Giving away FIZZY JOY 🥰😁

Mar 18, 2023

9 years ago I went through a strange spree: I baked ridiculously decadent cupcakes (that were secretly gluten free.) I gave them away to everyone I knew and even people I didn’t. It was glorious! If you ever want to feel happier and perk others up, bring them cupcakes. :-) It was fun and I learned how to more easily talk to people, an awesome side benefit!

Soon after, I started getting requests to buy cupcakes and it became a little business for awhile. I took tons of pretty photos of my cupcake creations and used them in my marketing. Here are a few of my most favorites:

I posted the German Chocolate recipe here.

The OMG Chocolate—probably the best cupcake on earth. Only women could appreciate them—I don't think I ever had a man buy one LOL:

And for the little ones:

So pretty!

But back to the giving away part—when I ran across those pictures I was reminded how much fun it is to give away joy. For me, there is always more being made deep inside, so it can’t be depleted. It feels like carbonation in my veins—it’s FIZZY JOY!

I can remember back when I was a kid, my Mom actively working on spreading positivity and happiness. She talked about how just like when you toss a pebble in a pond, happiness can start with your words and ripple out and touch many people every day. She would look people in the eyes, complement cashiers, engage anyone she met in a bit of conversation, and nearly everyone responded to her smile with big smiles of their own.

If I were independently wealthy I would give away all that I do: Reiki, coaching, neurofeedback, and artwork! :-) But wait, I can do some of that…

This month I’m offering 2 free Fairy House Workshops. They are already full but I will offer more free stuff, never fear :-)

And about a year ago I started painting these tiny watercolors. They are 3x4". I didn’t know why. My heart wanted to give them away but my brain immediately thought, what kind of business model is that? Those two fought it out for months while I painted them in spare time. They made me happy to create, so I did. After my Mom died in November last year, I found that each painting had a little story that went with it and so I started to write them down.

Below are the first 6 out of my pile. Here's the link so you can read the stories. These will be going out into my little town of Apex, keep your eyes open for them. They will be hiding in plain sight or I may hand some out. I suppose it’s my version of the painted rock craze (which I’ve always loved.) If you find one, enjoy it as long as you’d like and then pass it on to a friend or re-hide it in plain sight for someone else to find :-) Some ideas where you could place them: with your receipt/tip at your next restaurant, propped on a co-worker’s monitor while they are getting coffee, in the waiting room at your dentist, etc or literally smile and hand them to someone like a cashier, librarian, your doctor, a teacher, the list goes on! Feel the little ziiiiip! of fizzy joy when you connect with another person (either secretly or not) and imagine or see their ziiiiip! of fizzy joy when they receive this little gift. Ripples of fizzy joy going out into the world :-)

Meanwhile back at the ranch:

Rayn is as annoyed by her polleny nose as all the rest of us are. I can’t tell you how many times she’s sneezed directly onto my chest in the past 2 weeks LOL

The Polar Bear and/or coyotes have been decimating the wild duck/goose egg population this spring. I thought maybe it was coyotes but B-Rad said he saw her over there earlier in the morning, so it might have just been her enjoying all the eggs!

Look at this sweet little nest! I'm pretty sure these are duck eggs. I've not yet seen a goose nest look so small and cozy:

Baby Dancer wanted to do some Reiki in the barn:

If you haven’t tried Reiki, you can get your first session half off! I have a table in my office and a friend’s table was accidentally moved with us and I keep that one in the barn. I bring blankets and pillows out and we can do Reiki outside with the animals nearby. Breeze blowing, birds singing, animals munching hay…it’s really quite nice! Lots of people have had Reiki while having massage so it’s often confusing as to what’s what. Reiki is energy work. You wear comfy clothes, you’re NOT naked under a sheet in my barn lol. Contact me if you'd like to try it! If you'd like to read more about it, click here.

Lots of pretty weeds are coming up all over the farm and this year seems to be the Year of the Wild Pansy:

There are huge purple or white swaths of them all over the farm right now!

Wild Jasmine:

This is what all the pine trees are doing out here. If you've never been to NC, this time of the year is known as spring aka The Pollening:

Bonnie, my Thursday morning volunteer came out to groom—we all love her!

I went to lunch with my Aunt Katy this week at a new restaurant in Pittsboro. It’s called the Mod and was a yummy little spot. That's gluten free bread folks and it was good!:

Afterwards we did my farm chores (bought a truckload of hay and bags of grain) and then headed back to pet the goats and visit the horses:

And of course, Katy needed to hug some big old trees (the woowoo is strong in this family ;-))

We had a crazy, huge Pileated Woodpecker (like Woody the Woodpecker) poking holes in an oak tree and wondered if it was making a nest...

But no, turns out it just likes this tree, there are many old and healed holes shaped just like this! I think it must start off with the two round holes, like at the bottom of the photo:

And then start yanking strips of wood off to create the long, narrow hole. I don't know anything about Pileated Woodpeckers and it was fun to think about what it was doing. These are the long strips it was pulling off:

Much fencing was done last weekend, leaving B-Rad thinking he had the flu. "You don't have the flu, you are sore." 🤣

Here's the new gate so we can go straight into the goat pen now and bypass the mud!

Fixing broken boards in the upper pasture. Most of the wood fencing here is 35ish years old. It's amazing it held up that long. The Polar Bear likes to supervise to make sure he's doing it right:

I just love it when the sun hits the top of those trees!

First mow of the season! Makes it look like we have grass, not just weeds lol!

Wynter begging for treats with his fabulous Lorax mustache on full display:

I did talk to him about not dropping a whole mouthful of grain for Sweetness and it seems he's listening and just dropping bits:

Speaking of Wynter, he and I are doing much better! I'm just being more stern with him and mostly he responds to my serious words of, "Back away from the gate so I can get in." by doing exactly that. Yay!

I just finished Jane Fury the sequel of Comanche Kid. If you like westerns and Louis L'Amour, read these! I'm on Angeline by Anna Quinn and fell in love with it immediately, great story!

And finally, I learned a lot about how to identify snakes recently. Really good info that I didn't know. People often describe the dark parts of the Copperhead as looking like a Hershey's Kiss. I like the hourglass description below better because you can see that there are sections of the Northern Watersnake that also look like a Kiss: