So I must admit, I had no idea what this challenge would be about.
Initially I wanted April's Shine this year to be a program.
These last few years I held a 30 days challenge every year and I still wanted to invite everyone to join me.
Thing is, this last year I almost stopped sharing things online. There was a lot of Facebooking but that was about it.
Things were happening at such a fast speed, live life (sic) kinda took over my online life.
Painful things happened. Getting to know myself happened in a very deep and profound way..

​Sitting outside in the first spring sun of 2016, just before March 1st, my intention was to write about raw chocolate and my up-coming "Taste the Chocolate" day (I will still write about it later today, it's on March 4th).

But as right now it feels like the beginning of spring (out of the wind and in full sun in my little garden in The Hague, NL), while V is playing (throwing) with sand outside and I listen to the first bird's song this year, I feel the nostalgy of spring in Romania.

In RO, on March 1st, people exchange the Mărțișor (untranslatable, see picture) and it's for everybody the launching of spring.

The few days before, everybody is busy-busy-busy buying and/or making Mărțișoare, and making lists with people they want to surprise with one.
​
"Mărțișoare" are small things, with a white and red thread attached to them, and they symbolize Love.

I am one of the most spontaneous and impulsive people I know.
Living in the NL attempted to get this out of me.. :-)

As I discovered early on after moving here, not having an agenda while living in the Netherlands seems like a blasphemy, like "cursing in the church" as the Dutch say.. 
I tend to organise something at the last moment.. This can lead to frustration and loneliness in a country where most people plan in October where they'll go with holiday in August next year.. I had to learn to manage it and I even found a few Dutch friends that are quite spontaneous themselves.

So you can maybe imagine how much I was looking forward to going to Paris - when I tell you that I planned that trip 3 months in advance.
​
I was going to see Teal Swan, one of my favourite teachers. in Paris on November 15th. I had the train tickets, the hotel booked and of course, my ticket for the workshop. I was so looking forward to this.

( in the picture, Tour Eiffel, detail from my painting "Paradise Bird in Paris", sold January 2015)

(besides the first picture which I took away from Facebook, - thank you, Marius! - and a picture I took a few years back - the rest of the pictures were taken by Kuki when he came, with Bobi, to visit me and C in 2004.. You and I can see me and a bit of the NL through his eyes)

..Woke up with a startle this morning as someone was knocking on my bedroom's window..
These people are changing something on our facade in the garden and I promised that I would be awake so that they can use my electricity in the morning.

These promises we make..- for me it’s too early in the morning.

I slept too little, again. I am not really a queen of self care these days..

And I am sad. Still sad.
Grieving. Still grieving.

Draga Kuki, 
Dear Kuki,

Until this very last moment I was wondering in which language should I write to you, to say Good Bye..
​
Romanian? Because it was our language? Because we only spoke in English with each other when you came to The Netherlands with your sister - and only when C was around?

Or English? Because many more people will understand. And care..

Draga, dear Kuki..

Do you know how every respectable teacher says we should embrace change? Because in the end the Only. Constant. Thing. Is. Change?
And like it's really logical and it sound right until the reality is that the last thing you want is.. change? 

Personally I just cannot live in the same ever environment or do the same thing every day at the same time.
I can totally understand if somebody wants to feel like there is stability in life - so they invent a structure of the day and follow that until the end... but...


​That person is just not me.
I do not have regular meals, I just eat when I am hungry. 
I do not buy the same things every week.
I cannot go to sleep the same time and wake up at the same time.
I sleep as much as my body needs and I do not need an alarm to wake me up. I just say to myself I want to wake up at a certain hour and I do. It's certainly not the same one every day. And I love to sleep so occasionally I wake up very late. 

