​Am I the only one sad that Halloween is over? I always get a little down when it's time to pack up the ghosts and goblins for the year. 

But this October was pretty amazing for several reasons. 

First of all, this Halloween marked a one year milestone in my blogging journey. I will be writing more on that this week, with some lessons learned over the rather rocky year.

Whew! Just getting caught up on scanning in a bunch of art tonight. I "organized" my workspace this weekend, which means I put everything up, and then couldn't find anything! 

Luckily, I think I've worked the kinks out of my new system, and I did find my Inktober drawings for week 2. 

Here's the art round-up: 

​So, this week we all caught some sort of illness that made us absolutely miserable and worthless. The house is a wreck, and I've fallen behind on getting my Inktober drawings scanned in. 

As I was lying on the couch brainstorming my next blogging session...

I thought I would do something a bit different for Financial Friday this week. A totally random, sentimental send-off to summer with a photo blog post of some of my favorite memories from the year.

We lit our heater for the first time this week. That is the official start of fall, and the end of flowers, summer showers, pools, and blistering sunshine. 

What does that have to do with personal finance, you ask? 

​Feeling down today? We all get the blues from time to time. Sometimes it feels like the things we are doing aren't getting us anywhere. Sometimes we experience some setbacks or have to start all over. 

As tempting as it may be to spend a day wrapped in a blanket reading a sad book, that won't really help you get your smile back in place or your confidence glowing again. Try a few of these simple, fast tricks to cheer yourself up instead: