It snows in Colorado

Wednesday

Thursday

October Shipping News

Pearl thinks these are her presents.

Etsy Bloggers October Carnival—What are you doing for Halloween?

Halloween comes early for my brother and sister-in-law. We celebrated Halloween as Johnny Castle and Baby at their 80s Halloween party in St. Louis!

I remember watching Dirty Dancing every night of my 4th grade summer. Oh, to my mother's chagrin.



Pearl was the chick from flash dance... a little shy.

Made by Melissa—Etsy's October Blogger of the Month

Halloween is my favorite holiday and this chick is mad festive for Halloween!

Also a woman after my own heart, Made by Melissa is an animal rescue advocate. Check out her story about how she rescued her own puppy—it's a good one.

Pearl Loves Letterboxing

During our last letterboxing mission, Pearl was very enthusiastic about helping us find the box! It was hysterical! We followed all the clues to this tree that had several trunks. The box was supposed to be planted in the middle of them.

Chris started investigating and then Pearl jumped in to help! She was digging and talking, seemingly frustrated because she couldn't find it. We could understand the frustration as searchers of these boxes! You have to really look around and follow the clues perfectly to find them (and if you're direction senseless, it's challenging)!








Chris found the box...




and Pearl emerged with a ball...

Getting Out of the Way

I started reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron only a week ago and I'm feeling such positive changes already. It's a 12-week course about clearing anything blocking creative energy. Her stance is that even the most creative people have blocks of some kind and to varying degrees. She started teaching classes in Manhattan (what she calls the mecca of creativity) years ago, and finally wrote a book.

Part of the course includes daily "Morning Pages" where you write 3 full pages of blah without picking your pen up off of the paper. I've heard of and participated in such exercises to induce creativity and such, but her idea is that you're not trying to be creative so much as you're trying to get all of the clutter in your mind and more so your censor out on paper so that it doesn't effect the productivity of the rest of your day. I'm finding this to be extremely effective! Getting all of the yucky thoughts out of your head before you do anything else gives you permission to not worry about all of that while you're living and being present the rest of your day.

For a long time I wouldn't write anything negative, because as you know, I feel that we're constantly manifesting—and the written word is very powerful for manifesting. However, these pages are permission to not manifest and instead to acknowledge and release anything that creates worry, upset, or maintains persisting limiting beliefs. It's not all necessarily negative, it's also clutter and residue that needs a voice.

This is really working for me. Little did I know I was holding onto things I needed to be releasing simply by not acknowledging them. There's something to not giving energy to things we don't want to manifest. But when they're lingering and we're not acknowledging, we're in fact giving them more power. Ah the fascinating ways we detox.

Julia is also a believer of the Universe creating right through you if you let it. And the only reason we don't let it is because we're in the way. When we create, we heal ourselves and others by simply being what we were meant to be and working with our true nature. I absolutely love that philosophy. It inspires me to make sugar scrub and bath salts!

FWINTER

There was hardly a Fall this year. From a rainy summer to an overnight Fall for a day and then snow! The leaves didn't even have time to plummet from their trees before the snow! So they fell after the snow.