Happy September...🍂 gathering autumn inspiration & tidying up!

I just made a warm cinnamon cuppa and we're sitting down and we're simply going to share inspiration for the upcoming autumn season and I am so excited. It's been rainy and rumbly the past couple of days. We have a little sunshine reprieve right now, but the raininess definitely is an indicator of fall time in Florida because it's our stormy season. So I took some time to just write down some ideas that I hope to share and I always love to do this because I feel like when you have these ideas written out in front of you and these tangible things to look forward to, I feel like it just makes life feel so much more celebrated and abundant. So hopefully we can share inspiration together. Something that I've been thinking about a lot is just fall habits or things that I wanna incorporate in our day-to-day or our week-to-week that makes it feel like whatever season we're in. So for fall time, one way, one simple way we do that is flavors of fall, really honing in on those flavors and cooking. One thing that I love to make, of course, is soup, which I actually, this isn't technically a soup, but I plan to make a roast later today and we still have some pumpkins from our pumpkin harvest from last year, our seminal pumpkins. I love these pumpkins. They kinda taste like butternut squash and I think I'm gonna go ahead and put those in the roast. I've never done that before, but I've put sweet potatoes in the roast and it was delicious. So I think I'll do some sweet potatoes and some pumpkins. So I'll let you know how that turns out, but absolutely love to do a soup of the week. I try to do one soup a week, which seems ambitious, but it's such great leftovers too and it just comes naturally, I would say. So we have that. And then something else I would love to do is I shared this last year, but I would love to go to the nature preserve more. We don't go as often in the summertime just because of the heat, but as it cools down, it is glorious to walk along the paths and the trails. And I would also love to go to more state parks and maybe even national parks if we're able to make a trip, but I feel like just spending time in nature, even if you do live in a tropical climate, we still have different changes that if you really look closely, you can see and tell the difference or even just like different species varieties and different flora and fauna that you can witness throughout the time of the year, no matter where you live. So I absolutely wanna try to do the nature preserve or some kind of park once a week. Maybe we could even pick a day of the week where we do this. I feel like that sounds charming. Pack a picnic blanket, pack a picnic with the fall flavors. Like what a beautiful notion. This is the kind of stuff that makes me excited. Another thing I love to do this time of year is gather and host. I feel like I took a little end of summer hosting hiatus. I've just been taking a bit of a rest in general, but I am so excited to gather my friends and family this time of year. We have a few traditions that we've established. Well, really just one so far, but I have some ideas. So first one, I must mention our soup soiree. We've done this twice the past couple of years and it has been such a joy. I've been celebrating the autumnal equinox, which is the official first day of fall for over a decade. And it is just so fun to celebrate the exact day that it turns a new season. Something about it just feels really special and celebrated. So I've started celebrating the other solstices and equinoxes too, but the autumnal one just always feels special because it's the first one I ever celebrated. So I am thinking through, do we do a soup soiree again or do we switch it up? Part of me feels like we must do this as a tradition because it is so much fun. I always feel like timid to ask my friends to bring over a soup. I'm like, oh, come to my party, but you gotta bring a big thing of soup as your entry. I just, I don't love asking people to bring stuff. So I think I just get over that and then we do it again and continue on with the tradition. So I'm still debating, but I gotta make some decisions because it's already coming up quite quickly and I wanna give people time to prepare. But if you're unfamiliar with the soup soiree, essentially everyone brings a soup and then we all try each other's soups and do each other's soups. And then we have a winner. We do a little bit of a vote and gamify it and have a winner who wins the golden ladle, which is the highly coveted prize. I actually did this really pretty vintage silver ladle last year, but I think I still called it the golden ladle because it just feels right, but it's so fun. And last year, actually for my birthday, I did a pie party, which I think is another super fun idea. So I'm a early November birthday, so it's very fitting to have a pie celebration. And I had all these different pies and we chatted, we ate our pie and then we also did this pie face game. It is hilarious. You basically put whipped cream on this little hand and you pass the little game around and then it'll randomly launch the whipped cream into someone's face if they're in the right spot. It was hilarious. I love silly things like that. I learned about it from my little nieces and nephew and I'm like, you know what, I wanna play that too. So I kinda wanna do that again. It's actually my 30th birthday coming up, so I feel like I need to do something wild. Not really, but kind of. I just don't have any inspiration. Maybe I'll do the pie party again because it was super fun. I don't know, we shall see. I try not to force any ideas or inspiration. I just sort of ponder on it and then wait till I'm really excited about an idea and then move forward. But sometimes that leaves me planning very last minute affairs. So we'll see, we'll see. Another idea I thought of, which you could do this in so many different ways, but I was on a walk and I discovered this little forest. It was off the beaten path a little bit, but it just reminded me of a woodland forest and I just pictured us with quilts and our books and having a little reading club, sipping on tea. I don't know, I can picture it so beautifully in my mind, but I don't know what it'll look like. Maybe on the first day that it actually feels crisp and cool, I could gather friends and we could go read books or do a craft or something. I'm not sure, but that's what I mean. Sometimes you just see a location or you see a tangible item that just sparks an idea and then you kind of snowball from there. So I love when that happens. It's such a good feeling to feel inspired. I also wanna do some sort of clothing swap. I love to rent clothing, especially seasonal clothing. I usually rent from Nuuly and I was thinking this would be so fun to do with friends, some kind of clothing swap or if we have clothes we don't really wear anymore, doing an exchange. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what that'll look like, but that is another idea that I'm kind of hoping will turn into a true, tangible, fun experience. Okay, the last one is happy hours. I love to do little mocktail happy hours on our porch in the spring and summer. That's when I really call it happy hour season. But I was thinking, why don't we do one in the fall time? I feel like we totally could do something fun with that and especially once I decorate the porch, which that's a whole other thing. That's a good transition into our decor ideas. My ideas for decor specifically are feeling a little lackluster as of now. Maybe once we start decorating, we'll get more ideas. But one thing that I love is using natural elements for decorating. So, oh, I just spilled some tea. Oops, at least it smells really good. So last year, one fun little craft we did was pine cone bats. I'll put a picture of them. I love how these turned out. I love the incorporation of the pine cone. And then I did little watercolor wings. So if we could do more of these, I was actually thinking I could laminate the watercolor wings too, and we could add them outside. Just need to glue them quite strongly onto the pine cone. But that could be fun because I do really enjoy bats. I recently just checked out a book about bats from the library, and I'm excited to learn more about them. It's interesting that they're pollinators too. So one, we love that they control the bug population, and that's important for the circle of life, but they're pollinators. I forget that they're pollinators. That is a fun fact. Also, the other day, Brandon was doing yard work and trimming our trees, and every five minutes, I was running out there to get the tree branches that he was trimming off. I was like, we're saving those, we're saving those, we're saving those, and we're saving those because I'm gonna use them for fall decor. I have a vision of using them on our front porch, but then potentially within our home too. I love to use Spanish moss as well because we have Spanish moss everywhere near where we live. And I think it really looks enchanting. For our autumnal equinox party a few years ago, I did this cool display with a huge stick that I hung from the ceiling, and then I had moss draping and twinkling lights, and I loved that. I would absolutely love to do something similar to that again. So the branches are looking a little sad because like I've said, we've had some stormy, stormy weather, and I put them under our covered porch, but still, the rain will just go this way, that way, sideways, and it kind of drenched it. So I'm hoping they'll dry out okay. But you know, that's kind of the point, is to make them look expired so they turn all brown and emulate that fall look. Speaking of fall leaves, I would love to plan a fall getaway. New England in the fall is something I daydream about constantly, and I would love to do a family trip there again. We've done Vermont, we've done Maine, and I'd love to try a new place this year. We love those two places wholeheartedly. Would absolutely adore going back, which maybe we will because there's a couple places that I'm looking into, like New Hampshire, that is very nearby Vermont. You could totally group them together. So we'll see. And we've even talked about maybe flying into one airport, flying out another airport so we can cross more territory. So we have a lot of logistics to figure out because I would like to go at the end of this month, and that's pretty last minute. And obviously, it's a very highly coveted place to visit this time of year. So we'll see if it comes into fruition. I sure hope so. I think I would be interested in a traveling agent because I love to find fun activities and delicious restaurants and cafes, but I don't love the logistics of planning, oh, we're gonna stay here one night, we're gonna fly here, the transportation, the rental car, which usually Brandon handles most of that. But I don't know, I feel like travel agents are amazing. Maybe we should be utilizing them. But anyways, let me know if you have any suggestions. But I do have an October trip planned for one of my best friend's 30th birthday. We're going to Michigan, and I'm never, I don't think I've ever been to Michigan at all, let alone in the fall time, and I just know it is gonna be glorious. So I'm very much looking forward to that, but I would love to take a little trip with the boys as well. Even if we do a little road trip, maybe we could, again, go to some state parks or I don't know. We shall see what this season brings, but I really hope you all are feeling hopeful and finding those glimmers you can sort of look forward to. Now, I want to insert some footage of a pre-autumn tidy up. I started this morning and we still have more work to do, but I thought this would be good to just do a pre-decorating tidy up, really, so that we have a clean kind of blank slate before we pull out the bins from the garage and start transforming everything. I feel like I will really thank myself for that because typically I do not do that, and then I go straight from fall to Christmas and then do a big refresh in early January, which still is nice and I still hope to do, but let's just do