50 Things to Do For Fall

September is finally here and although it may or may not be 90-something degrees out right now, fall is just around the corner, and omg I'm excited! I wanted to share a list I made of some things I'd like to do this season, along with some other activities you might enjoy. Take some from my list and make one for yourself! What's on your fall to-do list?

1. Drink apple cider
2. Watch a football game
3. Attend a baseball game
4. Go camping
5. Visit a theme park 
6. Go to the fair or a festival
7. Play a board game
8. Go to the Renaissance Faire (KC's is starting soon!)
9. Visit a museum
10. Go hiking
11. Pick out pumpkins at the pumpkin patch
12. Carve said pumpkins
13. Bake a pie or cobbler from scratch
14. Go fruit-picking
15. Make fall decorations
16. Go antique shopping
17. Bake bread from scratch
18. Buy a dark fall nail polish
19. Decorate your front door or stoop
20. Have a bonfire
21. Drink hot tea
22. Have a fall picnic
23. Jump in a pile of leaves
24. Go for a fall country drive
25. Learn a new recipe and perfect it for Thanksgiving
26. Shop for new fall clothes (My obsession this year...and let's be honest, every year...is scarves!)
27. Make s'mores over a fire
28. Learn to crochet a scarf
29. Start on some Christmas shopping or handmade gifts
30. Go on a walk at night
31. Stock up on holiday craft supplies
32. Go to the bookstore and buy a new book
33. Sit outside and read said book
34. Go to the park
35. Make a stew
36. Explore a new town
37. Go to the farmer's market
38. Make a fall playlist
39. Watch a Halloween movie (Don't like scary movies? Me neither. I'm sticking to Halloweentown and Halloweentown II. Like a boss.)
40. Write in a journal. If you don't have one, start one!
41. Find a press leaves
42. Buy some bath bombs from Lush
43. Go on a fall road trip
44. Practice calligraphy, watercolors, or a new skill
45. Buy some fall candles
46. Write what you're thankful for
47. Make a Halloween costume (if not for yourself, then maybe for a young friend!)
48. Have a movie marathon
49. Drink coffee with a flavored creamer
50. Buy a Thanksgiving outfit

Wednesday Morning Date: Part II

I honestly forgot to put up the second part of our date yesterday as it was Halloween. Sean and I busied ourselves with our potential plans on how to spend the holiday, and we ended up going to Trader Joe's and spent the evening at home. We bought groceries to make tomato soup and grilled cheese for dinner, watched the Addams Family movie, finished Halo 3 together (maybe once a year Sean and I play through a game together. It ends up take two or more days, but it's fun). You know, all the things one does on Halloween.

I've also been having very severe wisdom tooth pain. My surgery is this Friday, but I honestly don't know if I can wait that long. The pain is probably the second worst I have ever had and the entire right side of my head just feels like horror. Still, I am pushing through and hopefully I can get them to do the surgery on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Anyway, enough of all that. Here is the second part of our Wednesday date!
After the Big Red Barn in Weston, we made the fifteen minute drive out to Leavenworth, Kansas. Leavenworth is home to an army base and some awesome little antique shops and boutiques. Sean and I enjoy the antique mall, the army surplus store, the music store, and the Corner Pharmacy cafe. It was lunchtime so we parked a couple of blocks down from our favorite shops and walked. I told Sean that I always forget how much I love the old architecture down there and that I'm always so pleased with how well they keep up with it.

Our first stop was our favorite antique store. We love it because it is huge and everything is completely affordable. Eventually I gave Sean the camera and let him take some photos. Something that a lot of people don't know about Sean is that he's a pretty great photographer, even though he will swear up and down that this is false. Maybe not good enough to do something with it but the angles he uses as well as the things he chooses to photograph, make for very interesting pictures. I will mark the ones below that are his. 

Sean didn't find anything from the antique store but I went home with Bill Cosby's first comedy album on vinyl and two 1960s Dr. Seuss books. 

I've recently taken to collecting vintage (pre-1970s) children's books. Sean and I don't plan on having babies anytime soon, but I've been thinking how great it would be to build a collection of vintage books over the next few years so that we have them when we decide to grow our family. Until then, the books are wonderful and I am in love with the illustrations and colors. Maybe I will do a post about them sometime.

Photo by Sean

Photo by Sean

 Photo by Sean

 Photo by Sean

 Photo by Sean

I thought it was hilarious that these two have the same looks on their faces. I pointed that out to Sean and he laughed and said that's exactly why he took the photos. I think you can always find bizarre things in antique stores if you look hard enough. Although, it was terrifyingly difficult to miss the one below.

