Art Dolls by Du Buh Du Designs

And the winner is...

above image borrowed from here

Congrats Brianne!

Thank you to everyone who participated in this giveaway~I was impressed with your thoughtful answers..impressed and moved by what inspires you, what you considered the most important gift received and by some of the obstacles in life that you have had to overcome or are in the process of dealing with~wow! I read every post, looked up every movie, book, poem mentioned. I was not expecting so many kind words directed my way regarding inspiration, but thank you~it's nice to hear your feedback :)

Next post will be in few days regarding the shop update. I have not had much time this past week as I would have liked to work on my dolls, so I need a few days to make some actual progress and assess when that will be. I'm going to try and include some ornaments and just have one shop update instead of two.

See you in a few days. Oh..and I forsee another giveaway coming sometime in January... :)

Filing Flight Plans at Four

Andres with his rocket at Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum this Fall

One evening, a few weeks ago, my son announced that he was going to the moon. Then he pointed to me and in a loud voice said "And you can't come" then to my husband Mark "and you can't come! I'm going  ALL ..BY.. MY..SELF!!". It was hard to keep a straight face at this sudden proclamation or not to think of a few comeback lines I could say, but I did my best to play along as I could see he meant business. Mark, feigning tears, sobbed over having been excluded from the trip of a lifetime.

The whole scene was rather amusing  but I couldn't help but wonder where this sudden need for independence came from and why we weren't included in his travel plans. And then this passage from one of my favorite Khalil Gibran poetic essays  came to mind. It reminded me that this was just the beginning of many steps towards becoming his own person~ something to encourage and celebrate, bittersweet as it may be..

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them  your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

So Andres, if you want to go to the moon, I'll pack a lunch or two for you and Dad will make sure you have plenty of rocket fuel for the trip. I forgot to ask, but you will be coming back, right?

H a p p y   F o u r t h   B i r t h d a y!

We love You :)

p.s.  I'll be back Friday with the winner of the doll giveaway  (Drawing will be closed on Friday 3pm).

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and safe travels :)

Doll Giveaway!

Last month was the Two Year Anniversary of my Blog and Etsy shop and in keeping with last year's anniversary I am having another giveaway~my way of thanking you for your support!

The winner will get to choose one doll from my next shop update (before they go on sale) . I have new dolls I'm working on that will be included along with the five from my Dia de Bloglania post below.

The rules are are easy~just leave me a comment; preferably something that has inspired you lately (a piece of art, movie, place, etc.), a fear that you have overcome, or one of the best gifts you have ever received that wasn't a physical object. Whatever is on your mind or a simple hello and where you're from is fine too. The drawing is open to all* (except family) and one entry per person please. I will pick a winner using the random generator on November 27th!

As you know my shop updates have been far and few between this year so predicting a date is not easy. I'm aiming to have the next doll update by month's end as I still have an ornament update to do before Christmas. Somewhere inbetween the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and family birthdays they'll get done :) Back to work..

* You do not need to have a blog to enter.