With any luck, we'll be going out to Hancock Fabrics this weekend for the last few notions and any cloth we don't have yet needed to make Laurel's costume. While looking up the pattern to give the link to someone, I found a Halloween Costume Contest being held by Simplicity and Jo-Ann's. Vogon thinks I would stand a good chance of placing if I enter Laurel's costume, so we'll see how it looks after I finish it.

In related cloth news, unless I buy some solid, dark-colored flannel to make the cloth pads, I'll be using piece of Sesame Street print flannel left over from the pajama pants I made Laurel back in the spring. There's something slightly macabre about using it for that, but hey, I hate Elmo. *laughs*

In hopes of reclaiming the coffee table (fabulous to work at sitting, plus it fits a 24x36" cutting mat with room to spare, we picked up a kids' folding table and chairs yesterday at Walgreen's. She's mostly taken to it so far, but the locking pin (to keep the chairs open, there's a pull ring on the underside of the chair to retract the pin and close the chair) on one of the chairs didn't pop out properly and Laurel folded the chair several times, finally folding it on her foot before she quit messing with it and I had the chance to fiddle around with the chair to lock it open. For the curious, she has a red table with one blue and one yellow chair. We almost got a blue table, but Vogon said he would have felt bad when she tore it up or stained it and besides, red is the midget's favorite color right now.

Does anyone know any finger/hand games like these that they'd like to share? Other than the ones on that page, she knows "Where is Thumbkin?",  "This is the church / this is the steeple" and "These are Mother's knives and forks / this is Mother's table" (the latter I learned as a little burrito from a Better Homes and Gardens children's storybook we have in storage).

We bought a small pumpkin for Laurel last night that I'll probably paint this weekend with something based on a coloring page, like the fall Sesame character ones we already have or whatever cute Halloween stuff I find at NickJr.com. (Yes, I sold out and have logins for the member exclusives at Nick Jr. and Disney.com, mostly for the printable activities but also to snag the occasional wallpaper for when she has her own computer.) We'll get larger pumpkins for carving this weekend; this year I feel like Invader Zim, so I'll either create my own designs from screenshots or elaborate on the pre-made patterns from Room With a Moose.

This week's FlyLady zone was the kitchen and I feel like I've made some real progress decluttering it -- we have a whole segment (entrance to sink, maybe four or five feet) of counter clear and we've been keeping it clean. This makes me feel accomplished, though now I want to go shopping for some storage things: a breadbox so we can keep the bread and tortillas together and out of the way, a set of hanging produce baskets, and more of the 15-liter flip-top boxes (previously blogged about for storing/organizing sewing patterns) to hold canning jars and other items we use but don't need to live in the cabinets. The breadbox will probably require a trip to Target since I didn't like the ones I saw at Wal-Mart and I'd prefer either metal or a dark wooden finish.