Autumn is Here

September has just seemed like summer until this week, but now October is almost here. I am very proud that we actually managed to get our little box of autumn/Halloween decorations scattered about today. This year, I mostly just showed the girls the box, gave them some tape and said go. They got most of it done on their own, which was quite nice to experience. They even helped with the outside stuff.

We also started to set up a little nature table, something I've been meaning to do for a long time. I bought a little green metal table with a gift card that my MIL gave me and Lone Star Pa screwed it together and we set it in a sort of corner in the living room. I say a sort of corner because the corner is actually formed, not by the room, but by Lone Star Pa's jumble of living room clutter - boxes of videotapes, DVDs and various incomprehensible wires that I cannot convince him not to stretch across my could-be-pretty seafoam green walls. Decorating really seems like a silly past-time around here in a way since there is no hope that anything but the clutter and wires will really be noticed by visitors, but...we notice the decorating. The kids like it, and that matters, I think. The way it makes them happy makes me happy and I think that matters, too. So...I just set up the nature table right in front of the corner of clutter - maybe it will balance it out somehow.

More on what we are placing on the nature table later, but I think having it to add seasonal items to will help me feel less guilt about never getting around to doing as many nice, seasonal crafts and things as I wish to do with the kids. I do, however, have a plastic jack-o-lantern bucket full of orange and black construction paper strips and scraps at the ready. We'll get in a little bit of craftiness, I think.

And books! I got out the autumn books, too!

Happy Autumn!