The only darkness a Halloween fan should fear

SOPA is scary..... and not the good kind. End the censorship before it starts!

Tag! I'm it!

TAG! You're it!

   It seems I was tagged by Pensive Pumpkin. Thank you Pensive for the tag ;). I secretly enjoy these distractions from all the creepy, dark, wickedness of my blog so I jump at the chance to partake. I am a bit late on this post as a multitude of games and other gifts from Christmas and my subsequent Birthday are keeping me enthralled around the clock.
   Without further delay.... the rules!

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Rules:
1. Post these rules.
2. You must post 11 random things about yourself.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post.
4. Create 3 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
5. Go to their blog and tell them that you have tagged them.
6. No stuff in the tagging section about ‘you are tagged if you are reading this.’ blah blah blah, you legitimately have to tag 3 people!
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Here goes the random stuff about me:

#1 I may not look it, but I am a world traveler. I have been all over this big blue sphere we call earth. Some of my favorite stops have been Japan, The Philippine, Costa Rica, Brazil, Germany, Amsterdam, and the Bahamas to name some of my favorites. I have been all over the US. When I was younger, I could not wait to get away from my home town. Now that I am older, I can't stand to leave it.

#2 I love spicy foods. The hotter the better.

#3 I am an excellent cook .Learned from my mom and picked up other tricks along the way.

#4 I am a total movie buff. I love movies of all kinds.

#5 I try to celebrate any and all occasions. I was raised to make the most of the day and to plan big when those days are special. I actually had a person recently comment to the fact that I celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years with decorations, foods, and parties. They went on to tell me they NEVER celebrate anything, not even birthdays and then started to complain about how terrible their life was and they  "wished the good lord would take them on".  Perhaps if they would make the effort to celebrate life and have some fun they would not be so damn dour. I am also not sure that "the good lord" wants such a fuddy duddy which may explain why he does not "take them on".

#6 I am severely anemic. When I was younger, I would have to fight the urge to eat raw meat over this condition. Because of this, I love iron rich foods such as liver and spinach.

#7 I love landscaping almost as much as Halloween. As soon as spring hits, I am in the yard, planting trees, pruning, and building stuff. That last few years, I have been incorporating Halloween into my landscape by planting creepy trees and plants with fall foliage.

#8 I am a full on gamer. I play anything and everything from board games and puzzles to all night Gears of War marathons on Xbox. I am partial to RPGs.

#9 I am handy and crafty, which is a boon and a curse. It is good for holidays or when things break around the house, but people who know me are always wanting me to build, fix, create, or make them things. I usually don't mind as long as it is not excessive or interfering my carefully planned days.

#10 Speaking of planned, I am a planer. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!". I tend to plan everything, even grocery runs. I am very good at improve and jumping into things blind so I am not sure why I am so big on planning everything.

#11 I have 4 books and a game, all 95% developed and ready. I just can't find a publisher/agent to carry me.

 So there are my 11 random things. Time to answer the three questions offered to me by Pensive :

#1 What is your favorite way to celebrate success in life? That is super easy. Throw a party! I love a celebration and any success, no matter how small, deserves to be celebrated. This can range from a small 4 person get together to watch a movie or karaoke to huge parties that I worry about where people will be able to sit and if the neighbors will call the cops.

#2 How do you motivate yourself and those around you? I believe in an even use of positive reinforcements and grim consequences. I usually greatly exaggerate the reward and the punishment. I love to use vivid imagery of the prize awaiting success and the dark cold fate of failure should the goal be missed. I also tend to follow up... sometimes too may times.

#3 What is the thing (aside from your spouse, significant other, beloved, partner, human children, or furbabies) that makes you happiest in this world? It's the little things in life that make me the happiest. Don't get me wrong now, Halloween, vacations, and parties all make me extremely happy, but they are few and far between. The simple things give me the biggest pleasure. Like home made soup on a snowy day. The smell of a rose I grew from a cutting. Opening a new game. The smell of a new book. Sleeping late on a rainy morning. The first day of feeling good after a long, terrible cold. The sound of crickets in summer under a canopy of fireflies. Finding a dollar in your old jacket pocket that has been in the closet for a year. I think people forget about how nice the little things are and they tend to over look them or label them as insignificant. It is when your life is devoid of these simple pleasures that true misery creeps in. 

Now that is complete, time to tag three bloggers to carry on the tradition. I want to tag three blogs that I enjoy reading and I think will appreciate this type of activity. The three I have chosen are :

Marilyn from the art bliss blog.

Annie from the Annie Walls blog.

Nicole from the Bewitchingyou blog.

