Thanks for your patience, friends, as I've worked out my crazy technical issues. (After 3 appointments with the genius bar, it turned out to be our cable connection after all....)

First off, the winner of the giveaway was Monica, who said:

"It looks like a lovely book! Thanks for being so open in this space."

Monica, please send me your address at the email address in my left sidebar.

Now, on to some other things.

Happy Halloween! I'm so excited! I'm happy to say that we finished our costumes earlier this year than usual. Yesterday I fell down the stairs and I think I cracked my tailbone, so that was crazy and I feared we might not be able to finish the costumes because sitting is really painful for me! Fortunately, I was already ahead of where I usually am the day before Halloween (bad procrastinator that I usually am), and Elisabeth did the rest of the sewing for me! She was awesome.

This October has been so golden and all the leaves I pass seem to look like little coins on their trees, making me think of this favorite poem by Elsa Beskow:

Golden, you are,
October.
Golden sovereigns on your trees.
Golden guineas on your floor,
golden coins of leaves
that fall
for us to scuffle through
and rustle
and rattle
and hustle
and scrabble
and dabble
and paddle
as they fall
into an October carpet
which hides
our shoes.

I think I'm going to give daily blogging in November a try again this year. Last year I just couldn't get through it, with first trimester sickness. It was feeling like too much, and since I hadn't announced my pregnancy to anyone at that point, it was just too hard, and feeling too much like quantity over quality. But this year, I'm hoping that nothing unexpected will pop up. It's always been so much fun for me and such a good habit. I should do it more! Ha!

See you...tomorrow!

uncommon grace