Blessed Samhain

On this night of thinning veils, pumpkins light the way and spirits come to call. The wind blows brisk and chill and the leaves have mostly fallen. The Earth goes to her rest as the plants die back and animals prepare to slumber.

The Crone begins her reign over this, the introspective and dark time of the year. This is a time of mysteries, of journeys and of self discoveries for those willing to face the darkness. This is a time of dying and letting go, but also of new beginnings and growth. For as in all cycles and circles, here on Samhain night, you will find balance.

May those who are here and those who have gone before us be muchly blessed as the wheel is begun anew. On this night of beginnings and endings, may you find that which your heart is seeking and let die that which you no longer need. Samhain blessings, my loves.

The Day Before Halloween

We're only a day away from the last night of the best month of the year. I have no idea where this month went, I sort of feel like I blinked and missed the whole thing! I haven't been keeping up as well with my countdown as I would have liked, but I've been doing little things nearly every day. We've watched movies, read stories, tried a few different seasonal beers, and have been taking evening walks beneath the flaming trees (on the nights I get home before the moon is out, that is.)

Yesterday we hosted our annual Halloween party, the first ever in our new home. It was a pretty small crowd, because some folks had previous arrangements and others were sick, but it was a great time! I spent the afternoon chopping, baking and pureeing pumpkins to make soup and baked the seeds with cayenne pepper and salt. Both things turned out great!

The table was set with all manner of treats and drinks and barely a thing was left at the end of the night! We played a rousing game of Apples to Apples that lasted for several hours, it was nearly 3am and Joe and I were falling asleep in our chairs by the time we finished up and our guests were on their way.

Tonight, we'll be carving our annual jack-o-lanterns and I'll finish getting my altar ready to celebrate Samhain after the candy guzzling ghosts and goblins have stopped knocking on my door tomorrow evening. We spent entirely too much money on candy so I hope there's are hordes of them, otherwise my plan for weight loss may be in serious trouble!

The Witch Queen's Ball

Since times of old it has been known,
that round Hallowe'en night,
a ball is thrown.

The witch queen rises and calls to her side,
all those subjects wanting to have a grand time!

She sits upon her pumpkin throne,
watching the seeds of merriment sown.

The toadstool witch who had a mishap,
sits near her cauldron,
waiting for flies she can snap!

The goblins gather 'neath the old tree,
tricksy trio that they be,
near the old tombstone they wait,
to scare the pants off you and giggle with glee.

The lovers come forward aglow,
to ask of the queen her blessing to bestow,
for a wedding on this All Hallow's eve,
that they happily receive!

Elphaba stokes the fire,
as the pair declare their desire,
before their witchy sisters,
and goblin misters.

A ball to remember,
before cold November,
one of love and of light,
and of pumpkin delight!


Thank you for visiting my wee contribution of A Fanciful Twists Halloween party. To visit our host, the wonderfully wicked Vanessa and visit the other partiers, click here.


(Like I could resist one final silly photo!)

Party Preparations

The girls and I are busily getting everything ready for Vanessa's Halloween to-do tomorrow. We're lighting the candles, spiking the cider, primping the pumpkins and calling in the ghosts to come and celebrate the coming of All Hallow's with us. We tried to find a new wicked girl to add to the group, but alas, at every turn we found that the shops have replaced the witches with Santas and the pointy hat wearers are gone for the season.

We're drowning our disappointment in tea leaves and Halloween music, like this:

Ichabod, Ichabod

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has always been one of my favorite ghost stories, particularly around All Hallows Eve, for as we know that's when the horseman rides!

What are your favorite ghost and/or Hallowe'en stories?

Collecting Leaves

I can't resist the fiery colors of Autumn; the golds, reds and oranges that glow in the morning sunlight and swirl to the ground in the slightest breeze.

Seemingly every year I collect a few of the trees' dropped treasures and put them into one of my large books to safely keep the passion of this season alive for months and years to come.

