Looking Forward to Falling Back

A sweet friend recently posted about the comforts of home and looking forward to autumn: http://prettylittleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-place-like-home.html
and I have to say, while I am not wishing my life away, I cannot help but be really excited by the coming of autumn.

There have been one or two mornings recently where I have flung the window open to wave goodbye to Carl, and there has been the faintest hint of autumn mornings to come. At the local farmers market, bags of home grown apples have started to appear. I have always loved Autumn...the smell of woodsmoke in the air, autumn leaves to scuffle through...I can hardly wait!

I love the back-to-school feeling of September and new pencils that mistily drifts into Autumn and pumpkins, before being rounded off with sparklers and bonfires.

Soon there will be apple day at the local orchard, and I will have mueseli with grated apple for breakfast, and pear juice with ginger to drink. I will bake apple crumbles and fill jar upon jar with gleaming purple blackberry jam. I will take all my softest jumpers from the bottom of my wardrobe and wash them so they are all soft and ready to wear again. This is the year I am going to buy an electric blanket to make our bed snuggly warm. There will be hot water bottles and mugs of cocoa, and rich stews cooked in the slow cooker and studded with dumplings. I will knit a new scarf for chilly mornings, and paint my toenails chocolate brown, or velvety purple.

There will be peppermint-and-nutmeg to spray upon my pillow, and autumn leaves pressed between pages of a book. Bowls of pinecones and shiney conkers will sit in bowls, and I will read 'Mrs Miniver' again, and buy huge bunches of bronze chrysanthemums. I will bake pumpkin cupcakes for halloween, and go on long walks.

To be ready for all this, I am having a really large clear out. I would love to take a week off work and turn out every cupboard at once, but I have done this before and it is exhausting. Instead, every week I am doing a little bit at a time. We are going to buy a new, bigger book case for the living room, and then we will be ready to snuggle up our home for Autumn.