Before and After

Fall is officially here. There's no denying it anymore. I don't care for it much myself, as I find the waning daylight, the falling temps, the dying leaves, and the overall drabification (that should totally be a word) of the landscape depressing. But it's not all bad, and it's still way better than winter. *Cringes at the very thought.* Let's move on, and I'll talk about some of the positives, alright?

This past weekend, Mom finally got around to switching out the stuffed animals on display on the window seat in her bedroom. This means carrying down one group of stuffed animals to the basement, putting them back on their shelves, selecting another group, and toting the new group up to her room. (She does this 5 times a year: at the beginning of the four seasons and also the Christmas season.)

The fall group this year is all of the stuffed ponies, and this makes all of us equine lovers extra happy. Sadly, the basement has gotten more damp in recent years. It's not a very good place for storing stuffed animals, but that's where the storage space is, so there they stay. (Maybe it's time to invest in some big plastic bags to keep them more protected...)

The effects are most noticeable on pale stuffed animals from the bottom shelf.

Poor Pal the white and blue pony. :(


Luckily, the brown I-don't-really-want-to-know-what-it-was came off pretty well with a careful washcloth bath. The little guy looks much better now.


Clipper suffered too, and her brown yuck didn't come off of her nearly so readily.


Still, she definitely looks better post-scrubbing:


Here's a before-and-after of her from the front:


It's hard not to feel more cheerful after taking in an eyeful of these guys.


The beginning of fall also meant a decent sale on summery garb from American Girl's website. We were able to talk our way into 3 new outfits. Thanks, Mom!

And because it seems wrong to leave Julie out, here we all are enjoying one of the last warm days of the season:

Positive #3 of fall so far has been ArtPrize 9. Tons of art is scattered around various venues in downtown Grand Rapids for its 3-week duration, and Mom's gotten to see a lot of it in person this year. We'll share our favorites in future posts, but for now I will leave you with this odd but entertaining rendition of Beethoven's 5th as performed by the Grand Rapids Ballet. (Yes, that's the Grand River in the background. It does indeed flow through downtown Grand Rapids, but it does not actually have any impressive rapids.)