Decorating for Yule ...

As planned, I spent the entire day on Black Friday decorating the house with Yule and winter treasures. My mom even helped me this year ...

Remind you guys of "someone"? ...

... Lady Tabitha, of course

My Gingerbread cats 

My handmade Yule wreath

My mom's original (vintage) glass Christmas tree balls in their original boxes from when I was a little kid. She recently handed them down to me after she found them in her attic last weekend ...

An old Polaroid pic of my mom's glass balls which adorned her (now vintage) Christmas tree as it looked in my parents 2nd floor apartment living room in Robesonia, PA.

Christmas morning circa 1968 (yup, that's me with the "little Dutch boy" hairdo) ... ahh, the memories -  lol

The day after ... otherwise known as Black Friday

Happy Friday ... "Black Friday", that is, and as is my personal tradition I never go out of the house on the day after Thanksgiving. Instead, I prefer the use this day to take down all of my fall and Samhain decorations. I switch up the "Halloween Tree" ornaments with the Yule and winter solstice ones and throughout the day I also clean my house.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I hope that everyone had a lovely holiday spent with family and friends. I spent mine with extended family and enjoying a wonderful homemade traditional dinner of turkey, ham, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and filling, corn, gravy, and a whole slue of delicious pies and desserts. 

Here are a few little pics I took from yesterday's gathering.

My mom and her fur baby, her poodle Brandi

My cousin's beautiful offspring, Weston and his sister Ava ~ really awesome kids .. and growing up so fast!

Ava with my cousin's house kitty, Jack

After dinner, the kids and I decided to play with Jack downstairs ..

Peek a boo!!!

Relaxing in the living room chatting it up while watching some movies.

It was a typical gorgeous fall day, brisk but the sun was shining and the weather could not have been more beautiful. Now, it is time to get to work and decorate the house for Yule ... and it looks like it is going to be yet another lovely fall day today.

Enjoy your weekend, my friends!

This and That

Greetings my friends and happy Wednesday! Things have been busy here as usual and with the holidays approaching, even busier. As you all know, every year we have an Angel Tree at work where we can pick cards for either children or senior citizens, It is a chance to give back to those less fortunate as some of us. Since the children's cards are usually the first to get picked from the tree, I always take two senior cards. This year, I picked one man and one woman who both asked specifically for white towels. So today I went shopping and bought two towel sets (2 large towels, two hand towel and four wash towels) along with gift bags and cards. 

I also added a cute little holiday wash towel set just for so. The Salvation Army does not accept gifts already wrapped as they wrap them themselves; however, we are welcome to donate wrapping paper, etc. if we like. 

While I was out, I stopped off at a cool little store called "Five Below" and found these warm, comfy plush mermaid tail blankets .

They meet the Kiki kitty seal of approval.

I would like to say a sincere "Thank You" to all of you who have sent Kiki love and prayers. She continues to have her good days along with the bad days, but with a little luck we will get through the holidays? We are taking it one day at a time. For the time being, I am spending as much time as I can with her. 

For those of you who celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, I wish you a happy and blessed one!

Chance or 'Divine Intervention'?

This is a question which I have asked myself my entire life. My conclusion? Well, while I do believe that people come and go in our lives for some sort of reason, I do not completely subscribe to the idea that EVERYTHING happens for a "reason." Good, bad or indifferent, I do not think we will ever truly know "why" things happen in our lives which we have absolutely no control over. I will say this, it seems the older we get, the more we seem to lose in terms of the ones we hold dear to us. 

Why am I writing about this particular subject? Well, as of late things have become a bit overwhelming in my life and now to add to everything else going on Kiki has taken a turn for the worse. Her meds are no longer working and there is little left we can do for her. She can not keep her food in her stomach and I fear that once we take her to the vet (her next check up is scheduled for mid-December) they will feed her through intravenous tubes and she will never make it back home again - just in time for the holidays of course and I was so praying that she would make it until afterwards. Now, it looks as though she will not even make it until Thanksgiving.  :( 

On the flip side of this coin, I was out to dinner last Thursday night and "coincidentally?" met a man who sat next to me and after he told me his last name, I realized that he may be a distant relative on my mom's side of the family. Through phone calls and emails, it turns out that he is related to me as my cousin confirmed it just this morning. My cousin has a huge database full of our family history which he has been gathering information on for many years now.

