My first tea leaf reading

The weather has become very cold in Wisconsin over the past few weeks. We have been lucky to have temperatures in the double digits! One way I've been trying to stay warm is to drink a lot of tea. For those who are interested, I've been drinking a lot of Stash MerryMint tea and Stash Licorice Spice tea.

Drinking all this tea inspired me to write something tea related. I've always been intrigued by people who read tea leaves, but have never had this done for me. Sometimes, as I finish a cup of tea, I will look in the bottom of the cup and think about the shapes I see. I've never taken it any further than that.

Trying to read my tea leaves (or whatever is left in the bottom of my cup) sounded like a fun experiment and good blog material. Aside from thinking I needed loose tea, I didn't know much about the process.

To help myself along, I decided to find some YouTube tutorials. Every time I need to learn how to do something, I head to YouTube. There are endless videos on how to read tea leaves there. The first video I ran across showed how to do this by tearing a regular tea bag. These instructions involved a lot of symbolism. I found it comparable to reading Tarot cards, with different placements for past, present, and future. I had always thought of just one design or shape showing up.




The shapes seemed somewhat open to interpretation, like looking at a Rorschach Test or clouds in the sky. So I looked up a series of charts so I would have help in deciphering what I was seeing. Here are a few of them:

Glossary of Tea Leaf Symbols & Meanings

Tea Leaves - Tea Leaf Symbols

Tea Leaf Reading

Tasseography

This woman gave a really nice overview of the process too. I know this video is kind of small, but it's worth watching:




You'll notice that she had a cool Victorian style teacup with symbols printed right on it. Here's a close-up photo of a similar teacup:

It would be awesome to use one of those, but I had to stick with what I had. Luckily, I found another video with instructions on how to choose the right teapot, teacup, and tea type for the process:



So the first thing I did was to choose a tea cup. It turned out that I had a teacup in just the right shape, complete with a saucer:

I chose to go with Stash Double Bergamot Earl Grey for my tea reading. I'm suddenly realizing how much I like the Stash brand. I chose this one, because it's a black tea and would therefore show up in the cup. Then I went through the process, hoping to see something like this:

Here's what I did see:

As the woman in the first video said, the image to the left of the cup's handle is past, middle is present, and right is future. So, I'll show you a close-up of each.

Left:

What I see in this is a curled animal or snake.

Center:

This could be a question mark or a hook.

Right:

I see a crown.

These are totally up for interpretation, but the one on the right looked clearly like a crown to me. After studying the shapes and interpreting them, I consulted the online symbol dictionaries. According to those:

1) Snakes are about as unpleasant as you'd imagine. Luckily, the coiled snake is in the past postition.

"This is an unpleasant sign of treachery, disloyalty, and hidden danger, sometimes caused by those whom you least suspect"

Sadly, that's spot on.

2) Hooks are an addiction or obsession. Question marks are the symbol of hesitancy or caution. The question mark definition makes a lot more sense than that of the hook, so I'm going to say that's a question mark. I have been hesitant/cautious in starting some new projects, and I'm not addicted or obsessed with anything as far as I'm aware!

3) Crowns symbolize the attainment of your highest ambition. Hey, you can't beat that! I do have some goals that I'd like to attain (the ones I'm being hesitant about starting), so that's a nice positive image to see.

This process wasn't at all difficult, so why not give it a shot? I'd be curious to hear about what you see, or even better, see a photo of it. What I saw actually made a lot of sense for my life.

I'm open to any other interpretations of what was in my teacup. If you're used to doing tea readings, and have experience in recognizing these symbols, I'd really like to hear from you! 

Halloween crafts for any budget and location

Recently, I've been collecting a lot of Halloween craft ideas on Pinterest and storing them on this board: Halloween Craft Inspiration

I decided to share some favorite Pinterest craft finds with all of you, but I wanted to focus on projects that nearly everyone could do. I know that outside of The United States, Halloween merchandise is a little more difficult to find. So I looked for the projects that involve materials that can be found everywhere, things like glass jars, natural materials, and paper. These also turned out to be fairly inexpensive projects. Here are 10 favorites of mine.

This first project comes from Martha Stewart. These spooky silhouettes can be cut out of cardstock from the templates Martha was nice enough to provide on her web site. The silhouettes hover above the candles on wires. Here's a link to the project and Martha's templates: Shocking Silhouettes

This skeletal hand project comes from the Formal Fringe blog and full instructions can be found here. This project requires latex gloves, a permanent marker and little LED candles inside a jar or candle holder.

 If anyone knows the source of the next image, please let me know. The link on Pinterest didn't lead to any instructions. Still, I'd say this project is as simple as spray painting any wine bottles you happen to have. I like the mixture of glossy and matte finishes.

This next project is from Country Living and it's something I've been doing for years. You simply cut masks, horns, hats, etc. out of black construction paper and tape them to the photos you already have in your house! It's simple and adds a mysterious look to what you see every day.

