Chamomile

So today I thought that I'd learn some more about the sacred herbs so I will begin with Chamomile. I am in no way an authority on this subject, I'm just sharing my research. If you have something to add, please feel free to comment!

 Chamomile is regarded as an herb that represents Asgard, home of the Northern gods, by many in the Northern Tradition. 

Chamomile is the common name for several daisy-like plants of the family Asteraceae that are commonly used to make herb infusions to serve various medicinal purposes. Popular uses of chamomile preparations include treating hay fever, inflammation, muscle spasm, menstrual disorders, insomnia, ulcers, gastrointestinal disorder, and hemorrhoids.

 

The Norse called chamomile, ‘Baldur’s brow’, because the flower was as pure as his forehead.

Camomile is a regarded as an herb of the sun and as a power plant that connects with the sun's power of regeneration, healing and protection. The perfume of the camomile flower is said to resemble that of the apple. The apple was the major sun plant totem for the ancients and the chamomile plant also radiates sun energy. This is why it was planted on graves as a symbol that the deceased would be reborn, just as the sun is reborn each morning. 

  Camomile is one of the sacred herbs of midsummer and may be thrown onto the festival fire, used in the incenses and garlands or added to the ritual cup.

 The dried flowers may be used in an incense to induce relaxation or sleep or to stuff sleep pillows.

Camomile is also a protection plant, the oil may be used to form a magical barrier around doors and windows to prevent negativity entering. Plant in the garden as a guardian herb.

 Ok, I am certain that there is lots more for me to learn about Chamomile, but Freyja wants her scrambled eggs, so I am off to do my Domestic Goddess duties, please feel free to remark on my short comings in this article and teach me something new!

Tuesday go to Meeting...

So we had a small Yule Celebration Tuesday night. We had a small feast of Caribbean Rice, Bacon wrapped chicken, and Coconut cookies. Then we made some Yule sachets out of  various herbs including: peppermint, cloves, cinnamon, juniper berries, pine, cedar, and  yarrow. I am almost positive that there was at least one more herb in the sachets, however I simply can't recall it right now. If my memory returns I will certainly update this post. It was a pleasant evening and I look forward to our next Tuesday meeting.

Yuletide greetings

Hello, I hope everyone is having a wonderful Yuletide season. I've started making a few changes to my blog. I started another blog called Particular Products for all the varying reviews that I do so that I can reserve this blog for more Pagan friendly (In my mind at least) reviews. Like I am definitely  going to put the Viking Beard Conditioner on this blog! So excited! I'll also include Organic reviews and just things that I think my readers might enjoy. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue with the subscription box reviews or not. We'll see. Do you have any opinions on the matter? Let me know! 1b0565203f628a59c48ff494ce5a6da30178128c290d78efbd

Yule

So tonight I'm racking my brain on what to bring to the Coven's Yule celebration. (It's a small town and I'll take any Pagan interaction I can get at this point) There are a ton of allergies so I have a lot to work around. I can't use wheat/gluten, corn, dairy , caffeine, beef, white potato, and soy, dark chocolate, shellfish or mushrooms. Plus I have a limited budget and I can't really get any semi exotic ingredients in the middle of nowhere. So I am totally open to suggestions because I don't have a clue what to bring, if I had a month to gather the ingredients I could put together a Paleo Yule Log but alas, I don't.  I'm working on finding a craft for the meeting also that is Yule related, but in spite of what some people think, I don't have a lot of spare time to do the research. Especially since I started doing this review blog.
Wes bottled our traditional Kavisar last night (A Beat Mead). So I will be bringing a bottle of that to the celebration of course, but I still need to bring a food dish. Sigh.
On the bright side, I am starting to get some good review options, including some essential oils and Viking Beard Grooming products. I am incredibly stoked about those. I really enjoy writing product reviews, but I enjoy writing Pagan related product reviews even more.
Well, I'm really tired at this point, and I'm not thinking entirely straight, so I'll sign off for the evening. Please feel free to let me know any thoughts or ideas that you have, maybe I'll find them useful. G'dnight.

So I've got a lovely new contest going to win a copy of Beginners Waltz which I reviewed last week. It took me a little while but I appear to be getting the hang of how to add things to my blog that didn't originally come from me.I am so stoked! so come on somebody get's to Win something!
congratulations Barbara Vogh, you won!

