Raven's Diary

How exciting and invigorating it is for me to find a multitude of tutorials online that can teach me step by step how to make fancy things in photoshop. I absolutely love what this program is capable of and get incredibly motivated and giddy when I am able to transform an ordinary photo into something extraordinary. I also love creating logo’s and love playing around with different effects for hours on end. It is just incredible to me how the creative community are so generous with their knowledge. People all over the world, sit and figure things out and then write a tuturial to help novices like myself. It’s tough enough figuring out exactly how things work but to then sit and explain in video or text how to do each step is awesome.

Isn’t this the eternal question? Recently though it has become an obsession. With the way life is going right now if I don’t find a sliver of Peace I may just go off my head. Yoga has proved to be very useful to attain some kind of calm in another environment. I only go once a week but it makes the world of difference to my mind. Also since end last year I’ve cut out ‘things’ in my life that cause me anquish and pain, no matter how painful or stressful it was to do I knew I had to do it. There was also no discrimination or loyalty, if it caused me harm it was out.

I recently also just had a light bulb moment with regards to house we live in. We wanted to be out of town but still close to town when we were looking for our first home location. We also wanted a big open home with lots of space to move around and breathe. Only now do I realise that no matter how we built this house having neighbours 3m away was never going to give me the peace I need. I must admit though when the electric fencing went up I felt a whole lot more safe, which in a weird way gave a bit of peace. However, only now that we’re planning to move to the country do I realise that that’s where we belong. Whenever we’ve gone away to a mountainous cabin or gone camping far away in the bush; we’ve felt that sense of peace that only nature can provide. It is now our mission to find that peace for ourselves.

But in the meanwhile I must still continue the search for the Peace in the here and now. My yoga instructor gave me guidelines to meditation and finding a corner in my home to just relax. Unfortunately it has taken me too many months to come to the realisation that I needn’t build a shrine or wait for the perfect little decorated corner, I can meditate anywhere. Thus; this morning I decided it was time and did a Salutation to the Sun and meditated for a few moments to centre myself; as I had a feeling this day may be hard. We shall see whether this proves helpful.

You know those days you have when you know exactly what you want for dinner. You take out the meat to defrost early in the morning already. You even pop into the shop for other things not even thinking about dinner as you just KNOW you have everything you need. And then when you finally get to the kitchen at dinner time and start taking out all the other ingredients and then discover that the main ingredient isn’t there anymore.

Well that just happened to me. I wanted to make chicken wraps tonight and was so looking forward to it the whole day. Was even watering at the mouth thinking of the added bonus of having mushrooms which needed to be used – and I love mushrooms. Anyways, so I take out the tortillas last and feel the packet feeling mighty light and upon inspection there’s only one left. So I gently use a few heated words at myself and wonder what on earth now. So I yank the potatoes from grocery cupboard, which also ‘needed’ to be used as they were sprouting already and just started peeling not quite sure where this was now headed. I popped them in the microwave. I thought mash would do the trick as we’re sort of on a diet and chips in oil didn’t appeal to me anyways. I snipped up the chicken and the mushrooms and started frying them. And then returning to grocery cupboard for some sort of sauce or something the tin of sweetcorn jumped out at me; ok not literally, but it just shouted ‘eat me’; ok it didn’t quite do that either and I hadn’t been drinking my usual dinner cocktail which in hindsight – why the heck not? Alright back to the tin, so I wondered for a second and thought ag what the heck let’s try it. I’m telling you the taste combination of all of this led to me having 3 helpings and now having a belly full!

I loaded the recipe onto my other site!

That is THE question! A day hasn’t gone by in the last few months where I haven’t heard or haven’t felt totally and utterly overwhelmed by LIFE! Today I saw and heard again how life was hitting this poor lady slap after slap and she just HAS to continue as she is the bread winner of her family.  We were talking and I just kept nodding my head. She said how somedays she finds herself actively and consciously having to take a breath as if she hadn’t been breathing before; and I was finding myself agreeing to having done the same. She said how the smallest little thing could throw her whole day or make her feel like she was going to lose her mind; and I concurred yet again. Cleaning days are the worst for me, I feel that if I have to hear that vacuum one more time droning back and forth I would have to jump out of my window.

What on earth is happening? Why do we all feel so helpless? I have heard concepts that the earth is unbalanced and therefore we feel unbalanced AND therefore all the weather anomalies too. That makes a whole lot of sense to me, but when will it regain it’s balance? How did it lose its balance? And what do we do in the meantime?

Yoga has been a great release for me, especially in terms of taking an hour for ME and mostly because I am forced to breathe. My yoga teacher told me that around the world all yogi’s have a certain time daily or weekly that they ALL meditate in the hope to create a collective vibration to try improve the world. What a wonderful concept. Imagine how powerful that would be if more people did it. Think about the negative vibrations all the negative people give off and then think of why this world is in such a state. Now think about what an impact it may have if all the positive people would get together! But how would we spread the word? The power of technology has proved to be very successful but then how many people would actually do it? Maybe I should see if I could get a campaign going….Let’s heal this world – together – one breath at a time…..research begins!

by Kathy Lette

This book was given to me by my dear husband for my birthday last year! Very brave man. I’ve just completed it and I must say I’m a tad bit dissapointed. The previous Kathy Lette book was totally hilarious and I think my expectations were the same for this one. However, in the same breath it is so well written that you get sucked into the lives of the characters and begin routing for the wives and thinking up ways they could get rid of their cheating husbands. It’s slightly serious with a few unexpected dry humourisms every now and then. I wouldn’t suggest buying it for a friend who’s going through a divorce or breakup, it may just give her some creative ideas! It is as always worth the read though if you just want to put your feet up and get lost in fiction.