Who's That Festive Creature?

Oh, the one in my new blog header? That's Yvonne. She was quite insistent yesterday that I would get nothing done until I put aside my other plans and brought her to life.

Of course, being a very particular creature, she wasn't satisfied with simply being any old Faun. After catching a glimpse of my tree and the bits and baubles of holiday magic, she was quite positive she could not be complete until she was appropriately dressed for the season.

Lest you think she be terribly unreasonable with her demands, she was actually quite patient as I struggled with the less than ideal paper I had drawn her on. You see, that yellow under tone behind some of the snowflakes? That's ink from sending this paper through my printer a while back and being out of all but the tiniest bit of yellow ink. Whatever I had attempted to print was a ghost image to my naked eye and I had forgotten all about it until, of course, I began to paint.

After a few hours and a bit of patience,the yellow ink turned into quite the happy accident. It helped a bit with the shading of her face and gives a nice glow to parts of the snow. I'm just hoping her sisters have the foresight to stop me from using a bum piece of paper for whatever medium they want to be born into.

Did I forget to mention she has sisters? She does and they're quite the family of Peculiar Fauns.

P.S. While I was searching the internet to make sure Yvonne hadn't taken some other fauns name I cam across the remarkably bizarre and wonderful world of Hank Pine and Lily Fawn. They're a vaudevillian act whose look and sound seems to be fairly inspired by old fairy tales and secret societies. You can visit their site here


P.P.S. I've added prints of Yvonne's holiday portrait to the shop. You can find them here.

Welcoming Winter

Autumn hangs on, while signs of the upcoming Winter holidays begin to shine.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and subsequent weekend! We ventured out briefly on Friday afternoon to a few of the local stores here in town to see if there was anything worth hanging on our tree this year, but came home empty handed and a bit disappointed. We spent the remainder of the afternoon munching on leftovers and relaxing on the couch.

Being one who is discontent to sit around for very long, Saturday was a different story. Sure, there was some lazing about in the morning, but later in the afternoon we pulled on our sweaters and went downtown for some dinner, walking and browsing. The weather here is strange to me, I'm used to the weekend after Thanksgiving being winter coat cold, but it was only slightly too chilly for a sweater to keep me toasty even with the sun down. Weird weather aside, we peeked and poked into quite a few shops, stopped for hot chocolate for Joe and a Chai Tea for me at the local tea bar and took photos of some of the festive lights and displays we encountered.

Main Street Greenville, SC is quite different from the glitz and glamor of 5th Avenue, NYC at this time of year, but it sated my sparkle fever quite well.

Our tree is up and we'll be decking it out this week. I realized though that aside from the ornaments for my tree, I have pathetically few Yule decorations. In total, I have a desktop tree, a small light up snowman, a few string of lights, a wee ceramic snow couple I painted a few years back, a ceramic gift box and two candy tins. I'm going to have to get crafty with my Yule decorations, but am sort of stumped on what to make. Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated!

Happy Thanksgiving

Via riptheskull on Flickr

This year, I won't be visiting my family nor cooking dinner at home but will be feasting with Joe and some friends in North Carolina. It's a bit surreal, this first family centric holiday away from home but I'm thankful that there are people nearby to celebrate with.

After the feasting, I'll be officially incapable of warding off the glitter and magic of Yuletide any longer. This weekend my apartment will be lit up and the tree will be trimmed, although I'm sure I'll fuss with the placement of the ornaments for the rest of the month.

This Thanksgiving may your blessings be many, your bellies be full and your homes be filled with friends, family and laughter.

The Holiday Hoopla

The fair I attended Saturday wasn't as bustling as I had anticipated with it being the weekend before Thanksgiving, but it was fun and definitely a great learning experience. Quite a few people stopped by my table to chat and I received a lot of compliments on my work but the flow of people was slow enough that I was grateful that Joe and my sketchbook had come along to keep me company.

All in all though, I'm happy that I went. As promised, here are some photos of my preparations as well as my table on the day of the show:

Various bits and stages of ornament making.




Mushroom Homes...