The three questions I will create for the newly tagged to answer are as follows :

#1 Besides Halloween and Christmas, what other holiday(s) do you celebrate/enjoy/decorate for?
#2 What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you?
#3 How do you deal with the negative people in your life?

Ready.... set.... GO!

It's Friday the 13th! Have you hugged your Jason prop lately?

What better way to observe the first Friday the 13th of 2012 than with a photo homage of my hardest working prop.

This day is also marked by the first significant snowfall of the year. 

I hope your Friday the 13th is a lucky one! Have a great weeKEnD everybody!

Frozen in Fog

Fog so thick, the sun cannot cut through at 10am.

A dull coating of ice covers the ground.

Winter is here in all it's dead glory.

wicKED Birthday creepy gift round up.

   Besides getting another year of age under my belt, this year I got some creepy gifts to boot. I was a little overwhelmed at all the loot I did receive!

   It made me want to dive in and swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck. M always does a good job of decorating the whole house and making any celebration special, and this one was no different. We started out having a home made lasagna dinner at my mothers and then destroying an ice cream cake while my step dad sang Happy Birthday to me all evening. 

   I even managed to squeeze in a couple of scary videos with my God-daughter (aka. future Wicked Woods staff member).

   We then came back to the Wicked Woods where M had managed to decorated the entire house in under an hour AND make snack foods for my Birthday Party guests.  I had a ton of gifts to open and I was super pleased with them all. I got a lot of gaming equipment and games, clothes, books, etc, but I also got some downright creepy/cool items from M. 

This firefly in a jar will look amazing in my Apothecary this year. 

What time is it? It's almost Halloween! I wish, but this clock will stay up in the office all year.

Devil hat.....not sure if I should be insulted or not. I will spare you the picture of me actually wearing it.

One of the all time greats to add to my collection.

   The best and most surprising gift I got from M was pumpkins made by Bean of Pumpkin Hollow! For those that do not know (and I cant imagine you would read my blog without knowing), Bean is the wife of the great Pumpkinrot of the Pumpkinrot blog. If you do not know about Rot and Bean, head over and check it out.... you will not be sorry. 

   

These Creepy little guys are gonna look great under our gnarled miniature Halloween tree,

   M got these great hand made creations from Primitives By Kathy where Bean's creations are in high demand!

He even came with a corded light. Of course, coming from Pumpkin Hollow, it was an orange bulb not a plain old clear one .

    So it was honestly one of the best Birthdays on record. Life just seems to get better and better each year. 

   I am still loving the camera M got me for Christmas. I can't wait to turn it loose on Halloween! :

   I truly hope everybody had a great weeKEnD. I plan on posting more often (if I can stop playing with all my gifts) and to get out some new years resolutions and personal top 10 lists of 2011.

   For now, I am going to make myself another cup of premium roast coffee from my brand spanking new Keurig Single Cup Coffee Pot! 

Happy Epiphany, Merry Old Christmas, and Happy wicKED Birthday to me!

   Today is my Birthday, which just happens to fall on "Old Christmas" or "Epiphany".  Epiphany is still celebrated by many as the day the Three Wise Men finally arrived at the manger to give baby Jesus his gifts. It is said by many old folks that this is the night that the animals in the fields (cows, horses, etc) will kneel down and pray in recognition of the birth of Christ.

   The Amish still celebrate Old Christmas as a day of visiting and feasting. They exchange presents on this day, just as they do on Christmas, but they do not decorate for it. It is said that if you wash clothes, sweep, mop, or empty trash or ash, you will wash a person right out of your life. This is considered a day of rest and celebration. Many old timers will also tell you not to lend any money on old Christmas as you will never get it back on this day because in the grand scheme of things, everything should be a gift today. 

Here is a few tidbits of knowledge about this day I gleaned from the web:

January 6th is still widely observed as a holiday by many plain folks, who commemorate the Epiphany with rest and fasting. The Epiphany, traditionally, is the day in which the wise men brought gifts to Jesus. However, January 6th is called “Old Christmas” because in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII deleted ten days, eleven minutes, and fifteen seconds from the calendar, to realign it with the seasons of the year, thus technically moving Christmas from Dec. 25th to Jan. 6th.

The Scotch-Irish Mountain folks up in Tennessee still call the 6th “Old Christmas”. Their tradition has it that one ought never lend anything to anybody on that day, for the lender will never get it back.

January 6th is “Old Christmas,” a tradition the Amish brought with them from 18th-century Europe. The Millers keep it as a family day, with visiting and feasting much like that on Christmas Day, but no gifts are exchanged. Amish businesses are closed on this day.

 No matter how you choose to observe today, I hope you make it a great one!

It is Friday after all! Hope you all have a wicKED weeKEnD! I know we will here at the Wicked Woods!

"PARTY!"

"DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!......then party!"