I thought I was making a blogging comeback last week, but it looks like it's already Thursday and here's my first post of the week. I haven't been reading blogs, writing posts, answering emails. The computer and I are strangers this week. But that's okay, because lots of good stuff is getting done in the meantime:

Do your kids have these faber-castell colored pencils? They're fantastic. You can draw with them and then take a wet paintbrush over your work to make it look more like a watercolor painting.

Anyway, we have been busy this week. Finishing up Halloween costumes at the last moment--bagging the sheep costumes for the budget-friendly, but family-favorite hay bale costumes. I promise pictures will come soon. I just have to reenact it all since I wasn't carrying a camera on the day of. (**see below**)

Packing up orders from my etsy shop and sending swaps over the ocean.

Sewing projects that fall more in the category of clothing rescue and reconstruction than anything else. Cutting off stained cuffs and adding a little trim, patching knees and fixing torn seams.

Cleaning out two closets to finally give my husband a place to hang his clothes in our small home. I've been putting it off because it meant going through my four shelves of fabric and sewing supplies and condensing it all into one shelf that would fit in my own closet. Ouch. It meant keeping out only the things that I absolutely LOVED and thought I would use soon. It was kind of like sorting through my fabric by season--leaving out corduroy and browns, reds and mossy greens. But it was worth it just to give him some space of his own.

I've also caught up on ALL my laundry and managed to keep my house somewhat picked up--a new goal of mine--to always have the house pop-in ready or at least pretty close to that.

And of course, we've also been doing the most important things like sitting around the table and drawing silly ed emberley drawings, and painting pictures with just dots of paint and going for walks and raking leaves and picking up sticks and lingering too long in bed....the things that make life worth doing.

**(the hay bale reenactment: candy bribe required for this photoshoot)**