Apricot yums & Cheerpeppers

Bites in the making!
Apricot yums

These are tasty and make a fun and nutrition- packed treat for everyone. My toddler loves them, and I make them differently just about every time. I cook food from my heart, so I basically measure only about 50% of the time. Here’s my creation:

Here’s what’s in them:

Almonds 1 cup

Dried apricots 1 overstuffed cup

Rolled oats 1 cup

Almond extract 1/4 tsp

Goji berries: handful

Dried mulberries: handful

Golden flax: small amount

Unsweetened coconut shreds added during rolling.

So the pictures above are from the batch I made today. They all have different levels of beauty. This might not be my most pristine group of yums, but I know they are yummy and so does everyone who tries them! If I were doing professional food photos, I would have probably been more selective and taken my time and used a filter.

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I signed up for posting daily. I don’t know why. I am already quite busy, and I probably won’t post every day, but it sure seemed like fun to try to make a post everyday about something random. Random is my style for this, I like to have some free flow and no pressure type of activities, so maybe you will see a lot more of Fiestaestrellas in November! WE shall see!

Sign ups are here:

https://cheerpeppers.wordpress.com

I’ll have to get the banner and come back and paste it on this post, at some other time.

Tis the season for blogging, holidays, fun, and writing! 🧡

🍂🧡

today is a new day to

join the center,

live in the warm embrace

of our spirited home.

I coil inward like a snake

as part of nature that hums

with the sounds of earth,

and the moisture of the rain

that’s incoming,

makes transitioning gentler.

the weather has cooled

with the crow’s caw.

the trees are more relaxed.

here, where the sun shines

consecutively, we get a chance

to dance along the edges of

clouddrops somersaulting;

its tiny splash of autumn

dives into me and my heart

is at rest.

gray day

Rain on the lake

activates ripples

increasingly the drops make

lashings of dimples

seagulls, pigeons and

ducks run amok

a social dynamic

wide-flapping panoramic

breeze in, breeze out,

waves up-down and about

rings along the ledges,

circled rocks, and maybe trout

a startle will break the ground

and send attendees to the sky

making a canopy of dots speckled

with abundant overfly

rain blurs the distinction

of dark to light

this gray day is heavy

but fresh and just right.

What I learned from my blogging time-off

 

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Image from ABC Open contributor trish.muir, from ABC https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-16/reflection-of-peacefulness/8124582

  • I learned that taking a break from blogging made me happier (so I’m just back to share what I learned), for now.
  • Time away enriched other areas of my life in ways that evened everything out, so I will do this more often, potentially by making my blog private again.
  • I love the WP community and have missed each and everyone who’s company I have enjoyed throughout the years. Looking forward to visiting you soon!
  • The process and dynamic of change is something that I consider fun. I’m curious how I will reinvent this new blog that I will create.
  • The rest of my life does not take a break, and I have been deliciously enjoying what has shown up. Somedays have been better than others, but overall, it’s been the best time.
  • Visiting with family has been so lovely – and it was so nice to focus on my visits with them without maintaining an “online” energy, and being this digital persona.
  • Blogging can be whatever I make it. I’ve been blogging for over 8 years; “Fiestaestrellas.com” will be changing form and format in a year or two from now.
  • This blog space will gain new life by 2021, potentially by the end of 2020.
  • Reading for pleasure is more pleasurable when I am more-so “offline,” and not creating and sharing content. I have so many other reasons that I use my computer, so it means more time away from my computer.
  • There are times in life when I want to widen my community and increase my outreach, and other times when I want to focus on enriching the foundation in my life and nurture that foundation, making new discoveries here. I’m still in the place of enriching my foundation: my “why?”

What have you learned from your blogging “time off” ? What do you love about blogging? How has your blogging community grown and changed in just a few months?

The new guide to life

The new guide to life
consists of simple pleasures

watching the shapes form
from out of clouds in the sky

the smell of the house
when dinner is full of
browning butter

fresh fruit on the counter

my baby daughter’s cheeks
when she smiles and
the sound of her squeal as
she kicks with enthusiasm

the sound that the trees make
when wind is whisking through

the splashing of ocean water
as it laps at our ankles
and the sand tickles and
exfoliates the soles of our feet

our morning walk to beat the
late summer heat

squeezing a lemon slice into
a glass of water and watching
it swirl

celebrating Lammas by gathering
ideas and updating the altar

singing simple songs in
foreign languages
and making up rhymes

just for her.

