fall inspiration

As fall peaks through and swings back to summer all in the same day sometimes... these are the things inspiring me right now.

Whimsical, handmade parties for children...

A digital scrapbooking kit with vintage colors, textures, and photographic elements...

End of summer getaways. Some familar, some new, filled with sunshine and cool breezes...

signs of fall

Have you noticed the little signs that fall is coming?

My favorite season has passed. I'm not sure why summer is my favorite season still. It doesn't hold the same meaning that it used to. I have to go to work instead of lounging about reading books. I get to do laundry at night instead of catching fireflies. And I rarely go around barefoot on the blacktop or splash in puddles. But still, I'm a SUMMER girl.

I never understand why people love fall. It's the harbinger of winter, the dreaded season. It's unpredictable: will the leaves have good color? will it rain every weekend? will it be ice cold for Halloween?

But oh! When fall is good, it is GOOD. Easy, breezy weather. Crunchy leaves. The smell of change in the air... I can get into the possibilities.

So we've started to notice that fall is coming to our home. In order to embrace the spirit of the season, I embraced a pumpkin spice latte and some pumpkin butter on Labor Day weekend. And I took a few leaf pictures, even though they were still mostly green. It's the little things that keep one's spirits up, you know?

falling

I think it was on Sunday after we set the clocks back an hour. JT woke me up insanely early after spending most of the night in our bed kicking me in the head. While I was making coffee I noticed the sun was coming up, causing the yellow tree in the back yard to glow. There was frost, so the leaves were heavy and falling off at a slow, but steady pace. It's such a different feeling than when the wind blows warm, dry leaves from the trees... it's a much more peaceful way to usher in the next season.

For a moment I considered taking the video camera out and setting it up on a tripod to capture those leaves falling to the ground. But I didn't brave the cold (and stench of skunk) to go set it up. So now I'll just have to close my eyes and remember when winter is getting me down.

Hopefully the pictures will help me remember.

yellow leaves

yellow leaves
Originally uploaded by brungrrl

Remember daylight? Daylight was cool. We did fun things when there was daylight after 5:30pm...

fall romance

I got some slouchy calf-high boots to wear with skirts. What do you think? I'm not sure I'm a boots with skirts kind of gal, but it's certainly comfortable and these boots are so warm... I'm going to love them when it's cold out.

The fall color was just phenomenally beautiful last week. I don't know if it was a combination of activities, weather, and trees... but it was such a scenic and romantic time. Monday morning first thing I noticed was the missing colors from the leaves that had fallen. And then there's the lack of sunlight making my mood more somber. It has been an amazing fall for us. I have so many pictures still to process and share with you. In time... there will be plenty of winter for picture play, right?

One of the wonderfully romantic things we did last week was to take a nighttime walk around our neighborhood to see the Halloween decorations. (Sorry, no pics!) JT fell in love with an inflatable kitty he dubbed "Roof Cat". He has talked about the spider webs, witches, elephants, and tractors a lot. Yeah, I saw a witch and a cat, he saw an elephant and he won't let it go. Who am I to argue? He also saw a tractor where I saw none and there was apparently something hiding behind it. Ok, if you say...

Well, today he asked if we could go see Roof Cat, the witch, and the spider webs. I told him they were taken down already. He got tears in his eyes an his lip started to quiver. Oh, the fancy talking I had to do to defuse that puddle of tears.

So now we'll look forward to the excitement that Christmas will bring. It is going to be an amazing, wonderful holiday season.

How about you? What has been lovely in your world? What are you looking forward to?

I'm baaaack

Ok, ok, I get it. It's been too long without blog and photos! I've been working, scrapping, and running around crazy. And maybe I'm so busy working with the photos from the past few months, that I haven't been inspired to take a lot of new ones.

But never fear, we did put the sheep costume on JT November 1 so we could get some more photos. John actually took these three...

Ok, I'll be back on the blog bandwagon, but that's all for now.

I forgot to mention, I didn't make it past the second round of Last Scrapper Standing. I wasn't terribly disappointed. It was the week that John was out of town and JT and I were hanging out. So I was plenty busy otherwise. Plus, I was using that time to dream up the ideas that I'm implementing now for Thanksgiving. I'm also doing a scrappin' project at church this week, so there was some preparation to do for that. The demo layout I did for the church project is pretty cool. I'll share it after the event. Here is round two of Last Scrapper Standing. The challenge was to scrap 7 random facts:


Nana Sparkles surprised us with a visit this evening. We went for a walk. The weather is supposed to turn cooler after tomorrow, so JT and I are soaking it up while we can. We also lose daylight savings time this weekend, so it's gonna be getting dark on us in the evenings.

JT loves admiring the sky and the trees. The trees in our neighborhood are SO colorful. I tried to take some pictures the other day, but I'm not sure that I was able to capture it.

JT's Aunt Jen is coming to visit this weekend... we will probably be doing some crafting. I told her to bring stamps and stuff for Christmas crafting. I don't usually make my own Christmas cards, but I use a TON of homemade gift tags. I've been making gift tags since I was like 10 years old. My grandma was a whiz at making tags from last year's Christmas cards. Hmm, maybe I should post a how-to. It's like the easiest paper-crafting you could do. :-)

Here is a mosaic of fall photo inspiration from around flickr. What is inspiring you these days?