Bagging up the artwork.

The Big Day:

P.S. I promise I took some time to relax after the show. I kicked back with a few glasses of red wine, a book and a blanket Saturday evening, went out to lunch and downtown to pick up a few stocking stuffers on Sunday and took myself to breakfast yesterday morning.

November, November, Where Did You Go?

It occurred to me today, while I was in a flurry of assembling and painting ornaments (36 of them, to be exact) that this month is nearly over and I've barely registered that it was even here.

Typically, November is one of my favorite months of the year. It is a time to meditate upon my Samhain resolution, reflect on and maybe even pamper myself, and just catch my breath before the next big holiday rush arrives, heralded in by the great feasting of Thanksgiving. This year however, I have barely stopped to admire the pumpkin colored leaves that are still on the trees, an oddity that I've not seen before since back home the leaves would all be on the ground and we'd have had our first snow by now. This November has been uncannily hectic.

There was the issue of my eye which is still persisting. My doctor gave me the o.k to begin to wean off the medications a week ago and tonight it is sore and burning so tomorrow morning I make an appointment to go back. But, that's current and the hectic two weeks I've had were caused earlier in the month when my eye was still sore. I was on the fence about doing the craft show I was invited to but when my eye began to clear up I went ahead and sent in my registration. I realized after I had dropped the envelope in the mail that I had a hair less than two weeks to prepare.

I've been a flurry of activity as I've been making ornaments and wee bottle necklaces, having prints made, painting new things and sculpting fairy houses. Packaging and display has been a creative endeavor all its own as expedited shipping costs and my budget were in disagreement and Joe has been a huge help with this. When I pondered building display stands from a piece of plywood, he made them. Even when I came up with the ludicrous idea to make every single box for all of the small items from card stock he sat down for a few hours and helped me measure, cut, fold and secure all 50+ boxes. If it weren't for him and a good bit of coffee, I'd be nowhere near finished with preparations.

Since this is my first show and I'm cutting it a bit close with finishing everything up (it's this Saturday!) I've had very little time to write or visit everyone. Gods willing, I'll get everything done with time to spare to share some in progress and preparation shots before the big day. If not I'll share them after the show and ,should I sell at least 3 things, a celebratory Midnight Margarita!

P.S. I just wanted to thank all of you for the comments on the previous post. It means a lot to me that you all take the time to read my less than cheerful ponderings and even more that you shared your thoughts and experiences with me. You've given me heart and things to think on; it's been much harder than I've let on to pick up and move this far from everything I've ever known and perhaps this down time is meant to be a useful growth period. Other old friends have been creeping into my dreams over the past few nights but they haven't caused any reveries or sadness upon waking, they've simply been friendly spectres of the night.

I've been seeing a lot of you working through the 30 Days of Truth blog posts. Where can I find the questions? What have your experiences been with it thus far? Are any of you doing it in a paper journal, rather than online? I sort of feel I may go that route, at least at first, since I tend to re-read things written down more often than I will things online.

P.P.S. Don't worry, I fully intend to take a few days to relax, read, take a hot bubble bath and focus on just me after the show. ;)

The Friendship What if

I'm sure we all have a few friendships that have fallen by the wayside in our lives. Whether they were the sort that were short lived or the sort that you were sure would last a life time, but somehow petered out matters not because sometimes these things leave a 'what if' stamped on your heart. Like all 'What If's that you haven't completely let go, you can only brush them under the rug for a while before they inevitably resurface asking you how you could have salvaged things or how things would be if you just bumped into each other on the streets. Would you pretend not to know each other? Stop for a quick awkward conversation? Or would it feel as if things had never fallen apart in the first place.

In my just over a quarter century of life I've had quite a few friends and twice as many acquaintances, the majority of which were made during my school years and drifted away when those years ended. I still have a handful of these friends in my life now, two of them are people I've been friends with for 20+ years. I made a few friends at work and at college and some of the best times I've ever had were with a few of those friends. I have so many photos of us laughing it up, causing mischief and just hanging out that it's hard to believe that those people are no longer in my life as anything more than a friend of a friend. Other, older friends, have become even less than that... simply ghosts and shadows from the formative years of my life.

