Fall Assignments

I've always loved fall, but my love for the season grew significantly the first fall after I graduated high school when I worked at a local farm stand called Beans & Greens in Gilford, New Hampshire. I will admit I did not love that job while I was there (it was a lot of hard work) but looking back, it was a really fun job to have for a season. The store was a giant old barn on lots of land where we sold fresh procured honey, jams, milk (the chocolate milk was so freaking fresh and good!), baked goods, green beans, tomatoes, corn, apples, fresh berries, and a zillion other vegetables.

While working there I got to help decorate for Halloween, paint pumpkins to be sold in store (I painted things like Snoopy and Woodstock, funny faces, a haunted house, etc.), paint children's faces (and make some sweet tips I might add), organize a children's pumpkin maze, have a jack-o-lantern carving contest, give tours to elementary school children and lead them through a hay maze, decorate with fall flowers (zinnias, chrysanthemums, and others), tie my own pumpkin-hangers with hemp, work the haunted corn maze at night, and many other things. I also acquired a love for country music while working there...that probably had something to do with the same country soundtrack being played on repeat for the entire season. So basically while working there I participated in, what I would label, the epitome of fun fall activities, so I feel like I really know what a fun autumn season can be like.

Fall in New England is locked in a three-way tie with summer and spring for my favorite time of year for (what I feel are) obvious reasons. One less obvious reason maybe is that I think the fall is romantic. Maybe it's just me, but being with your sweetheart in the cool and colorful fall-time has something about it that just makes me feel capricious and adventurous and even more in love with my husband. I think for me it's the fresh start of new school year (even when I'm taking a break this semester) and feeling like Dalin is my hot boyfriend that I get to spend my afternoons with after work and classes. It's even better now (if possible) having a sweet daughter that we get to share our new experiences and adventures with!

Anyway, since fall is mostly about school starting, here are some assignments I've made for myself so that I can get an A+ in fall.

1. Bake an apple pie. Bonus: Do it with apples we picked ourselves. My absolute favorite type of apples apparently don't exist out here in Utah (as I've tried every freaking type at the store,) but two falls ago I had my mom send me a dozen or so of them--fresh-picked at an orchard in New Hampshire--and I plan on begging her to do the same thing this fall. So maybe I'll use those for my pie.

2. Eat a candy apple. This might be a little harder than it seems. I can never find places that sell candy apples, which I much prefer over caramel apples (call me crazy, but I am not a big caramel fan unless it is very fresh). I might just have to make one myself.

3. Find some fresh apple cider and also some hot apple cider. Two of my favorite things in the fall. Sold all over the place in New Hampshire, but there has to be some sold out here somewhere and I will find it.

4. Do something not involving apples...just kidding haha, I just noticed the last three were all about that and thought I should change it up.

4. Watch some corny Halloween movies. I love Halloween. I know it's kind of a creepy, pointless holiday, but I love the things that come with it (aka trick-or-treating, Halloween parties, pumpkin carving, etc.).

5. Go to a Halloween party. Check. We're going to one in Boise in October. Maybe I should revise this to say "Win a prize from the costume contest." We did two years ago and it really got us motivated to make that a regular thing. Our dear sister Cassie and her husband Shay stole the prize from us last year, but never again ;).

6. Decorate for Halloween and then for Thanksgiving. I have decorations (many are crafts from years past) stored away and normally I'm good at getting them out because I get bored when our apartment looks the same month after month, but when I was pregnant that was not a priority (with the exception of Christmas and Easter).

7. Find a place to serve people on Thanksgiving. This is a tradition in my family that I haven't participated in the last two years because I haven't been with my family, but I always loved going to the community center and serving Thanksgiving lunch to the elderly. It made me feel happy inside and extra grateful for my family and health. It also made Thanksgiving dinner later taste even better ;)

8. Own at Fantasy Football. Do I care about football? No. Do I even watch the games? Not really. But I am competitive and I want to beat my sister, Shaina and her husband, Layton in particular. Not sure why I chose to target them, but they both like football and I think it would be satisfying to beat them ;)

9. Go through a corn maze or on a hay ride. I don't know where they have those out here, but there has to be one or the other somewhere and I really want to go. Even if it means Dalin and I have to drive outside our Provo/Orem bubble.

10. See more of our family! I want to visit with Dalin's family as much as possible this fall and I want to try to get my family to come visit me at some point before or around the holidays. I miss them too much otherwise. A year is way too long to go without seeing my dad, mom, or brothers.

11. Roast pumpkin seeds. Love this tradition. Maybe I'll try a new recipe this year. I could try to make them taste like kettle corn or something!

12. Go to the Farmer's Market as much as possible. It's on Thursdays and not only do they sell the best kettle corn (mentioned above) but the produce is fresh and delicious. And I like supporting farmers.

13. Make more blackberry smoothies. This means I need to see more of my brother-in-law, Layton because he makes AMAZING ones. With fresh blackberries. So does his mom. I'm seriously obsessed with them and crave them daily.

14. Make squash. Real squash. My mom tells me it's easy to do year after year, but year after year I fail to make it because I get nervous it won't come out right. But this year, I'm doing it.

15. Read and watch Harry Potter. Definitely a fall activity. And it makes me feel happy and like a teenager again.

16. Drink Butterbeer. I've never had it, but anything Harry Potter is fallish to me, and maybe I can find a recipe if I can't find a place that makes it. Someday Dalin, Tenley, and I will go to Universal Studios and have some in Harry Potter World.

