Fall Magic

by Jill Burgoyne

I love October. When the sun sleeps past 5:00am, when the temperature starts to settle under 100 degrees, and slowly creeps down to near-jacket weather. I love the pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and decorations.

Early in the morning, when the house is still quiet, I open the doors to invite the cool of the morning and I snuggle up  in my favorite blanket to breathe in the air of a new day.

Baking in my kitchen is no longer a fire hazard, so homemade breads and random kitchen experiments begin to emerge. Cooking is funner somehow. Steamy soups and simmering casseroles replace summer salads.

Fun fall and Halloween-themed crafts find their way to our table. There are lots of patterns for various crafts online. Especially coloring pages. And my children run around in their partially-finished Halloween costumes. (Emery has asked me a hundred times what sound a giraffe makes. They bleat, which seems to her a sorry response to her little sister's tiger-roar. She informed me that baby giraffes roar sometimes.)

Various pumpkin patches offer discounts on Groupon and some of them offer free admission on specific nights for fully-costumed parties. I love neighborhood Halloween Carnivals and trunk-or-treats. My children like to take walks around our neighborhood to point out their favorite yard-decorations.

We have a tradition in our house to roast pumpkin seeds as we are carving our Halloween pumpkin. (We only have one for the whole family until our children get older.)

On Halloween night, I make a hearty dinner-in-a-pumpkin before we go trick-or-treating. The thought of the adventures of October fill our house with magic.