Happy Friday! We’ve been having just exactly the kind of weather this week that you hope for during this early part of fall and I hope you’ve gotten at least a little bit of that too. 🙂 Let’s catch up.
Do you still do real printed photos or do you just store them digitally? I love real printed photos in beautiful photo albums and for putting in frames around the house, but I’ve been kind of on-and-off with actually getting myself organized enough to print them off over the years. I’ve really gotten into a good routine though over the last little while and I love the ritual of putting my newest photos in the photo album, which inevitably leads to flipping through a few pages of older photos too. And is there anything better than putting a favorite photo in a beautiful new frame? I always get my favorites printed off both in color, as well as in black and white, because those are the ones that I like to display around the house. It’s great to have both and they’re only a few cents each, so why choose? Here’s the system I’ve developed for getting my favorite photos printed: I use these blog posts as my cue! When I add a favorite recent photo to a blog post from something that we’ve been up to, I also save it to file on my laptop marked “Photos to Print Summer ’22”, or whatever season it is. Then at the end of the season, I just upload them all to the photo printing website and order them! Just the process of doing it makes me realize how easy it is to pick a few favorites and save them, and I usually end up doing a few more too, so I have a good collection at the end of the season. 🙂
We’ve just been having the most fall-tastic couple of weeks here! It went from hot summer weather to crisp and chilly in an instant and the timing couldn’t have been better. We made it out to our local pumpkin farm to pick out some amazing pumpkins for our porches, we did the corn maze, we burned all the fall candles, we got cozy and watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving movie, just all. the. things. It has made my heart so happy.
Pictured above: Pie garland | Coffee Table | Black pillow | Bookshelf lights | Ruggable
Jack had his cross country race this week and he did so well! Whew. I can’t believe how fast the kids in his grade are. Jack came in sixth place, but the top eight get a medal, so he was relatively happy. He’d been training for a few weeks before and we were so proud of him for working so hard and just keeping his wits about him on race day when he had to stand out in the cold for over an hour waiting for his turn to run and then stay positive when there were so many other kids just as a fast as he was (or even just a little bit faster). Constantly amazed by this kid!
I did not end up going camping with Chris. With the kids’ activities and me needing to get caught up on work, it just didn’t end up making sense. The weather ended up being magically perfect for those couple of days so he went on his own, as originally planned. I was a little sad to miss out, but happy to hold down the fort and get a little ahead on some work stuff, and Chris suggested that maybe I should book us a little trip doing whatever I’d like for next month, so that’s exactly what I did. 🙂 It’s going to be super fun and I’m excited!
It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada! I love this holiday even though our family is scattered far and wide and we have such a hard time getting everyone together. I know there will definitely be a time again where we can have a house full of family and friends, but right now we’re absolutely in that season of life where it seems like everyone is just pulled in different directions all the time. We have a pretty busy weekend planned and we won’t be at home much, but we did put out all our Thanksgiving decor around the house just to capitalize on all the cozy fall vibes that we can. Today we’re going on a little day trip with Kennedy to tour one of the universities she’s looking at for next year, then we’ll have our big Thanksgiving feast, and we’re definitely going to be spending a day at our local fall fair which is back for the first time in several years. Such a fun Thanksgiving tradition to have that fair to visit every year and we’ll definitely never take it for granted again.
NEWS AND FINDS
-We made these candied pumpkin spice pumpkin seeds last weekend and I basically lived off nothing else on Saturday. We originally got the recipe from Kennedy’s first grade teacher years ago, but they’ve become a bit of a tradition around here. We almost always cheat though and buy the seeds already cleaned and pre-roasted from the store, then just do the fun part ourselves.
-Comment of the week: “Love these farmhouse stands. I have made two. Cheap and easy!”- Fiona on Pinterest. Find the tutorial for making the $10 cake stand stands here: DIY Cake Stand. Perfect for displaying your Thanksgiving pies!
-I’ve been adding to my stack of magazines that I’ve been mentioned in or that our photos have appeared in! A client of ours just had a project we shot for her in the spring featured in a huge spread on a local design magazine, and we just submitted another project to a magazine that’s being printed next summer. It’s amazing how far in advance these magazines work. It’s always fun to see your name in print. 🙂
-I try to add to my decor collections for different holidays every year, just one or two classic pieces, and this year I grabbed this pie garland for Thanksgiving. This thing is an endless source of delight and also a great conversation starter for any neighborhood kids who come through here. So happy I had a moment of silliness and decided to buy it even though it’s completely impractical and probably a little tacky too. You only get to celebrate Thanksgiving for a few weeks a year, so why not go all-in? Currently on the lookout for something equally fun for Halloween.
Pictured Above: Sweater | Jeans (kids size 14 = 24 petite!) | Similar marble table | Ruggable | Cream velvet curtains | Bookshelf light
–This sweater!! I stumbled on this a few weeks ago and just had to try it out. I love this brand because it actually goes all the way down to size XXS, so I’m actually able to find things that fit! This sweater is just perfect because it has a boxy, oversized feeling, while still being the perfect length for my 5’3″ self. Usually I’m drowning in extra fabric and most sweaters are just way too long on me. I was so thrilled I ordered a second in the praline color as well, which is more of a classic camel and less pink than it looks on the website.
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.