You can find current prints for sale here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/foxravenart?section_id=11064642

Painting measures 8 x 10″ and is Mixed Media & Acrylic on Canvas. The edges are painted to match the painting background, making this piece ready to hang or sit on your woodland altar.

Item is signed and dated on the back by the artist, and ships from non-smoking environment within several days of receipt of payment via US Mail with delivery confirmation.

Available for purchase in my etsy store.

Painting measures 11 x 14″ and is Acrylic on Canvas.

Item is signed and dated on the back by the artist, and ships from non-smoking environment within several days of receipt of payment via US Mail with delivery confirmation.

Comments by viewers:
” It is galactic beauty”
“This is really beautiful! Just looking at it is having a calming effect on me.”

Available for purchase through my etsy store.

Life’s a process, enjoy it!

I started buying a couple LED bulbs each month to replace my regular incandescents a few months ago, the ones that were in my dimmable ceiling fans. At $16-30 a pop, that’s all I could justify on the monthly budget. At $9, I foresee buying three or four each month, and hope to have them all switched over by summer. Not only will they save money in the long run, but they also add another good selling point to a home. So switch over what you can and save some cash on your electricity bill

I’ve noticed that as this new year has rolled in, there’s been a lot of talk about embarking on master cleanses that combine a system detox with the elimination of all those icky substances we ingest all year — caffeine, sugar, dairy, carbs, alcohol. Iif you love it, chances are you won’t be eating it on a master cleanse.

I think cleanses are great. When your organs and cells are operating cleanly, you tend to think faster, move more easily, and feel more upbeat. It’s easier to lose weight after a cleanse, because your body is more efficent. Think of a detox regimen as a tune-up for your body. You do it for your cars every so often — why not your own vehicle? My own body was resistant to conception six years ago, but after a summer spent doing various gentle detoxes and cleanses for my general health, I conceived easily.

You hear all sorts of horror stories about these cleanses, of course. And it’s true: done incorrectly, a cleanse might lead you to have headaches, diarrhea, bloated, skin breakouts, make you feel exhausted or just plain awful. This can happen in any elimination diet, due to the death-throes of addicted brain chemistry, but when you mix it with a cleanse your combining the pain with what we in the healthcare industry call a “cellular die-off”. As you dislodge toxins from your cells or kill bacteria or fungal infestations, such as candida albicans, these harmful gases and toxic substances are released into your bloodstream. They can course through the digestive system wreaking havoc, overtax your liver and kidneys and create all those aforementioned symptoms. We call this a healing crisis. You feel horrid, even though you are taking steps to heal your body. The unfortunate truth is that the more you need a detox, the harder it can be on your body. So, what’s a girl (or boy) to do?

In a word: slow down! Don’t just jump into a huge detox program. I recommend starting off by making sure your liver and kidneys will be up to the task. They are your primary cleansing organs, and the better they are operating, the better your skin and digestive system will fare as they try to eliminate toxins and handle an elimination diet down the line.

Milk Thistle is the number one herb for the liver: it has been proven to speed repair in a very short amount of time. The cool thing is that your liver actually regenerates itself entirely every 6 weeks. The key is to convince it to copy good, healthy cells, and not the old damaged ones. Milk thistle will help with this. Your liver is active mostly between 1-3 am each day, so take your milk thistle around 8-9pm. If  you are taking capsules, make sure you take them an hour before going to bed (any pills taken closer to bedtime can lodge in your esophagus and create reflux conditions.)

Burdock or Dandelion Tea drunk in the mornings and evenings will cleanse both the liver and the kidneys. Both are strengthening and beneficial to the body, and can be drunk for for up to several months. Stinging Nettles  are also good for detoxing the organs, and are anti-inflammatory to boot, while providing the body with significant amounts of vitamins and minerals including iron, vitamin K, C, A and calcium. You can combine any or all of these herbs with the milk thistle for an effective, gentle cleanse that will prepare your body for a more complete Master Cleanse.

Good Luck, and Happy New Year!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Orange-Candle/?ALLSTEPS

You can add a few drops of fragrant essential oil to enhance your candle experience

Chickens love to dust themselves in clean wood ash!

In keeping with my last post about green buildings, tonight I’ve been thinking about wood ash uses. We burn a lot of wood in our fireplace, and very little cardboard and never any plastic or toxic materials. This means that our wood ash is safe to use in various garden and home applications.

So long as you practice clean (no plastic, etc) burning, there are so many things you can do with wood ash, don’t just toss it away — since you have to save it for at least a few days anyways (to make sure all those little coals have completely died out) you might as well let your fireplace continue to pay for itself.

The Wonderful World of Wod Ash
or
Things you can do with your ashes:

1. Mix it with water to create lye, which you can mix with fat and use to make natural soap.

2. Carry a shoebox filled with fine ash in your trunk to get your car out of an icy parking spot — just sprinkle a handful for a foot or so in front of the tires.

3. Use it on your driveway for safe de-icing/traction.

4. Sprinkle it in your chicken coop or animal stalls under bedding to counteract urine odors and keep away insects

5. Make small piles or little bowls of ash in your poultry run for your birds to dustbathe in. They LOVE it, it’s safe, and it’ll keep them free of mites and lice.

6. Use up to 40% wood ash in your cement and mortar mixes without compromising concrete strength while adding some flexibility. There’s tons of specific research about this online for serious building applications.

7. Spread around your garden areas to keep away bugs and slugs. Don’t use it on alkaline soils.

8. Sprinkle near the roots of calcium loving plants like roses and tomatoes. Don’t use it on acid loving plants.

9. Mix small amounts with your compost to boost nutrient values (generally no more than 10-20%, unless you are trying to change your soil ph.)

10. Control pond algae. One tablespoon per 1,000 gallons adds enough potassiumm to strengthen other aquatic plants that compete with algae, slowing its growth.

11. Clean your sooty glass fireplace doors by using a damp sponge dipped in your ashes.

12. Make a paste with water to shine silver and scrub pots.

13. The same ash can neutralize odor in the coop, makes it wonderful for those times when your pets get sprayed by a skunk and you’ve run through all the tomato juice in the pantry — just rub a handufl right into your dog’s coat.

14. Ants coming in the house. Sprinkle the wood ash around the house as a barrier/deterrent. Also on any nests you want to get rid of.

More about the hobbit house here: http://www.simondale.net/house/

Wonderful way to use cans for siding...

Fifty years ago, Alfred Heineken designed the Heineken World Bottle (wobo), which he called "a brick that holds beer." The bottles interlocking design was to encourage its use as a building block after consumption. Unfortunately, only a few thousand were made. Photo: beerbeer.site88.net

Two of my favorite actors singing very nicely and making me smile. Hope it makes you smile, too!