One week left before Halloween.

What’s scary to me this week is how much work I’ve got coming up in November.

A lot of it has to do with actually finishing things I started at the beginning of the year. With a little over 60 days left, that doesn’t leave much wiggle room.

I’ve decided not to do National Novel Writing Month again this year. The very idea of any book 50,000 words long makes me shiver. Trying to write that many words in a holiday month is tatamount to insane. So, no new novel for me.

However, I have not let myself off scott free for November. There is another challenge called Picture Book Idea Month, where participants come up with 30 picture book ideas in the 30 days of November. I’ve done this challenge the last two years and “won.” In addition to being a participant this year, I will also be a guest blogger. My post will be online on November 14. In it, I will talk about the picture book challenge and give away a finish signed, original painting created just for the event.

And, as an off shoot to this, several of my writer friends and I are working toward having November designated as a worldwide celebration of picture book and literacy. The web site is almost live. I will send out more detailed information as soon as it’s available.

There are several other personal book related projects in the works, and I opened an Etsy shop last month. I sell Hardened Leather Masks, Amigurumi Plushies and an assortment of beaded items. I’ll be adding quilts of my own designs soon.

Have a wonderful week.

Do you have a special request for a coloring page? Let me know either via an email or through one of my social networking sites. I’m on Twitter and Facebook.

Sign up to receive alerts when a new coloring page is posted each week and/or click here to view more coloring pages!

Click the image to open a .jpg to print and color. Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Help support my efforts by spreading the word or buying any of my books. Please stop by any of my social networking sites to leave me a message (here is good too!) and let me know how you like the coloring pages. Remember, I provide these pages free of charge for your own personal use. Do not reproduce them or use them for any other purpose without my written permission.

October is winding down.

Last Friday, my husband took the kid to pick out a Halloween costume. This is the first year I can remember where she opted for a store bought creation. She had originally planned on being a Monarch butterfly, but the store didn’t have one in her size. She tried on a bunch of costumes until she found one that fit, which she could live with. It’s a character from a movie. ‘Nough said.

I read a distressing statistic the other day. About store bought costumes. Did you know that 6,250 TONS of landfill waste is from used Halloween costumes? That’s a lot of trash.

I’m a saver, a recycler and a composter. I still have costumes I created in the late 80s. I couldn’t possibly fit into any of them, but they’re not in a land fill. One of my kid’s earliest chores was taking the kitchen scraps to the compost pile out back. A chore she still does to this day. I tried to teach by example, by using as few resources as possible and reusing the ones I had on hand as many ways as possible before disposing of them. Somewhere along the line, it got lost in translation. My child contributes more trash to the landfill every week than my husband and I combined.

I know there are kids her age who care about the environment and being frugal. I read about them in the paper and on the internet. It worries me though, that they may be in the minority and the current generation of children are even less concerned with what’s going on around them then the children of my own generation. According to the United Nations Population Division, the world’s human population will hit 7,000,000,000 on October 31. That’s a billion more than just 11 years ago. Talk about scary. That many people use a LOT of resources and make a lot of trash.

Are your kids wearing a homemade or store bought costume? Where will it end up the week after Halloween?

Do you have a special request for a coloring page? Let me know either via an email or through one of my social networking sites. I’m on Twitter and Facebook.

Sign up to receive alerts when a new coloring page is posted each week and/or click here to view more coloring pages!

Click the image to open a .jpg to print and color. Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Help support my efforts by spreading the word or buying any of my books. Please stop by any of my social networking sites to leave me a message (here is good too!) and let me know how you like the coloring pages. Remember, I provide these pages free of charge for your own personal use. Do not reproduce them or use them for any other purpose without my written permission.

Yesterday, my husband and I were visiting my mother-in-law. We go to see her every Sunday. This week she was baby sitting my nieces and nephew. The two girls are in their last childhood years, one turning 12 next month and one will be 14 at the end of the year. The boy, the youngest of the siblings is about 8.

While making pleasant Sunday lunch conversation, the question of what they were going to be for Halloween came up.

The eldest said she didn’t know. The middle child stated she was going to be either a ninja or a sock monkey, she hadn’t decided yet, and the boy proclaimed proudly he was going to be dressed as Mario. He then went on to explain to his poor old aunty he meant the character in his DS game.

It occurred to me, that many kids will be dressing in similar costumes, bought off the rack, tying into some game, movie or television show. When my kid was little all her costumes were home made. She was a princess, a pumpkin and a dalmatian. I’m sure there were others, but I don’t recall them at the moment. Now that she is nearly grown, she makes her own costumes. This year she plans on being a monarch butterfly.

I wonder if the ease of buying an off-the-rack, pre-fab costume is draining creativity from the newest generations of children. It takes very little thought or imagination to go to the corner K-Mart and pick a costume from the dozens on display. This is just a symptom of a wider trend, though.

I remember playing made up games when I was a child, hand-held video gaming wasn’t even a concept yet. My parents only allowed my brother and I to watch TV between 6 – 9 PM. Other than that it was either playing outside or reading a book. Or, as my mother threatened when ever we complained of boredom, she’d find us something to do. This usually entailed some form of housecleaning and was to be avoided at all costs. My brother and I spent many an hour concocting games and activities to while away the free hours after school and homework.

After our Sunday lunch, all 3 children pulled out their DSes and “played” a game “together.” One sat across the room from the other two. All three had their eyes glued to their screens. They sent each other messages through their games. Maybe I’m hopelessly outdated, but it seems to me there is no real interaction happening between these siblings wired into their programmed games. That concerns me.

What are your thought?

Today’s coloring page was a special request by Tara and Autumn. Thank you both for a wonderful suggestion.

Do you have a special request for a coloring page? Let me know either via an email or through one of my social networking sites. I’m on Twitter and Facebook.

Sign up to receive alerts when a new coloring page is posted each week and/or click here to view more coloring pages!

Click the image to open a .jpg to print and color. Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Help support my efforts by spreading the word or buying any of my books. Please stop by any of my social networking sites to leave me a message (here is good too!) and let me know how you like the coloring pages. Remember, I provide these pages free of charge for your own personal use. Do not reproduce them or use them for any other purpose without my written permission.

I’ve been visiting my parents for the last several days.

They live 600 miles away. A two day drive when, like me, you have a bad back. My husband would drive straight through. Me, I spend a night in a hotel about halfway there.

This is the fist time I have ever been to their home in mountains. They had the house built over a decade ago. To me one undeveloped wooded plot of land is pretty much like any other one, but they insisted I needed to watch the home movies of the building of the house and the walking of the property lines. We spent 3 hours doing so yesterday. You would be proud. I didn’t yawn or fall asleep.

I did however hear buzzing in their walls.

Today’s the last day of my visit and then I drive back home via a friend’s house for mental decompression.

For some reason I thought I would be able to continue to work on my picture book art. All I have managed is a few daily doodles. My working process is so internal it looks like I am staring off into space. My parents take this to mean I am bored and need entertaining. Or conversation. Or food. Although I brought all my working supplies with me, I have not been able to sit long enough to focus my thoughts clearly on the images I want to move from my brain onto my papers.

Perhaps I should give up until I get home and have peaceful solitude again.

I feel like the sitting cat in my doodle above. I do believe my left eye is spinning in its socket as well.