Let's get this party started!

Everything's starting to come together, I'll be having my Hasbro Games house party later this month and hopefully next week we will be cutting, dying and straightening my hair. It also looks like I'm going to be going on a diet with some wonderful new products(hopefully) that I will tell you about once a test them out.So I will definitely be adding a toys and games page as well as a health and fitness page shortly. I received my December Birchbox today and I love it! can't wait to show y'all what came inside!  My Ipsy Glam bag and my Wal-Mart Beauty Box have been shipped so those should be in shortly. I'm still having some technical difficulty which I hope will be fixed soon.(She's going to have to speak slowly and use short words.) Hopefully she can help me figure this stuff out soon so I can possibly earn some money and finish up with a couple of my reviews. Is there anything you want me to do a review on, maybe I can help. I'm currently trying to figure out if my tablet can read kindle books. If it can I might be able to do some book reviews.

Multi-tasking momma

So right now I am participating in a twitter party,writing a post in my blog. Making sure my daughter cleans her room. And eating mac and cheese for lunch (which I shouldn't be doing at he computer, but I'm busy and hungry.) Oh and finishing up a #BzzAgent campaign as well. I have to say I don't really enjoy the Twitter party thing. I find it hard to keep up with and I'm not sure I'm doing it right.

I'd like to thank all of my new twitter followers, if you haven't started following me I'm @DynalRoberson so go ahead a follow me as I post all about the reviews I'm working on. I really enjoy doing product reviews even if I do get bogged down occasionally. Which is why almost everything I post about is some kind of review. They make me happy. So thank you once again to my new twitter followers, because of you I now qualify for better products to review. As my product choices grow I'm going to branch out into new pages and have different pages to review electronics, beauty supplies, kitchen products, clothes, and of course Subscription box reviews! If I have a subscription I'll give that box it's own page, like I did for BirchBox. If I don't I'll put it on one page for now. This way you can go to an area that interests you! Don't forget to like my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/asatrumomadventure?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

Tis the season to get sidetracked...

So it's been a little while since I last posted. We had Thanksgiving. We had lots of snow. We had our back up vehicle break down. It's been a long couple of weeks. I took some pictures of the snow, I thought they were pretty, what do you think?

I've fallen a bit behind on my product reviews so I will be catching up with those shortly. Sorry if you get multiple posts in a row. Hope you enjoy them. As always I'd like to remind you that I do not get paid to post good reviews. If I like a product I'll tell you, if I don't I'll tell you that too.
This weekend is the crafts show that I will be bringing my up-cycled products to. Hopefully I'll sell some things, the proceeds of this sale go to buying presents for my kids.
Like I said tis the season to get sidetracked,  I can't seem to stay focused on writing right now. between Freyja adding everything she sees on tv to her "wish list" and knocks on the door by the UPS guy I can't seem to finish this post.  I hope y'all have a good night, and if you're in Buffalo, Wyoming this Saterday, come out to the Senior center and buy some of my offerings.

I'm so excited!

I'm so excited, I have all kinds of stuff coming in for reviews! I'm currently in the middle of a review for Scott Naturals Tube Free, sent to me by #CrowdTap. I'm also in the middle of a review for #MaryKay Timewise Firming Eye Cream , which I won from @smplbeautytips . I've got a #HouseParty event coming up for #Hasbro games, A review for a fog-less shower mirror, and a hair dye review from #BzzAgent! Plus I have another Birchbox coming in this week, and the Wal-mart Winter Beauty box should be shipping this week as well! Lots of fun stuff to look forward to!

I am also trying to figure out social media. I really don't understand Twitter, but I would appreciate any followers https://twitter.com/DynalRoberson . If I can get 100 followers I get access to more stuff that I can review. I'm not sure if I'm doing the hash tag thing correctly or the links, but I'm hoping I am. I signed up to be an Amazon Affiliate, which just means that I'm going to have one of their banners on my page eventually, if my tech support can help me figure out how to put it on. Also there may be links on the products I review to Amazon if Amazon happens to carry the product.

If you have any useful advise on how I can make the most of my social media accounts, I'm open to suggestions. I'm not overly tech savvy, but I do learn eventually. Also if there is anything you would like me to review just let me know. If it's free I can definitely do it, if it's not, it might take me a little while, but I'll try.

What do you eat?