So, what do you think? Do you believe in either "chance" or "divine intervention."? 

Saturday post

Greetings, my dear friends and happy Saturday to you all! Being that it is Veteran's Day today, I thought I would post a little something in their honor. My father served in the Army during the Korean War and Perry's father had served as well. 

I work with quite a few veteran's who have served in various branches of the military and yesterday, one of them handed out poppies which she handmade herself to all of us employees in honor of "Remembrance Day." ...

Each year, my High School Band would perform on our football field for what was called "Band Day" in which we would play and perform to "Stars and Stripes Forever" in honor of veterans. 



The other day, I came across some old (albeit not so technologically advanced at the time) footage of my 1983 Senior High School marching Band when we competed in the Festival of States Nationals in St. Petersburg, Florida. If you fast forward the video to the time of 1:20, you will see me marching with my twirling squad in the Festival of States yearly parade. Can you find me? LOL!!

This and That ...

Funny little story ... yesterday I took a day off from work to take my mom to her eye doctor appointment. While sitting in the waiting room, I looked around only to see the typical scene EVERYWHERE you go these days. I saw every single, solitary person around me with their faces pasted to their cell phones and tablets either playing games or checking their e-mails, etc. Now, please do not get me wrong, I do "get" that cell phones have their uses, but personally speaking, I find them distracting and annoyingly rude for the most part simply because of the way people act with them -  as if they are some kind of actual replacement for communicating on a "personal" level with others (know what I mean?) ... and, as though it is an "appendage" they simply can NOT live without! (but I digress .. lol)

Then suddenly, a nice lady walked into the waiting room and sat next to me. Lo and behold I saw something I rarely ever see anymore ... she actually picked up a magazine in lieu of playing with her cell phone. I looked at her and said, "How refreshing!" She turned to me, smiled and said, "What do you mean?" I replied, "It is nice to see someone pick up a magazine in public instead of a cell phone for a change." She laughed and told me, "I do have one but I refuse to live on it like most people do. I have better things to do such as LIVE my life!" ... she was a smart woman indeed I do believe.

After my mom's doctor appointment, we decided to go shopping around the area and ended up at one of our local Dollar Tree stores. I found a couple of goodies while we were there ...

Pure, refined coconut oil to use with my essential oils
(For more information regarding healing oils and their uses please check out my post link: https://thewiccalife.blogspot.com/2017/07/frankincense-not-just-for-magick.html)

Something different for me, colored mascara. The blue colored mascara on the left (cobalt blue) and the purple (portly plum) on the right. I think I like the blue better ... :)

And, when we got home, my mom surprised me with this cute little cat magnet ...

All in all a pretty enjoyable day for my mom and I ...

  HAVE A GREAT WEDNESDAY EVERYONE!!!

A lazy Sunday ... well sort of

Yes that is indeed true, never a dull moment ... (although I am trying very hard to have one). I had to put Kiki back on her one med, metoclopramide, (a medication to help prevent her from vomiting every day) after the vet told us we could take her off of it as she was doing so well and did not seem to need it any longer. I pray this helps her because she has been vomiting up for the past three days. As it is, she is still taking pepsid-ac twice a day and two 5mg pills of prednisolone which helps her a bit. 

I took a couple of pics of her this morning snuggling with me on the sofa. She loves to relax with me when she is not enjoying sleeping under the Halloween tree ...

As for the rest of my day, I plan on cleaning the house and chilling with my little girl until bedtime. And so my dear friends, I will leave you all with a funny little post which I am sharing from Dark Elf's (Perry's) page ...  ;)