I also seem to stick to a certain leaf shape each year. Once I find the first perfect specimen to save, I look for that shape in all different sizes and colors until I have half a dozen or more collected and ready to press.

This year, I'm thinking maybe I should do something with all of the lovelies I've collected, so I can enjoy Autumn all year long. But what to do? I've considered gathering the groups together in a frame, showcasing a duo or trio of the prettiest ones in various sizes, but am unsure if Id need to do more to preserve them than just stick them in there. Any ideas?

Pumpkins, Sea and a Full Moon

Is there anything more magical at this time of year than pumpkins? I think not! Most of my best memories have happened in a pumpkin patch, including being proposed to, and Joe and I have made it sort of an unspoken tradition to go pumpkin picking on our anniversary. This year, we kept with tradition because we were lucky enough to find a place open on a Monday!

We wandered the patch area and the pre-picked areas, looking for this year's perfect pumpkins. Joe wanted a white one and I chose to stick with the traditional orange.

Once our future jack-o-lanterns were picked, paid for and loaded into the car we headed to one of my favorite places in NJ to visit my much beloved and sorely missed ocean. I'm still not used to being nearly 4 hours from the shore and unable to visit the sea more than once a year, if that. I'm a day tripping sort who wants to run to the ocean to sooth me in my many moods. So, what better place to go to celebrate our anniversary?

We spent a good portion of the afternoon roaming the boardwalk, taking in the sounds and smells of the sea shore before snagging lunch at one of the boardwalk eateries. I would have preferred to stop by the Wonder Bar for the sake of my ridiculous nature, but they don't have Monday hours. We walked in the surf, reveling in the chilly waters, collecting sea shells and for the first time in my life I was excited to see a seagull. I shit you not. We don't have seagulls this far inland in South Carolina and it's sort of weird to not see them all over the place like we did in New Jersey. Also, I haven't seen a deer in over a year despite living in a wooded area of the suburbs, but that's another story.

The random excitement of seagulls having passed, I could no longer ignore the fact that my sinuses felt like they were full of lead. We made the decision that I was hurting for some medication and a nap and grabbed a hotel room where I proceeded to swill some cough syrup (ick) and doze off until dinner time. We went back to downtown Asbury to eat before walking a few blocks back to the boardwalk and the ocean.

There is seriously nothing better than this place at night, except this place at night during a full moon.

As we walked the boardwalk hand in hand, we passed people snuggled on the benches enjoying the view as well as people heading to the beach talking about charging crystals by the full moon. Let me tell you, it was a breath of much needed normalcy for this Jersey native, you never hear that sort of thing down here! We became a pair of bench warmers ourselves for quite a while before I wandered down the beach. I walked to the place where earth and water meet, to greet the sea and the mother moon and speak softly with them for a few moments. Asking their blessing, I knelt and collected some water before rejoining my love on the boardwalk to head back to the hotel and fall into a peaceful, nyquil aided sleep.

Back in the South

Our trip to the North, was as ever, way too short. This is the perfect time of year to be in New Jersey, with all the leaves in several shades of autumnal fire and it being chilly at night and warm enough during the day. *sigh* As per usual, I burst into tears as I crossed the Water Gap entering and leaving my dirty, beloved home state.

We totally lucked out and missed any and all manner of rain as well as managed to visit during an Indian Summer kind of weekend. We barely needed our jackets. I'm still getting situated now that we're back home and fighting off a nasty head cold that decided to take up residency in my sinuses on the second morning of our trip, but I'll sum vacation up with this; it was great to be home. I didn't get to see everyone or everything that I would have wanted to, but I don't regret a moment of our visit one bit.

I finally got to meet my niece, Khloe, who is a master at the arts of smiling and drooling. Like any good aunt, the first thing I did when I walked into the house was wake her up and give her toys. :) She also seemed to have an affinity for throwing up on Joe, poor guy.

Here's my kid sister, her kid and me, the old hag (har-har). What you can sort of see from the photo, is that we all look alike. It's a bit hard to tell with my sun bleached hair, Katherine's dyed hair and Khloe's lack of hair - but if you put our baby pictures together the only way to tell us apart would be to identify the time period of objects found with us in the photo.