So this year for Thanksgiving we are going to share the Feast with our neighbors. We are currently making a list of what everyone is making so we don't end up with twenty pounds of potato salad. We are bring a ham, mashed potatoes and a green-bean casserole. Our neighbors are making other things for the feast including homemade noodles and rice pilaf. Which makes me wonder, "What do you consider to be traditional Thanksgiving fare?" I always thought that Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce,green-bean casserole and a variety of pies was your basic fare. However when I went to my first Thanksgiving With Wes's family I sadly discovered that they generally didn't do mashed potatoes. I have also discovered that the stores in Wyoming don't generally keep pecan pie, which is one of my Thanksgiving staples, in stock. Therefore I am going to be learning how to make Pecan Pie, but I probably won't master it before this year's thanksgiving. So, verily, I ask you this: What are you having for Thanksgiving?

Fa, La, La, La... Bah!

So it's that time of year again. Holiday time! I'm one of those people who aren't that into the Holidays. Oh, I try, but honestly, they just depress me. I'm reminded of past holidays that weren't the greatest. I'm reminded that I'm missing half my family. I'm reminded that I can't afford to get my children the gifts that they would like. So I'm going to try to make the best of it. Wes is going to make our traditional Kvasir.(Beat Mead) .The Pinata didn't go over to well last year, so I don't know if we are going to repeat it. We are trying to come up with our own Holiday traditions, but so far all we have is Mead. Not bad, but we can't exactly share that with the kids. Do y'all do anything special for the Holidays? I'm a bit at a loss. I'm not exactly Suzie Homemaker.

Fire on the Mountain Top

So the big news today is that the mountain is on fire. Last night it was at 43 acres, tonight it's at 1,170 acres. It's about five miles out of town. We've got the bug out bags packed and sitting by the door in case they decide we need to evacuate. I'm hoping it won't come to that though. We are supposed to be getting some kind of precipitation tonight and at this point I'm even OK with snow! (I hate snow.) This is my first Wild fire and I don't like it! I guess I'm worried over nothing because nobody else in town seems to be, but it seems like I'm reacting the opposite way that someone up here would react to a hurricane. So, we propose a toast to Ullr, may we get snow tonight to put out the fire. Hopefully there will be good news in the morning.

*Update*
As of 8 am this morning the fire was 95% contained and they were sending the out of town volunteers home. Hurray for the snow doing it's job. Hail Ullr!  It can stop snowing now...

Exersize'n

So a couple of days ago I instituted a new "Work-out plan" I put on the 80's music channel and whenever the mood takes me I get up and start dancing to the the song. It's a quick 3 minute work out and it's fun, I get to listen to some great music and the sounds of my daughter protesting loudly "Mommy, Stop that! Stop Dancing!" I'm guessing that it's accomplishing something other than embarrassing my daughter, (It doesn't embarrass me, she's the only one who can see it.)  because now my legs and butt are killing me! I am definitely not dancing as much today as I was yesterday! I don't know how many calories I'm burning, but I do know that I burned more than I did last week when I didn't do anything.

I can't get Freyja interested in learning how to write to save my life. It doesn't help that she's a lefty and I'm a righty. At this point I'm seriously considering putting her in a brick and mortar kindergarten next year simply so that someone else can have a go at it. She's coming along alright with the reading. She knows her alphabet, and her numbers (She usually juxtapositions some of the letters in the alphabet song but that's ok, she knows what they look like.) She's got some sight words down, and loves to be read to. She just doesn't want to write, or draw or really do anything that requires her to use a pencil or crayon. Ah well, I will carry on, maybe we'll progress later on in the year...

Subscription boxes, gotta catch them all!

Having spent the evening looking at the myriad of subscription boxes, I think that they have one for everything you can imagine if you only look hard enough. Yes , even a Pokemon Box. There are tons of the normal Beauty box subscriptions, of which I signed up for Birch Box and Ipsy. I will be post unboxings and reviews when the boxes come in. There are so many more that I want to try that aren't as main stream!  There's the Monthly Magic Box Which is all about Magic the Gathering! How cool is that? There's a Steam Punk box, a Goth box, A horror box, tons of geek boxes, even a Scandinavian Housewares box!
I started out last night going, Geeze, I wish they had better boxes than just make-up and nail polish! Granted make-up and nail polish are cool, but I may one of the only girls in the USA to say "How much do you really need?" So I started looking around. There really are more boxes out there, there's even a Jewish box. I'm not Jewish (Obviously,) but I like the fact that it's out there. I can't wait to start reviewing these boxes!



