Autumn

Running a bit late with this - due to being rather busy. This is the UKS blog prompt for yesterday ...

List your 5 favourite things about this colourful season and I also want to know, now that you're a scrapbooker do you see Autumn with different eyes?

1. Most of all I love the smell of Autumn. There is something about the air quality and that smoky spicy bonfirey smell that just isn’t the same any other time of year. I can’t explain it very well but you know the smell - one day you step outside and the world smells different –richer but somehow colder and crisper and you know Summer has gone and Autumn is here for a brief visit.

2. I love the colours of Autumn. The rich golds, oranges and reds, of the leaves on the trees, of the flowers and berries that are around at this time of the year. And of course the fabulous huge orange pumpkins all ripe and ready and waiting …

3. Halloween is my favourite festival of the year, even beating Christmas (just) and is the pinnacle of Autumn. The dressing up, the trick or treating, parties, carved pumpkins, bats, witches and just plain scaring the heck out of people. I am really thrilled to be in New Orleans for Halloween this year so I can see how it’s really done!

4. Collecting conkers and kicking up the beautifully coloured fallen leaves and hearing them crunch under your feet, especially with the sun shining a fantastic way to spend an hour!

5. Warm socks and hot chocolate (with a nice slug of brandy) are a must at this time of the year. There is nothing like toasty warm feet and toasty warm hands with a steaming mug of hot chocolate to cheer you up and get you through those colder nights. Add to that the scent of a pumpkin spiced candle and I’m in heaven.

Although I am a winter baby I have never been a fan of cold weather, I love it hot hot hot! But I think that Autumn is my favourite season. I used to find it a little depressing, the end of all that lovely warm weather, earlier nights and everything dying. But as I’ve got older I’ve come to appreciate how beautiful and important this season is. Of course Halloween helps, and as a scrapbooker this season offers a million opportunities to use the vibrant orange themed papers that abound, and of course makes you look at everything as a possible photo opportunity!