Valerie's Variety Pod

April 28, 2020February 5, 2021

7 Chakras – What are these? – e86s2

episode 86 season 2

Recently, yours truly got accepted into the spoken word world with my first Audio book live on Audible. Wicca for Beginners by Amelia Greenwood and now I have my second book finally produced. Chakras for Beginners by Crystal Gland. This production avenue is something I’ve been working towards for several months and I am quite excited to have been accepted into his world of voice reading and producing audio books.

So today I’ll share with you this newest book Chakras for Beginners, the Ultimate guide to balancing and healing your chakras, guided mindfulness meditation to open your third eye and radiate positive energy through reiki teachings (Vegus Nerve).

Welcome back to Valerie’s Variety Podcast with your host me, Valerie Moss the show theme for 2020 is EAT – READ – CREATE . The show drops every Tuesday. Follow me on Instagram @ValerieJMoss Pinterest @VJMoss Facebook @ValerieSwainMoss

Chakras for Beginners

As with the previous book Wicca for Beginners, I knew nothing about this nature based religion- this new book I was asked to produce was on a subject I’m also not well versed in either, Chakras for Beginners. This book is so interesting about breathing into your core chakras and clearing these so you can function openly in your mind and body chakra areas – there are 7. Do you know what a chakra is?

Chakras are the circular vortexes of energy that are placed in seven different points on the spinal column, and all the seven chakras are connected to the various organs and glands within the body. These chakras are responsible for disturbing the life energy, which is also known as Qi or Praana.

Introduction

The author usually provides a description of what they are looking for like vocal style American accent, inspirational, male or female preference, and more detail perhaps with the genre. or someone who can perform – I’ve read this several times. I wish I did better in my drama class in high school.

So, the author for Chakras for Beginners found me – the process through ACX –

ACX is a marketplace where authors, literary agents, publishers, and other Rights Holders can connect with narrators, engineers, recording studios, and other Producers capable of producing a finished audiobook. The result: More audiobooks will be made.

can work this way also – very flattering when an Author reaches out to you among the 109, 065 producers available today – like how does that even happen? It’s funny tho as I’ve had several authors reach out with their wants, can you do this in 5 days or quicker – the formula for a 3 hour book is times 3 – 3 hours of finished book takes approx 9 hours to record and edit – so when you work full time to produce a finished 3 hour book at minimum is 10 days. And book types, cookbooks, eating disorders, sexual positions, narcissistic personalities, more about Wicca and chakras. There’s so many options out there.

This author heard my samples loved my voice, my soothing relaxing voice. One thing about this book unlike the Wiccan for Beginners is the vocabulary, this was challenging but I think I did okay with the amazing words – thanks to YouTube and Siri for helping with the pronunciations.

from the website One Tribe Apparel – perfect map.

Here’s the Table of Contents for Chakras for beginners and a voice snippet of each one chapter:

Chapter 1: Root Chakra – Muladhara (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 2: Sacral Chakra – Svadhisthana (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 3: Solar Plexus Chakra – Manipura (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 4: Heart Chakra – Anahata – 2 mins
Chapter 5: Throat Chakra – Vishuddha (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 6: Third Eye Chakra – Ajna (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 7: Crown Chakra – Sahasrara (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 8: Chakra Meditation (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 9: Reiki Chakra (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 10: Everyday Uses of Chakra Crystals (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 11: Guided Meditation – How to Meditate Correctly (snippet) – 2 mins
Chapter 12: Mindfulness and Positivity (snippet) – 2 mins

When I was conversing with the author, I offered to have them on the show but they chose to decline. Notice how I’m not sharing this person in more detail? It’s interesting as the Author Crystal Gland is the pen name – lots of authors do this – did you know that? I mean besides some famous ones like Stephen King- I didn’t think it was as common as it is – it is very common.

