October is My Month !

October 1st ?????????

How did that happen ? Time is just going so very, very fast ! The Queen is having a hard time keeping up, guys ! And don't you say it's because she will be 43 on the 9th, either !!!!

Ah well, this is where we are and let's celebrate it !!! October is the best month by far !!! The best colors for a season, especially in the North East. The best smells, wet leaves, carved pumpkins,... The best tasting food, crisp apples, the first stew of the season, orange chiffon birthday cake... And let's face it, the very best clothes and shoes of the whole year ! Cozy sweaters, gorgeous arty scarves, fine leather boots and not a bathing suit in sight !!! And finally, the one thing that always makes October special for me.....

The Kim Birth-Festival !!!!

Okay, so I am very, very lucky to have my birthday on October 9th. It falls around the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend every year and also Columbus Day weekend here in the States. This means that the family always gets together to celebrate and they never forget my birthday. David works for a bank so he always has the Columbus Day bank holiday off to come home with me ! Also, I am so lucky that I have so many wonderful friends and loved ones, and that they all know how much I love to birthdays, (I have told them over and over through the years !) so they all take the time to give me a little token of love or a little special time together. This makes my birth-day into a birth-festival a lot of the time, sometimes lasting for a couple of weeks !

I have to say that I have been the founder of the Kim Birth-Festival over the years. None of this hiding the fact that it is my birthday baloney for me ! Celebrate me, celebrate me !! I love it so very very much ! It feels good !

I even threw my own 40th birthday party a couple years back, just for about 20 of my closest women friends. We had a fantastic October weekend at a condo in Mont Tremblant, Quebec. And yes, I asked them to bring gifts. I asked them to bring something that showed they had taken the time to think about me.

I received some of the most touching and wonderful gifts that you can imagine, like my Aunt Francoise who gave me 40 bulbs to plant in my garden. Or my friend Tracy who has known me since I was 8, and who gave me a cd with songs on it that we used to listen to when we were kids (look up Melanie - "Brand New Key"). Or my two totally un-artistic friends, Barb and Tina, who went to a ceramic painting place together one afternoon and painted an extremely ugly coffee cup for me that I still use many a morning inspite of its ugly beauty. I also made every incredible woman there a gift from me, a hand made book mark and a journal with a letter on the first page from me, telling each one of them how much they mean to me. Besides the gifts, there was love, and laughter, and hot tubs, and yummy food and drink and even dancing, lots of it !!! It was my best birth-festival ever !

Tracy, Suzanne, Francoise, Mom, Natalie, Lise and Cindy at my 40th Party

Darlene, Andrea and me in the bathtub at my 40th Party

While this October may not hold the exact same magic, and while I may be feeling a little rushed into the whole thing, I want push myself to celebrate anyway. Life is too damn short and too damn hard to miss out on any reason to celebrate ! October is here ! It's a great month ! What more do you need ? Get out there and find something to celebrate !