Tag: empty nest

Fancy Friday

Funny Happy Friday Images With Quotes for Facebook, Whatsapp, Pinterest

Good morning! Happy Favorite Things Friday! My regular readers know that Fridays are devoted to the frivolous, here at the blog. There is nothing wrong with frivolity. We are meant to enjoy pleasures in life, big and small. Today, I am still getting my ducks in a row since returning from my trip. (We all bring home mountains from wherever we go, mostly Mt. Laundry and Mt. Chore Pile-up.) Therefore, today I will only be sharing one favorite. I purchased BuDhaGirl bangles from a wonderful boutique when I was away, and I am in love with them. As a woman with a small wrist, I have always loved the looks of bangle bracelets but they have rarely worked for me. They tend to be too big and too jangly and noisy. I discovered these bangles and I am sure that I will be purchasing even more in the near future. They are quiet, comfortable, beautiful and weather proof! The bangles come in three different sizes, plus they even have children’s versions. Here’s a description of the bracelets from their website:

“Handcrafted in Thailand by our team of really nice people. Each Plume All Weather Bangle is made by a team of 20+ artisans, each bangle is hand made, each is a labor of love. Plume All Weather Bangles® (AWB®) are made with organic products, at times a slight color differentiation might occur, this is only natural as humidity and temperature conditions do affect the outcome. Our Serenity Prayer Bead is made with uncoated brass which as time goes by, might develop a verdi-gris patina. Our point is that Plume All Weather Bangles are a product that will age, develop character, and will remain beautiful…just like our BuDhaGirls.

BuDhaGirl Plume All Weather Bangle bracelets are made of polyvinyl carbonate tubing that is a semi-flexible material, so there is a little give when you slide the bangles over your hand. The key to deciding your size…how the bangles go over your hand, not the size of your wrist.” 

Here is a link to a particularly pretty set, but frankly, they are all pretty:

Plume All Weather Bangles® (AWB®) – Serenity Prayer

Enjoy! I doubt that you will be able to keep it at one set, once you purchase these lovely baubles.

Have a fun weekend! See you tomorrow!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

No Place

Hi friends. I’m home. And I’m soaking it in. And my dogs won’t leave my side. And my energy is filling in the space that I left when I went on my trip, like the perfect last puzzle piece fills in, and completes the puzzle. I love travel. I love the people whom I traveled to visit, but man oh man, I also love home. That’s what’s wonderful about taking breaks from home. New slippers look fancy and fabulous and interesting and are really fun to try on and to wear for a little bit, but there is nothing like your long worn, classic, never to be thrown out slippers which mold your own feet perfectly and help you to breathe more deeply and more comfortably and fully, than you ever breathe, when you slip your feet into them and nestle into their warm, soft, nurturing welcome. Home. Love. I’ve brought a few new things, and ideas, and inspirations, and personal expansions with me to Home. And Home says “Thank you! We have room for these wonderful new extensions of you!” And she hugs me, and she welcomes me back with the warmth of familiarity, and coziness, and peace. There is no place like home.

60 Best Family Quotes 2022 - Short Quotes About the Importance of Family

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Roll With the Punches

John Lennon Quotes 3

It’s Groundhog Day. I’m sitting in the same spot where I was sitting yesterday, writing my blog post, in a café right across from my gate. It’s wonderful to be back to travel, but it’s not so wonderful to be back to the snafus and complications and mess-ups that often come with traveling. You take the good with the bad, I suppose. I promise to get a little more wordy towards the end of the week. See you tomorrow where I hope to be writing this from my cozy little writing nook at home!

Roll With Punches Quotes: top 24 famous quotes about Roll With Punches

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Journeys

****Happy Birthday to my beautiful first child!!! You are the one who inspired our family and made it our biggest desire to have even more children! (And don’t remind me that you are closer to age 30 than 20 ever again.) 😉

I am travelling right now. It is the first time that I have travelled in a while. It’s such an interesting experience to be out of your usual routine and element. I think that you become more self aware when you travel. You see contrasts to how your live, contrasts to your own environment, and climate, and schedule, and you delight in the novelty of new places, experiences and customs. You get ideas and inspirations for change, and you get a focused insight on what you miss the most in your own everyday life. Travelling is always beneficial for mind clearing, personal expansion and for getting a newfound appreciation for what makes your own life special to you. Tomorrow, I will be home and back to my normal routine. I feel refreshed, affirmed and a little tired. I feel expanded, enriched and grateful. See you tomorrow, friends!

“Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer” – Anonymous.

Monday-Funday

credit: Quotesworks

Good morning. I have to give a shoutout to my wonderful husband. Happy Birthday, love of my life!! Sorry that it fell on a Monday this year. 😉

I am having one of those rare, really fun Mondays, so I will just keep it to the meme for today. Have a great week, friends!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Wisdoms Abound

This is Water’s Soul, an eighty foot sculpture unveiled in Jersey City, NJ back in October. She was designed by the artist, Jaume Plensa. When you look from a distance she appears to be shushing New York City.

It has been suggested that the sculpture is not just telling New York to quiet down, but more a message to all of us to remember to relax, quiet down and stop being in such a flurry of activity all of the time. I love the visual of a mothering spirit telling us to find our calm.

Here are some more wisdoms that I found as I explored shops and towns that are new to me: (Wisdoms are all around us if we are looking for them.)

It is so true, isn’t it? We all recognize style, but to describe it, is a very difficult thing to do. Style is just so innate, intrinsic and unique to each individual soul.

