Altars

What an eventful couple of days it's been...

Last night my dogs got a hold of some chocolate and ended up eating an entire 11oz bag of Hershey's assorted miniatures, which contains primarily milk chocolate but also a few dark chocolate in the mix (very bad for dogs!). That resulted in me paying a fee to speak with animal poison control, attempting to make them throw up the chocolate, going through vomit looking for the candy wrappers to see what they ate and how much, and cleaning up diarrhea. What a night! I ended up not going to sleep until 2am, called into work and told them I'd either be late or miss today and that I could make up the hours later, and then called the vet first thing in the morning. They told me to monitor them closely to check for certain symptoms and if I see those to bring them in for blood work. So that's what I've been doing.

Meanwhile, my mother in law came over to help out because we had carpet installed today. The original plan was for her to let the guys in for the carpet because I was supposed to be at work by the time they got here, but obviously things weren't going according to plan! Within an hour of the carpet being installed, one of my dogs had an accident on my brand new carpet. I almost had a full blown mental and emotional breakdown due to the stress. Finally, after cleaning it up, my mother in law helped me to set up and organize my new walk in closet. We've been remodeling the upstairs of our house for a year and the bedroom and walk in closet are finally move-in ready! I spent a few hours organizing clothes and still have plenty more to do. The bed will be moved up this weekend once my husband comes back from his business trip. I already bought a full matching bedding set and curtains. I even have a small piece of art work I bought at the Renaissance festival of a dragon that matches the color scheme that I'm planning to hang up. I'm excited to find a few accent pieces to complete the room, such as lamps or picture frames.

We decided to put my husband's dresser in the bedroom to hold the television and my dresser in the back wall of the walk in closet to hold a mirror and jewelry boxes. However, I'm going to have a decent amount of free space on the top of my dresser. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. I've always wanted a private space to set up a little altar and I think I finally have one! I'm going to set up a small discreet altar on my dresser in the walk in closet.

The space is already fairly private, but I still want my altar to be discreet. I don't want it to scream "altar" or "witchcraft" or anything like that since I know there will be other people entering my closet. I'm thinking I might go with an ancestral altar style. I want to find a decorative box to hold items such as my grandmother's jewelry, my rosary, my tarot cards, an athame, etc. Then I want to put up at least one photograph of my grandparents. I might also put up a few other photographs of other deceased family members as well. I have a huge picture of my great grandmother but I'm not sure if I'll have the space to hang it there unless I move the mirror into the bedroom. Then I would like to set up an incense burner, a few candles (specifically a purple one for my grandmother), perhaps a vase for purple flowers for my grandmother, an offering bowl (I have a few I made in high school), and a chalice. I also have a large assortment of little religious items such as angel and saint statues, holy water vials, crosses, etc. so I may set up some of those as well.

I'm going to wait until the bedroom is completely set up before I start on the altar. However, I am really looking forward to this new project. I've always wanted an altar but never really found the space or time to set one up. I'm so excited that I now have the perfect place and opportunity to do so! This realization is the one good thing out of the past two days of stress. I can't wait for my husband to come back from his business trip tomorrow. The dogs and remodeling are really tough to handle by myself!