Mama and baby feet _ found online

Photo credit: source unknown

of unique talents and interests

Anna-Maria Hefele’s intriguing voice stretches the bandwidth for what’s possible with human voice and its acoustics. Check out this video where she describes, very well, polyphonic overtone singing. Here is her website for more information.

Recently I began my training as an 8th ray ritual magician with the Medicine Woman series of programs. Also, I aligned my meditation series with Deepak and Oprah again for this July 15th’s initiation of Miraculous Relationships. Celebrating this July 16, 2019 Capricorn lunar eclipse has been part of the way of my existence and sacred path, noticing what signs and correspondences show up along the way.

Keeping a meditation practice and embarking on a journey to deepen my astrological and stellar connections while being initiated as a new mom, simultaneously enjoying time spent with visitors, after the brief illness of my husband and the extra scrambling required, all while preparing (and deciding) for the autumn schedule has been a unique challenge.

I’m not sure if there are any unique talents related to what all I have been doing, but I do hope to continue to purify and prepare myself for whatever work I’ll be doing in the future, as I am continuously guided along my path. Completing the Medicine Woman Rites of the Six Moons with my pregnancy was a very special and unique gift to me in my magical life and the magical life of my family. Exercising and eating well has definitely been the way of this warrior.

My grandmother has been persisting and she’s just “wow’ed” our family so many times with her strength and endurance. Turns out I don’t have to say goodbye now. She’s now at her newest home. Thank you to everyone who read my poem and left some love for us (and her) here.

Give peace a chance

 

Changing states,
inevitable flow,

no one can stop the
rain, push the river,
or force the sun behind a cloud.

Each day is delicate and fresh
with so much possibility for you
if you invite it,

if you live the invitation.

What would you like to invite into your life?

and what would you like to ask gently to leave?

breathing in, and breathing out,
enjoying the permanent state
that doesn’t come or go, but is always
ready, present and willing.

Free from judgement

life is so precious
we only get so much time
here in this form,
to experience exactly as we
are, with no label on how we
react, what we feel, what we
encounter.

how beautiful and precious is our
choice, our freedom, our whims,
our planning, our unique flames,

as we streak in the wind, in the eternal stream,
we offer our incandescent blur of precious steam

to the beam of consciousness ~

and it enters into us, unannounced

but completely recognizable

as peace, love, goodwill

pastry donut, uniqueness

I am filled with a million thankyous
and while that number is imprecise

I am leaking wishes for everyone of
you who touch me every day

with your focus and dedication
Your talent, your trust

Life is unbreakable while it is
fragile and the thankyous are squishy

awarenesses, that are part of an

experimental soundtrack, traveling towards
everybody’s Heaven as one.

What I do today I will not do tomorrow
but something different and something new

For I have found a way to encounter
unexpected happiness after turning troubling
corners,

And I’ve decided that I don’t need any talent to continue, all I need is the blessings of another day, with all its lack of permission. I’ll take the breath! I will make my own way, without a direct line,

instead I will carve out my path, one line at a time, and wait for no celebration to greet me but the one that naturally arises,

when I realize that I’m breathing deeper than I ever have before;

so something’s working well enough,

for me, to continue getting lost in love.

:: bows::

Free-falling into a new life

this was going to be a “it’s the blog’s end” post,
finished the blog. Its mission’s run out.
the long pause at the end of a winding
road, or maybe that will come tomorrow.

service has been disrupted in so many
ways, and the vision vacillates while
the complexities loom.

i was planning on finishing everything
i started, once I realized that in principle
was a principle, just a principle;
and these are my rules now, whimsy be what
it may, the life-force answers to itself.

accepting a better version of events
can be whatever they end up being, and an end
can redirect meaningful energies,
free up resources,
provide inspiration.

what about a re-route?

the whole path has been a splinter!

an impulse quickly turned into a million,
refracted directions,
when with camera: mirror-less direct
images captured on film, in no order
but the perpetual march of the order
that is already given by the continuity
of the space that the events take place in.

this guide is so agenda-less. she’s had no
reason to spread a vision, word, in so
many directions. She is, in essence, “inert,”
lovably all her electrons are full in her
outer shell.

she seeks no bonds.

still she returns, one by one, and moment
by moment, as each strange inspiration
lingers in the new ways that it does, when it’s still
a stranger, and we are sometimes excitedly
courting each other. The self that meets a new moment,

“what will you be, how will you become?”

