What's So Special About a Trip to the Pumpkin Patch?

Every October, we do a traditional visit to the pumpkin patch with Danny’s parents. They only visit about twice a year, so this is a big occasion for us. Last year, Forrest could have easily spent about 2 or 3 hours in the pumpkin patch. This year, he wasn’t quite as obsessed with pumpkins, but he still had a lot of fun.

We went to Lone Pine Farms in Eugene, which is where we go every year. I suspect they did not have a great pumpkin harvest this year; a lot of the pumpkins were rotten, damaged, or just starting to turn already… and the patch has only been open 2 weeks! We still found quite a few great pumpkins, though, so we can’t complain.

It was one of those perfect Fall days that feels absolutely perfect. It wasn’t too hot (mid-60s, a little windy), but it was sunny. The patch was crowded, but not like last year, so crowded that it felt claustrophobic. There was room to take all the photos I wanted of Forrest. It was just a day that felt really perfect and special.

Some of my friends often ask why our trip to the pumpkin patch is such a big deal. Well, first of all, pumpkin patches are really only open for one month a year. October. That’s it! That’s all the pumpkin patch you get! As well, the farm stands attached to pumpkin patches really depend on the business, as they often close for the season on November 1, or shortly after. Visiting local farms during the summer to buy produce, and then buying pumpkins from them instead of from a grocery store, helps me to support a local business.

Second of all, pumpkin patches are fun. There is always a lot to do. Lone Pine even has a whole playground set up so kids can play for a little while as their parents pay or browse the farm stand. There are games. There are hayrides. A cow train. Horses and goats to pet and feed.

It’s a special trip we take every year and one we all look forward to. If you don’t regularly visit a local pumpkin patch, you’re really, really missing out on an opportunity to not just have fun, but support a local business.

What’s your October tradition?

10 Quotes to Help You Fall in Love With Autumn

Autumn quotes, they float around everywhere, don’t they? Some of them we are familiar with (“I’m so glad I live in a world with Octobers”) and some of them are new. I am a quote collector; I’ve kept a spare notebook to write down lines from books, articles, and just about everywhere for years. This is one of my more neurotic tendencies towards collecting, but it’s come in handy! I always have quotes at my disposal for just about everything.

I picked 10 of my favorites quotes that I’ve pinned on Pinterest for this. It’s always nice to have some new Instagram caption ideas, huh?

(And in the means of disclosure, I tried to source all of these images the best I could; if they have a source, it is in the hover caption. If they don’t have a source, it’s blank. However, if you recognize a photo & know its source, please let me a comment to let me know and I’ll add it immediately!)

Source: Fiverr

From Love and Space Dust by David Jones

Source: Katie Daisy

Source: Celeste C Clark

Source: MakeMediaCo

What’s your favorite Fall quote?

Inspiration Sunday: October 14

Welcome to Inspiration Sunday! I used to this posts year-round on my blog, almost 6 years ago, but gradually stopped when I started making my blog less of a diary and more of a, well, blog. However, I like to do them throughout Blogtober because they are a nice break from having to write content that requires a little more thought and research.

You can read all my Inspiration Sunday posts from last Blogtober here. Without further ado, let’s hope right back into Inspiration Sunday!

1. Making Fall Memories

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A post shared by Michelle 💐 (@michellelocke6) on Oct 1, 2018 at 8:10pm PDT

One of my best Fall memories is attending a birthday party for one of my best friend’s at a local pumpkin patch. I remember it being dark when my mom came to get me and I got a goodie bag that was in one of those shiny, mylar bags that was shaped like a witch’s head. The whole ride home I babbled on and on and on to my mom about the pumpkin patch, the games we played. I don’t remember any of it, but I do remember how excited I was (and realistically, as a parent now, how overtired I was).

I think about that every time I take Forrest somewhere to do something new. At 3, he’s starting to form more solid, long-lasting memories. He remembers when he hurt his arm in April, for example. And he remembers our trip to Idaho in July. But he doesn’t remember Christmas last year. It’s funny to think he’s building his lifelong memories of Fall right now and, honestly, as someone who loves Fall… I hope I’m building good ones for him.

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A post shared by Michelle 💐 (@michellelocke6) on Oct 6, 2018 at 9:28pm PDT

2. Really, Really Good Tea

One of my first Blogtober posts was about tea and I actually found two teas I mentioned at the grocery store last week. For the past 3 years, I’ve been on, essentially, a coffee bender. I’m 100% about coffee 100% of the time when I used to be exclusively a tea drinker. However, in the past few weeks, I’ve been drinking more and more and more tea—and turning to it over coffee in the afternoon. Sometimes, you just need to be inspired and honestly, Salted Caramel Chai is a great way to be inspired.