Conclusion

What do you think? Interested in learning more. I’m sure you have 3 hours in your daily commute to give this new genre of audiobook a chance. I have a request, if you’re interested, send me a note, text to my email, Valerie@ValerieMoss.ca and I’ll send you a code for a free credit to listen to this book – yes for free. In exchange, I’d love to get your feedback – write a review on Audible for me, tell me what you think of the production quality, my voice, my cadence, the overall sound, personality etc. I would love a review of this book and hey, while you at it – give my show a 5 star rating on your podcast app, leave me, Valerie’s Variety Podcast a review while you’re at it.

Here’s a referral link to buy the book – enjoy this intro to Chakras in Chakras for Beginners The ultimate guide to Balancing and healing your Chakras, guided mindfulness meditation to open your third eye and radiate positive energy through reiki teaching – vagus nerve.

Thanks for listening today, and if it wasn’t for all of you I wouldn’t have had the courage to pursue the Audible audiobook world. Thank you!

Want a free audio book code email me@ Valerie@ValerieMoss.ca or text me to this email also and I’ll send over your free audio book code for either Wiccan for Beginners or Chakras for Beginners – both are guides to bettering your view of the world and as a result have mindfulness and positivity.

Let me know if you want a free code – my pleasure to send over over to you – to check out these books. Anyway as always, thanks for listening and keeping me in your list of podcasts, with so many options out there competing for our time, It’s awesome to know that I’m one of your choices.

This show, Valerie’s Variety Podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Valerie Moss, through WordPress and GarageBand, the loops I use in the show are provided through GarageBand, background recordings are recorded by me and my trusty iPhone. The music TASCAM 40 and TASCAM 128 is produced and written by my music man, Jason Schnell.

Thank you to One tribe apparel for this awesome body map image of the 7 chakras

Talk to you next Tuesday

(this episode was pre-recorded prior to season 2)

April 21, 2020January 29, 2021

Easiest Spring Pillow Cases & Give-A-Way! – e85s2

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episode 85 season 2

Spring Finally, let’s refresh some pillows!

Todays show is all about CREATING – freshening up for Spring with a finished quilt top and matching pillow cases – this pattern I’m going to share with you today will be available on my blog and details here…if you’re not a sewer or a quilter, don’t fret just pass this episode onto those people and they will be forever indebted with this valuable information JK, just showing a little Spring in my step today for you to share with your friend or family member that is a crafty sewer. – and yours truly will give away a set or two to whoever tells me their favourite Spring Story – it could be about easter, gardening, spring cleaning, you tell me and I’ll make you a set of these pillow cases (in your favour colours and in the size of your favourite pillows – sound good?)

So..years ago I made this quilt, Truly Scrumptious by Cinderberry Stitches as part of my block of the month program when I ran Pastimes Online. This quilt was The date of this post was Oct 2010, yes so many years ago now. BUT when I made this quilt I was hoping to be pregnant this year and was secretly or openly hoping for a girl…

Well made the quilt, did get pregnant and then promptly tucked the top away for another day when I could finish it….well people this quilt is now finished with…matching pillow cases.

FIRST

Dig out that old quilt top that you haven’t finished 🙂 then prepare to sit down & listen to a good book, I listened to a new book by Joy Fielding, The Bad Daughter and go through your thread stash, find your favourite colours to match and bobbins wound and enjoy your time finishing this new quilt…well new because it’s been stashed for so long.

SECOND

Quilt until your hearts desire, and then bind, bind, bind…one of my favourite parts, I love this finishing touch, it’s so rewarding, tucking in that final raw edge and completion the border, smooth and crisp.. But when it comes to a label I always groan, now I have to write something up and add a separate piece of fabric to the back – where to put it and make sure you don’t stitch through to the front…

Here’s another one I did years ago 2013 for my niece and I just love the way it turned out…if you can do free motion, you can do this label on the front of your quilt, just find a good spot and measure out your words (first) then just have fun. I pull the bobbin three to the front, leave it long then tied it scrappy, make sure you date it and put your name…especially if you want to show off all of your hard work 😉

THIRD

The Spring Pillow Cases…

These just turned out so cute, and were actually very easy, I haven’t made pillow cases below, except some small ones with 1 fabric, but nothing scrappy and fun like these, London mentioned, since these were for her, that she would like ties 🙂 I have a set of sheets that I decorated with ties and London just loves how these look – so… no problem we added ties.

