust in that.

Check out Offbeat Home!!!

I LURVE the Offbeat Empire and the amazing people who run it.
You probably have heard of Offbeat Bride, but there's MOAR!!! It's like the Knot how they are the wedding-themed site, then there's Offbeat Mama (like the Bump) and then Offbeat Home (the Nest). I should mention that these sites stop being like the Knot at this point and starts being more individualized and specialized for Offbeats.
OBB talks about zombie weddings in bars that are amazing and things like using TP rolls for centerpieces.
OBM talks about Offbeat motherhood, raising Offbeat children and giving birth. There are birth stories, mama products and a smattering of amazingly cute kiddos with mohawks.
Since OBB no longer serves me as it use to when I was going to be a bride, and OBM doesn't serve me specifically... yet, I read the shiz out of Offbeat Home. I love reading about bunny Hingeheads we can add to our doors to give the Bunnay Hutch some personality, or about vertical gardening on our deck.

The Empire recently held their reader survey to see what we like, when and how much. The last question was "Have you submitted a guest post before?"
To which my survey response was: No.
The sub-question was: "Why not?"
The only answer I had was "I don't know!"

So I got busy! I wrote about my favorite daily home task: cooking!!!
I wrote about the Mooseloaf and Greek Yogurt Mashed potatoes we had for dinner last week, submitted it with the picture and crossed my fingers, eagerly awaiting the 2-week waiting period for approval of guest posts. I'm the anxious type so I yippeeeeeed when I got an email 5 DAYS LATER saying it was ACCEPTED FOR PUBLISHING!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So go to OffbeatHome.com next Thursday, December 15th to see how Mooseloaf is made and to leave me some Offbeat comment love!

Psychological Needs in Hetero-Marriages*

Everyone has needs. Emotional needs, phsyical needs, psychological needs. All kinds of things that make us feel like "us" and make us happy. Loving yourself and taking time out to do things you enjoy fulfill some needs that no one can, but in doing this the past month or so I have felt there is something missing. I have felt... not a lack of closeness to Shawn, but an increase in distance for sure. We are not "growing apart" or being distant but we are simply there at home, expecting things to be amazing and different because we're married. It is amazing being married to your BfF but I have missed the special connection I felt to Shawn that made me giddy when we first met. It's not missing or gone, it's just changed. It has grown along with us and now it is different. Just like how a child we will someday create will grow and change many times, becoming simply different.
What is missing, for me, is the way I show my husband how I support him and how I feel about him as a man. In between doing things I enjoy like teaching crochet before going home after work and cooking dinner, I have become very focused on what kind of woman I am. This is important to figure out, but I have time. I have an idea of what I want to be, too so that's a headstart.
So it has occurred to me I spend too much time focusing on what I do rather than what I express. Sure I think all these things about Shawn below, but I never tell him. Not like I should. Not like I need to be told how he thinks of me as a woman...

Men are "doers" and Women are "thinkers." Generally. And I HATE to generalize especially in the case of people, but this is mostly true. Men focus in on one thing at a time intellectuallly while women take it all in and digest it emotionally. This wires us differently thus causing our needs to be met differently.
Men need intellectual affirmation. They need to know how you feel. You cannot simply mentally obsess over your man a la Anne Boelyn and expect him to read your mind or assume the you feel a certain way about him.
They really need to know you trust them, for starters. Trusting your man to go to the gym alone when you don't want to go (or because you already did) shows him you know he loves you enough to do what he says.

Men left with the responsibility to do the right thing will; if they do not, they are boys.

And if you do go to the gym with him, just because you catch hottie McAbs-Abs eying him dosen't mean he will ever give her a thought simply because you gave her one.
Trusting your man includes letting him go when he says "I'm fine" to your "What's wrong?"
If he doesn't want to share it he can obviously handle it himself, so trust him to do so. If he needs your help or it concerns you, he will ultimately come to you because you have shown him you're there. That is all he needs.
If you're parenting, trusting your spouse to care for the baby when you have been doing the main caregiving during the day can be difficult. Just because they do something different doesn't mean it's wrong... you may learn from the way your partner does it! Trust them!

