Fall Makes Me Happy

I love fall.  I love fall decorations, fall smells, fall weather.

Leaf Wreath Tutorial

 

This is a super simple wreath to make, and pretty cheap too!  All you have to buy is a foam wreath form and some sewing pins if you don't have those on hand.  It's a great way to bring the beautiful changing leaves of fall into your home.

Materials needed:
foam wreath form
lot of leaves (pick your favorite colors and shape!)
flat head sewing pins
small piece of ribbon

First gather your leaves.  You can use fake leaves if you want, or if you don't have any changing trees near by, but real leaves are so pretty.  And free!  I got a wide range of color for my wreath, but any color combination will work.

Next, dry your leaves.  Every tutorial I read online about drying leaves said to leave them pressed in books for a week, but I wanted my leaves to have a little bend left in them so I only dried them for 2 days.  I didn't want any leaves breaking as I pinned them and bent them around my wreath form.

Separate your leaves by color as you take the pressed leaves out of their books.  This makes it easier when you pin the leaves onto the leaf form to create a pattern, or a gradual change in color on the wreath.

Use flat head sewing pins and pin away!  Make sure to hide the pins of the previous leaves you pinned as you add more leaves.  A lot of my leaves only needed one pin, but some leaves on the edges of the foam needed several to stay down and curve with the foam.
Loop a piece of ribbon and pin it to the back of the foam and you're done!

Cascade Springs

On Sunday Jensen, Suz, Jordan, and I drove up past Sundance and toward Midway to enjoy the weather and changing leaves.  We stopped at Cascade Springs to walk around.  Suz and I decided to make a wreath of the colorful leaves, and got a little excited picking them.  I ended up picking almost twice as many as I needed for my wreath because I thought I wouldn't have enough. oops

This pictures is for Jensen. He sure loves his Jeep.

Jensen found the perfect "Canada" leaf and carried it around with him while we were walking around. He wouldn't even give it to me to use on my wreath because he wanted to save it for himself. :)

Have I mentioned yet that fall is my favorite?

Autumn has Arrived!

Happy first day of fall!  It's officially here and I'm so excited! Now I just wish the weather would cooperate and feel like fall too.  Here's a few things I hope to do before all the leaves are gone and winter is here.

- get pumpkins from a patch and carve them
- go to a corn maze

- have friends over for Canadian Thanksgiving

- take photos in an apple orchard

- make lots of soup (taco soup, chicken rice soup, ham and potato soup, corn chowder...)

- make and eat pumpkin everything! bread, milkshakes, pie, cookies

- go up the canyon as often as possible to see all the beautiful leaves

- burn my apple cider candle

What's on your fall to do list?

A Night at the Fair

Last week Jensen and I went to the Utah State Fair with Suz and Jordan.  Jensen and I went to this fair four years ago on our very first date.  It's crazy to me that we first met and started dating four years ago!

  

Pigs!

Head-butting goats

A fair bubble!

Huge cow! 

Tiny baby cow! She was only a week old.

The fair had a "side show" with strange animals and things like a two headed cat, Siamese turtle, and a six legged cow.  It was three dollars to go in and Jensen and I are too cheap so we didn't get to see any of the strange animals in person.  Suz and Jordan went inside and said it was almost worth $3, but there was a lot of dead animals in jars of formaldehyde

My first ever dippin dots. Totally worth the $4 for a tiny bowl of ice cream. Yum!

mmm...I love the fair

Nat's Wedding

One of my best friends Natania got married in the Manti Temple back in July.  It was a beautiful wedding and a beautiful day.  I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to see her get married.

Natania and Mckay

I love Nat's family! I went down to visit them in Flagstaff with Natania a few summers ago, and I get to see them almost every time they come up to Utah.  Even though I don't see them very often I still feel like her mom cares for me like a member of her family.

I met all of these girls my freshman year at BYU.  We all lived together our sophomore year, and most of us the year after and some summers in between.  (Except Brooke who got married the summer after our sophomore year).  One of our roommates Kiki couldn't be there because she moved back home to Texas last year after she graduated.

Brooke, me, Natania, Carron, Allison.

Family Photos

Prepare yourself for a ton of pictures! Here's our family photos from our trip to Canada.  We used a camera remote to take the ones of everyone, Dena took the pictures of Jensen and me, and I took the rest.  I'm pretty proud of how they turned out.  I was kind of nervous taking them.