Do I think about these specters of friendships past often? Normally, no. I used to cringe when they were brought up in conversation, a verbal pebble thrown at me causing me to flinch, but not an longer. I no longer get sad or wistful over photographs or lose myself in the wondering of what life would be like if I still had these friends.

I wouldn't be thinking about them today either, but I had one of those gripping and vivid dreams that can be so real that you're unable to convince yourself it's a dream until you manage to manifest something outrageous, like a flying pink elephant. One dream, two of the biggest phantoms in my 'what if' catalogue and the wondering of it all continues in to the morning. I was sure I had let go and come to terms with the fact that both of these friendships, while important and seemingly vital to my livelihood at two points in my life, have been long gone. Perhaps the extreme difficulty I'm having meeting people and making friends here is dragging up the memories; I've been feeling lonely having only managed to go out with someone other than Joe or his friends twice in the past seven months. I love my husband and love spending time with him but I'm used to having friends over for game nights, going out for coffee or a pint to chat, or just getting together for no real reason at all at least once or twice a week. Going from having several very good friends and doing things regularly, to having not a one is lonely.

Perhaps the phantoms were dredged up by these feelings since they were part of some of the best periods of my life, perhaps they weren't. I know that this morning I am grateful for coffee, custom orders and my upcoming craft show to keep me busy and Gogol Bordello to raise my spirits and distract me, otherwise I might spend my day in the wonderings of the 'what if's.

Ye Olde Renaissance Festival

This past weekend, we visited the Carolina Renaissance Festival in North Carolina. Now, I don't expect you all to know my little secret, because I've never discussed it here before... but I am a Ren Faire junkie. Even worse than that, I am a Ren Faire junkie who refuses to go to the faire without some sort of costume. So, when we decided a few days before the date we were planning to head up there that we would indeed be going, I didn't have much time to put something together and the costuming juices weren't exactly flowing. I pondered and pondered and Thursday night decided I would just go to the store in the morning pick up some cheap Hallowe'en fairy wings on clearance, make a simple mask, throw on clothes from the closet and be a fairy of some sort. Inspiration struck in the wee hours of the morning however, and I decided what my costume would be! In a flurry of fake flowers, chopped up tshirts, curses flung at the sewing machine and hot glue burns I created my outfit and made a mask for Joe.

We went as the Green Woman and Man. I'm used to creating costumes for faires in mid-August, so costuming for a windy day in the mid-fifties was a new experience. However, that was not the only new experience I had. You see, out of all the costumes I've come up with for the dozen faires I've attended I've never once been complimented or had people stop me to take my photo. I can now say with a fair amount of awe and pride, that there are dozens of photos of us on peoples cameras and there were numerous compliments given to us throughout the day. A girl pushed her way through a large crowd at one of the shows just to tell me she 'love, love, love, looooved' my outfit.

Here's a better look at my mask and head dress, for anyone interested:

Getting our photos taken and being stopped to chat weren't the only things we did during our faire day however! I was able to meet another like minded northerner who a little bird told me stops by here sometimes (Hi Jenn!) and there were many other magical things and enchanting folks to see.

We spotted Twig, the fairy, as she sat on some mushrooms and adjusted her flowers.



Your one stop shop to appease an annoyed wife!


This is Gypsy Geoff, a fire juggler, wearer of many hats and escape artist. His show was fantastic.


This fairy pulled me into a circle of people to play a game with her.
And a sure sign Yule is right around the corner...

I promise, I haven't been too naughty!

There are many, many more photos from the faire on my flickr page. I've only shared a few here, so if you are interested in seeing more, flutter on over and take a peek!

And, for making it to the end of my ren faire revelry, I'll leave you with a tidbit of trivia. Before moving to SC, I went to the Ren Faire in Tuxedo, NY at least once a year each summer. It turns out, Joe did as well. We crossed paths there several times, even having a brief conversation during a memorably horrendous downpour where we both took shelter in the same shop, well before we met and became friends at work. It was only after we had started getting to know each other and he saw a photo of me in my pirate costume that he remembered meeting me during that downpour. And here we are, a few years later, married and attending faires together.

