I love Fall!

I love Fall more and more every year. I'm so grateful for the transition from summer to winter and for the holidays it brings. And now that we have Lily and her birthday to start off those holidays it makes it more fun. Plus, I'm home now to make some of those delicious treats that include pumpkins and apples. 

Here are a couple pictures of the beautiful fall in Norway.

I was so excited when I heard there was a pumpkin patch in Stavanger. Ever since Lily was born I've been dying to make it to a pumpkin patch and to take some pictures of her there. Plus I found out that the Americans in my ward like this specific pumpkin patch because it has "cooking pumpkins". Just like most things around here, it's cheaper to make it homemade. I had never even thought about making homemade pumpkin puree before. They told me it was easy so I planned to do this with the pumpkins we found.

It was a little out of bus range so a girl in our ward offered to pick me up from the bus stop with her children and then drive me back home after.

The pumpkin patch was amazing. The weather was not. It's behind a cute house right by the ocean with a beautiful field behind it. But it was SO windy that Lily was basically getting blown over the whole time. 

She helped pick out a couple pumpkins and then was done with the activity. Especially if I pulled out the camera, ha ha. This was her most of the time :)

There were also some carrots you could pick which I thought was fun, and would be fun for Lily, but she preferred watching while holding on to my leg so as not to fall over.

We made it out of the field and I started taking quite a few pictures of Lily with the pumpkins and she cooperated for awhile. I took our nice camera, even though I'm intimated by it because I've never learned how to use it. When I got home and put her down for her nap I was so excited to see my highly anticipated pumpkin patch pictures.... only to find out that 90% of them were overexposed. AHHHH! In the craziness of it all and the hurrying I hadn't even checked the pictures I was taking. That's probably the first lesson in photography. LOOK AT THE PICTURE TO MAKE SURE IT WORKED. It's a little embarrassing how sad I was. I threw a little tantrum trying to edit the pictures and frantically texted Barrett telling him how stupid I was and that he needed to come fix them. But to no avail, they were that overexposed that it was irreparable. :_( Barrett came home and gave me my first photography lesson and I am doing better now and have been trying to practice to avoid another disaster. So maybe next year I'll get the pumpkin patch pictures I've always imagined to have with Lily? At least I was calm by the time everyone else started posting their amazing, very well taken pumpkin patch pictures, ha ha.

But we did end up with these fun pumpkins and although Lily didn't like the experience, she was so excited about "Lily's pumpkin" and "Mommy's pumpkin" and "Daddy's pumpkin". She carried her little one around for a couple days. 

They came in handy for her birthday party. And at least the cooking of the pumpkins was a huge contrasting success compared to the pumpkin patch pictures. I decided to make these pumpkin cookies I got the recipe for last year. Here's the process.

Cut the pumpkin into fourths, which is no easy task. Then cook them in the oven for about an hour.

 The pumpkin comes off really easily from the skin with a spoon.

 Blend it up and you're finished. Surprisingly easy. And it tasted SO much better than canned pumpkin.

 The finished product. Way more moist, not as strong of a pumpkin taste, and everyone raved over them. I think that we'll be our new Fall tradition, to puree our own pumpkin for the cookies and any other pumpkin baking we want to do. I still have plenty left to try out pumpkin bread and pumpkin pancakes. Mmmm.

Now that Halloween is far past and Thanksgiving is approaching I've been trying to focus a little more on gratitude. I'd like to start adding our own family traditions in now that we are away from our families and on our own to celebrate. But I was reading a blog recently about how to incorporate gratitude and family traditions into this time of year and came across a link to this great documentary photography project (book) by James Mollison, called Where Children Sleep. He travelled the world and took pictures of children and their bedrooms from all different countries, ethnic backgrounds, incomes, family status, etc. It really touched me and filled me with gratitude for ALL the blessings I enjoy. My life has been so easy compared to a lot of people out there who fight everyday to meet their basic needs. It was a good reminder. Anyway, I thought I would share the link. Click here. Happy Fall!