Dream Home

If you could design your dream house, what would it be like? What sorts of colours would you use for certain rooms? Would you design a room for your personal sacred space? Would you design an entire chapel for your altar, or design a beautiful garden for it? Would you perhaps include a barn on your property to have your eggs or other animals? How would you make this house more Pagan-centric? How would you make it more "green" and Eco-friendly? from Being Pagan

My mother likes decorating shows. I have watched enough of them, despite my hating them, to practically become an interior designer.
My dream house would be a penthouse apartment, probably a two-storey one. Yes, they exist, and yes, they are expensive. If my significant other and I can’t afford a Toronto penthouse, then I’d like to stay in the town where I was born, Waterloo, in your typical suburban house. Three bedrooms, even if only two will be used as such (I’ll explain that later), laundry room upstairs, LARGE en-suite master bathroom upstairs. The downstairs would have a small hallway at the front door, which leads into a nice-sized living room. Through another doorframe would be the kitchen and dining room. I live in an open concept house right now and I hate it, so this house wouldn’t be open concept. There would also be a nice sized bathroom on the main floor. The basement would be finished with an open concept space. There would be a bar, and a large space for just hanging out, watching movies, and having parties, similar to what I have now. The basement space would also convert into some more beds in case I had more people sleeping over.

Alright, now the actual decorating! I’m a huge fan of the ‘men’s club’ look. This means dark, muted colours with lights highlighting certain things. Yes, everyone will probably think it’s super dark. Yes, that is what I want, but I would put all my lights on a dimmer. Then, if my mother was over and though it was too dark at the dining room table, I can use the dimmer switch to brighten it up. My walls would be wallpapered in a solid colour of dark blue, and my floors would be VERY dark hardwood. I would have lots of area rugs, and they would be in bold geometric patterns in dark colours with a pop of a bright colour. The kitchen and the bathrooms would probably have the brightest lights without dimmer switches. The kitchen and bathrooms would have large floor tiles in a dark colour as well. Hardwood is too hard to clean in these kinds of rooms. I would either match the colour of the hardwood, or stick to a dark blue. The backsplash and counters would be in white subway tile. The appliances would be stainless steel.
Upstairs, the master bedroom would have one feature wall of red paint, and the remaining three would be in burgundy. The bed would be a dark wood four poster if I can get away with it. The floor would be carpeted with a very plain carpet. The other furniture would, of course, match. The bathroom would be tiled in white subway tile going up the wall about five feet, then the blue above the top. Everything would be white, with a large sink. The shower would NOT be tiled. I hate how tiles feel on my feet.
There would be a guest bedroom, which would not be in the style of the rest of the house. It would be another bright room, with maple coloured furniture, and painted a light green colour. It would have a queen-sized bed. The floor would be carpeted with the same colour as the rest of the upstairs hallway and master bedroom, just for a bit of continuity.

Okay, the basic design! But wait, we’re missing one of the bedrooms! This is where the fun comes in. I would hope that I marry a pagan, but knowing my luck I won’t. Anyway, this other bedroom would be my ritual room. See, I like my stuff. In fact, I really like my stuff. And, of course, I really like my pagan stuff as well. Now once I move out, I can start to buy things online, such as herbs or oils, and my father won’t be like “NO! Someone will steal my identity!” So, this room would just be for spiritual things. I would paint the walls in a sandy colour, and the carpet would also be a sandy colour. You know, for Egypt! I’d get shelves in gem tones, especially blue for lapis lazuli. There would be no furniture except for shelves. All my items that were not displayed (oil vials, herbs, candles) would be in the closet, which would be organized for easy storage and access. My items like statues, big fancy candles, and other things I want to display would be on the shelves. The walls would also have my wall reliefs and other hanging artwork. The room would be big enough for a small group of people (maybe about eight), but it would be mostly me (and maybe my husband). The overhead light would be bright, but it would be on a dimmer as well in case candle light wasn’t enough.

Lisey, I know you like the idea of having a barn and living off the grid (you god damn hippie) but I’m a city girl. No barns, no farm animals, minimal eco-friendly...
It’s my dream house damnit!