Here’s the Pattern

Measure your current pillow case – mine is 29″ x 19″ (one side)
Pick out your fabrics, they can be matching or not (one for you and one for him, maybe?)
If you are a quilter, you’ll have fat quarters kicking around which measure 18″ x 22″ – notice anything? The 22″ is basically the width you’ll need including seam allowance, yes they might be an inch or so larger per side but this works, trust me it’s perfect
As you can see in my example, I striped pieced these, you will need two of each strip to make this mirror on the front and back
Cut strips into 6″ sections or the same width of your ruler to make it easy (see a pattern here, easy)
Some of these sections are small just pick your fabrics and make sure they add up to approx 29″ (then make two, front and back)
The bottom strip is a single unit so the end of the pillow case, the part that is at the bottom, so only one piece is needed here.
So, in the below example I have 2 (red dots (cuff 2″), teal strip (3″x2), orange dot (4″ x2) pink model (6″x20, Strip (6″x2), teal stripe (3″x2), white (6″x2), dark teal (6″x1) = 32″
Red Dot Cuff – the first pillow case I just turned the edge and finished it, the second pillow case I cut the cuff 6″ and folded it to 3″ then stitched this on the pillow case so the cuff was thicker and nicer
if you want to have ties – which are super cute. Cut 3″ strip – will give you 4 ties (with the 2 pillow cases I used the red dot as the connecting fabric, so they sort-of looked like a set- when you are adding this cuff tuck the ties into place, make them secure by backstitching over top of the spot, lay their end buried inside the seam in the same direction – it’s a bit tricky to top stitch the seam allowance as in step 12 but just take your time and go over it – it looks so nice!
sew all of the strips together, same order on both sides (so they are a continuous stripe through the pillow case), press seams open (you want them as flat as possible), so now you have a 22″w x approx 64″ long rectangle.
to make this pillow case look ‘finished’ and ‘professionally completed, proceed to change your stitch length to a longer top stitch length, you can use a walking foot if you like ( I didn’t) just an open toe foot and I proceeded to first do a loose top stitch on both edges this will hold the pressed open seams in place, then top stitch each seam on either side, I did it about an 1/8″ away – to catch the seam at the back – this will reinforce all of these for longevity with the pillow case, years of love and washing.
Then press, press, press
Connect the two sides, I started with the bottom (un-open side) and then stitched to the cuff end, make sure to pin all of your seams so they match up exactly, the stripe will be continuous front to back…
Fold corners so they lay flat, then turn pillow case right side out – press, top stitch the two long sides (just do this as close to the edge as possible, I just used my open toe foot as the measurement) start at the bottom and work you way to the opening, back stitch both ends.
top stitch the cuff in two lines

U R Finished!

April 7, 2020January 29, 2021

What 2 Do – What 2 Do – e84s2

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episode 84 season 2

One women’s view of her life

First, I hope everyone is safe and is looking forward to a little humour today….I’ve personally had quite the 2020 start off…folded ROE in a nice white envelope, coming upon my window looking like a spider web – SMASHED! And now like you Covidiot Syndrome. Oh yeah did I mention homeschooling and carpal tunnel – okay enough complains about my exciting life – NOT!

I’ve always been a home-body, grounded at home, love to cook and sew, and CREATE and READ – as in my new theme for 2020 this maybe my new theme forever who knows.

