balancing act

Sincere apologies for my time away, dear readers.  I found myself being a little swept away by my life this past week, chipping away at 'the novel,' spending quality time at work, and visiting with my father--the first family member to visit me in the Emerald City in years.  A lot of years.

Now that he's gone back home to the midwest, and I have a few days off of work, I'm trying to get a foothold on other, less important things.  Like laundry.  And, yes, the novel.

Isn't it funny how, when we have things we should be doing, we always find ways of distracting ourselves with pointless, time-consuming projects?  Yesterday, I took a "twenty minute" break from the novel to stretch my legs and ended up spending four hours sifting through my (embarrassingly large) collection of children's books.  First, I needed to look through all of them, to see whether or not there were any duplicates. There were.  Then, I had to move them all from one shelf to another, trying to find the right system for ordering them.  By author?  By illustrator?  By year?

And after all that, there was the matter of dealing with my sad dolls.

A few years ago, I started collecting sad dolls, especially down-trodden, forgotten playthings that I felt compelled to rescue from thrift stores and garage sales.  I tucked them all away, up on a shelf, and then promptly forgot about them myself.

Yesterday, I decided that the shelf would be better suited for my vast library of Little Golden Books, and so I began sorting through the dolls, too.  I haven't decided yet what to do with all of them, but I think they deserve better than I've been giving them.

For starters, most of them are, um, naked.  Which is the way that I found them, I swear.

And even the ones that have clothes need some serious attention, like having their hair glued back on to their little heads.  My favorite of the little orphans is this gal.  According to the stamp on her back, she's an original "Lingerie Lou."

I love her hand-beaded little tutu, but I'll admit, I have no idea what to do with her hair.  If anyone out there has any DIY doll repair suggestions, please let me know...

I seem to be more than capable of finding silly things to do with my time this weekend.  If you're in need of some suggestions, though, here's a to-do list for you:

Fancy up the pumpkin.

Keep your hands busy.
Promote yourself.
Have fun with felt.
Read more fairytales.
Do some nesting.

Happy weekend, everyone!  

I promise I'll be back to regular posting next week.

(And I've got some extra holiday fun in mind.  I'll share my plans with you soon!)