Dia de Los Muertos

I've mentioned in previous posts my love of holidays.  Holloween is one of my favorites.  My new favorite holiday is Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), which is a Mexican tradition.  The more I learn about this holiday the more I love it.  I think it is a wonderful way to celebrate loved ones that have passed on and to expose children to the idea of death in a positive and celebratory way.  This weekend we happened upon this amazing Dia de Los Muertos exhibit.  It's beauty and elegance is beyond words and the pictures simply don't do it justice.  I'm going to attempt to create a very small Dia de Los Muertos offerenda this year and I hope to gather some beautiful artifacts over the next year that we can use in annual offerendas.  I'd love to hear how others celebrate Dia de Los Muertos, All Saints Day, or similar traditions.

Spring Equinox and Prioritizing "Me" Time

Matilija Poppy

Happy Spring!!  Spring symbolizes rebirth, renewal. What better time to reflect on New Year’s Resolutions than three months into the year and the start of spring!! Prioritizing my time and personal projects is topics that I struggle with, mainly because I have a lot of interests and limited time to pursue them. This year, to honor my motto, ‘It’s Time for Simplicity’, I tried a new approach to New Year's resolutions. I made a long list of the things that I'd most like to undertake this year.  These items were on the list either because they are life-long goals, because I have a passion for them, or they just really need to get done. Then I pared my list down to just a few items that I could really focus on during the year.   My criterion for keeping items on the list was simply that they have to be activities that make me happy or that I enjoy doing.  Time is my most precious commodity so there is no sense wasting my 'spare' time (if such a thing exists) on self-imposed activities that I don't enjoy.   So here is my list:

•       Become a certified yoga instructor
•       Decorate living room and makeover office, and clean out garage
•       Integrate edible landscaping into my yard
•       Enjoy every moment to the fullest
•       Do more family arts and crafts
•       Learn to play guitar

These are the things that I plan for, prioritize getting done, and work at every day.  I also made an escape plan.  In the event that I stop enjoying any of these resolutions or realize that they sounded more fun in theory than in practice, they are dropped from the resolution list.  That actually happened with the last item on the list. I’ve always wanted to play guitar so I enrolled in a beginning guitar class through the adult ed program.  Throughout the first class the instructor kept saying how important it is to practice, practice, practice.  So I sat through the first class, practicing the “The Horse with No Name” over and over and over, trying to figure out how I would possibly have time to practice guitar outside of class time.  I finally came to the conclusion that outside of those three hours of class-time I don’t have the time to practice and  that there isn’t anything else on my resolution list or otherwise that I’d be willing to give up to make the time. So I left at the end of the class, never went back, and never had a regret.  I’ve been having too much fun working on my other resolutions.