On a different note, I figured out how to add a Followers gadget (I think) and I now have one follower. (It's my tech support.) I had a couple of other people say that they are following me, but it isn't showing up in my blog overview, so I hope they are. :) I'm not doing anything overly exciting today, basic house work, maybe working on my up-cycling.  I might even feel adventurous and try and post some pictures to this blog.

Well, that's it for right now, I still have a lot to learn about how to set things up in this here cyber world. (Otherwise I would have added links to all the cool box sites.) But rest assured, I'll figure it out eventually... Or I'll just get Jen or Wes to do it...

And Now for something completely different...

Ok, So today is Halloween, the last day of the Festival of Samhain. It's after ten, and I'm a little drunk. We took the kids trick or treating and now it's Horror movie time. Wes and Ty are watching Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. I'm kind of watching it, but I don't have that good of an attention span right now. I just had a glass of grog which is about the equivalent of nine shots of Jägermeister. It has apparently taken me twenty minutes to write  five lines, and I'm not sure why I'm suddenly typing in bold print. Sorry.  There we go, that's better. Wes has a tradition of shaving off his beard during the festival of Samhain so that his Father can see him as he was, which is really sweet, and kind of like tempting the Gods, because if he dies without a beard, he can't go to Valhalla. Also, Our anniversary is on the 23rd, the first day of the festival so it's also like, "Happy anniversary baby, I'm going to look weird for the next week!" But seriously, I'd like to give a big shout out to my Grandparents tonight, who where Pentecostal and probably feel really odd about that... And also a good friend, Richard Sharp, who I miss greatly and hope he is having a wonderful after life in the Summer lands. I actually don't have a lot of experience with loved ones dying, for which I am very grateful. We recently lost my Mother-in-law and my Sister-in-Law Judy, and I believe that they to are also in a good place in the summer lands.

On a completely different note, I signed up for a couple of Subscription boxes, both of which are Beauty boxes so it should be very interesting to see how that goes. for those of you who don't know me very well, I currently don't use a lot of make-up.Actually, currently is an understatement, I have never used a lot of make up. I foresee a lot of calls to "Tech support" lol.

Ok, so on the note that everyone else has turned in for the night, and  I will take my Que and do so also. I'm guessing that I actually got the word wrong on that one, because I have no idea why they want me to capitalize the q in Que... maybe it will make more sense to me in the morning... Maybe not, but hurray for spell check anyway! Without which, you probably wouldn't have been able to read this blog at all! So I will try to give you an update tomorrow on whether or not I still think this blog makes sense. Oddly, I'd like to note that I can not seem to spell tomorrow correctly when I'm sober, but seem to have nailed it while drunk.

So I will now bid you all fare well, I hope you had a wonderful Samhain. may you have many more!

*Edit* Ok, so after looking at last night's post, I am surprised to see that it actually wasn't that bad. There were a few grammatical and punctuation errors, but all in all still legible. And I made at least one person Chuckle.

Monday Morning, Sigh...

Well, it was a long weekend, and I didn't get much done. We went to the Pumpkin Carving Festival on Saturday. Freyja had fun, but it was really crowded this year and I didn't enjoy myself nearly as much as I did last year. We only stayed for about an hour. The kids decided they would carve their at Jen's house that evening.

Which brings me to the highlight of my weekend. Date night! This may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but we haven't had a date night since we left Mississippi, and honestly, I'm pretty sure we took to baby with us on dates in Mississippi. So after four years we finally got out of the house without any kids! Thank you SOOOO much Jen!  We didn't do anything exciting, just went to the Chinese buffet and did some shopping. But it was incredibly nice to get some alone time with Wes, even if we did talk about the kids most of the time. Granted it was usually something like "It's so nice to be able to sit down and enjoy our food without having to keep the kids in line" or "It's so nice to be able to go shopping with out some one asking for this or that." We got some good deals while we were shopping and picked up a couple of Yule presents for the kids. Yes, we bought other people gifts while we were out celebrating our anniversary! When we got back to town Freyja was asleep on Jen's Sofa and Ty was watching Doctor Who. They had carved a couple of lovely Jack O' Lanterns for Samhain.
Upon our arrival at home we determined that Tyler is a Drama Queen. Michael had spent the four hours we were out playing on the X-Box and had forgotten to eat. He tried to make us feel guilty about that by saying he didn't eat because he couldn't cook anything. It didn't work because there is plenty of ready to eat food in the house. There was Fruit, Cereal, sandwiches, left over pizza, snack crackers, etc. Tyler then declares that Micheal has no room to complain about being hungry because he hasn't eaten in "6 Hours!" Really! We were only gone for four hours, Jen fed them dinner, and he was eating popcorn when we got there! I know that he ate popcorn because five minutes later he was remarking on how buttery it was. Oh, and he becomes even more dramatic if he gets called out on his drama!

