Life Goes On. . .

I never meant to take a blog break. It just kind of happened. I haven't exactly been idle. I went to the middle school every day for more than a week and sold BooGrams during the two lunch periods as a PTO fundraiser. A BooGram is a party favor bag with a handful of treats and favors in it which the kids buy and exchange with their friends (sort of like Valentines.) We made 2,080 and sold the majority of them for fifty cents a piece (or 12 for $5.)

There was the end of soccer season, and the end of soccer season pizza party with trophies. (Surely I'm not the only Soccer Mom who has a special celebratory end-of-season dance?)

Yesterday the one Christmas Bazaar that I am taking part in this year took place. There were a couple of (largely unnecessary)days of frenzied beading to add to my wares. I share a table with a couple of friends (fellow soccer moms from our sons' team of several years.) We had a great time chatting amongst the three of us, and we saw lots of people we knew among the light turn-out for the bazaar (we're blaming yucky weather, although it was warm and dry in the hotel ballroom,) but we sold practically nothing, as did most of the other craftspeople. Sigh. I had lots of left-overs. Lots.

And of course there was Halloween itself. Audrey will spend yet more time on the therapy couch in the future because I didn't get around to making the Renaissance maiden costume she chose (the one with more pieces than my wedding dress that I was supposed to alter to fit her from a women's size 6 pattern.) She dug out a wizard's robe I made in 2001 (also with more pieces than my wedding dress and largely handsewn in parts due to awful sequined fabric cuffs which the sewing machine refused to go through,) wore school girl clothes underneath, teased her hair, carried a book and a wand and was the best Hermione Granger ever. James joined a group of his friends, wore his fantasy adventuring clothes, carried his glowing sword, stole his dad's awesome boots and trick-or-treated around the neighborhood while singing Christmas carols. Yes, Christmas carols. If that's their idea of Halloween mischief (and we are talking about 13 year old boys,) I'm a very lucky mom. Today's chore, to get rid of the remaining Halloween decorations. This is what is left, but we had more.

I suppressed the urge to put together a still life of soup and tea and cold medication, but I'm also on day nine of a respiratory infection with a persistent cough that has been complicating our lives. The whole family stayed home on Thursday with it. We slept late (other than me getting up several times with puppies and John putting in a cameo appearance at the hospital to see a patient in intensive care and tell them he wouldn't be in clinic,) we had a fire in the fire place, we drank lots of tea and soup, and played several games of Munchkin, an evil and addictive card game. Unfortunately the Thursday we were home sick was also the Thursday I was supposed to get my pincushion for the Pincushion Swap out in the mail. I've got some catching up to do. There is a plan:

I'm looking forward to receiving my pincushion, too, because apparently I'm under-pincushioned at my house. I woke up and found this in the living room catch-all bowl this morning:

Thanks to my husband for retrieving the stray needle, and apologies for there not being a pincushion where he thought there should be. Audrey's digital camera was handy this morning, but I noticed sort of belatedly that she has the date stamp turned on.