Also from Country Living, are the instructions on how to make these decorative candle holders. Basically, what you're doing is printing a spooky image onto vellum and wrapping it around a glass candle holder.

I found this project on the Page Turners Hollow blog. These Halloween Silhouette Lanterns require a glass jar, some bright paint, and a cut paper silhouette. The blogger who made these jars found her silhouettes on The Graphics Fairy blog. I think they'd look cool with many other shapes too, like the silhouette of a bat or a raven.

These spiderwebs are made from black trash bags! I found this idea on the How About Orange blog. Here's the blog post with detailed instructions: Trash Bag Spider Webs

Here's another spiderweb cutout, this time from black construction paper. This is from the Green Baby Guide blog: Template for spider cutout

These rocks were another Pinterest find with a link that led to nowhere, so I can't give you a source. The type looks so perfect that I wouldn't be surprised if there are scrapbooking letters Mod Podged onto the rocks. I collected quite a few rocks this year by the lake, and I plan to paint them for Halloween. I'll probably do more spooky faces than type, but I really like the look of these!

This last project is super simple and I think it could make a cool porch decoration! Or better yet, set them on the ground as if they're emerging from the earth. This idea comes from the Family Chic by Camilla Fabbri blog. Although, the Pinterest link didn't take me to the how-to, I think we can guess how these glowing hands were made. Trace your hand on a brown paper bag and cut out the shape. Then rubber band the hand to a glass votive candle holder. These remind me of zombie hands reaching from a grave!

Sometime this week I should have some photos of the finished projects I've been working on. These upcoming projects had their start with Dollar Tree products. I learned from assembling this list of crafts, how much I rely on Dollar Tree and local craft stores. This little experiment helped to give me the perspective of people who don't have tons of Halloween craft supplies readily available. I hope to try some of the projects in this post, and I'll share the results if I do!

The Justine's Halloween Blog Party is planned for Friday October 26th, and of course you're all invited! So if you have a photo of yourself in costume from any time in your life, please email it to me at this address to be included in the fun: contactartgirl@gmail.com

If you participated last year, I'd prefer a different photo this year. So get digging through those old albums, or create something new! 

Here's a reminder of the festivities from last year's party: Justine's Halloween Blog Party 2011

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! Hopefully...

Spring struck Wisconsin early this year and I've been taking advantage of the nice weather. That's part of why you guys haven't seen me in a while! I've been spending a lot of time gardening, mostly from seed. This has been somewhat tedious, but so far worthwhile. The tediousness came in with checking my seeds that were sandwiched between damp paper towels every day for weeks. The worthwhile part came in when the seeds actually grew!

I have a new book to help me with the vegetables I'm growing. As luck would have it, I found an old Barnes & Noble gift card from 2003. It fell out of this book when I opened it:

I've read through this book multiple times since 2003, but never noticed the old gift card. This may have been because the gift card was in an envelope. I was happy to find out that this ancient gift card was still good! I used it to pay for Growing Vegetables by Kim Rowney.

The gift card also paid for The Body Snatcher and Other Classic Ghost Stories.

I went into Barnes & Noble hoping to find another book of ghost stories! This book seemed an appropriate choice, given where I found the gift card. I haven't read any of these stories yet, but how could I resist that cover?

The veggie book is so detailed and I really recommend it to anyone with a garden of their own. This book would be helpful, whether you're working with one pot of plants, or a whole box garden.

I'm about to show you some of the vegetables I've been growing from seed. It turns out that I've been growing plants that belong to The Deadly Nightshade family! Sounds spooky, right? Get ready...

These little guys are the starts of my Yellow Pear Tomatoes. Yeah, that's right. Tomatoes belong to The Deadly Nightshade Family of plants! Who knew they were so Goth?

Here's the fuzzy stem of my Jung's Improved Wayahead Tomato.

This is the start of my red pepper plant, which is also in The Deadly Nightshade Family. I've grown many of these, as well as orange peppers, from the seeds of an actual pepper from the grocery store. It's amazing how many vegetables can be grown from the seeds of what we buy at the store!

If you're wondering why my little veggies are in newspaper pots, it's because I was testing how strong the seedlings were, after removing them from the damp paper towels. If you're interested in learning how to make these temporary pots, here's a really helpful tutorial:



It takes a little practice to get into the groove of newspaper pot making, but you'll find this super easy once you're used to it. By the way, you don't have to mold the newspaper around a jar. I used a juice glass and it worked fine.

One more source I want to share is: growingyourgreens.com

The guy who makes these videos is so enthusiastic about plants and offers lots of great advice to gardeners!

Maybe if I pay extra close attention to his videos and really read my new book, I can grow veggies as big as these:



Not to mention the cartoon version!

Yeah, that song will be in my head for a while...