What are your favorite fall things to do? As a family we are big on rituals and traditions and making it a priority to spend time together. The fall season brings a ton of things we build into our regular family calendar to spice things up. From grabbing a pumpkin spice latte, to visiting Walt Disney World for Halloween, here’s all the things we make a point to do every fall. Hopefully it will give you some ideas about what to add to make your fall season a little more magical!
With the end of summer comes Labor Day Weekend and thankfully cooler weather. So what does our Fall lineup of family events look like? We love grabbing pumpkins, trying new foods, and adding in some travel. Here’s all the things we do every fall to make the most of the great weather, scenery, and flavors.
We Visit a Local Festival
We make it a point to visit the St. Rocco’s Italian Festival during Labor Day weekend, mainly to see the guys from our community attempt to climb a very tall, very greasy pole in the hopes of winning money. Strange, yes. But it’s neat to watch, so we grab an Italian ice and ring in the season. There are so many cultural festivals this time of year, chances are there is something awesome happening in your neck of the woods too. Yes, this is a picture of two guys climbing a grease covered telephone pole in hopes of hitting the hanging cheese and meat at the top of the pole.
We Buy a Fall Candle
Thanks to the fall weekend sales at Bath and Body Works we can commit to grabbing at least one new Fall Candle to get the house filled with smells of autumn, without breaking the bank. Our favorite scent is Leaves.
We Take a Mini-Road Trip to See Fall Foliage
If you have the vacation time you can travel farther to see the gorgeous fall foliage happening in late September and October. Near us in Ohio we like New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and all the New England states for a road trip. But we can find pretty leaves closer to home on our self driving Fall Foliage Tour put on by our local parks district just over a weekend. This often includes stops at apple farms and pumpkin patches, and we can always count on someone offering donuts and coffee. An absolute must-do for us each fall.
We Grab a Pumpkin Spice Latte
It’s no secret, we love fall, coffee and Starbucks. So when the opportunity to grab a PSL comes along we take it! We also love the Pumpkin Spice Chai and making the copy cat recipe provided by Twinings for the Pumpkin Chai Tea and Caramel Milkshake!
We Grab Pumpkin Spice Everything
To tell you the truth, we like testing out all the foods spiced up with fall flavors. The pumpkin ice cream, the pumpkin spice waffles, butternut squash pizza… all of it. We love it.
We Host a Pumpkin Carving Party
For a family our size we usually need about 10-14 pumpkins, so it truly does become a Herculean effort to get enough pumpkins for everyone. And when the weather is better we usually move the whole pumpkin carving operation to my moms porch, to keep the mess at a minimum. Make no mistake this party usually also includes a ton of Halloween themed food and sometimes a bonfire with s’mores.
We Visit Walt Disney World for Halloween
We’ve been visiting Walt Disney World every year in the fall since 2013. We’ve written a ton about why we love Disney in the autumn months. We are always sure to grab those Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party tickets, mainly because we cannot get enough of the Boo to you Parade! Need the whole parade in audio? You can covert this video to an mp3, and listen to it on repeat:)
We Watch All Our Favorite Halloween Movies
Whether together or in our own homes, we all have movies we love to watch in the fall. Addams Family, Haunted Mansion, Caspar, and many more! Luckily most of our favorites get put on the television at moms the morning of our family Pumpkin Carving Party and we just keep them going all day long!
We Bake All Our Favorite Fall Treats
Let’s face it, there are certain foods we don’t touch over the spring and summer months. Only when fall arrives are we allowed to indulge in all things pumpkin, apple and spice. Here are some things we make sure to make every fall. Whether we add them to Sunday dinners at our moms or make them for special get togethers and birthdays, these are the dishes that show up the most!
- Pumpkin Pie Bars
- Apple Cider Floats
- Bean Chili with Tortilla Chips and Avocado
- Apple Cake
- Pumpkin Bread
- Zelda Soup
We Add a New Fall Item To Our Wardrobes.
I have a friend in her 30’s who still goes shopping for a new fall wardrobe every fall, like she did when she was in high school. While it definitely breaks the bank, the ritual is absolutely cathartic! Grabbing a new fall shirt, new boots, or a new sweatshirt all add to the feeling that something new is happening. Nothing says Fall like a cozy new flannel shirt or new boots. And frankly nothing beats L.L. Bean for the best flannels and duck boots around.
We Decorate for Fall
We add a fresh wreath to the door, get the fall blanket throws out and spice up the fireplace mantle. Sometimes we’ll craft wreath or a new mantle decoration. This year we added a hot cocoa bar into the mix as well.
We Plan A Thanksgiving Menu
While we typically have the same dishes every Thanksgiving, because tradition is important, we still write up a menu. Because sometimes we decide to add mimosas to the morning breakfast of pie, or homemade jams to the post dinner croissants, or spice up a vegetable side dish. Either way, this is always a production. And since we do it every single fall, it’s on this list. Hours of deliberation will ensue over this one.
All Our Fall Traditions
So there you have it! The list of things we do each and every fall! While we do sometimes feel like we’re shoving a ton in to a very small period of time, this list of things helps get through the arduous work week at our jobs and gives us something to look forward to! While it’s OK to miss these things every once in a while, for us its important to remember that this is how we bring a little extra magic into the season. Otherwise our lives would just consist of a lot of work. We’ll be sharing these lists for each season from now on as a way to keep ourselves honest in making the time to continue to do these things, and to inspire you to add a little more fun to your own fall activities lineup.
We’d love to hear about your fall rituals and traditions. What are we missing? Let us know!
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