Monday, 28 August 2023

TSL's 10th (Belated) Birthday + Fave Posts


At the end of July, The Seasonal Life celebrated its 10th birthday! I thought it was in August but then realised it was July, so that's why this post is late, lol. 


I wrote my first and second posts on 25th July 2013, an intro post and another one sharing my favourite things about summer. You can read them here:
 
 
 

TSL was the 3rd blog I started, the others being Star Sparkle Blog in April 2011 and Falling Petals in February 2013.  The other two are entertainment and spiritual/self-help blogs and I thought it would be good to have one about seasonal events and living.  

I started out writing about summer related things and posting recipes. In October and November 2013, I did my first post about a seasonal event (Hallowe'en drinks and then about my Hallowe'en). Then that December I did my first post about a sabbat (Yule).

As well as sharing recipes (seasonal and just ones I like), I started posting more about my sabbat celebrations. And later on, I did a series of posts sharing ideas for celebrating the sabbats. I really enjoyed that but decided to stop doing them earlier this year because I felt I had covered them all. They each have multiple posts and I didn't want to repeat myself.

I still post about my celebrations though and may do more inspiration posts in future if I feel inspired. :) I did share a few links with ideas for celebrating Beltane at the end of my winter-spring update post.
 

Monday, 7 August 2023

Lammas 2023

Last Tuesday (1st August) it was Lammas, my favourite sabbat apart from Samhain! Some people may celebrate on 31st July or 2nd August though. My main celebration for this festival is baking (usually gingerbread) and this year I made Cornish style pasties as well. (You're not supposed to call it a Cornish pasty unless you're from Cornwall!)

Although I made a pasty the first time I celebrated Lammas, I don't make them that often. The last time was in 2020. The recipe is from Kate West's book The Real Witches' Kitchen. I can't post it online but I did link to a couple of similar recipes in my first Lammas post on the blog: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2014/08/lammas.html

I used Jus Roll pastry which makes it a bit easier, lol. The pasties (I made one for myself and one for my mum) ended up being a bit hard and the carrots could have cooked more, but apart from that they were ok, lol. Here's a picture of one of them: