Where Have I Been??? Playing In Seaweed!

A thousand apologies that I have blipped a bit the last week, I have 80% written the next post for Wild Woman Journeys and will post tonight, but thought I could explain why I have not been up to date.  I have been working, day and night in the winter cold packing mussell spat.
take a look.

There are alot of jobs and businesses out there that Im sure we never even know exist.  The stages in producing something that is never known.  I have one of those jobs, I work with 'mussel spat', the stuff that is needed before mussels can grow on mussel farms.  So here is a look at the job we do every winter.

Kellys family work in the Marine Agiculture business so every winter season we have a quota to fill for mussel spat which is pretty much mussel babies.  The only place in New Zealand that you can get this spat is here in the far north, it washes up on our West coast, a very long beach called 90 Mile Beach. This is where we get onto the beach to start our beach runs, which is driving for miles rain or shine, day or night, looking for dark patches of seaweed in the water

Looking south down the beach.

 The spat washes up on certain winds and moon phases and is collected onto trucks and brought home to be packed.

The spat attaches itself to seaweed and looks like little crystals and like little mussels when they have grown bigger, you can see some in this photo, attached to the left of this seaweed.

So spat is a crystal like thing and it is attached to the seaweed, it is not the seaweed!

working with seaweed isnt as gross as it sounds, its so fresh from the sea so it dosent smell, maybe just a bit cold when its midnight and your in a cold garage sorting the wet stuff with an aching back from hours of work that you question your sanity.

it has to be sorted to remove sticks, sponge and shiny weeds, the stuff on the floor is rubbish and is returned back to the beach.

Somedays its a very messy job

there are sooo many types of seaweed all tangled together

and we use a conveyor to sort it so it can be packed in 10kg bags

which are packed on ice into a truck and then delivered all over NZ to the mussel farms

like this, you can see the mussels hanging down on the vertical ropes

so next time you eat some New Zealand Green Lipped Mussels you know where they have come from

and you also know my reason for being just a little bit late with my E-Life, I guess the real life will always come first in the end, gotta make the moneys people!

Spat has NO routine, it ruins many a party of trip away with its ability to turn up just when you have something awesome organised, spat waits for no man!

Thats why Kelly refuses to do it anymore, and went and got another job!

Me?  I still love it xxx

So see you all again tonight
with our new Wild Women Topic

*GRACE*

Love Ya

xxxx

Sheree



Life..The Experience Of Using Our Time

Wil Womens Journey Self Love Pt3

For Wild Woman Journey Intro and Info Click HERE

Welcome all you Wild Women to my last post on 'Self Love', two weeks sure flies around here!  I know many of you are taking time to do the work I have suggested and I love your feedback, it lets me know Im heading in the right direction too.  So lets get going with this post and see what you can take from it to help move yourself into a new more posotive you xxx

My Experience

This is my experience with 'Self Love'. I feel it is a common thread these days, especially with the over communication of our times, we are so much closer but so much further from each other, there is gap emerging in our lives which is hard to pin point, here is the story of what was mine.

When I was lacking in self love, it was expressed as complete loneliness, a desperation for love from anyone but the ones who did love me. I could be in a room full of people who were friends and feel completely alone and isolated, Its like I couldn't reach them, so close but so far, I began to feel worse and worse and that began to show on the outside with me seeming more awkward with each passing day. It showed to me in the fact that every time I laughed (rarely) it felt completely fake and put on.

Naturally invitations dried up for the weird girl, I felt I was revisiting childhood rejection from school days. I started to fret about not being invited to things that I wouldn't have even been invited to on a normal day, all I saw was what I was not being invited to as opposed to what I was. Socially I had shut down so I used my professional interactions as ways to connect with people. I started to do the one thing that I knew could get me love..... I started to 'Volunteer'.

I was the girl who took on any role that was going to help out, take charge, give of myself. There was nothing I wouldn't do for a little praise, Ohh the praise and thanks, but in the end all that praise went no where, it all sunk into the big black hole of loneliness inside of me within an hour of receiving it. So what did I do? I did more! because surely if I had more praise it would finally hit the magic spot...my heart. But it didn't and I burnt out from the frantic volunteering.

When I had to give up my life that wasent working and let it all burn away,... I was left with ...me, and once I learned to love me, the old original me, all the loneliness melted away. I had found myself in a place quite the opposite to before, a place I didn't want people to come to, I chose complete isolation and it helped me to find a life that relied on ME only. Filling myself with love from me and what I do for me! So now that I'm back out in the world anything like praise, appreciation and love that does come my way, leaves a warm glow and I just move along happily with good memories.

I go out a lot less and enjoy my time at home more than before, when friends go to parties I not invited to, I love to hear their stories and see photos, I no longer feel Resent or Jealousy for the things that don't come my way. I have a wondeful group of friends that I appreciate for who they are, not for how they make me feel.  I do what I do and finally that is enough for me. I love the feeling of satisfaction from nothing but everyday life, it means that anything else that happens to me tips me over into absolute ecstatic happiness.  It shows me that my cup is already full and just waiting to be overflowed daily.

I now take a huge amount of wisdom from the following quote, I think it speaks of our society today.  Not many are satisfied and spend all their time hunting for something that will never fill the hole inside them.  We are the only ones who can fill them and heal them, this is our journey...and our alone . xxx

“ If you don't appreciate what you already have, then how could you be happier with more”

Wild Woman Challenge
'Everyday Muses...aka Friends'

This is a little something you probably do each day without even thinking of it, but its always best to do things with intention.  Coming from an Inspiring angle rather than a Envious angle will surround your thoughts is good energy too.....so...

Make a list of your closest friends or people you like to be around or think of, they can be personal friends and family, work mates, strangers, or even famous people.  The main thing is you can sense something about their personalities. 

Once you have a list of names, write down a trait they have that you love the best, there are so many wonderful things about other people to admire, so write them down.
Are these traits that you wish to own yourself ?
Can you use your friends as inspiration to be a better you??
This can be a two fold experience, because you can gain the knowledge for yourself and also by concentrating  on others good points, the love multiplys and you bring more of that light into this world.
We need to celebrate each other a little more : )

I concentrated on my good friends that came to my tea party and this is what I came up with.  Try not to think too hard, I pretend that someone asks me about a friend "What is your friend Renee like?" and I answer with the first special thing about their personality that comes to me.

Wild Woman Challenge

'Self Love Portraits'

We all have photos that we love of other people, and I save those beloved photos in the hope that one day I will get off my ass and take them of myself.  Well this week I brought a remote for my camera which means I can set up the photos and click away till I get it right. 

The first one I did was one I love of Stevie Nicks. 

Its good to note that you should try and capture the photo in your style.  Its heart breaking when you give yourself a photo to copy perfectly and its so hard to do, and it feels like an epic fail.  So here is MY version of the Stevie Nicks photo.  Set up took all of 5 mins, dressed on top, pyjamas on the bottom, sitting on my daughters floor with a backdrop stung from her wardrobe to the tree in the other corner. Bedside lamp with no shade, camera sitting on chair with remote in hand.  Yes this is the real world, no studio needed!  Then I 'Picasa' it afterwards and its magic.

So try to dedicate some time to yourself this weekend getting those dream photos done, even better if you can do it with a friend whos willing to have hers done too.

So fun and the results are there for a life time, I always think my grandkids will love photos of me like this.

I think Im gonna print this one out big!
Its nice, you cant see my broken nose! eek!

Self Love Questionaire

Now you have done all your Self Love work, here is a little questionaire to test where you stand in the whole 'Self Love' world.
Print out the PDF Here
I love to do questionnaires and put them away to be read years later, it shows the hugest amount of changes in our life, and are sometimes a good laugh, or a bit sad seeing yourself stuck in a space you thought was unmoveable at the time.
Ohh 'Hindsight' you are a wonderful thing
there will be a questionnaire after each section so keep them all together, maybe for a time capsuel!

Thankyou so much for Journeying with me

See you on Monday for our new topic

which I was going to tell you

but there are too few surprises left in this world

so sorry!! : )

xxx

Sheree

Nature Girls Winter Fun

School holidays are here and that means we get to spend time just having fun with no timetables for anyone young.  So we gathered our girlie friends together to have some nature fun.

We took to the sea on Poppa's fishing boat and went for a ride around the harbour. it was an amazing winters day, sun shining, no wind.

This is how winter should be... always xxx

the water was soo clear

and the girls enjoyed seeing their home from a different perspective, water to land, not land to water.

our cute babies

and plenty of Native Coatsal Bush

Deserted Beaches

and Nature

To Ponder

and learning about fishing boat thingys

Thanks Poppa the girls had soo much fun xxx

After our boat ride we went to the fairy forest and lit a fire (check out the fairy hovering over Pipi dogs head, theyre both wondering whats for lunch)... but not yet...first..

Fairy Hunting

and then time for pre-cooked cheese sizzlers sausages



with plenty of Watties Tomato Sauce

and of course Marshmallows too

Marshmallow Cheeks

even Louee the kitten came for an adventure too

to hunt for creatures on a Winters Day



We love the adventures we have in this forest below our house, its an amazing cosy forest for the kids, you can see a post I did about it last year HERE. (photo below)

 We come and cook our dinner over the fire and play Bush People, one of my favorite childhood games, I always wanted to be stranded somewhere so I would have to survive.  I have found out recently its a trait of having a 'Libra North Node'.  Soooo Fun!

All this winter fun is great but bring on spring!! I want to get planting some flowers and summer veges : )

Hope your having an adventure where ever you are

much wintery love

sheree

xxx