There are lots of other ways you can show your partner you love them and that you think they are a good person. Trust is the one I feel everything is based on, however. If you can't trust someone enough to let your guard down, who will keep watch of it when you can't? Trust and be trusted.

I may continue this...

*I chose to aterisk "Hetero" because of the language I used here like "husband" and "wife" instead of "partner." Trust applies to every relationship!!!

YAY! I solds 2 sock monkeys!



HiLLjO.etsy.com

I have an etsy account mainly so that local people have an easy way to buy my products online and have them mailed to their homes in lieu of the run-around-to-pay-and-pickup. Plus it makes them available for people that just happen upon my sock monkeys and agree that they are a perfect gift for anyone. I usually don't make sales out of the blue off of etsy; I usually get a custom order, make it, post it and then the customer buys it off the site. So today when my fraternal twin monkeys were purchased I did a happy dance!!!

These two will be joining a family for Christmas as a gift! I can't wait to send them out on their merry ways today after work! I am glad, too, that I didn't have to split them up. They're twins, you know.

Happy 11.11.11 - Peace Day + Vet's Day

peace/pēs/

Exclamation:	Used as a greeting.
Noun:	Freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility.
Synonyms:	quiet - calm - tranquillity - tranquility - stillness

 

 

Peace is most defined AS a lack of hostility. I do not believe this wholly; Peace IS a capacity to hold conflicting ideas about how people live and to accept each of those ideas as equally good to the others so long as it does not disturb your own life. Without this, Peace cannot be achieved.

I am highly, highly spiritual and have no exclusive religious beliefs belonging to any one religion but I have studied Christian theology at Creighton University in Omaha, NE and I learned something about good and evil. Good is not a lack of evil; evil is a lack of good. Everything is inherently good. And if it Is, it is meant to Be.
I believe we are all connected and all thoughts come to us from whatever or whoever God is. To have the peace of God, you must acknowledge the connections between us and revel in the differences among us.

Most humans haven't discovered that there is NO way to completely agree with everyone, which I find silly. Nothing is for Everyone. Of course you won't agree with what everyone has to say; not everyone agrees with you. However, we are all human and any thoughts conflicting or otherwise, join us together.

Feel the oneness you have within yourself, then to the person closest to you. Think about how you may disagree with them on something, but how you still love them very much. Extend that love for yourself and those close to you to any others in our one race of Human and you will find Peace.

Peace is not a lack of anything; it merely Is.

SURPRISE!!!

For those who do not recognize... this logo is for the new Guns N' Roses.

And we totally saw them last night at ye Olde Qwest Centre (now known as century something...)!!!

I won tickets at my amazing job and that's not all... they were SUITE BOX TICKETS. This was the surprise I was keeping to myself yesterday!!!

I didn't tell Shawn we were going until we drove past the marquee at aforementioned Centre and he saw the logo with the advertised show.

"We're going to this?!" he asked.

"YUUUP," I was finally allowed to be excited now that he knew!!!

Better still, Reverend Horton Heat opened and played for over an hour!!! If you have played guitar hero you've probably heard "Psychobilly Freakout."

 That was better for Shawn than the headliner, who if you don't know, only has Axl as the remaining original bandmember. It was a great show, we had a FABULOUS time for free and didn't mind the late-starting show one bit. We did leave 4 songs from the end after November Rain but apparently from the reviews today in the Omaha World Herald a lot more people missed a lot more songs. It was after 1 when the concert finally ended.

My least favorite thing, to be a negative Nancy (no offense to Nancies out there; y'all can make fun of my B- blood type if you want) but they have replaced Slash with a baby poseur version of himself. The boy needs to take that hat off his head, cigarette out of his mouth and practice not playing sour notes here and there because he's too focused on the camera and babes in front of him to pay attention to the neck of his guitar. DURRRR.