Then, yesterday, I had another Ocular Migraine. If you don't know what that is, it's a migraine that starts in your eyes. It sucks. I had my first one when I was pregnant with Freyja. I was driving home from my Mother-in-Law's when I suddenly lost vision in my right eye. It was scary as Hel! Fortunately I wasn't driving yesterday when my latest one hit. It was still scary though. Hopefully Wes's insurance will kick in soon and we will be able to find out why I keep having them.

So that was my week-end. It had it's ups and downs. The good news is I'm not nearly as irritable as I was before. The bad news is my migraines are back and we don't know why. We still haven't finished Freyja's costume and the boys haven't worked on theirs at all.

Up-Cycled Gifts for the Holiday Season.

Today I am working on some of my Yule gifts. Also, Jen stopped by and offered to let me split her table at the crafts bazaar in December so I might just do that. I've started by up-cycling some shirts. I've got some collar and cuff accessories going, and I'm making some Wine bags out of Up-cycled shirt sleeves. If I get off my bum and get going I might have a couple of Wood Burned Rune Sets done by then as well. Trying to  find some simple up-cycling projects to keep the momentum going with. I'll post Pics as I get them. I miss my camera.

I'm learning a little everyday about how to blog. Today I learned that I need to sign up for AdSense so that I can possibly make some money while doing this. Which would be great, the idea of generating an income is wonderful! While I love being a Stay at Home, Homeschooling, Asatru Mom; it doesn't pay very well. It would be nice if this blog could at least get me a Loot Crate or Nerd Block Subscription. I plan on getting them anyway and posting my views on them here on my blog so it would definitely be helpful. So if anyone has any other ideas on how I might be able to generate a bit of an income doing this, please share!

Pineapple porkchops anyone?

So, today I decided to try doing something new with dinner. Pineapple Pork chops! I have no idea how this will go over with the family, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. It's a fairly simple idea. I hope they like it. Freyja will at least enjoy the rice part of it... Wish me luck!

In other news, I was going to add a new page and do my product review on the RC Street Hawk we received from BzzAgent for free. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to add a page and my tech support is driving her daughter around today. Sigh, I'm really not very good at this! I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually. At least I won't fail another English class because of it! (Seriously, I failed a college English class because I couldn't make a Web Page) So stay tuned , hopefully I'll figure it out in the next couple of days.

It's my Blog, and I'll Blog if I want to!

So I had a friend help me set this up this morning. I figured I'd use it to write about the many interesting aspects of my life! Just kidding, my life isn't that interesting! So I'll just write about whatever I want to. Homeschooling, product reviews, Subscription box unpacking... you know whatever I'm doing at the time.

What I'm doing right now is working on my 4 year old daughter's Halloween costume. She want's to be a Raven for Halloween. Specifically she want's to be Huginn! How great is that? So I have been attempting to make her a costume. First off let me get this out in the open, I am NOT "That Mom"! While I hope the costume will come out to be cute, it's not going to be stunningly amazing. I'm up-cycling an old set of dark purple bed sheets for this (I'm hoping it will look black in the dark). I tore the fitted sheet into strips and then tied the strips to a couple of coat hangers that my husband bent into the shape of wings. My next step is to figure out how to rig a harness to hold the little buggers up. I'm definitely enlisting my husband,Wes's help for that. The plan for the fitted sheet is to turn it into a tunic that will fit over her winter weather clothes so that she can be warm and stylish! If there is enough fabric left we want to make a hood as well. I ordered some black feathers off of eBay that we will incorporate into the costume if they arrive in time. Wish me luck, I'll post pics when I have some to post (and find out how to post them)