Transitioning

I hope you and your families are all safe and well after Frankenstorm.

Here, it was pretty much a bust. A couple of trees down, some wind, some rain, and much ado about nothing, much to the disappointment to the members of my household who were hoping for a storm day (I won't say who those members may be, but I did have a long list of to-do's if I just happened to be trapped at home).

In the meantime, I'm working on making the transition to winter, to holidays, to whatever chapters of life lay ahead. It's no secret that I'm a summer girl all the way, so I resist fall in general, and I resist Halloween in particular, I think, because it is the start of the madness––two months of making and baking and preparing and celebrating. Don't get me wrong; I like all that kind of stuff. But, it's a lot of doing and doesn't leave a lot of time for being. Also, this year I'm trying to remind myself that I can't do it all (I never could do it all, but now I can do even less). This summer I failed to comprehend that I need to say "no" to some things (okay, a lot of things) in order to get my work done, and I got really far behind. I need to do better this holiday season.

At the same time, I'm trying to get into the spirit of things. This weekend, the boys painted their papier mache weapons Halloween props that we made the week before (using wrapping paper tubes torn along their spiral seams and then re-rolled into a tight, long cone shape).

A (rainbow) trident for E (some sort of devilish, deamonish thing):

(Here he's fake-painting because I failed to grab the camera faster than he could paint).

And a sword for Samurai Z:

Then we baked some cookies for a Halloween party at our friends' house, using this sugar cookie recipe, some basic butter and powdered sugar frosting and chocolate-covered sunflower seeds.

I had a bunch of ideas for Halloween crafts and decorations to make with the kids, but we never seemed to have the time. We only have a few Halloween decorations––a tissue paper jack-o'-lantern garland that has survived eight or ten Halloweens, a few construction-paper bats made for a long-ago party (and starting to curl up along the edges) and, of course, the table-runner I made last year, which I like to just sit and admire whenever I'm at the table (and now I know why everyone keeps saying it snowed on Halloween last year––it snowed a teensy bit the day before!).

I also discovered a batch of matching placemats I cut out last year but didn't finish and it turns out I didn't have time to finish them this year, either. Oh well, it's all part of transitioning: making room for what is important, and letting go of the rest.

How is your transitioning going this season? Did you make it through the hurricane OK?