coffins are a necessity

this isn't so much a 'craft project' insomuch as i put a thing in another thing and called it a day, but it was much more successful than i thought it would be.

i got this coffin from work--it was a display for something ages ago and had been in the back office ever since, so my boss said that i could take it home. i wasn't sure what to do with it until my coworker suggested i turn it into a cat bed.

i didn't do much to it other than stuff a wedding dress from a thrift store in there--i don't know why, but oscar loves sleeping on the thing. perhaps the satin keeps him cool. regardless, i wore the dress once for a halloween costume and stained it with fake blood, so i didn't really have any use for it anymore. 

this was how it was for a while, and how i expected it to go--cats never seem to sleep where you want them to. women and cats will do as they please

but then he got sorta used to it! 

 i think he was still feeling it out here, because he doesn't look that most comfortable.

 but he really likes it!

 unreal

 i keep taking pictures because ITS TOO CUTE 

i love it because of my many nicknames for him, one of my favourites is 'my little vampire'
partly as a (sort of cruel, but he cant speak english, so its okay right?) joke because shortly after he came into my life he had to get nearly all of his teeth removed because he had a terrible gum infection and tooth rot
but partly because i'm fairly sure if he were a person he would be lestat de lioncourt 

xoxo

it's been a while

so, i... uh...

...have not posted at all this year.

here is a quick selection of photos summing up the last few months.

as always you can follow me on instagram, @wormtongues, or on tumblr where i am the-witchqueen

but i would really like to come back here sometimes.

i have been working a lot (more than i would like to be working) and i have gotten overwhelmed. as often happens, with the advent of the warm weather, i am feeling more motivated and more human.

 i work only a few blocks from where the building collapsed in the east village in march. it was a really scary and sad day. this was the view from my workplace. there is still a giant hole where those buildings were, but the area is largely back to the way it was--business are open and thriving, other than the ones that were destroyed.

 my mom visited in march and we went to the chelsea markets together, something a bit 'touristy' that i wouldn't normally do on my own.

one of the highlights was a mexican/japanese place we grabbed dinner at. i know it sounds weird but it was really good.

 i made oscar this batnip toy

 i visited my dad in pennsylvania and went for a walk in the woods with an old and dear high school friend. 

 it was one of the first warm days, and i think we ended up walking about 15 miles altogether that day. 

 i don't get a lot of time in nature--new york city has a lot to offer, but not that--so it was really lovely to just take a day and wander. we hardly saw any other people. 

 so, yeah, i'm going to columbia in the fall! i'm going to be getting a masters in social work. i'm incredibly excited!

 oscar is still the little light of my life. 

my dad got married! here i am with him and my sister at the reception.


 my sister and i along with my new stepsisters were the bridesmaids. we all have very different personal styles and so the bride decided to allow us to choose our own bridesmaids dresses, so long as they were knee-length and navy blue. this was mine!

i got this notebook because it looks like oscar. 

2014 is almost over, and ive been doing some things to catalogue it. i backed up and organized all my photos from the last twelve months, emptied out my change jar and counted it up (i plan to change it in for real money soon), and did some organization.

it's been... a year. it's been a good year and a bad year and a lot has happened. here are some of those things.

• i started cross-stitching this year; it seems like i've been doing it for longer! this simple little cross stitch of dethklok was my first project; here it is in progress: 
  
• i went to see one of my favourite bands, eluveitie, in concert. unusually, i didn't see amanda palmer perform--i've been to dozens of her shows but this year i wasn't able to see her.
• i went to NYCC for the fifth time, and worked at it for the first time!
• i graduated college and started working full time. next year will hopefully mark the beginning of grad school for me.

of course there was a lot more but these are some milestones. i hope 2015 is wonderful for all of you. 

xoxo

oh mistletoe

i'm not a winter holiday person.

my friends know that most of my holiday energy goes into halloween. after that, i struggle. winter has always been hard for me--i suffer from a mental illness that always seems to challenge me more when it's cold, whether it's because i stay inside more or don't get as much vitamin d or whatever. i am lucky in that treatment has been very, very effective for me, and for the past few years i have been very mentally healthy. still, there are times when i struggle, and winter seems to make these times worse.

i'm also not very religious--my dad is jewish and my mom is a lapsed catholic. my parents together decided that when my sister and i were young we would start attending nondenominational unitarian-universalist services at the local congregation; my dad once referred to this as an 'inoculation' against fanatically following a religion. much of the sunday school classes were focused on learning about world religions and traditions held by them instead of focusing on one particular set of beliefs, so it was a really interesting experience to get to celebrate these different cultures--and even visit some of their religious ceremonies through the sunday school program.

i find myself now with a strong set of spiritual beliefs and a rather weak set of religious ones. i practice witchcraft because i feel like it connects me with myself, others, and nature--things that are important to me because i live in a city where these connections are often hard to find. i'm a solitary practitioner, without a coven, and that's what's comfortable to me. as such, i celebrate the traditional holidays like samhain and yule, but i also try very hard not to take things too seriously.

as a result i have some pretty weird holidays.

there's hanukkah with my dad, christmas with my mom, and yule with myself. how did someone who doesn't much like any of the winter holidays end up celebrating three of them?

each of these holidays is very special to me, and i've combined them to celebrate in my own special way. i sometimes call it 'hexmas'.

here's my hexmas sweater!

and here's my hexmas tree! it's a bit hard to see because there's a lot going on but i have eyeball and witch ornament baubles, a little bride of frankenstein, a bat, a witch hat (an ornament and the one on the top), some spiders, some little crows, and a bat garland!

is there any special way you celebrate your holidays?

31 days of halloween: day thirty-one

drusilla is my favourite buffy character.

honestly shes one of my favourite characters in anything.

i still have a few hours before work so i may redo the wig but nothing major.

what are your halloween plans?? im working til 1 so im not doing much but i get to hand out candy at work!

xoxo

31 days of halloween: day thirty

today i'm just bats.

a cloud of bats in the night sky.

this one was fun. it's not even a majority of all the bat stuff i own. i'm a little obsessed. 

31 days of halloween: day 29

it's fun being evil.

it's very fun being bellatrix lestrange.

(i should admit this is technically voldemort's wand. i got it at the wizarding world of harry potter.)