Light.

A Selection of True Awakening Experiences Part 3

But first…

Below is what I wrote for Part 2: Starting ‘right here’ with an intro.

This is a selection I wrote for MeMyMagnificientSelf, where we are asked by our friend Barbara to share our awakening experiences with others. This is Part II of a two part sequence. My participation is here, below, in Part II. I had recently met the other participants while Part I was taking place, and/or had already been completed.

Beginning:

Awakening used to sound like an ending to me, so complete, and total and full.

But, I think of it as this endless continuity. It is almost a complete engagement, and yet it is so dynamic that it is always “in the process” of being engaged.

There’s this idea that “one” has access to everything, all that has ever existed. But that is not just an idea; it is a sense – a smell, a quality to the nature of connectedness.

There’s still the personality, and of course because there is absolutely nothing wrong with the personality.

There’s just a sense of being beyond the capacity that one originally set out with in the life, and perhaps a sense of connectedness to all the other lives that came before, including the soul’s journey.

There’s this sense of not knowing what’s ahead, but being nearly absolutely certain, most of the time, that this gift of life keeps giving to us, to me, to everyone. There’s this sense of constantly being in reception with source. There’s a deep relationship with the cosmos and with the pain and suffering of the world, but not in a way that is gripping or feels identifying. There’s a sense of ‘coming and going’ and it just sort of improves over time. The witness who is watching is not really the subject, and there really is no object, but it is the peacefulness of center-point, and the culmination of pointlessness.

The emotions get deeper; the connections with others become richer. People in your family that you may have thought you didn’t “get along with” show you their spiritual love for you. Disagreements on the personality level do not affect the deep nature of the connection. The connections deepen. Family members start to feel understood and “seen” by you – as simultaneously the experience is mutual, and love enters where it the illusion was it was not. The veils on relationships keep lifting.

Awakening is a process – for this being it started in 2007, but the blueprints for it where there all along. The circumstances leading up to it, and in the beginning required a lot of releasing, a lot of acceptance into the path of the unknown. Meanwhile, all the support shows up. It can be rocky at times, even extremely difficult and painful, but ultimately awakening is the most brilliant gift to consciousness. It’s the kind of thing that spreads for those who are ripe and ripening. The clarity is what reigns, rises, and spreads, breaking up all the dross of thought, conditioning, and aberrant energy patterns. Awakening is final, but it isn’t done. It is like a seal that has opened and the energy from the container is decompressing over time.

Note: When I saw Barbara’s challenge show up in my inbox, I immediately penned the words above; it literally took me only about 2-3 minutes, if that. My own clarity on the prompt – as I experienced it unto myself – was surprising!

******************************* PART III *************************************

Begins Here:

Reflecting on Part II was beautiful. I am glad that I could receive again my relationship to the words on Part II through this exercise, agreeing with all that was written above about the continuous experience, and not feeling like I need to update or change anything.

Beyond ideas, beyond thoughts and notions of awakening is the day-to-day experience of it. There are the delightful surprises that show up along the way.

Below is a poem I have written for Venus Retrograde, which takes place today, October 5.

 

“Bringing in the Calm”

 

How can I feed this moment with what it needs?
,
numerous deep breaths answer…
,
the steady gift of,

deliberate
airway transformation

.

Healing sounds tone
,
a singing voice illuminates:

you are safe, you are peaceful,
you are calm.

your true nature shines free with the complete
view that all is now magic, laced in the fabric
of gentle thoughts, easy movements

fabric woven into a soft, multi-dimensioned
tapestry where you can surround yourself in
the cushioned condition of reflection

,

timelessly recreating a reality within the vision
of peace.

Writing, poetry, and photography ©Ka Malana 2018, shared on Fiestastrellas.com

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