Dreams!

So, I had a pretty awesome dream a couple nights ago. I kind of forgot about it until jsut before dinner, and posted it up on my dream journal. Right before Lisey left to go to bed, I told her this dream, and I thought she was going to drop dead from an overload. I have a feeling she's going to interveiw me about this tomorrow, but I'll post the dream here, in case anyone else wants to read it, or interpret it:

I was at the newly finished Conestoga mall. This is our local mall, and it’s currently going through a HUGE facelift, with 30+ new stores, restaurants, ect. I’m with my mom, but I wander off toward the food court. There is a small cafe which is run by a Voodoo/Hoodoo/ Santeria priestess. She gets me to buy this cup of coffee called Mulan. The beans smelt like melon, and the coffee tasted really good. I don’t really like coffee to begin with, but I like this stuff. I go find my mom at the GAP, and tell her how good it is. I’ve practically chugged this cup of coffee. She is uninterested.

I wander outside the GAP, and there is a kiosk with Disney stuff. I look up at it, bored. There is an older man beside me. A young guy, about my age, jumps off the top of the kiosk and asks if I’m in high school. I tell him I’m college-aged. And he starts telling me about Disney World. I tell him I know all about it, because my parents are dragging me along this year, and I tell him my parents belong to the Disney Vacation Club. He tells me that I might have some more fun if someone else comes with us to Disney.

We then go back to the coffee shop, and I bribe the priestess to help me keep this guy. It works. I believe I slip her an extra $5.
I invite him home, and then I realise I’m still dating my current boyfriend, and I know I have to break up with him, because I really love the new guy.

A couple notes: The young guy was a fairly good build. He wasn't scrawny and I didn't fear as if I was going to "break" him. I think he was a red-head with really elegant features. I can't really remember. There is a legend that states if you kiss someone in your dream, you'll never kiss them in real life. I've kissed my current boyfriend in my dreams, but never in real life; and in this dream, I didn't kiss this one guy.

Pagan Dreams

I am studying makeup artistry come January. Don’t get me wrong, I love makeup so much, and I love playing with it. Though, recently, I’ve been focusing more on my USBoS, once I get my raw documents processed—I’m aiming for the end of October—I think I’ll actually work on practising makeup again, along-side tarot practise.
However, my town is majorly lacking in any sort of pagan themed shops and communities, despite a growing pagan population. We have a fantastic stone store, and we have a couple good places to buy incense and candles—namely a store called Green Earth, and Pier One Imports—and we can sometimes get oils at these locations and at The Body Shop, and we have a lot of places that sell herbs in bulk, though I have yet to go into the one store my friend recommended, which is funny because it’s right by my optometrists (Hmm, I’m going there on Tuesday, maybe I’ll pop in!).
We do have one “New Age” store. I won’t tell you it’s name because I don’t want this to turn into a call-out. I’ve been there once. Sure, they had fireproof shells, smudge sticks and feathers, silk handkerchiefs, and a largest selection of divination tools I’ve seen offline. It had some good items that I would have loved to invest in. Keyword: invest. It was pricy.
Though I would love to shop online, I still live with my paranoid father who hates shopping online, not to mention that the shipping is murder and a lot of stores don’t ship to Canada.
In America—so I’m told—there are tons of New Age shops. Actual, physical stores. Some are probably high-end, and some are incredibly local and affordable. So, what’s wrong with Canada? Sure, some of our bigger cities have stores.
I kind of blame my town. We are a university town. People from all over the world come here to go to our engineering school. We get all these intellectuals, but not in the philosophical sense. We get the hard-core nerds.
I love nerds, don’t get me wrong.

Anyway, I guess it’s a bit of a dream of mine to open a proper pagan store in town in some place accessible and doesn’t look like some hippie wannabe is running the store. Somewhere that looks professional and reputable, with everything from wands to jewellery, to artwork, to running seminars and classes. Something that has high-price objects, and also affordable basics that I just cannot find here...we don’t have anything like this here. Sure, we have them in Toronto, or London, or Windsor, but not here.

So, does anyone else want to share your pagan dreams/goals? I’m intensely curious!