I am crazy about SoulCollage®

This is what happens when a person stays up all night collaging. I've been eating mostly-over 90% living food-and the detox symptoms are calming down and I have lots of energy. I feel vital and alive a lot of the time and I wonder why everyone isn't doing this.

These first five cards are my first SoulCollage cards. I just jumped in and made them. I didn't know the "official" size so mine are 4"X6" which is considerably bigger than the ATCs (2 1/2"x3 1/2") that I've been making. Only the first one has a title so far.

Abundance

Some images wanted to go on a smaller size card so two ATC-size cards got made too. Aren't they beauties.

These SoulCollage cards kept coming--late at night, while Jazz was at camp--I kept making SoulCollage cards. I didn't blog although the house is slowly getting cleaner. Actually doing art is helping me to keep on cleaning house, preparing food, and generally running a household.

And these little ATC size cards keep popping up here and there too.

I realized these would make nice gifts--little wallet sized cards with inspirational quotes.

And life did keep happening at our house. Eggs got laid. Food got prepared. Parties attended.

Our girls have laid their first dozen eggs now.

The food dehydrator has been busy. Besides finishing up the saguaro fruit, I did another tray of tomatoes and lots of sweet potatoes. The sweet potato chips go fast at our house. They are so delicious. This time I added lemon pepper and they are even better than ever.

We attended a birthday party and what kind of birthday party do you have when temps are in the triple digits?--one at night with lots of water play.

Playing fill the bucket

Other updates:

I am still training for my first 5K run and getting better every day.

I am still doing A Course in Miracles although much slower than intended. The lesson I'm on now I've been doing for four days (they are daily lessons). Lesson 20 involved remembering the lesson twice an hour and after four days I am remembering it several times a day. It takes what it takes.

I have not started The Artist's Way but I've been doing Art.

I'm eating mostly--at least 75%--local food. In fact, it's what I want; food with vital energy. Things I used to eat don't appeal to me. An example is the packaged Earthbound Farms organic spinach. It does not have the vitality that I now want in my body. I am so thankful to be on this path.

I have not been using shampoo or conditioner in my hair for a couple months (see my post No-poo and more) and mostly it is pretty fabulous. I am washing it with baking soda and then rinsing with apple cider vinegar every week to 10 days.

No-poo and more

After dropping Jazz off at daycamp on our bikes, I came home excited to search for blogs with combinations of my interests e.g. blog, A Course in Miracles, unschooling; and blog, raw foods, unschooling. I did find a blog of a woman who unschools her children and is going raw. She hasn't posted in a long time but one of her most recent post was about going "no-poo" I recently, a little over a month ago, read about this movement and that day joined it. "No-poo" means not using shampoo. It just made total sense to me. Shampoo is a fairly recent invention and no wild animals use any kind of chemicals or soaps and their fur is often much softer than our hair. The premise is that our scalps produce natural oils that protect our hair and keep it healthy. Once a person uses shampoo often enough the balance is destroyed; the chemical soaps strip the hair of it's natural oils and the body works hard to replace these and goes into overdrive and we, noticing our hair is oily, decide to wash it more. It is an endless merry-go-round, not unlike commercial agriculture's use of chemicals--because of the chemical use there is more need to use those chemicals.

I've now been "no-poo" for over a month. Thanks to Sara at Sweet Surrender, I'm feeling courageous enough to post about this. I haven't told anybody yet that I'm doing this and my hair has been less than perfect during the detox phase although it is much much better. I spent some time following "no-poo" links. Actually a couple of days ago, I came close to giving it all up but I'm totally inspired now to stick with it. I've been using EMs (effective microorganisms see EMAmerica) to clean my hair and also in the bath with epsom salts to help in the detox phase of going mostly raw. It worked great but now I am out and my next batch is not ready. I haven't yet used baking soda as is recommended for cleaning hair in the transition period because it seems so harsh. After reading some no-poo stuff I'm going to give it a try. The EMs got me through the worst of the greasies but my hair is not where I want it to be yet. It was particularly inspiring to read No Shampoo Experiment as she has been doing this for quite a while and really documents her journey with pictures and all.


Jazzie spent most of her evening in free play. She has really been craving this it seems. She often tells me how important this is and that she is creating stories for movies and plays she is going to write when she gets older.

We took a break from Mind of a Raven and I read her about half of Barefoot Dancer: the story of Isadora Duncan. What an amazing woman and she reminds me so much of Jasmine. Jasmine's talent and passion is dance. She utterly amazes me with her ability. I just searched my pictures to find one to post and this is the only recent picture I can find of her dancing. Have I stopped taking pictures of her dancing or have I lost them somewhere? I guess I'll remedy it.

Jazz also participates in the only dance available in Ajo--folklorico. She is in two different groups. Here she is performing at the plaza for Cinco de Mayo.

This evening for dinner I made my favorite soup. I love this soup so much it was my last meal before I did a 19 day fast (Master Cleanse) last summer. I've been eating almost 100% raw this week but I had three bowls of this for dinner tonight. It's a sweet onion with basil and tomato soup with seasonal veggies thrown in. I used a can of organic tomatoes from the store but everything else is from our CSA share or the garden.

I finished processing the tomatoes and corn I bought from the farm. I froze all the corn and dried about half the tomatoes. I cut the corn off the cob uncooked and put it in thin layers on plates in the freezer and then transfer it to a plastic bag.