Axl sang pretty well despite some falsely harsh reviews and he bopped around doing a classic 1-leg hoedown jig from time to time. It was a show filled with some talented musicians for sure.

Meet the Baby : Princess Peach

We have wanted a pug for almost 2 years.
After seeing everyone lovin' their dogs while we were in Michigan, we decided it was time to get our very own. We searched for a pug in Nebraska and found a little 5 month old gal from Pug Partners in Nebraska. We filled out an application and they got back with us to schedule a home walk-through with the pup and her Foster Mom. The pug was so happy and she ran around like a wild lady at the house! We were in love.
After sleeping on it like the organization suggests, we were in pain without her. We were sure we wanted to care for that dog!

Yesterday her foster parents both brought her over to say goodbye and send her off into our home. I can't imagine how difficult being a foster parent would be to this little girl or any other precious animal! Heartbreaking, to say the least.

I am SO impressed with Pug Partners. They chose a great set of foster parents for our perfect little Peach before she came to live with us. She is the most well-behaved puppy we have ever seen!

We. Love. Her.
Borderline addicted. Ok, over the line.

FREE Favicon Design

I don't know if you have noticed but lately blogger has come out with some new features to brand your blog! One of these is using a Favicon. Instead of the Orange Square with white Blogger B, you can now use any square image 100KB or less!

If you would like one but don't care to make one or you don't have time, I would LOVE to make you one for free. It just gives me a happy skip in my heart.

Just email me or leave a comment here and I will get on it!

Swooning for Watermelon

I read a ton of blogs. Duh.
But there are a few I sit at my reader and click "refresh" for every hour on the hour or more. Some of these include (blush if you have to, but trust me: you rock!) Party Frosting, All.Women.Stalk., Style Me Pretty, Green Wedding Shoes, Sweet Designs-Amy Atlas, and a few more. When new content is posted anywhere here on these things, I jump out of my skin to click and read it. And of course being the comment-fiend I am, I leave my lovin' in the form of comments.

Nothing has given me more blog-land thrills than making friends with some of these folks (KIM! DIANA!) and also just getting a "Hey, thanks. You're awesome, too" from some of them like Eddye of SMP and now Lisa from Amy Atlas' blog.
So I encourage you all to go read some >Watermelon-themed cuteness at Amy's blog created by her and her team of awesome people like Lisa.

Oh, and do you know what Lisa's email signature is?

Sweetly,
Lisa

HOW CUTE IS THAT?!
Anyway, go see some watermelon themed goodies!

Working on my SMP & All.Women.Stalk Submissions

Almost Friday again!

Dawn Pohlen

I have been sifting through the wedding photos picking the ones I will edit first. I have 76 from our photographer, some from Shawn's mom's camera and we're also waiting for the video to be done because some stills were taken from that for pictures, too!
As you brides know it takes a lot of weddings to make the blogs we love go 'round with features. Fortunately for wedding blogs, there are over 2,077,000 weddings in the U.S. each year! The U.S. is not the exclusive source for wedding features, though. You have to take into consideration brides from around the world with web access as well! This is approxiamately 41,975,000 weddings around the world every year, over 20 times the amount of weddings happening in the U.S.!
This helps me mentally prepare for refusal of our wedding for sure. The success of our wedding lies within us, NOT within the 1 in 42 million chance that we get featured somewhere. Besides, who cares about the people who say "No, thank you," to seeing and sharing pics of your rad wedding? No, THANK YOU! Now we can move onto people who lurve us and would like nothing more than to squee over our photos all day.

Dawn Pohlen

In any case, it would be a major thrill to have many people identify with and receive your wedding with interest. To better increase our 1 in 42Million chance, I have found several articles about standing out in the oceans of wedding being submitted these days. It comes from Style Me Pretty, which is basically the same thing as hearing it from the horse's mouth. Read here.