a little tidy up. I know it'll feel good. So I'll insert some footage I already did, and then we'll continue just cleaning up the space. I completely forgot to do this last year, but this adorable little chair actually came with an additional slip cover, and I remember I had it on the first year we had it because we've had it for a couple years, but essentially you can take off this blue cover, wash it, and then the other slip cover, let me show you, is this delicious fuzzy brown color. So that is much more suited for fall time and winter time. Oh, how cozy. Our son is gonna be so delighted when he sees this because when we first had it on, he was just a tiny little baby, so I don't think he could even sit in the chair yet, but oh, he is gonna love this. You're gonna love this chair. Yeah, which he's never really experienced because he was just tiny. I forgot to do it last year. I'm also gonna go ahead and take this quilt and give it a nice wash. I love this quilt. It brings so much joy. It's a nice, airy cotton. It's 100% cotton, but it's just very soft and nice for summertime, and of course the colors, it's very joyful. It's from Anthropologie. I've had it for years, but they always have pretty quilts there. I'm gonna go ahead and wash it and make way for our, I have this super furry orange blanket, so I usually put that here. Oh, and we'll do it once we decorate, but I also bring down our spare duvet cover because I just love the layered blanket look and how you just melt into all the blankets. It's just ultimate coziness. I'm amazed at how happy this Birds of Paradise is because, I keep joking, I'm gonna need to cut a hole in our ceiling as it keeps growing because it's almost touching the top. Okay, I was about to take off this quilt that we have on the backside of our couch and replace it with our autumn quilt, but I was thinking, I just love this one so much, and I'm wondering if we could have a more of the merrier situation and if these will complement each other if we layer them. I can visualize it, but, you know, sometimes it looks better in your head, so we'll see if this side wing looks nice and what we think. Okay, I feel like it's one of those things that my eye is still adjusting to a change, but I think I like it. I think more is more with this and it just, I'm all about layering textiles and just adds another layer of coziness. Why not? I had fun doing these little Snoopy miniature puzzles, but I'm gonna go ahead and pack this up and make way for our true fall puzzle because I know it'll take me the next few months to finish it. So, sadly, I'm packing this one up without completing it, but we appreciated it and I know we'll be back again. So, we have that to look forward to, but it's an interesting puzzle because it's just a bunch of the characters. It's a bunch of miniature puzzles and what is kind of helpful, or not kind of, but super helpful, is that it's color-coordinated. So, like, all the ones with green backs are the same characters. Oops. And then, like, this one, for instance, her backing was all pink, which, do I leave it together? I'm gonna leave it together at least a little bit so that we have a little head start whenever we pick it back up. How cute is Snoopy? Just adorable. I have pieces of paint, too. Maybe not. See you later. I'm gonna go ahead and retire our little flower vase in our powder bathroom for the season and I'm thinking we can put a fall candle or a little mini pumpkin if we happen to have one that fits in this spot perfectly. We'll see when we start decorating. These pendant lights are very tricky to clean. In the past, I've just cleaned them as they've been attached to the actual ceiling, or I just left them in place and used a duster and some spray, but I'm gonna try to just fully remove them and wash them in the sink. I thought to look up a tutorial and that was recommended to fully take them off and then wash them in warm water. I just don't remember how to put it back on, but hopefully it's not too troublesome. It's sparkling. I'm not sure how well the camera's picking this up, but look at the before and after. That's the one I just cleaned and this is the one I have yet to clean. See how cloudy it is? Wow. Okay, I was feeling good about my new cleaning method for these pendant lights because the dust is gone, however, we have fingerprints and one of the light bulbs doesn't work now, so I'm not sure what happened. We switched the light bulbs a second ago to just see if something was wrong with the actual light, but no, it's the light bulb, so I doubt that was just a coincidence, but anywho, I guess I'll just be dusting it from now on, but they do look quite shiny, so that's a win. This vent always gets nice and dusty too. Yikes. It's time to wash our sheets anyways, so I figured I would take off this blue gingham duvet cover and these pillowcases because we have this cute sort of burnt orangish brown striped linen duvet cover that I like to put out for fall time, so we're gonna do a little refresh and then we have another pair of sheets that I can switch them out with. How often do you wash the duvet insert? I typically wash the covers when we do our sheets, but the insert, oh, I am not a fan of washing that because it takes so long to dry. It's a sweet potato. That beautiful pumpkin straight from the garden wants to be eaten. You having a good day, your highlight? Okay, we did it, we tidied up sufficiently and I'm giving myself the green light to start decorating whenever we get the chance. I'm so excited. I probably will just progressively add things here and there and then hopefully we can enjoy all the little fall touches soon. Also, the roast turned out amazing with the addition of our pumpkin, which you don't have to have a seminal pumpkin, that's just the kind I have, but I think even a butternut squash within just your standard roast recipe would be divine. So wanted to share, but I'm so looking forward to everything we have on the horizon. I really hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you and yours are well and I'm excited to see you next, bye.