yule 2017: ushering in the light with the Nui Cobalt Designs Crone’s Crate

Happy Yule/Winter Solstice, everyone! As you may know, it’s the shortest, darkest day of the year. But what’s exciting about me when it comes to Solstice time is, we can only rise from here! After today, the we get a few more minutes of daylight each day, and that’s not a bad thing. The holiday season is in full swing and I hope for a blessed holidays for each and every one of you.

I got a couple of surprise early Yule treats this week, and I wanted to share them with you! All of the photos taken in this post were taken with my brand new iPad Pro! B got me an iPad Pro for Yule and it along with the Apple Pencil will take me to a new place in 2018, and help me launch the brand I’ve always been wanting to launch. More to come on that!

Another beautiful Yule surprise I received this week was the Yule Crone’s Crate from Nui Cobalt Designs! Forest is a dear friend of mine and she and her husband gifted me one of their Crone’s Crate subscription boxes for the holiday. Of course, I have to share this awesomeness with you! The theme of this year’s Crates, from Samhain 2017 until Mabon 2018, is the Tarot. This high day’s theme is The Magician: archetype of initiation, empowerment, and the pursuit of knowledge. It is the electric moment of connection between consciousness and the Cosmos.

I definitely want to highlight the level of care that goes into each Crone’s Crate. When I opened the box, I was greeted with this beautiful scroll! It gives more details on what’s inside the Crone’s Crate, and where you can purchase further products from each vendor. (Bonus Patsy the cat pic!)

I peeled back the black wrapping to find this beautiful paper on the inside:

Then I peeled back THAT paper and here’s what I saw….

Okay, hello gorgeous. Look at the detail with which everything was wrapped! It was clear that Forest and her husband spent quite a bit of time on this one. Let’s dig into it!

First up is The Magician, from Arcana Wildcraft. An enigmatic and powerful blend of dewy red rose, petitgrain, bergamot, necromancer’s incense, dragon’s blood, and a shelf stained with hermetic potions. Label art by Forest Nui Cobalt. I put this fragrance on today and I am loving it. When I asked Forest her impression of it, she said, “It’s the first time you walk into your local metaphysical shop.” And she’s right. How it smells, how it feels. The resins and herbs and the hint of something truly magickal. It smells like a place, a moment, a memory.

Next up is this beautiful Magician Holiday Ornament from The Magical Druid! An elegant poplar wood ornament featuring the classic image by Pamela Colman Smith for the Ride-Waite Tarot. Perfect for the Yule tree or a year-round complement to your own sacred space. The Magical Druid is one of my favorite places on Earth. I feel so lucky that I have such an awesome magickal space in my town full of rad people – and they have the bandwidth to make beautiful things like this ornament!

I next unwrapped the Cedar Forest Soap from Honeyrun Farm, a local farm offering some pretty awesome handmade bath and body products, as well as a full array of honey and bee products. Pure, woodsy, and warm. Red Cedarwood essential oil, coupled with a hint of real Lemongrass essential oil and pure raw honey to sweeten the scent of the bar. This soap is made using the old-fashioned cold process method with beeswax and honey from the family-owned beehives at Honeyrun Farm. I absolutely love handmade bar soaps, so this will get put to good use in my home.

Next up was another Honeyrun Farm item and I just had to show off how beautifully it was wrapped. This is their Buckwheat Honey. Earthy, strong, and robust with an aftertaste that is reminiscent of molasses. It is rich in antioxidants and contains a range of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Many like to use it as an alternative to cough syrup, since it has a thick, rich texture that coats the throat and can suppress coughs. Natural alternative to cough syrup? I’m all about it! I’ll have to try this if I feel myself getting that winter malaise that seems to be going around. In the meantime, I haven’t tried Buckwheat honey, but I love all of the other varietals of Honeyrun Farm’s honey that I’ve tried so far.

The final Honeyrun Farm item was this Floating Star candle. A charming pure beeswax candle ready to float in your favorite dish for entertaining! Pure beeswax is harvested from family-owned beehives and is cleaned, melted down, and poured into star shaped molds. Beeswax has an aroma that is wholly natural and burns brighter, cleaner, and longer than other types of wax. This little guy is covered in glitter from opening the honey, but I love it! It definitely fits with the overall theme of The Magician and the Winter Solstice. I absolutely LOVE the smell of beeswax, too. Be sure to check out Honeyrun Farm for all of your bee needs!

The final few items in the box were from Nui Cobalt Designs themselves. They’re well known for their apothecary and chandlery items as well as magickal talismans, and I’m always excited to try more of Forest’s products. Included in this box were the Golden Solstice Bath Spell and Soy Candle. A light in the darkness, this uplifting blend evokes renewal, empowerment, and the indomitable human spirit. Warm mahogany and spiced sugarplum are accompanied by traditional frankincense and myrrh with a spritz of juicy pomelo. The smell of these is truly amazing, and really is a light in the darkness of winter. It’s warm and cozy but still juicy and bright. I’m going to be lighting the candle tonight at 5:10 pm when the Solstice sun sets and we’re plunged into our Longest Night.

A final item in the bag, and last but not least, is a handcrafted Mojo bag. Enchanted to brighten, lighten, and illuminate the path ahead. It is an empowering companion for a healthy and prosperous new year. I definitely will be keeping this on my altar and on my person until Imbolc hits! Let’s usher in the light!