Are any of you ladies or guys out there submitting your wedding to be featured anywhere?

Is anyone ready for Friday yet?



HOJASU Imaginations Image

It has been kind of a rough week for me.
I voluntarily have a good week until (through energy transfer from person to person) I have reasons to deem the week "rough." Things that help me to remember who I am (sense of self grounds me like NOTHING else):
1. My Sock Monkeys
2. My animals
3. Walking in the woods with Shawn
4. Shawn.
I am the first person to tell you I am highly emotional. On that note, in the last few years I have also learned how to be master and controller of my emotions. Every once in a while I reach a melt-down point where I cannot self-controll and Shawn helps me rationalize myself in a way that I don't feel stupid. Sometimes I just think I have boundaries or rules up that are immovable. He'll ask me questions that make me realize I am not against the wall and I slowly regain independent control. Hugs help too! :o)

Most of my daily emotional struggle is made of things that don't matter to most people. For example, roadkill makes me cry. If I see a cat or a dog in the road I immediately lose emotional control and sob. Even dead squirrels and deer give me a larger-than-average pang in my heart.
So when I go to work and put everything I have in me into my work only to have 5 people surround my desk telling me I messed up, I take it kind of badly. Don't get me wrong, I can take negative feedback and constructive critiscism (that is all I dish out--upon request)but this is not either of those things. It's straight out of "Office Space" by Mike Judge: you do one thing wrong and 10 people contact you in some way to tell you that you messed up the TPS reports. I. KNOWWWWWW. GRR!!! By the time Friday rolls around, I'm pretty fed up with the place and I can't find my stapler.

It is so amazing to go home and have someone there at night to hold you and listen to your rants and be on your team rain or shine. I draw so much strength from Shawn. No matter what I am going through and how bad I see it as being, Shawn reminds me that my greatest want is fulfilled.

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”

                                                                                                   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

He believes in the HiLLjO; and that is the greatest gift he has given me.

PS: Last 7 hours to enter the giveaway starts... now.

GIVEAWAY!!!

I am just so happy all the time anymore that I want to give away a sock monkey! The deets: The prize will be one original sock monkey (made of new socks, silly!) handmade by myself.


HiLLjO's Sock Monkey

To enter:
*You must leave a comment here or here about who you would give the monkey to or if you'd keep it!

Extra Entries
*Be a follower of Daisy to Sunflower or HiLLjO
*Go to my etsy shop and then come comment here on which owl hat for sale you like the best.
*Make a blog post about the giveway!!!

The giveaway will end  12:00 AM CST Thursday, July the 7th!!! Lucky 7-7-11!

Good Luck!

PS: I'm ammending the giveaway to include everyone around the world! I WILL SHIP INTERNATIONALLY!

My Solah Shringar : Chooriyan

Courtesy of The Lucky Elephant



Happy Monday, everyone.

After this weekend I'd prefer not to discuss what is all left to do. It's not that much but it overwhelms me just the same. We'll keep it positive by just saying that I am struggling with my wedding accessories meshing with the look of my gown. To help me with this, I have been notified by Diana that I have won the Lucky Elephant giveaway that she featured last week on AllWomenStalk! This made me cry happy tears because I have no more money or time for any more DIY projects or extra purchases. Now I still get my Hindu Chooriyan!!!

Each Lucky Elephant bracelet is handmade by etsy shop owner Jutta, who gives 10% of all the proceeds to Chicago's Urban Initiatives. I can't think of a more beautiful bracelet to wear on my wedding day.

Thank you Jutta and Diana. You've made my entire day!

Mushy-saurus Day

I'm having a very emotional day.
Not only is it a mushysaurus day where I cry everytime I see something that is nice and wedding related, or if I think about our wedding in depth(more than 60 seconds).