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A post shared by Michelle 💐 (@michellelocke6) on Oct 8, 2018 at 7:15pm PDT

3. Comfort

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A post shared by Michelle 💐 (@michellelocke6) on Sep 24, 2018 at 9:15pm PDT

There is something about Fall that makes me just want to… be comfortable. To wear big sweaters. To wear my favorite wool socks. To drink a lot of warm beverages while watching my favorite, familiar movies. I don’t want to wear high heels or tight clothes. But I’ve realized lately that sometimes I behave in ways that avoid making me uncomfortable. I don’t stretch myself in my writing, because I’m comfortable where I am and I’m “good enough”—to try more makes me uncomfortable. But sometimes, being uncomfortable can be the best thing for us. Fall is a great season, because it reminds us that things change; we can’t live in Summer forever, the leaves have to turn so that we can have Summer again. So as much as Fall makes me want to be comfortable, I’ve been trying to find ways to actively move out of my comfort zone.

Things I Love: October 13

You know what I love most about these posts? Being able to look back and see what was going on in my life this time last year. (You can read all my past Things I Love posts here.) It’s funny to imagine a year from now remembering this week through this very post.

It’s been a big week here! Danny’s parents are visiting, Forrest has had a third cold, and Danny had a day off yesterday. I’ve been working nonstop it feels like, plus I’ve been deep cleaning just about everything in my house. (Is this, perhaps, the Mrs. Hinch effect?) I have a lot of things on my list this week, but as usual, I’ve narrowed my TiLT to just three.

1. Fall Leaves

It’s so funny that some trees are already completely gone over to yellow, orange, or red; some trees are still half-and-half; and some trees, like the gigantic cedar just outside Danny & I’s house, are still completely green! I’m so thankful this year that the changing leaves is less all-at-once and more one-at-a-time. It gives me a little bit more time to enjoy those leaves (and take photos like these ones).

2. Spooky Season Is Here

1) THEY DID THE MONSTER MASH
2) IT WAS A GRAVEYARD SMASH
3) IT CAUGHT IN A FLASH pic.twitter.com/OHzfpqeqH3

— Yung Pazuzu (@RussellFalcon) October 3, 2018

Danny and I have a rule that we don’t watch certain movies outside of October. They are specifically for the run up to Halloween. This includes the Saw series, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Coraline, and a few more. Every night for the past week, we’ve been picking one of our scary movies from our collection and watching it. I don’t mention this much, but Danny is a movie collector, so we have a ton of movies—and I’m really grateful for it this time of year! I love finishing my workout, then going home to cross stitch and watch a classic scary movie!

3. Early Birthday Treats

My birthday is the 20th and I may or may not be turning 30 years old. I’m trying not to actively freak out about it because 30 feels very big. I don’t remember being freaked out by turning 20, but I do sometimes wish I’d been a more teenager-y teenager instead of the anxiety monster I was! Anyway, it’s a big birthday, obviously, and I’m easing myself into it by getting myself a few treats.

And surprise, Danny gave me some early birthday presents this week too. He got me a new deck of Tarot cards, as well as a book on witchcraft that I’ve been wanting. I treated myself to the Too Faced Dew You foundation, as well as a new pot of It Cosmetics Bye Bye Pores, my favorite setting powder of all time. I’ll have a full review of the foundation next month, but gosh, I love it already; it smells like watermelon!

Well, that’s it for this week. What have you been loving?

How to Make Simple Pumpkin Hand Pies

The other day as I left work, I got the idea in my head that I needed—absolutely, positively needed—pumpkin pie. Not just any pumpkin pie, but a hand pie.

Hand pies are, obviously, small, hand held pies. And pumpkin pie, traditionally, is not a great filling. The recipe that most people use for pumpkin pie is quite runny with a lot of egg and cream. The entire drive home from work, I found myself thinking of ways to make pumpkin pie filling without evaporated milk and 5 eggs. There had to be a way, right?

I ended up (of course) searching Pinterest and cobbling together 3 different recipes for pumpkin hand pies. They were super simple to make and even though I tried to keep the portions smile, I made 12 hand pies and have enough filling in my fridge for at least 12-24 more. (That’s… a lot of hand pies.)

