I know it's almost 1 am but it's still Wednesday for me, so Haunted Hump day still counts.

It's that time of year again!

Since I am sick, I didn't feel up to picking up my house and taking pictures of my spooky decor. Don't worry, I am getting to it and haven't forgotten. Nor have I forgotten that I said I would share some pumpkin pictures on a Halloween Swap page on Facebook- they are on a camera that was moved and I keep forgetting to go look and to ask where it is. Fear not, I have made a page long list of stuff I want to try and accomplish over the next several days. Lists make my life so much easier. 

So, in lieu of spooky decor and really any current successful craft projects (my salt dough ornament experiment didn't work out the way I had hoped so I am moving on to sculpey), I will share a semi-spooky personal manifestation board I did several weeks back and a personal ghost story.

Here is my board. I wanted it to be more witchy but apparently I was channeling my inner goth/ vampire that day. There are some witch-ish elements shining through, but mostly it has to do with other aspects of my life. Since we as humans are multifaceted it makes sense. A more pagan-centric manifestation board has been planned to address my pagan goals, but I may just save that for Halloween night, you know since it is the Witch's new year and all that. 

On to the ghost story, which Marfi, who hosts Haunted Humpday, kind of inspired. Well, in so much as reminded me with her post, that I can post ghost stories too. Anyway, I am sure that those who have met me physically have heard this story, but those in internet land have not, read it if you wish. This is a personal experience dating back to when I was a very small child...

I woke up in the middle of the night scared, the cold sweat, to scared to make a noise, kind of scared. My bed faced the wall opposite my bedroom window. A street light always shone in and there was also the shadows from a large tree in the back yard. I used to lay in bed and entertain thoughts of a skeletal chicken army marching across my wall, so in some respects the tree plays a tiny part, in that most of what I would normally see, wasn't there. Instead it was blacked out by a black, child-sized figure perched on my windowsill, and it was watching me. I knew it was, its red eyes glowed on my wall, as if the wall was a mirror. It watched me for a few little bit then turned its attention to something outside. Somehow I managed to pull the covers up and hide, desperate and hoping that if I could just go back to sleep it would leave. 

I never saw it again. Some might say it was a really bad dream. For awhile I thought maybe it was until I heard an internet radio show hosted by a Shaman. I don't even remember what exactly he was talking about that recalled the memory of this creature, but I e-mailed him and described what had happened when I was younger. His response was that it probably wasn't a dream, that it was probably a creature that fed from children's fear. He had a friend who studies this kind of thing. Of course for the life of me I can't remember what her name was, but how freaking creepy. Now, I don't know how true this could be, because when I tried looking up information on such a creature, I was coming up with nothing. However, I didn't really look too hard or too long. I might do that in the near future.   

Inspiring pictures, pickle jars, Pinterest, and bad dreams

I can't remember which wall paper site I found this lovely picture on, but I love it, and more to the point, when I saw it, it screamed Miyuki. Miyuki is the name of a character in a story I have been writing, working on, tinkering with, and and so on for the last several years. I haven't been able to finish it and maybe that's just me being overly critical, or maybe it is that I don't really know where I am going with it, or maybe it just isn't ready to be written just yet. Either way, when I get ready to hunker down and actually work on it again, this will be my desktop background to help keep me inspired.  I typically have something that reminds me or inspires me to keep going when I am working on a specific project. Plus this fulfills a need to go look up pretty pictures every so often. 

Pickle jars. My friend Chris always has pickles available at her house and I like them enough- or rather got hooked on them- that I started buying them in bulk as she does. So now I have pickle jars sitting around. I thought to make them flour and rice containers but that's just a pain in the ass mostly because my hand won't fit in the jar with my measuring cups. I thought, well, I will just pour the stuff out but knowing me, I would just make more of mess and end up wasting stuff. So, I have decided to keep a couple jars to use for craft projects and the rest are going to be recycled. This also cuts down on the amount of glass available for me to break. What can I say, I am clumsy.

Last night I decided I needed some Pinterest time. Only my laptop battery was running out and I was too lazy to get out of bed to fetch the power cord. I was also very tired. So this morning I picked up where I had left off. I have some craft projects I would like to do and am compiling a visual picture list for myself. At the moment most of them are sewing projects. All of the quilts in my house were made by my 3 of my Grandmothers and most of which were hand sewn. They are old and most are older than I am, having been used for at least 2 generations.  Since I treasure them and want to keep them as long as possible, I decided that I need to start quilting myself. This is to carry on the family tradition but also to fill a need to have gothic and witchy quilts fill my house.  Anyway, back to Pinterest, I spent an hour looking at DIY gothic crafts, clothing, some crochet, and coloring pages. I started to doze off, so I decided it was time to move on. 

I had a rather bad dream last night. I dreamt had my boobs removed and reconstructed to prevent cancer. Since my Great Aunt died from breast cancer it's a pretty vivid and valid fear I have. I decided a long time ago to disconnect from my boobs in the event that I turn up with breast cancer and need to have them removed. But the truly upsetting part of my dream was me looking at Grad schools. I went into talk to an adviser about possible schools. Well, I was told that I had to take 20 more credit hours and all at the 200 (sophomore) level to not only graduate with my BA, but also to have any hope of getting into grad school. Okay, this has to be because my history class, the last class I have before I graduate, it a 200 level class and there is a ton of work already. Secondly, I am not happy that I am already starting to have bad dreams and panic attacks within the dreams about Grad school.  I'm not sure what to make of it just yet. I am kind of afraid to think about it. 

Lastly, I am pushing my homework off until this evening. Amanda rented two movies that I need to see before 9 pm tonight. One is Victor Frankenstein with Daniel Radcliffe and the other is Krampus. And given that all I want to do is take a nap, I figure if I watch the movies, take a short nap, and wake up in time to cook dinner before Amanda gets home, I will be doing good. Then I can devote my evening to the bit of homework I'm allocating for myself.