The unfortunate side to seeing babies that are related to you however, is the flood of the 'when are you going to have one?' that inevitably follows. Family, if it isn't a cat or a dog, I'm not interested in taking care of it right now. But, I will hop your kid up on sugar and play and give them back to you if they stink, as my sister can attest to.

We also visited our friends in Hoboken, since the last time that I had seen them was over a year ago. We parked in the free parking where I've been parking for the past 4 years and Colleen made us an awesome brunch. We watched a movie and realizing we still had a few hours before we had to be anywhere, decided to go for a walk down by the river.

Now, for those who don't know, the husband loves to mess with me. Fairly often he comes up with stories and tries to pass them off on me as true. Because of this, I usually don't believe anything bad that comes out of his mouth. So, when we were walking past my car and he said 'There's a boot on the car!', I didn't believe him. Why should I? I've never so much as gotten a parking ticket before (because I'm awesome.)

But sure enough, the dude wasn't messing with me and there was a fucking boot on my poor car! Apparently, the side of the road that I always park on is the resident's only side but I somehow managed to never get ticketed in the past few years. Guess the out of state plate was a dead giveaway? So, my home state decided to give me some of their love for out of staters and I made Joe call to have the thing removed because I was ready to give them a piece of this Jersey girl's attitude. In other words, make things worse.

$218 later, we got a code, removed the boot, parked the car on the other side of the street, walked the hunk of metallic hell back to the parking devils and these two lovely people bought a few rounds of 'Screw Hoboken Parking' beers.

We went to a wedding, followed by another wedding. The first wedding was sort of a hit and run for us, which I feel bad about, but I was getting nailed with the onset of the sinus infection and felt like my head was full of cement. At the second wedding I ate my very first bite of haggis while people marveled over the dude's ridiculous beard.

We celebrated our third anniversary, which I will tell you more about later. For now, know it involved this:

some of these:

and collecting ocean water from my favorite place, beneath the full moon at the end of a day celebrating the love of a wonderful bearded dude and myself. If that isn't some super potent stuff, then I don't know what is.

I also became the first person I've ever known to travel 700+ miles for a haircut. We stopped to see my aunt, who has been cutting my hair since I was a wee teeny thing, and on the spur of the moment decided I wanted to chop it all off! So, she did and I was able to donate nearly a foot of hair (11.25") to Locks of Love, who makes wigs for children who have lost their hair due to various medical conditions.

In keeping with our Hallowe'en festivities, we picked our annual pumpkins, watched a movie, drank some pumpkin flavored beers, ate apple cider doughnuts with hot cider, picked up a jar of delicious pumpkin butter (if you haven't ever eaten this, you're missing out!), walked in some crunchy leaves, put my niece in her very first leaf pile which I was remiss and didn't take a photo of and visited the old cemetery where I did grave rubbings as a child and encountered my only ghostly happening. I'll share more about that later, for now I'm off to brew another pot of tea to keep this awful congestion/cough at bay, finish painting the lawn cutouts, break out the Halloween decorations (I'm so far behind!) and begin work on my grimoire. I finally found a suitable piece of oak board to use as my covers and want to get them cut down and hinged so I can begin to compile my pages, even if I haven't decided what will adorn the cover just yet.

What have you been up to, lovelies?

Love After Death

To celebrate All Hallow's Grim, I decided to err on the side of dark romance. Having just celebrated my 3rd wedding anniversary to my favorite fella, I'm still feeling a wee bit mushy. What says love never dies better than two formerly living lovers being reunited in undeath? ;)

From The Crow, my favorite 'love story':

A building gets torched, all that is left is ashes. I used to think that was true about everything, families, friends, feelings. But now I know, that sometimes if love proves real, two people who are meant to be together, nothing can keep them apart.

If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.

You can visit our Wicked Hostess Magaly and all the other Grim partiers by visiting Pagan Culture.