First up, this white envelope, I had a feeling over the last couple of months of 2019 that the projects were dwindling and the bids were not getting awarded. I worked for a Vancouver company being their representative here…yes people I’ve been packaged out. After 5 years I was handed the white envelope and walked out the door. I needed some time to reflect and think about this. I was assured it wasn’t anything I did and it was a company decision, but you still feel this sucker punch that you were chosen to be handed these – scripted beautifully papers – and asked to sign on the bottom line before 4 pm today. If you haven’t experienced this it’s a shock to say the least. Once I swallowed this huge lump in my throat and stomach I stated to tell a few people outside my main circle, and guess what I wasn’t alone – that so many people have gone through this. Two of my colleagues recently felt the same and so many people I reached out to were in the same place – and now so many people are in the same boat as me. I’m safe, I’m working on my side hustle, I’ll get EI – eventually (when I called EI their recording said that they couldn’t take anymore calls today), I can make my payments in life…but so many people are truly struggling now with this cover situation.

So I’m looking for work, but when I can take a job or get picked for a job – the jury is out – I need to be home now with my child, which by the way is coming up later in the show…

So it had been a couple of weeks since I was without employed, me and London were heading to karate and proceeded to park at the front doors at a handicap spot under the bright parking lot lights, in front of the church where we train. I hid my purse in the backseat on the floor. We proceed to our class. After our class commences there is a hockey team that arrives shortly after our class. In the meantime a guy, comes and checks out all of the vehicles with flashlight – under the watchful eye of the security cameras. This villain proceeded to come into the church and scope out what was going on then proceeded to smash my window and steel my purse. Yes I had credits cards and debit cards and my drivers licence and of course my health cards for both myself and London – as we just had an appointment so I had them on me. I recently took some cash out to head to my dads for the weekend. Within under an hour this culprit shopped and shopped. So, after cancelling all of my cards this day – and reporting everything etc. it was a gong show!

And totally triggered London from our last robbery instance. There was glass everywhere in the car..UGH nightmare.

Did you see the Jimmy Fallon video with his kids? there’s a link in my show notes but it basically goes like this, he’s sitting on the couch, his girls look to be 5 and 7 maybe, are hanging off him, while he’s trying to do an advertising monologues skit – he telling people to buy toilet paper from CVS – he asks his kids if they think his joke is funny (which it was) and they say ‘nope!’ – insert laugh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKDd38-EVCs

So my side hustle of producing audio books has exploded a) because I have time to take on more projects and b) people like my voice. One thing that is so funny is the people who hire me are from Italy – yes Italy – why I’m not sure but almost every contract I’ve received is from Italians men and women…weird and interesting right? My husband thinks this is so bizarre. I’ve sent an email to ACX to see if their’s some algorithm that is triggering this. When I ask the ‘Italians’ they just say that they like my voice from my samples. Strange tho right? So the genre I’m best suited for to date are – Self Help books like meditation, sleep, being mindful and also diet books, keto and intermittent fasting diet books. I’m enjoying this so much…Have you ventured into this as a side hustle? Reach out to me I’d love to be able to chat with someone else in this business. It’s a tricky thing to read, edit and produce to the quality standard required by ACX for Audible. But it’s making me learn and keeping me connected and going though this weird time in our world.

As a bit of a downside tho I’ve contracted – no I’ve acquired carpal tunnel through my hand and up my arm – it was brutal, I was icing this and taking breaks and as such being late on my contracts. My hubby went out and purchased a new mouse for me. This is a mouse that when held is in the position of a ‘handshake’ and it’s released my pains by like 80%. So if you’re experience any of pain in your hands, elbow and up into your neck I’d suggest testing out a new mouse. I bought the Logitech mx vertical mouse – check out my site for a link and picture. I would also love to have a treatment like massage and or osteopathy but I’m scared to head out and honestly I’m not even sure if they are working…if you have any ideas for stretching that have worked for you please send these to me.

So, I’ve been EATING – READING and of course CREATING during this time, I feel like I want to do everything to just keep me grounded and keep me from not freaking out. How are you feeling during this time? Did you buy all the groceries you think you need for a while, did you stock up on your favourite things? I did my big shop on the Friday before this gong show started. I went into the roasterie in Kensington on Sunday which was only allowing 6 people in the coffee shop at one time to get a hot chocolate to share with my little munchkin. I’m not comfortable going into a store – are you?

CREATING MEMORIES

So I’ve been busy CREATING – every once in a while we purge London room, toys and clothes and bring to the salvation army to donate. We have a batch of old books, and toys in the back of my car as I haven’t been down to deliver these yet – I wonder if they are even taking deliveries… Anyway I felt like CREATING so I dug out all of my scrapbooking stuff to start scrapbooking our trip to Cancun…I haven’t printed any photos (we went before Christmas) but I started putting pages together with recipts, brochures, paper etc that I gathered while we were away and this surged an intense feeling of scrapbooking so…here’s what I did.

I went out to my car and dug out one of the books that we were going to donate, The Berenstein Bears collection in hard cover, once of London’s favourites. It is signed by her cousin Jarvys who gave it to her for her 1st bday (she will be 9 this year) and I just loved that he signed it. So I dug out some random printed photos that I’ve had laying around and started to build this book into a scrapbook with random memories…there’s pics on my site and on Instagram but here’s some of the goodies that I saved hopefully this will inspire you to scrapbook those memories near and far.

Camp Scrapbook Pages, attached to pages out of the Berenstain Bears Book, DIY Project

. I have an old pencil case from when I was younger then London is now, inside this home-made case which is made with denim from an old pair of jeans and a green zipper – I have cabbage patch kid pencil crayons that I got for Christmas one year I think I was 6. Also in this case is badges from a camp I went to when I was 11 years old I’ve scrap-booked the badges, which bring back and awesome time in my childhood – do you have any badges that you’ve held onto from your childhood, make these into a page or a card or something to inspire you.

2. I knew I wanted to take the signed inside cover from Jarvys who is London’s 2nd cousin and make it into something worth looking at. His writing and all…so I put a frame around his signature, took out cardboard letters and wrote the word cousins and then I added a note card that read: Jarvys Dad is London’s Great Uncle

Jarvys signed this for London on her 1st Birthday…such a great memory!

3. There’s a picture from my stash of London in the tub when she was 3 months old

4. There’s a pic of me from 2010 holding my cat Tig, before she howled at the moon and I was 10 years younger

5. Then the last picture is one of my husband before we were married, it was taken in 1999. He came home to meet the parents. My dad and his wife. We met the year of 1999 when things were going to come to a STOP when the clocks and computers rolled over in 2000 – remember y2k? Then we got married on September 8th, 2001 – 3 days before 911 and now this…right around my 43 bday. This picture of my now hubby I carried around in my purse for years it’s all tattered and warn like a good book.

EAT – READ – CREATE

I’ve also been Eating and keeping grounded cooking at home, tonight I’m making pizza crust also from scratch – usually I buy the dough from Lina’s up the street from me but I’m not ready to step into a grocery store yet. I’ve made these little protein balls, for a quick low carb snack. I’m still making my bread every few days – this is definitely a staple in my house a -go-to- item that I’ve made for over 5 years now. What’s your favourite must make on a continually basis. Me, it’s bread and soup on Sundays…weather is my homemade soup or my Aunties soup – souptacular, there’s always a pot of soup at The Moss’ on Sundays…

Well if I can give you any takeaways from todays show…CREATE something a card, a letter, a story, read something even if it’s just a small little joke to give you a chuckle and EAT something that is your favourite that you’ve made…if you want the recipe for my soup and my protein balls let me know. You can text me to my email valerie@valeriemoss.ca

Until next time, take care of yourself and your favourite people. I’ll leave you with this clip of London, when we were in Kensington, we were trying to have fun avoiding people enjoying the sun and making memories…he’s the audio part of this video…she might be onto something here…as a reporter…