WHAT. THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. Tomorrow is November. That’s twenty-six days till Thanksgiving. That means a mere sixty-one days until 2016. That means fifty-five days till Christmas. That means it’s time for October’s monthly recap on FTB!

To be honest, I don’t even remember what I do in monthly recaps. I have to look at the past ones to see what I covered. Because by the end of each month, everything is such a blur. I suppose I usually start with the books I read this month, so let’s go with that…… or maybe not since I read all of TWO BOOKS IN OCTOBER.

This is sad. This is so, so sad. Annnnd… one of them was a re-read. I re-read Rachel Coker’s Interrupted: A Life Beyond Words (which is amazing, as it has been the past dozen times I’ve read it since the fifth grade) and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom (which was even more amazing, and the review will be up on Monday!)

I’m not sure if it’s the dreary weather that puts me in a lazy mood (because Georgia has been cloudy and overcast practically all of October) or school or what. And November is NaNoWriMo – which means writing 50k in 30 days, and I may start hyperventilating at that thought – so I’m not sure how many books I’ll be able to get to next month. Which means December will be nothing but books all month long. (And I’m already counting down till Christmas break, so let’s do it!) I revised my 2015 reading goal to 70 books instead of 50 (I’ve read 58 or 59 since January?) so hopefully I can read a mere 12 books more. I read that many in a month during the summer, and I miss those days!!

Oh – oh – oh – but I am almost done re-reading Pride & Prejudice, which is nice. I never get tired of Miss Jane Austen.

Meanwhile, some highlights on the blog were:

• My first co-post with my best bookish friend Brooke 😉
• I talked about supporting authors which I’ve been wanting to write forever
• OH AND THIS HAPPENED.

50 followers may not seem like a lot, but it’s a lot to me and I’M SO HAPPY! Currently thinking of a super cool giveaway to do so be on the lookout… oh and if you wanna reach for 100 sometime soon and tell your friends and everything that’d be cool. (‘Cause I’d have the coolest giveaway on the blogging block when we reach 100, just sayin’.)

And here are some AMAZING things that happened in October for me…

• I FaceTimed with Brooke (who most of you know – my pen pal and the sweetest commenter ever and pretty much my best friend and now I’m making her blush!) and I was SO NERVOUS. Also, I haven’t mentioned this to her (so now you know Brooke) but November will be a year ago when she first commented on my blog…. heeheeeheee. It will be our one year friendaversary, Brooke! 😉
• Meet BEASLEY. My dad finally caved, y’all. We were out for an eye exam and we brought home a dog! He was skin and bones when the shelter got him… almost about to be put to sleep. 🙁 The vet says he’s probably a border collie and dane, and he is positively adorable. (But definitely *not* potty-trained, ugh..) He’s already spoiled rotten and in love with our cat Mittens. (Maisy not so much, but she’s getting there.)

• We drove a U-Haul truck of donations to South Carolina for flood victims. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about it a lot on the blog or not, but my mom posted on Facebook asking for donations to fill our mini van and drive up there. (It’s my mom’s hometown that was flooded.) That turned into our homeschool group and a few churches in our area donating and it was crazy! (Crazy-awesome.) We stayed with some friends who were just outside the flooding and drove to several churches in S.C. who had 400 people coming everyday for food, blankets, clothes… basically everything.

Some of the moms aren’t pictured but as you can see we had some men for the heavy-lifting! 🙂

I would talk about what went on on your blogs but I’m kind of too lazy so I’ll just leave you instead with a flashback to my first-ever-selfie. In case you’re having a bad day.

I clearly rocked the selfies at 5.

how was your october??