(I know this isn’t a great photo. Low light, what can I say?)

Here’s my recipe:

• 2 rolls of refrigerated pie crust (you can make your own, but I had store bought in my fridge)

• 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree

• 1/4 cup Greek yogurt

• 1 egg

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 2 tablespoons maple syrup

• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

• 1/8 teaspoon cloves

• Egg wash (1 egg + water)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Then, start by unrolling your pie crust and rolling it a bit with a rolling pin to flatten it completely and thin it out a bit more. Then, using a pumpkin cookie cutter, cut out pie shells. Arrange half the shells on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. The other half, cut out jack-o-lantern faces or “pumpkin marks”. Put about 1-2 teaspoon of filling (it will depend on the size of your cookie cutter; my pumpkins were quite small, so 1 teaspoon was almost too much!) in the center of the bottom shells, brush with egg wash, then top with the decorated pie shell. Press around the edge with a fork. Repeat until you’re out of dough or filling*. Brush tops with egg wash. Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until browned.

*Extra filling can be stored for about a week or so. I ended up baking mine in muffin cups on top of graham crackers!

You can also sprinkle the tops with cinnamon sugar after brushing with egg wash; I am going to try that next time and see if it makes them just a bit prettier.

That’s it! Simple, easy, delicious hand pies! I am actually going to try doubling the filling recipe and using it in an entire pie, as I like the taste of the filling a lot more than usual pumpkin pie. It is less sickly sweet and more nuanced, thanks to the Greek yogurt and maple syrup. Let me know if you try these—I’d love to know what you’d change to make them better!

Best of Blogtober: Week 1

I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, bringing back Carousels. Remember Carousels?! They were just posts where a blogger shared everything they’d read on other blogs that week—or a selection of their favorites if they were particularly voracious readers.

I wanted to introduce this year a best of Blogtober weekly round up: all my favorite posts from some of my favorite bloggers. I’ll also be tagging them all on Twitter and in my Instagram stories. I’ve also started a Pinterest board for all of my Best of Blogtober bloggers!

Without further ado, here are my favorite Blogtober posts from the first week! (This week, I’m keeping it simple and not adding much of my own filler to this list!)

1. 31 Halloween Movies for People Who Don’t Like Horrors from Indie Rose Psycho

2. We’re the Weirdos Mister from Cardigan Jezebel

3. My Autumn Bucket List from Chloe Lauren

4. How to Have a Hygge Home This Autumn from Emily Aagaard

5. 10 Things You Need to Do in Your First Month Blogging from Quarter Life Quest

6. 5 Tips for an Autumn Night In from Rebel Angel

7. The Little Book of Self-Care for New Mums from Hannah’s Life Diaries

8. Why It Can Be Hard for People to Reach Out from Breakfast At Shelby’s

9. 7 Makeup Tips for Acne Prone Skin from Living in Saturn

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If you have a blog post you would like featured next week, leave it in a comment or send it to me on Twitter!

How I Edit My Photos in Autumn

In 2017, I shared how I took better iPhone photos—and that included my editing process in the app, A Color Story. (You can read that post here.) My process has changed a lot in the last year. I primarily take blog photos with my DLSR these days (iPhone photos just end up too blurry in blog posts, as you can see from my post yesterday) and then use my phone to take photos for Instagram.

I recently started trying to keep a “theme” on Instagram. I had been planning to use a darker, orange-based filter for Autumn since at least late spring (yes, I am embarrassing) and when I finally got to start doing it, I was so excited. My feed looks lovely and I’ve had quite a few people message me asking about my process for editing.

So I thought I’d share a quick blog post about how I edit my photos. The process is pretty simple. Sometimes, it feels like people really complicate their photo editing process. I like to keep mine simple by saving my favorite filters in a sequence in A Color Story; this helps me always get roughly the same look (although sometimes I do adjust things later on).

Let’s start with a basic photo.

This is the process I use for a low-light photo. These are my standard filters; October is from the Seasons pack on A Color Story, Brent Wood is from the Mood pack, and Cashmere is from the Fawn pack. You can see that it increases contrast, adds a moody feel, and increases the warmth of anything that is golden- or warm-toned to begin with (like my skin and table). I will use this for darker photos as well and photos taken in better light. (I didn’t have any photos in need of editing for this example, so I know it’s not the greatest!) This set of filters is how I got the look on most of my photos on Instagram.

However, I do have a secondary set of filters that I use on Instagram specifically for photos where I don’t want my skin tone or Forrest’s skin tone to end up looking pumpkin colored.

In this photo, you see that Forrest’s skin tone was warmed up a little, but not much; the background is darker, the photo is moodier, and in general it looks like it would fit right in on my Instagram. (I love this photo of Fo because he looks like a little alien!) Cashmere, again, is from the Fawn pack; October is from the Seasons pack, and Venice is from the Mood pack. In general, this filter set is just a bit “lighter” on skin tones than my other, making it perfect for selfies.

So that’s it! That’s my process for editing photos for Autumn. Do you switch up your process seasonally?

Here's What I Learned from An Autumn Road Trip (with a Toddler)

I am not a traveller.

I know, I know. It seems like everyone these days talks non stop about traveling. Everyone wants to travel and see the world. And in some ways, I definitely want to see the world. But I don’t like traveling.

I don’t like driving for long periods of time. I don’t like airplanes. I don’t like the stressed, naked feeling of being transitional between two places (home and destination). I don’t like the anxiety it gives me. And now that I have a small human I’m responsible for, I absolutely do not like having to pack up everything I can think of for him (including but not limited to: blankets, toys, any medication he might need, extra food, juice, cups he can use, forks he can use, emergency meals, and milk). The amount he needs has consistently gone down since he was a baby (no more giant container of formula, bottles, bottle wash, sanitizer bags, Pack’n’Play, and more), but it’s still a lot.

And doing it by myself? Excuse me, no thanks.

Well, I did just that on Friday. Danny had gone over to Central Oregon (Sunriver, to be exact) for a teaching conference in Bend. My parents have a cabin in Sunriver, so we had decided it would be a family vacation. But with Forrest in school now, I didn’t want him to miss a day so we planned to go over once he got done with school.

As the days lead up to Friday, I started to seriously panic. Taking a three-hour plus road trip by myself with a toddler? Packing up the whole car on my own? I was nervous. Danny told me he would be fine if I decided not to do it, but I knew he really wanted me to. And of course, Forrest was excited at the prospect of a vacation. Nothing makes him nervous.

As I wrote on Instagram, I didn’t want my anxiety to make Forrest miss out. Yes, it would have been better for me personally to stay at home for the weekend. But Forrest would have missed out on some potential fun and that prospect made me sad.

So I did it. On Friday afternoon, I packed up the car, got Forrest a Happy Meal (no judgement), and drove 3 hours with a potty trained toddler. Here’s everything I learned.

1. It’s probably going to all be fine.

Probably. My biggest worry was that, while going over the pass, Forrest would need to use the bathroom. Since he’s relatively newly potty trained (it’s been about 3 or 4 months), when he has to go, he usually has to go immediately. This is fairly normal for preschool age kids. However, while driving across a mountain pass, the last thing I wanted to do I was pull over and break out the little potty we keep in the car. However, my anxiety was for nothing: we stopped at a rest area before the pass and he was fine all the way until we got to the cabin.

So yeah, the thing you worry about? It’s probably going to be fine. (Please remember to tell me this next time I go on a real vacation aka go flying.)

2. It’s ok to do things you normally wouldn’t (or that you would).

I had all these plans for things Fo and I would do. Museums. Outdoor parks. Everything. I wanted him to have as much fun as possible while we were on our own mini-trip, especially as Danny was still in a conference on Saturday. However, we ended up going for a nice long walk to get coffee and a treat, then went shopping and spent time relaxing in the cabin. I felt bad that we hadn’t done any of the exciting stuff I had planned, but we did have a nice lunch out together (my first time taking him to a real restaurant on my own) and he really has fun no matter what.

3. The weather won’t cooperate, but that’s fine.

Part of the reason we didn’t do all the fun stuff I had planned? It was raining! I think of Central Oregon as very cold and relatively dry. But it had been raining at home and that rain followed us on vacation. So, the museum I wanted to go to? Mostly outdoors. The walking trails? Off limits thanks to the puddles and downpour. We made it for our walk in the morning, but that was about it. We had fun jumping in puddles outside the cabin, then retreating inside to warm up and go pick up Danny from the conference. The weather wasn’t really what I had planned on, but that’s Autumn for you, really!

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This is a much more personal post than I usually post for Blogtober, but I thought I’d try something different! I had so much fun over the weekend (even when Forrest pretended to have a stomach ache to get us to leave dinner!) and I tried something outside of my routine—and it was all fine! What’s something you are challenging yourself to try this Fall?