The Crone’s Crates are available individually or in a subscription here at Nui Cobalt Designs. I think these are perfect for not only the magickal in your life, but people who like supporting small businesses too, as all of the items were handcrafted and handmade. Thank you so much Forest and Josh for the lovely gift! And a happy Solstice to all of you, my dear readers. Let’s usher in the light!

Happy Pride Month!

Happy Pride month everybody! I’ve got lots of stuff in the works for this summer. Hope you’re all doing well! As some of you may know, LGBTQ+ issues are near and dear to me. I’m all for inclusion and making sure their world has the same rights as mine.

This year, I’m marching in the Pride march on Washington D.C. It’s this weekend and I’ll be posting lots of pictures!

Meanwhile, head on over to check out my latest article on The Vinazine!

digital detox.

I’ve been feeling pretty foggy. Like I’m in the throes of a deep depression that not even my normal things (reading, chocolate, cats, yoga) can help me out of. It feels different than my normal seasonal bummed-out issues. It’s a miasma that set in, oh, around January. Yeah, I’m one of the people still upset about the election and the way this country is being run, but that’s not my core issue.

Recently I got a new iPhone 7; my iPhone 6 was on its last legs and constantly would die if I tried to catch mad Pokemon at the park. When I got my new phone, I decided not to put Facebook or Facebook Messenger on it. And I only put on about half the social media apps I used to. It started as a thing where I told myself, “Oh, Facebook and Messenger seem to kill my battery, so I wonder how it will perform without those apps on there.”

But really? I didn’t really realize it until I thought of it, but I was wasting minutes, hours, days refreshing Facebook and looking at what everyone else was up to. I was living vicariously through everyone else and their engagements and trips and babies and happy lives while I curled up on my couch in the fetal position with a cup of coffee or staved off work to see what kinds of leggings my friends were hawking.

In the first day or so of having my new phone, I felt naked. I don’t know what’s going on with other people! And they don’t know what’s going on with me! I posted a status saying I was only going to check Facebook while at work and/or at a regular computer, because I wouldn’t have it on my phone. I told people if they wanted to get in touch with me, to text me.

Do you think anyone has been in touch? No. And that’s okay! This detox from Facebook has taught me that friendship is a two-way street, and I could benefit from reaching out to people, too. Just this weekend I spent some lovely time with my good friend, Jordan. I reached out to her and we made plans and I followed through on them without cancelling. That’s so big for me. I didn’t spend my time scrolling through my phone instead of making conversation.

And you know what? it’s kind of been the best thing. My Facebooking was getting to be A Thing. It was the first thing I looked at in the morning and the last thing I looked at before bed. I realized that maybe I was looking at getting something out of it that really isn’t there, and to me, that’s true connection.

I’m looking for true connection. This is a theme that’s been popping up for me, connection. At thirty, I’m lonely in ways I’d never imagined. For friends in my town that aren’t an hour or more away. I’m lonely for pals here in Columbus that are just a text away, where we can curl up on the couch drinking wine and talking about things like feminism and skincare and politics.

Social media has made me awkward in person. I reach out to local online friends in the hope that we can be friends, but that’s such a weird thing to do nowadays that I’ve gained no ground on that.

So I think I will keep up this digital detox of sorts. These feelings around connection and how social media has changed me are worthy of exploration. I need to be better at putting myself out there, and making myself a more approachable person. To me, the first thing about that is getting my nose out of my phone and off of Facebook as much as I can. I want to continue to explore this and see what kind of journey it takes me on.

Because I know I’ve missed a lot of journeys because I was too busy staring at my phone.

I hope you’ve all been well. ❤ I just became a member of an amazing society of women blogging about awesome topics, so my hope is that you’ll see more of me around here. By the end of the month I’m planning on showing you my 2017 Q1 empties – lots and lots of skincare empties thus far! And my monthly favorites will be returning – I’ve got a lot of new goodies I’d love to share.Thanks for popping into my little corner of the Internet; I am honestly and wholeheartedly grateful. Let’s connect – on Instagram at @murflegirl or Twitter at @vividlyvz. (Because obviously my Facebook page might not get as quick a response, haha!)

i’m with you.

I posted the below to my Instagram very recently. I wanted to share it here too:

I was initially going to stay off of social media and not make a post about how I’ve been feeling and my thoughts in the aftermath of this contentious election. 

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But I can’t sit by and watch my friends, my family, my spiritual village in agony. I see you, and I’m with you. 

To my amazing, strong, and resilient brothers and sisters of color, fearful of what comes next, I see you, and I’m with you. 

To my LGBTQA brothers, sisters, and persons, unsure of their future and their rights down the road, I see you, and I’m with you. 

To my non-Christian folk, from those who get persecuted on their looks alone, to those who feel unsafe talking about their spiritual practice, I see you, and I’m with you. 

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This country voted against us. Voted against progress, voted against equality, voted against the greater good. We will now be plunged into an uncertain and rather terrifying future. A platform with a Vice President that supports conversion therapy and barring gays from employment. A platform with a President that railed against everyone “other:” people of color, women, the disabled, non-Christians…the list goes on. In this trying time, we must pause to let ourselves grieve and heal. 

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And then we must continue to fight. This is a time of awakening, and a time to stay woke. I see you, and I’m with you.