New Moon in Aquarius January 30th - another super new moon

my aquarius locket 20% off thru 2/18 with coupon code LINCOLN

We have a New Moon on Thursday (plus the Chinese Year of the Horse begins which creates even more universal energy for a new beginning now and it's a new super moon and a black moon - the 2nd dark moon in the same calendar month) - lots of new in this one folks.

We have Venus about to move forward (YAY) so projects that have been in the planning stages or that have been stagnant over the last few weeks (especially related to creative projects, relationships and money since Venus rules both Libra and Taurus) can get some legs under them now and will start to move forward. More money comes in. See my retrograde post.

Also the last few days of this lunar cycle coupled with these last few days of the Year of the Snake (snakes die when they don't shed their skin) make it a powerful time for release.

I'm going to use this energy for something larger than that pile of newspapers in my bedroom, although the pile is outta here, you should, too. 

Maybe some belief we are holding onto about what we need to happen so we can feel secure, what we need to have in place before we can do something else, where we need to get before we can stop or who we need to be before we can relax. Let's let go of that.

Write it in script, burn it, release it - we have to mean what we say with this stuff, because it works.

We won't be able to fit back into that shedded skin even if we tried, the Year of the Snake is over - release always equals expansion - we will have expanded ....

(not in a "need a new dress size" kind of way, of course, but that old skin is all wrinkly and crinkly and well .. dead, it's gotta go)

If we have fallen off the wagon with any intentions set on January 1st, everyone gets a do-over. But the skies have changed so the way we work with those intentions changes, too. 

The difference between the New Moon on January 1st and this moon on January 30th is the sun has moved into Aquarius now so we take the energy of Capricorn - the builder, worker, organizer energy and evolve it with the big picture thinking of Aquarius. 

We take that thing we have built out of its box now. We look at it in a new way. We might even get a little Aquarian wild-child with it.

Maybe our clean studio gets a bit messy.

(if it ever actually got cleaned up - with the Venus retrograde we might have been in a standstill and standing still is a perfectly good place to be ... until it isn't anymore and you will know when that time comes because you will begin to get uncomfortable with that place of stillness then you just have to do something to move out of it, what you do doesn't matter, you only have to move the energy)

It's an opportunity to take a long look at how the life we are building fits in with the other lives we share the planet with and move in a more powerful direction of building a space that supports all of us.

It’s a great time to set intentions that involve increasing our confidence, being true to ourselves and taking on new challenges.

Since we moved into an air sign over a week ago ideas have started to move, our thoughts may be a bit more scattered, colds are easier to catch now since we are more easily ungrounded.

If you are an Aquarius sun sign (like me) this is your most powerful new moon of the year.

This New Moon is an excellent time to set intentions for Aquarius stuff. I haven't decided on my intentions yet, but will post some mid-week to give you an idea of the kind of work that is supported during an Aquarius sun period. You can set any intentions at all at a new moon but if you work with the energy at play in the universe right now, you will have a strong wind at your back.

make something NEW ... or maybe not

This is my monthly post on the EcoEtsy blog:

3 Things to Think About Before Making Something Else

See the post HERE 

including my hot Etsy seller tip of the month - remake what you already sell with some clever packaging and widen your exposure by tagging into specific niches - and sell your thingamajig to the people who want to buy it.

changing something ELSE

With one retrograde after another this year, we can't totally wait for the stars to line up for us to get stuff started or make things happen.

(although definitely work with the retrograde period as much as possible by doing all the "re" work - re-evaluate, renovate, re-invent, research, etc and launch new projects with an open mind to the fact that stuff will change with things we start now and have to be re-done - this is all ok - maybe the secret to this is doing things we enjoy doing - so if we have to do them all over again it will be something we want to do - actually the "doing things we want to do" is the secret to almost everything anyway)

One of the ways to create change in some area of our life (or to stop some repeating pattern) is by creating change somewhere else in our life and one way to figure out a way to do this is to listen to our own language about the situation.

Step 1. Describe the situation to someone else. Or think about how you usually verbalize the situation.

(this is one of Olive's primary jobs here at Olive Bites Studio - she is an amazing listener - if you don't have an Olive, just chat with yourself, that will work, too - don't over-think this, just talk and listen to what you have to say)

I will give a recent story about hubs as an example. George really wants a larger work space. Every other day he said to me, "I need more space".

But he doesn't usually use those words - what he actually says when he is thinking 'I need more space' is "I don't even have room to breathe here."

Step 2. We think about other areas of life where he doesn't have room to breathe. 

Since what he is saying is an actual physical thing there are many ways we had to work with this.

He now takes 10 minutes a day and does some deep belly breathing.

We use a laundry service for his shop uniforms and he really needs to go up a size on the pants waistband department (especially in the winter when he wears a lot of layers) but because they charge to set up a new size, he never does this. So, a couple weeks ago I ordered him new uniforms with the size increase - easy enough for me to tailor them later.