See? Renaissance Faires truly are magical, wonderful places. <3

Dia De Los Muertos

The Day of the Dead, a time to honor those who have come before as well as celebrate their lives. A day to give thanks for the paths the ancestors have paved for us and for loved ones who still walk among us.

This year I think about my grandparents, three of whom have crossed into the beyond without my having had the chance to know them. My paternal grandfather passed on well before I was born of alcoholism related illness. My paternal grandmother lived nearly 2,000 miles and I was only able to see her enough times to count on one hand. She wasn't a phone person and hardly called before she passed on four years ago. My father speaks little of his father, but was fond of his mother who he has told me was a strong willed Irish woman who knew how to raise her kids on her own. My maternal grandfather passed on two years ago, but due to a strained relationship with my mother which she only once explained to me once a very long time ago, I saw him once or twice and hardly ever spoke to him growing up. I remember clearly the last Christmas that he was alive and the last time I saw him; we had gathered at my Aunt's home as we do every year and not only did my grandfather have no idea that I was married, he had no idea who I even was. I was greeted and goodbyed with a handshake and it tugged my heart then and it continues to do so now.

I think about my last remaining grandparent to walk among the living and I give thanks that I have been able to grow up knowing and being loved by her. While my grandmother isn't much for going out or having people over these days, we used to spend a good deal of time together. I know nothing about my grandmother's heritage, as it's been irrelevant to our relationship.

I think of others lost this year, of a friend of 13 years who lost his mother three days after I had moved to South Carolina. He left a tear choked message on my voice mail telling me his mother, whom myself and several friends had thought of as our own for years, had suffered a brain damaging seizure and passed away. I was devastated that I couldn't attend her funeral and shocked when a month later his father followed her across the veil. I think of my friend and give thanks that he has coped better than I believe I could have and is making plans to do things he otherwise may not have been moved to do.

I think of those that have gone beyond, both well loved and unknown and while I don't have photos to place on my small altar, I hold them in my heart...

and gather closure to myself with at least a few. I look at Santa Muerte and her brightly festooned company and she seems to tell me to let go of my sadness and to do those who have gone beyond justice by appreciating the life that flows through me and those that I hold dear.

During our remembrances we must not forget that life is meant to be lived for as Da Vinci said, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death."

Samhain Festivities

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween and Samhain!

We had a very mischievous Mischief Night on the 30th, with our annual Hallowe'en party, which I am pleased to report had a great turn out! One of my former Coffeebucks coworkers even came by with two of her friends and the 4 of us made merry... perhaps a bit too merry, as my head and belly told me yesterday morning.

Our festivities yesterday were low key. We spent the day napping, watching horror movies and getting the candy ready for the droves of trick or treaters we were sure we'd get. By 7:00pm we had answered the door twice, handed out candy to four kids and only two of them were in costume. There is still way too much candy in my plastic candy cauldron this year.

However, the lack of trick or treaters had a plus side as we had saved the carving of our annual jack-o-lanterns for sundown. No knocking at the door meant we were free to carve to our heart's content.

Since we neglected to take our annual Halloween photo at the party, we took a bunch of silly photos with the pumpkins. This is my favorite one, I'm thinking it's frame worthy:

When Joe retired around the witching hour to get up for work this morning, I stayed up a while longer to sit down and perform my Samhain ritual. For the first time in a very long time, I felt called to cast and work within a circle. I welcomed my elemental brethren and bade farewell to the Sun and welcomed the Crone into my life once more. With all of their energies around me, I released the things I wished not to bring forward with me by black candle flame. To fill the void, I contemplated what I wished to call to me and welcomed it with the flame of a white candle.

I felt so drained afterward that I didn't do my annual 12 cards wheel of the year tarot reading, instead opting to crawl under the warm covers of my bed and snooze away the first few hours of the New Year.