And a (eery dirty..) secret? I do not shower every day and if I do, I do not do it in the morning or in the evening, I just do it when I feel like showering; it's not because I have to do it every day. There. I said it.
​
There are enough other things I can bet will happen every day.. The sun will rise every day, that is enough stability for me. I will always love my son every day. My house will kinda look the same every day (our reality on Earth is handy that way).. (Just imagine if we would not have this combo of space-time reality where we all agreed that things will look the same tomorrow, we would have to invent a world every day. )

Talking about showers, this morning I took one. I am so enjoying my - our -  (still really new although it's been a few months) vitalized water. I love water but I was noticing that I did not love the water flowing in this apartment any more. I did not like the taste and had more and more resistance to cleaning anything including myself. Since we installed the Aqua Vitalizer, this whole new wellness came into our lives. And we even got a cat, she felt the improved energy of the house.. Cats know.. :-) 

"She" is actually a stray cat. She was running through our garden and we could not even touch her, she was very frightened and her defenses are up most of the time. She must've had a rough life. Although she is very young (I'd guess a little more than a year old), she does not play at all. She is scared of the little pieces of paper I used to make her play.. V called her Mary, Mary the Cat.

Like last year and better (we all learn!!) and in a new, more central and just wonderful location in Delft - the Doelentuin, here it comes: 
Food Festival in Delft.

For all of you who love food and in the same time know food should be nourishing and sustain health, give life instead of shortening it, this is where you will find the answers to all your secret or not so secret questions.

Between 11:00 and 18:00 there is a Food Market and the program extends until 20:00 with a show.

Shining Mama will be at the Food Market with Shiny Boxes and two Shiny Taarts, with Water Kefir and Kombutcha and with a workshop (in Dutch) about how to make the most simple but oh so delicious raw bonbons with raw cacao and raw cocos, cocos oil, nuts and more. 

Besides Shining Mama's there are many other very interesting workshops to follow so make sure you'll be there.

Weather will be wonderful, too! 
(..veeeerrrrrryyy important for such a festival! And just me saying that will tell you how integrated I am in a society that talks about weather all the time :^D )..

My bonbons workshop will be from 15:45 until 16:45. 
You can subscribe for it (and/or any other workshop or lecture) @ this link. 

See you there!

Some of the yummies that will be on my table for you to enjoy:

(..or why I am not writing a blog every day, like I said I would..)

You know, this is probably.. this must be the most difficult part of my business.. 

Telling the truth at all times - with love. 
Love - for all of us involved.. Me, included.

I guess the first thing that comes to my mind about this promise I made to myself (that I am not respecting) is that life is a cycle made of cycles. 

You know what they say, that in 3 dimensions life looks like a spiral (my favourite) - but in real life it might feel like from time to time we arrive in the same (rotten) spot we were in a few months back or a few years back and think: Geez, I thought I already dealt with that.. 

And still, here it is. Again.

Same here. 

In "real life" I had a "real reason" to stop my project of 365 days of blogging only after... hahaha, a week.. :-) 
Namely, my "real life reason" was that my beloved laptop broke. 
It didn't break-break - but some of the letters went striking - Y, U, I, O. 
(Like, the most important :-) the letters in Y O U and I :-) )

I did several practical things to find a solution - about which I will probably write at length another time, for the ones out there who might find themselves in the same kind of situation.. 
For now, let's just say I had a few kind of partial solutions for a while - but not a complete one until I bought a new laptop.. Which happened about one month after I stopped my baby 365 days project :-) 

A month after! Gasp!
I promised to write 365 days, I wrote 7 in a row.. and now it was 30 days later..!

It gave me food for thought. 
About how resistance can manifest itself in all these mysterious ways. 
About how I did not even know when this whole month passed. 
About how, after a month of not writing a thing, I had little to no inspiration. 
About how before my computer broke I could not stop writing for more than 3 months.. 

..About how difficult it was to even consider writing this blog post. 

Yet, here I am, writing it. 

18 shiny boxes and counting for the duo boxes and I also cut the papers for the minis and a lot of other papers for the duo. 

I used to make one box from the beginning till the end and then start with the next one.. Now, in the interest of time, I cut all the papers first - or at least, a big part of it - and I am making them as "automatically" as I can :-)
It goes much faster and I do not have to concentrate as much - which is win-win as I can listen to whatever I want to - and talk to V all day long without making too many mistakes..

I am so enjoying this process, it's a great meditative practice for me. And a great lesson in not stressing.. 

For some reason, this time I had no interest in making shiny boxes from prints of my art - but went on to make them from older stacks of carton that I have saved for a while. Wow, are they beautiful! 

I am wondering why I felt nothing for making boxes from my art but here it is, me totally trusting that my intuition tells me what people will enjoy at the Leefmarkt fair..

We also had a surprise guest today in house: