Okay so I need to chug restore magicka potions for my mage but I can't find any ingredients in any shops or farms that have the effect, any suggestions?

Look http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Restore_Magicka for a list of ingredients and other means of raising your magicka. If ingredients are hard to come by, search any ayleid ruin and you will find several welkynd stones that fully restore magicka.

are you playing vanilla oblivon? the default regen on that game is silly fast. try not to miss so much.

Those with the Atronach sign have stunted magicka and will need potions and welkynd stones to restore magicka.

I have the mage sign.. my mana is not regenerating fast enough and I don't have enough mana. With a full mana bar in a row I can get like 11 casts from novice level shock spell with only 10 damage. 4 casts from a apprentice shock spell with 20 damage on my level 4 mage, I have 51 destruction.

I am missing out on some int/willpower because I chose argonian.

Your Argonian with mage birthsign should do fine. Just get that intel and willpower up to 100 over time.

At lower alchemy levels, combine flax seed with steel blue entoloma to make restore magicka potions. Hunt for them along the road west of Skingrad.

Casting cost goes way down as your skill in the relevent skill of the spell goes up. Touch spells are also cheaper to cast than their corresponding on target counterparts. You can also include some absorb into your touch spells. You can also slow down your casting rate by using a damage over time spell and disappearing while it works and letting your magicka regenerate. Or summon a big helper and disappear to allow your magic to regenerate. Or command one of your foes to fight for you and disappear while your magic comes back.

Or, you can just eat flax. You might be surprised as how much each sample will restore your magicka. Stinkhorn Cap is also good. Find flax near Skingrad, in great abundance. Find steel blue entoloma around the hills of Chorrol, also in great abundance. Stinkhorn you'll find mostly in the south, near Bravil and Leyawiin, anyplace marshy, really.

Join the Mages' Guild: free ingredients--so many so often, in fact, that it amounts to cheese. It's easy to just spam one Guild after another, grabbing ingredients, making more potions (you can't fail, unlike in Morrowind), and use a bit of the proceeds to buy Restore Magicka potions. The more potions you make, the better you get, the longer and stronger the effects of whatever you make, etc.

Yes, and flax is so abundant around Skingrad that you can easily harvest 100 or more. Also, when you eat an ingredient that way, you get a slight boost to your alchemy skill, but not as much as you'd get by mixing the potion. This can be good, if you feel, as some do, that alchemy levels up too quickly; this way, you're only raising your Alchemy skill when you need the effect.

Same thing is true for Cure Disease; there is no reason to buy or carry Potions of Cure Disease, because Mandrake Root is lighter, cheaper, and just as effective as the potion.

Thank you so much, flax is a godsend

Blue steel caps would help me with alchemy leveling but I have found only 3 empty ones near chorrol, and none in the central great forest. The wiki shows a lot of them there but I see none :S

If the issue is leveling alchemy, any two ingredients that work together will help you build that skill, and all that food, fruit, etc in the Mages' Guilds (and the Fighters Guilds, for that matter) are free if you join.

Also, take a look at http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=27758&id=106. It not only provides a safe storage area in all the various guild halls, but a few Restore Magicka potions in each Mage Guild storage box. And they regenerate. I don't use this, because I store stuff in the house mod I use, but it's very useful to have around.

Walk the road from Chorrol to Bruma. You should easily find about 50 ish, at least that is my normal average when walking the road.