How We Do Fall

Today I'm linking up with Shay and Erika for their monthly series, "How We... Wednesdays"!



This month's topic is "How We Do Fall".

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year!  I love all the pumpkin hype, the crisp, cooler weather, the trees, smells, everything.  I have loved blogging about fall in the past several years which you can find here, here, here, here, here and here. 

So, how do we do fall? 

We always go to the pumpkin patch.  We typically grow our own pumpkins, but the girls insist on going every year haha!  We have 2 local pumpkin patch/apple orchards that have their festivals on the same weekend.  They both have food/kid stuff and fun little boutique stuff to buy.

Love this pic of them when they were basically babies...



Gimme all the fall scented candles!  I typically stay with soy based candles since they burn cleaner, but I found this one at Hobby Lobby and I couldn't resist, it smells HEAVENLY!!



We also love to go for walks in the woods.  We have woods behind our house that we love to go explore, or we go to St.Johns which is about 10 minutes from our house, it's just gorgeous out there!





Brad and Alayna start duck hunting the end of September.  She LOVES going with him, even though it requires her to get up by 3:30-4:00.  Thankfully she is easily persuaded by Little Debbie Snack Cakes.



We have a large apple tree in our front yard that produces the worlds smallest crab apples.  Even though it takes forever to peel the little buggers, I still use them.  I canned 8 quarts of apple pie filling this year, and we love to make apple crisp, apple pie and glazed apple pie squares.





And of course it is not fall unless you rake all the leaves and jump in them! 



I am looking forward to the cooler temps and the time changing (I know, I know!!).  I like having cozy evenings at home.  I hope you enjoyed a little peak into how we do Fall!!

Back to School

Well, we have (almost) survived the first week of back to school!  It has also been a cool week, in the 70's and lower 50's in the morning.  I LOVE IT!!  Oh I am so ready for everything fall...

Labor day weekend we were home and I got SO MUCH DONE!   Saturday I cleaned out our storage room and reorganized it.  Unreal how much room we have in there now, haha.  I think I took 8 bags of stuff to Goodwill and threw away 3 bags of broken things.  Saturday night we had Brad's brother and his family over for supper.  We grilled, had some drinks and played cards.

Sunday was just more cleaning the house and getting laundry done.  Sunday around suppertime we headed over to the farm for the annual Labor Day weekend fish fry and campfire.  Fish was yummy and everyone brought sides/desserts.  We ate waaaay too much food!

It was a beautiful night for a campfire!

Labor Day we alsways go back to the farm for a big breakfast, Brad made an egg bake and there were caramel rolls, sausages, hashbrowns and fruit.

We got home around 9:30 and I had an itch to clean out the garage.  I literally worked on from 9:30-7:00!  It is so clean now!  Brad and the girls helped out too.  Feels so good to have the house organized and cleaned out before winter.  When the girls were younger, Monday night was "Spa Le Zimm" which was a girls only spa night.  The girls would take a bubble bath in our jacuzzi tub and we would do face masks and manis/pedis.  I would make mini cinn/sugar sandwiches and they would have a kiddie cocktail.  They looked forward to it every year!  Unfortunately the two bigs have practice in the evening and trying to find a night that everyone was home was next to impossible.

First day of school pics!  Rachel: Semior Emma : Sophomore and Alayna: 7th Grade.  Brad made everyone a hot breakfast, eggs, omelets or breakfast sandwiches with hashbrowns.

I always like to do a little back to school decor...

I couldn't resist this cute photo of them back in 2011!

And I love this quote, "Life Without Jesus is Like a Broken Pencil, There's No Point".

I got each of them a little back to school bag with travel size lotions, deoderant, face masks and bath bombs.

I plan on enjoying every little bit of this year with Rachel, can't believe this is her last year!!!