17. Visit Provo Canyon. I want to be outside and take a hike or have a picnic. I just want to smell the fall air and teach my daughter to love nature. Hopefully we will get to see something of the leaves changing color (maybe we'll take another drive through Nebo Loop) and I can pretend I'm home in New England ;)

18. Paint pumpkins. Carving is fun, but it makes such a huge mess once the pumpkin gets old and leaks all over the place.

19. Make fried dough or scones. Warm bread dough and cookie dough are always so comforting. Maybe I'll even make some Mexican buñuelos for Halloween, too.

20. Take lots of photos. I pretty much do this anyway, but now I need to record it for Tenley's sake. So she can look back and see how much we loved her and all the fun things we did as a family.

Do you have other fun fall ideas? 
What are your absolute favorite three things to do in the fall? I want to make this the best fall of our life thus far so don't hesitate to share something you've loved from falls past!

Grammy Hill's Strawberry Jam

Who knew that making your own strawberry jam could be so simple? I'm all about homemade. I always use homemade pie crust, despite the extra work because the taste is seriously so much better. I also love learning to become self-sufficient and self-sustaining. There is something so satisfying in knowing how to do something on your own. Now that I know how easy it is to make jam, I will very likely never buy Smucker's again!

Dalin's wonderful Grammy Hill always makes her own jam, and last weekend in Boise she taught my sister-in-law Shaina and I how it's done.

Ingredients:*
3 1/4 cups strawberries
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 box MCP pectin
1 cup corn syrup
4 1/2 cups sugar

*Note: We used two different recipes--one was found on the box of pectin, the other on the box of MCP pectin. Truthfully, I don't have a preference between the two recipes though the pectin one literally only contained strawberries, sugar, and pectin, so if you don't have corn syrup or lemon juice, that one will work just fine.

Instructions: 
We bought two flats of strawberries. (Basically, that is the equivalent of four large containers--and we didn't even use them all!)

Here is a picture of one flat.

Wash the strawberries with cool water, placing them in a strainer after their top are chopped off. 

Use a chopper preferably to chop the strawberries to the desired consistency. I like my jam to have little strawberry chunks in it so I made sure I did not over blend. 

Picture of box of MCP Pectin. I had no idea what this was until we tried this recipe.

Measure 3 1/4 cup crushed and chopped strawberries into large bowl. Stir in lemon juice. Stir in MCP pectin and let stand for 30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. After 30 minutes, stir in corn syrup. Gradually add sugar, stirring until blended. Stir for an additional 3+ minutes (after all sugar is added) until the sugar is dissolved and no longer grainy.

Have several jars with lids prepared--clean them out with hot water and let dry prior to making jam. Fill containers within half an inch from the top, screw lids on, and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours.

Last step!
Freeze jars for 24 hours, then let thaw one at a time in fridge as needed. Enjoy!

The two jars that are redder than the others are the ones that had thawed in the fridge. The rest are still frozen.

That's it! This particular recipe requires no boiling, though the one with regular pectin does. It is so easy and so useful. With three large containers of strawberries, we made about twenty jars of jam. Shaina took ten and we took ten. Two are now thawed out in our fridge (the rest are sitting in the freezer) and we used some for toast this morning! It tastes AMAZING. Very sweet, but that's how I like my jam. I can't wait to make my own raspberry jam, and I'd even like to try doing a strawberry-rhubarb version.

If you have any questions about this recipe or if you tried it yourself and loved it, let me know by commenting below! 

31 Weeks. BIG Changes

I'm so sorry to my poor neglected blog and to my wonderful readers! Though you are few in number, I really appreciate you taking the time to read and comment when you feel prompted to do so. It makes having a blog so much more interesting. 

Well I am now at 31 weeks. And gosh am I huge...everyone says so. Apparently though, I'm not huge enough for little girl. She has been moving like crazy the last two weeks. I am not sure what changed, but she does not seem to have any more room. How do I know this? Because every moment, she is constantly stretching out and trying to kill her mom. When she does this, particularly when she sticks her little foot or bum right behind my belly button, it is very uncomfortable and I have to push her back in using my hand or she will leave it there. It is cute...for about two seconds...then I have to have her stop because it feels like she is going to push her foot right out of my belly. Babies can't be claustrophobic, right? 

This past weekend, while visiting Dalin's family in Boise, we went to see "Now You See Me" at the movies. It was a pretty cool movie--I wish the ending had supplied more answers, but it was very hard for me to pay attention with baby girl moving the entire time. I'm not kidding--she was stretching and kicking and pushing and hiccuping the whole movie as well as several hours afterward. This made it very hard to focus on the movie, but also made me wonder what changed in the last week to make her so ridiculously active. She's getting bigger though, and I'm guessing she is less comfortable now that she's running out of space. She's also more like a real person to me now because I talk to her every time she starts getting out of control in there. When I'm hungry and she is kicking around, I assume she is hungry too and I tell her, "Don't worry, we're getting some food right now, baby girl." Usually, I use her name though. 

In other news, we had the best time in Boise and it was very hard for us to leave, as it always is. It was weird though saying goodbye to cousins, aunts, and uncles and realizing that the next time we see them--probably in 3 months or so--we'll have a 1-month old baby with us! And she will be a part of our lives forever! So exciting! But so unreal. I can hardly accept that it's happening so quickly.

I hope everyone else had a spectacular (and long, like ours) weekend! 

Has anyone else had a very active baby? What did they turn out like after they were born?

Here is a picture from our little one-night getaway last week. I was 30 weeks pregnant back then...so long ago...ha ha. 

My stomach looks dramatically bigger when I put my hand underneath the bottom of it.