missing 'home'

My trustworthy book about the healing properties of semi-precious stones told me that wearing an amber would make me aware of traditions (and other things as well). I found my grandmothers old amber-pendant-necklace and had almost forgotten about what the book had said until I found myself looking at an old german cookbook of mine, squealing in delight at the pictures of antique scales and rolling pins and daydreaming of opening a german bakery.

It would be like a scene of Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" (the house of the three fairies), with a medieval german twist. And of course, only german breads, rolls, cakes and cookies! Oh I miss them! I guess it has to do with me missing the secure feeling of living at home, being taken care of and loved, having family time baking and eating. *Sigh* Can't wait for Christmas!
As it looks like I'm not going to open a german style bakery any time soon, so I've decided to do the next best thing, which is to make good old sourdough bread from scratch. Hmm I love sourdough bread. It's the main kind of bread in Germany. We barely ever ate toast bread.
All you have to do is mix 1 part flour with 1 part water in a plastic bowl, stir with a non-metal utensil and then wait. Stir a few times a day and once a day add more flour and water. Soon you should have caught yourself a yeast! Or a mold. That's what happened the last time I tried this. The instructions were wrong, well, they said I HAD to wait 7 or so days, but I don't. Caught mold on the very last day of course.
My dough is coming nicely, I have caught yeast, it smells a little strong right now, but that should settle. As soon as it smells like either apples or vinegar it's going in the oven!
I remember when I was young, our next door neighbor came over one day and gave us a jar of sourdough starter called 'Hermann'. As it turned out, it was a kind of a travelling dough, it came with instructions on how to feed it and make it get more, then you had enough to fill up a number of jars to give to your friends and bake yourself some yummy bread too! I guess you could compare it to chain mail. But much more delicious! How neat would it be to start that tradition in the States.....

inspiring movie

Last night I watched a movie called "D.I.Y. or Die", in which several independent artists are interviewed about their lives as artists, and how they deal with different things. What struck me most was their definition of being an artist, and their advice to just be yourself, make what makes you happy, do not create things for money, and just have fun with it. Make things that YOU think are good, and don't care about what others think about it. Because if you end up never making any money with something, you will still know that you kept true to yourself, you had fun and didn't prostitute yourself. Beautiful.
(For the people with Netflix, it's on instant streaming!)

the random things...

...I've been making. Here they are:

My hubbie has been slicing cedar and cypress. I'm not sure what I will do with it yet. For now I'm using the slices to put hot pots on and the small ones for coasters. Since I have so many I will probably sell them as supplies on etsy.
Then I made a felt mushroom, and a polymer clay mushroom. Why? I don't know.
Then I made bracelets of different sorts. Because I like them.
And most recently, crocheted leaves. *Sigh* I have creative ADD.

Planning to paint a mural on my hallway wall. Well, I'm making the entire hallway into a mural, one side will be the forest, you will feel really small, the other side will be a slice through a magical house, you will see all the rooms, and then I'll make movable paper-dolls and stick them here and there, doing different things, it will be FUN! :D

big fat meh-ness!

I feel blocked! Trouble is, I don't know for sure from what. I just feel it. I'm not living up to my potential. This is so weird. I think I even know what my potential is, and I know I could easily accomplish these things, IF... yep, that's what's wrong. IF I only had a regular income, IF I was only thinner, less scared of everything, IF I only didn't have this self-doubt. I can almost touch my blockages. I don't have any motivation. It's like: "Well yeah, I could be an amazing harp player/artist/etc. - so what? That won't make me happy! Only happiness makes you happy!!!"


*Sigh* I figure I post some pictures to get things flowing a little bit. Hope you enjoy.

What is it that makes you happy?


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dreams = plans

I believe that one should never give up on their dreams. Or, better, they should dare to dream, and know, that they all can come true! And then they should come up with new dreams!
I believe, that one should tell themselves, and God, if they prefer, what they want out of the day, the year, and life. Sometimes you need to remind yourself, hey, I don't have to keep on stagnant like this! I can do even better! When I was little and living in Germany, I was dreaming of one day living in the USA. I didn't know how it would happen, I just left it up to God (the universe) to take care of it. And It did! That's why I'm going to show you what I'm dreaming of now.
My husband owns a piece of commercial property in Alabama, which is the only reason why we still live here. We've had it on the market for years now, but nothing yet. I'm still hopeful though, every day could be the day right?
We already know, that we want to move to Oregon, the land of our dreams! The perfect scenario would be a location kind of close to Portland, and also kind of close to the ocean, while still being close to the mountains? Hahah, I know that would be close to impossible. But yet, nothing is impossible...
We both have the same taste in houses, so we both knew we wanted to build a log home. We have even already decided on the model! It's one by http://www.confederationloghomes.com/. And here are some pictures:

The other night my husband and I got so engulfed in looking at the pictures and the floor plans, talking about possible modification we wanted to make (we want to add a tower and a garage) that we totally lost track of time and went to bed several hours late!

That's what I'm talking about. We don't know yet how much it will cost, but we trust in Spirit that everything will be taken care of. Of course we know that most of the price will be covered by the money we get from the property, but who knows what other source it's going to take? I can't wait to see what He/She comes up with! :)

my paintings

Thought I'd show you some of my favourite paintings of mine:

My whole life, as long as I can remember I have enjoyed painting, or at least scribbling. All my school booklets were full of scetches, every page. But my mother always made me feel like I was worthless for drawing. One time she looked down at me and scoffed: "Anybody can do that!"
Because of that I have never really painted alot, I never ever thought I would one day feel worthy enough to call myself an artist! I still feel awkward calling myself an artist, and I still don't paint as regularly as I would like to. I feel like there is this invisible block. Before, I sensed it was there, but I didn't know what it was. Now I am slowly realizing that it had something to do with a low sense of self-worth. Realization is the first step I guess! :) Now that I am in the USA, my new family has been much kinder to me and much more generous with praise. Being pre-conditioned negatively, I still don't trust people when they praise me. But: I'm looking forward to getting more used to praise!! :D

Ill never learn...

Ive had a horrible stiff neck and tensed up shoulder in the past days, no weeks. It makes my shoulder hurt and then become inflamed. This has happened before, so I can't believe I didn't realize that this time it was caused by the very same thing, a bra strap that was too tight. Duh!! Now it's better, but my neck is really stiff, it hurts to turn my head in any direction.
Just as well that today is sunday, it's rainy and my husband has decided to finally have a day of rest and is sleeping on the couch right now. Perfect day to take it easy isn't it? Plus there's a Harry Potter marathon on abc.

On a different note, I have found this amazing blog, any of you interested in metaphysics, if you don't know about Burt Goldman yet, go check out is blog here. His teachings kind of remind me a little bit of Joseph Murphy's, really interesting stuff!