Photo by Sean

Photo by Sean

Photo by Sean 

Photo by Sean

Photo by Sean 

Photo by Sean

 After the antique store, we walked across the street to the music shop. They do classes there, but they also have this awesome guitar room in the back where you can play or just look around.

We were pretty hungry after the music shop so of course we went to one of our favorite parts of Leavenworth: the Corner Pharmacy cafe. This cafe is amazing because the food is super cheap (84 cents for a bottomless cup of coffee, 1 dollar for eggs, 2 dollars for a large slice of pie, etc.) and it's actually pretty delicious for how cheap it is. Sean always says, "It's like they've kept all the prices from long ago!" And it totally is! I had a cheeseburger, onion rings, and a cream soda and Sean had a breakfast special with coffee. Our total was $12 or something like that. 

 

 So that was our date! After lunch, we drove home and Sean went to work, and while I wish we had more time to look around, we both enjoyed the time together. I'd like to plan more things like that for us to do. I think it's really easy to just go places rather than make a big deal about a date and exploring. Sean and I love to explore and see new things, so hopefully there will be more outings like this in our future.

I will be spending this weekend trying to get through my wisdom teeth pain (although, hot tea is actually helping a little) and working on some homework for the coming week.
I really can't believe it is November already and while I am usually very eager to put up my Christmas decorations as soon as this month rolls around, this year I am feeling a bit of a slowness which, I have decided, means I should take my time and enjoy things as they are and as they happen. I am looking forward to the end of the semester as well as Christmas break but there is time between then and now that I cannot just skip over and ignore. Maybe I will feel different in a few days and I will feel the push to put up my Christmas things and write off the fall season early for the year, but write now I am happy with November. 

Wednesday Morning Date: Part I

At the beginning of every season, I make a list of things I want to do (for example, "Things to Do This Fall"). I have actually gotten more done this year than I thought, but one thing I have wanted to do every year, and I never got to, is go to the pumpkin patch, particularly this place in Weston, Missouri called the "Big Red Barn". This week is the last week it is open as Halloween is on Friday, so Sean and I decided to get up early and visit. 

 The Big Red Barn is a popular venue for 'rustic' country weddings and field trips (there were two kindergarten classes visiting while we were there). The farm itself is owned by a family whose home actually resides as part of the farm scenery. In the summertime and part of the fall, you can even go and pick their apples and blackberries, and with a small fee they provide hay rides as well as animals you can pet and interact with. The whole estate sits high and overlooks the rolling hills and the surrounding area. Sean and I both agreed during our visit today that if ever we were to own land and build a house in the Kansas City area, it would definitely be around Weston/Leavenworth.
Below is a picture of their blackberry vines and the view. The best thing about this view is obviously the amazing colors. There is a peacefulness about being up there and looking out. I imagined that we had a home that we built on that hill or another like it but taller. And I imagined that the house had a large, wrap-around porch that we could sit out in the cold, early mornings and drink our tea and coffee as we looked out at the valleys and hills below. Maybe one day we will.

The Big Red Barn sells many homemade 'country' items like flavored honey, candies, jams, salsas, and soap. It's always fun to look at those kinds of things. I found this soap they had and it was called Cinnamon Apple Crisp. It smelled delightful and I thought about the happiness of smelling like a pie.

 Sean was quite excited to see the chickens. We've decided that someday when we put our roots somewhere, we'd like to have chickens and a large garden and all that. Perhaps even raise Angora rabbits. But the idea of having chickens is something that delights him most. He pointed out their cuteness and their varying colors and sizes. Who would have thought that he cared at all about chickens?

 They had a great variety of pumpkins and some of them were just bizarre and amazing. My favorite one was the brown, bulbous, moldy-looking one. It reminds me of Elephant Man, isn't that terrible?

 So this was bizarre and enchanting: A tree with pacifiers strung on its branches. For some reason, the mind automatically wanders to, "But where are the babies?!" The only explanation I can think of is that the owners have children and grandchildren and as they've outgrown their pacifiers, they've hung them in this tree to signify...something along the lines of being proud...? That's the only story I've come up with to make it seem less weird. So, y' know...just think about that.

This is just part one to our morning date because honestly, Sean and I only stayed at the Big Red Barn for thirty minutes or so before heading to Leavenworth to look around and have lunch. So look out for that post tomorrow!