He started walking around the backyard every night after work (he doesn't go out back much in the winter and I notice this "need more space" feeling hits him hardest in the winter).

We moved our bed so his side isn't near any furniture or walls. I got a small fan for his desk.

Right away he started to notice he didn't feel as stressed about being cramped at work. I noticed he got rid of some scrap metal he was saving "until the price goes up" and freed up some room in the shop (he had refused to do this earlier).

Now he didn't actually get more space, but by moving the energy in other areas of his life, this energy has to shift, too. It wouldn't surprise me if some actual change to the physical space shows up soon.

Now, if he had found himself saying "I'm cramped here" or "I can't think straight here" or "I'm buried here", etc - then the way we would have changed things and the things we would have changed would be different.

Since everything is connected it makes perfect sense that this works. If we are having trouble starting something new, start something else - something easy, but maybe not too easy. If we are having trouble finishing something then finish something else. If you have trouble with procrastination at work, find something that needs to be done right now in your kitchen and do that and I mean right now, just go and do it. Little changes create big changes. Maybe there are no big changes, just little stuff done over and over again.

So, if something isn't working, maybe try changing something else. See what happens! xo all

so last month I lost half a million dollars (twice!) and found out I was related to my husband ... part 2

While I was going holiday crazy, my brother joined ancestry.com.

He was quickly obsessed and arrived to Thanksgiving dinner with pages of names and a roll of scotch tape.

(the papers print out like a chart or like branches on a tree, but it is easy to get lost reading them and easier if you tape them all together all over your floor like a real tree - or at least this is what we did)

Anyhoo, it was quickly apparent that George and I are related (yikes, poor Olive), which may be true of almost everyone if we go far enough back, but we didn't have to go very far. Also the names we are related through are last names the town we currently live in is filled with, even though neither of our families are from this town. And neither of us ever realized we were related to any of these people.

And the plot thickens ...

There has always been a family story of an ancestor named David Matthews (my grandmother's grandfather I believe, if I have enough grands in there) who fought in the Civil War, lost a leg, shook hands with Lincoln, owned half of the next county and to his detriment never learned to read and write. He was swindled of his property by an unscrupulous lawyer and shady judge when he signed his X on the wrong dotted line.

We learned from my brother's ancestry.com work that David Matthews had a daughter who married a lawyer - this daughter later died under mysterious and unknown circumstances and this lawyer, who was then a wealthy widower sold a lot of property and moved ... I don't know, somewhere warm I would imagine. David Matthews was still alive at this time.

This lawyer who we will just call THE LYING SACK OF NO GOOD FILTH

(hubs is having a stroke that I might write this name, since our town is still filled with this name, so I will just call him what my family has been calling him for generations)

was related back to my husband in exactly the same way David Matthews is related to me (grandmother's grandfather)!!

So it would appear hubs' great-great great grandfather (if I have the correct number of greats in here) swindled my great-great great grandfather, possible murdered my great-great great aunt in order to own half the next county - which his new wife and heirs must have proceeded to sell off with great expediency since none of it is left.

Now, I can't actually prove much of this. But I do know I have a family story about a swindle by a lawyer and now know the person who was swindled had a daughter who married a lawyer who came into a great deal of money at precisely the time my ancestor lost it.

(I don't need Miss Marple to puzzle through the chance of this happening)

Also, I almost forgot the most interesting part ... this all took place in the town I now live in - which is a very small town that hubs and I only stumbled into because we drove through it back and forth to work for a year to avoid the main roads.

And the farm my great great great grandfather lived in was on the road we currently live on (long gone now) and possibly the very property we live on was part of that property.

Yes, I know this sounds like a Lifetime movie.

I can't decide if this is a million to one happening or if this kind of stuff is bound to happen when people's families have lived in the same general area for generations. I can't help thinking there is some kind of ancestral karma here that I should look at. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe it is something hubs and I have ironed out just by being together, I don't know.

I do know that I have been making it clear to hubs that he owes me at least half a million dollars because of the actions of his direct ancestor THE LYING SACK OF NO GOOD FILTH.

I should be a rich woman now.

(rich in ways larger than cork and magnets, people)

Also the house we looked at that we didn't buy is next door to the oldest house in town which was moved to that location from the location right next door to our current house and also may play a part in the story ....

I have probably given you a headache and you are thinking, what the hell is she talking about ... it is rather hard to follow. I need to make myself a little chart and post the picture for the screenplay I am writing for Lifetime.

First I need some kind of ending for this story - like maybe I win the lottery, hubs murders me for my winnings and the ancestral drama plays out all over again ...

this would all wrap my story up rather nicely. Well, not so nicely for me, but nicely for Lifetime maybe.