Other Supporting Crafters:

Lone Wolf Woman: This Michigan native artist creates Native American jewelry, ribbon shirts, baskets, smudge sets and other beautifully unique artwork. Below is a link for a smudge bowl set that I think is a beautiful way to purify your ritual space.

NativeAmericanArtworkbyLoneWolfWoman

Buy Handmade

Welcome to PaganParenting.com!

Economic Help Online: Calling All Crafters!
UPDATED 3/22/09

Thanks for Helping Us Get Our Store FREE FOR LIFE! Now Let's help a disabled Native American crafter get her store for free in the next 2 days!

If you sell handmade craft items, art, or artisan supplies, you can get an online store for only $7/month FOR LIFE if you SIGN UP TODAY for ArtFire.com with NO SELLER FEES and UNLIMITED FREE PRODUCT LISTINGS! This makes selling your handmade wares online much cheaper than selling on Etsy and EBay. There's less than 300 accounts left at this incredibly low price!

You helped PaganParenting.comg get 10 referrals to get our store free for life, now let's get together and help out a disabled Native American artisan get her store for free. She needs 9 more referrals in the next 2-3 days.

Help us help the artisans who supported PaganParenting.com by using the referral link below to sign up!

Since we just got our store free for life, I've switched the referral link over to the first crafter who helped us get our store for free so that we can hopefully return the favor.

Is Your Food Safe? Check Your Pantry for Peanut Recalled Products

The FDA has provided a searchable list of the peanut recalled products. Make sure your family's pantry doesn't include any of these. If you find any, make sure you throw them out - or better yet take them back to the store and get your money back! (You do save your receipts, don't you??)

Spring Gardens and Food Preservation

I just finished off some of the peach jam that I preserved in the Fall on a stack of pancakes my husband made for breakfast. Home-canned food just tastes so much better than anything store bought, and it's a whole lot cheaper.

With the economy in such a downturn, I see more and more families growing their own gardens, many for the first time in their lives. I also see a renewed interest in canning and food preservation. Since these have always been an interest of mine, I'm starting to finally have more friends that preserve food and can all sorts of james, jellies, fruits and more.

There is nothing like the proud, satisfied feeling that overcomes you when you look at a dozen neatly sealed jars of jelly all lined up in a row on your kitchen counter. There's something soothing, even maternal, about it. You're providing for your family. You canned it. You preserved it. You're responsible for your family having an abundance of food come the winter. I have always loved the safety net and warm cocoon of having a well stocked larder.

If you've never gardened, get some tomato, squash and pepper plants to start. All three are very prolific and are some of the easiest things to start growing. So are strawberries. Plant them one year and they'll multiply year after year with no effort. By the time I remember I should water the berry patch in the spring I've already got red, juicy berries on the plants with no effort.

Ostara

Where has the time gone? It's hard to believe as I clear the ice off of my car on a daily basis that it will soon be Spring. All too soon it will be time to plant seeds for the coming harvest. Light will overtake the dark and the days will stay lighter longer. And yes, the tradition of painted eggs has already birthed large displays of dyes, stickers and egg wraps in all of the grocery stores. Ostara, the Vernal Equinox, is upon us already.

Be sure to explore all of the great Vernal Equinox information we have available on the site. A good place to start is our Wheel of the Year Ostara page over in the Spirituality section. From there you can find articles on the holiday including recipes and ritual, word searches and children's stories related to the Vernal Equinox.

Want to involve your children more in your ritual? We have several great articles about that in our Magick & Ritual section.

Here's a couple of my personal picks for Autumn related children's books. Spring : An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur is a book of poems about Spring, beautifully illustrated. Spring's Sprung by Lynn Plourde is a delightful story about Mother Earth and her squabbling daughters - March, April, and May. Spring Equinox, The : The Greening Of The Earth by Ellen Jackson is all about the signs that Spring has arrived.