And my dear friend was at a Van Gogh exhibit yesterday and texted this:

It’s true! Beauty and wisdom abound. This world is a wondrous place. If we listen to Water’s Soul and we find our calm, we are more likely to notice the beauty and wisdom in everything. Have a wondrous weekend, friends! Find the beauty and the wisdom within and in the external! Soak it in.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Friday Gypsies

200 Happy Friday ideas in 2022 | happy friday, its friday quotes, happy friday quotes

Don’t worry. I won’t do a repeat of last year’s April Fools pranks. I got a little too much flack for that one. Plus, I think that you all might be too prepared this year. 🙂

My weekend is pretty filled-up with quite a few fun activities, so my blog posts will likely be a little shorter than usual for the next few days. Please forgive me if I seem distracted. As always, though, thank you for your support and validation. I love the connection that we have here at the blog. It is a constant in my life (and hopefully yours, too). I treasure my blog and I treasure you, my readers.

With that being said, today, I only have one favorite to share. My husband and I were recently at one of our favorite local hangouts and they had hired a singer, whom I found to be particularly good and soothing and entertaining. She has one of those deep southern drawls, with a bluesy edge, which is my favorite kind of country singers’ voices. Please give Aubrey Wollett a listen. Apparently, she has a decent following not just in Florida, but also in Nashville. Have a fabulous Favorite Things Friday!! Enjoy at least one of your favorites today or discover a new favorite! This is a precious day of your life.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

What Belongs to Her

As I write this, our little brown dog, Trip, our Boykin spaniel, is lying at my feet, making sure that his paw is touching my foot. He does this often. He likes to have one paw on his people, whenever we are sitting on the couch, or at our desks, or at the kitchen table. He knows the nurturance and healing nature of touch and he soothes himself with that touch, whenever he gets the opportunity.

Ralphie, our Labrador retriever, is overwhelmingly enthusiastic about everything that he loves every single day. He gets absolutely jumpy and lick-y and giddy about dinner, despite the fact that dinner is the same damn thing every single night: two cups of Hills Science Diet prescription diet dog kibble, put into a maze bowl, to make it last longer. Ralphie shows that same level of enthusiasm for greeting his family, for playing fetch, and for swimming in the pool. His whole body shouts out his feelings of delight, like he can barely contain the happy energy of those feelings inside of his powerful, muscular physique.

Josie, the collie, who is the most obedient of our canine trio, sometimes stubbornly plops herself down in the yard, into her own place in the sun, and refuses to come in. She knows the healing sensation of lying in the sunshine, and she insists that we sit awhile and relax and bathe in some Vitamin D. When I bury my nose into her sunbaked fur, I understand that she is right. She is absolutely right.

Nature makes no apologies for what she needs. Nature never hides her own true nature. That’s not in her nature to do so. Nature is so wise and pure and true. Why do we try to pretend that we aren’t part of nature? Why do our minds try to put up barricades to letting our own natural selves lead the way? Nature flows so perfectly, until we do things to artificially “correct” it. The thing about nature, is that she is quietly patient and powerful. In the end, she won’t let us destroy her, and she hopes that we remember that we are part of her, instead of insisting on separating, and then sadly end up destroying ourselves.

Image

credit: @Native3rd, Twitter

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

She’s Sending Out Good Vibes

 “There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re focused on what you don’t have.”

– Anthony De Mello

There’s a lot of belief in spiritual circles that the energy that you put out there is what you get back in life. And then there is a lot of backlash to that idea, suggesting that “toxic positivity” doesn’t allow us to feel all of our genuine feelings, which can be truly unhealthy for our minds and bodies, in the long run. I think the compromise here is not to deny the pain of our individual lives and the tragedies going on in the world, but instead, choosing not to dwell on them. Do what you can do to alleviate what makes you feel sad, and/or frustrated and scared, and then move your attention to all that you are grateful for in your life. Learn to notice and to focus on all of the good. Don’t let the negativity grow out of proportion by hanging one’s hat on to the black clouds.

I get the Daily Om in my email every day and I was going to take excerpts out of today’s reading, but then I thought, this whole thing is worth putting on the blog. It is such an excellent reminder of how the flow of good vibrations work. Imagine if you, and everyone around you, chose to stay in the flow of well-being, just for today. Wouldn’t that be amazing?! Below is today’s reading from the Daily Om:

When we are in a state of good vibration, we attract more of that to us.


Feelings vibrate, just as all things in the universe do, at a particular frequency. Negative feelings like anger, guilt, and greed vibrate at low frequencies, while positive feelings like joy, appreciation, and passion vibrate at high frequencies. These high frequency vibrations make us feel good. This is why people and places that inspire and cultivate positive feelings have what we call good vibrations.

Good vibrations inspire health, happiness, and optimism. When we are tuned in to good vibrations, our bodies heal, our hearts open, and our minds shift toward the light. We see new possibilities and feel powerfully energized to follow our inner visions. At the same time, we feel relaxed and capable of manifesting these visions without giving in to stress or struggle. Good vibrations put us in a state of perfect receptivity so that we feel it is the energy flowing through us that accomplishes what needs to be done. We feel guided, supported, protected, and nourished within this joyful flow. We sometimes forget that we are allowed to feel this way all the time.

Lower frequency vibrations are not bad in a moral sense, but they are bad in the sense that they simply don’t feel good. Still, they have a purpose, which is to alert us to the fact that we are blocking out the higher frequency vibrations that we need to function well. They are a call for healing ourselves from within. The key to our healing lies in remembering that it is our birthright to feel good and that feeling good is the essence of our true nature. When we are receiving and sending out good vibrations, we are in the flow. When we are not, we can begin to raise our vibration by seeking out people, places, and situations that vibrate at a higher frequency. Whether we need to go on retreat or just call a friend who makes us laugh, seeking out those good vibrations and basking in them is a sacred and loving practice that returns us, time and again, to the joyful flow of the universe.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.