Things I Did Last Fall

Mt. Washington
I rediscover my love for Autumn each year when it comes along.  Last year we had a few adventures during the season including my first trip to Mt. Washington (above).  We have plans to go back in a couple weeks so Ryan can do a night hike.... EEEK!

Amanda and I threw an awesome Autumn dinner party, which we are planning on doing again in the next few weeks!

We went to the Roger Williams Pumpkin Spectacular for our third year.  You bet we will be going back for our annual trip this year.

Last year I was able to fly home to my parent's house during their business season at  Nature's Select Orchard and I loved it!  Wish I could have gone this year but we plan on going at a different time this year.  

In the meantime I have to find some orchards or pumpkin patches in New England worth going to.

Stay tuned, I'll let you know what I find and the other adventures this season brings.

xo

Erin

Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Rachael from Tumbleweeds and Tantrums hosted all of us military families that weren't going home for the holiday.  A few weeks before the big event she told me she wanted a sit down meal and wanted my help.  I don't think she will ever know how happy that made me asking for my help!  

We got to work right away.

My mom mailed me all the pumpkins and gourds we used for the day from Nature's Select Orchard.

Rachael got her table inspiration from here.

I made all the gals flower crowns and everyone got a place cards with inspiration from here.

Everthing turned out great!

Thanks Rachael!

Now on to Christmas ;)

xo

Erin

See another Thanksgiving we had together here.

See out Autumn Dinner Party here.

It's Not Winter Yet...

I've been hearing friends and family say they got a jump on Christmas this year and are already done with all of their shopping.  I love Christmas time and all it represents but it seems unnatural to me to start all the celebration before Thanksgiving!  Don't get me wrong, I put up the Christmas decorations and listen to Christmas music 24/7 but only starting the day after Thanksgiving.  I also just want to hang onto Autumn as long as I can because it's also one of my favorite times.  This fall, I was able to go home to my parents orchard to help out and I took a billion pictures.  Here are some more images to keep us all in the Autumn season and don't forget everything you are thankful for!

You can see more of my visit to the orchard this year and more posts about Nature's Select Orchard here.

xo

Erin

Autumn Dinner Party

Amanda from Amanda Louise and I did it again; a dinner party!  I'm so thankful to have her as a friend.  We both love to throw dinner parties and even decided to continue this year with one for each season! 

This go around, we added a kids table equipped with  sparklers, fun straws, 

and markers to draw on the table top.

I mailed myself some decorative gourds from my parent's orchard when

 I was home this fall and we had a bit of an adventure getting those cattails! 

Ryan of course helped out again by cutting our slab of wood for the center piece

 and making creative cinder block heaters to keep us warm on the deck.

It was a fun night but we learned some lessons from this one that we won't repeat next time.  We decided to make a day of it and started cooking in the afternoon and figured we would slowly pull it all together in plenty of time to snap photos while the sun is still out and casually wait for our guests to arrive.  Well, we ended up frantically trying to cook everything, especially Amanda's pumpkin pie, and just felt this time crunch we weren't expecting.  We did pull it all together but with better planning (making the food the night before, or in the morning) we can enjoy the fun part much more (all the decorating and DIY's)!!

Head over to Amanda Louise to see more photos of the night

 and to find out how much we spent on the night!

Stay tuned for our winter dinner party in February!

See our Summer dinner party on the patio here.

See our DIY deck furniture here.

Check out our inspiration for the night here.

xo

Erin

The Life of an Apple at the Orchard

When I was home at my parent's orchard, 

I was able to see some of the journey the apples go through to get costumer ready.

My parents were blessed with an abundance of apples this year so almost everyday I was there, they were picking, polishing and packing their apples.

There is an art to picking the ripe apples that I don't think I've mastered yet.

Once picked the apples go to the antique apple polishing machine.  They are placed on one end of the machine and go through on a conveyor belt and are polished inside with horse hair brushes.

They come out the other side shiny and polished

 and are bagged according to variety for the customers to buy!

See more of my trip to the orchard here.

Don't you just love going to orchards in the fall!?

xo

Erin