Hallowe'en, Back Then

Via rich701 on Flickr.

For as long as I've been alive, and even before that, Halloween has always been given a certain amount of flack. You get those that say it glorifies the darkness (as if that's a bad thing), you get others that call it the Devil's holiday (though the only devils I've ever met on this day have been kids in costumes) and you get numerous others who worry about various terrible things befalling children on this night; razor blades in candy, axe murderers in the neighborhood, kidnappings... the list could go on and on.

For me, however, Hallowe'en has always been about fun. Who can help but love a holiday where you can be anything your heart desires, even if it's only for one night? Sure, some folks will say it's wrong for kids to want to be a witch or a vampire or anything under the sun for various reasons, really. And to them I say, 'pfft!'. I'll level with you all here; when I was a kid, I never dressed up as a witch. Not once. But, I still turned out to be one. A Hallowe'en costume is not a fated path, folks.

But I digress. This holiday is about letting loose, having fun and maybe getting some free candy while you're at it. It's about crawling through corn mazes, bobbing for apples, picking pumpkins and maybe giving yourself a scare or two, in the form of movies or haunted houses, just for fun! And it's all those things that make me nostalgic for the Hallowe'en I remember growing up with.

Found on Wikimedia Commons

Every year, every house in my neighborhood would decorate their yard and home in preparation of the upcoming parade of ghoulish candy seeking goblins. Some folks were more elaborate, building entire graveyard sets or haunted paths, while others settled for a few leaf bags in the shape of pumpkins or paper ghosts in the trees. The point is, not a single house went without a pumpkin, at the very least. It was magical to walk through the neighborhood to see what lie in store for us at the end of the month, while we pondered what we were going to be this year.

When the night finally came all the neighborhood kids would get together. Those who were too young to wander unsupervised would all pile in the back of someone's huge SUV or truck to be taken around by some of the parents while the older kids raced from house to house, using a strategic plan that would net them the best candy. Because as we all know, the houses that give out full size bars are always best! Only once or twice did we come across a house without the front light on, or a bowl that was devoid of candy sitting on the porch. Folks would compliment us on how scary, creative or pretty our costumes were as they handed out our sugar laden treasure and we'd frequently take breaks on the curb sides to nibble away bits of our well earned loot.

At the end of the night we'd all trundle back to our parents, at whichever house they had gathered at, swap our favorite candies, give mom and dad a piece or two before drifting off to bed with visions of goblins floating in our heads.

Now it seems that magic is starting to die off, which seems strange to me considering how open minded we've become since my childhood and the fact that in a lot of places, child related crimes have *decreased* not increased. Kids go to parking lots or malls to 'trick or treat', parents vigilantly check candy packages for pins, needles and all manner of horrific things and toss away any home made treats the kids may have gotten along the way. Many a house is devoid of pumpkins, paper ghosts and candy, many choosing to leave their lights off on Hallowe'en night. Of the houses that do put their lights on, there is always at least one or two who hand out Chick Tracts or other pamphlets letting children know that celebrating this holiday will land them a one way ticket to Hell. I often wish people would tell me where these folks lived, so I could have a little heart to heart with their crazy asses; I can think of no greater evil that exists on Hallowe'en night than the attempt to terrify children into your way of thinking.

When I walk the neighborhood, with the leaves crunching underfoot thinking about my Hallowe'ens past I get angry and then I get sad. I get angry that despite great leaps and bounds for us in some areas, we are back peddling about a secular holiday. Yes, as a witch I celebrate Hallowe'en and Samhain as two separate entities - one for the love of fun and the other for the love of my Gods and honored dead. I worry that soon the magic of this holiday will only remain in the hearts of we grown children and will be lost entirely on current and future children. And I can think of nothing more heart-rending than the loss of this long celebrated, wonderful night.

Via IMLS DCC on Flickr.

Hat tip to Lyn at Witch Blog and her recent guest poster, Grandfather Oak for stirring the Hallowe'en memory Cauldron for me and inspiring this post.