{guestpost} top 5 things you should DO in the Fall by Torie

Hey there! I'm Torie and I blog over at Lattes and Love. I'm a 20-something blogger, college student, and coffee lover. On my blog I talk about everything from my book-writing adventures to self-love and body image issues to my rare but sometimes successful DIY attempts (I won Pinterest Project Queen with that one...). You'll pretty much get a dash of just about everything there. I like sharing products and companies I love with my readers and I love to talk style, too. Basically, Lattes and Love is as ever-changing as I am. Stop by and say hi, I'd love to have you. But now onto the good stuff. Thank you so much Sabine for letting me post! 

Fall is here....sort of. The weather in my area can't make up its mind, and after a really hot, dog days kind of summer, I'm ready for cooler weather and colorful trees. I'm ready for all those Hallmark fall moments. To prepare for the (hopefully) impending arrival of fall weather I have put together a list of five of my favorite things to do during this brilliantly cool season. 

1. A trip to the pumpkin patch.

Who doesn't love going to the pumpkin patch all bundled up in a sweater and scarf, watching little kids run around and scare each other in the corn maze? I can't wait to take a hay ride and nurse a cup of warm cider. Will it happen exactly like that and I'll feel like I'm in a movie? No. Will I make my boyfriend shoot the pumpkin launcher at an abandoned bus again and cheer when it breaks out a window? Absolutely. 

2. Make Caramel Apples

A fall tradition that no one should go without, making caramel apples has been high on my list of priorities every year. Thankfully I have friends and housemates who fully support this wish list. We already have our supplies ready to go for this year. I'm probably enjoying a freshly dipped caramel apple as you read this. Try not to be too jealous. I know it might be hard. 

3. Jump in a leaf pile. 

I know what you're thinking. What am I - 12? No, but how dare you try and strip me of the sheer joy and pleasure of jumping in a quality leaf pile. There is no greater feeling than flinging yourself into the air and, just when you would normally land hard on the ground and permanently bruise something, flopping into a pile of crunchy leaves. It is so worth pulling pieces of leaves out of your hair for three days and I will do it until doing so causes me to break a hip. We're talking decades, people. Disappointingly, I don't have a picture of this one. Don't worry, when it happens this year I'll take about a hundred and you can come check it out on my blog. See? I'm such a good advertiser ;). 

4. Cuddle, cuddle, cuddle. 

When the temperature cools down, I don't want to do anything but spend afternoons wrapped up in the boyfriend's arms watching football games and renting movies on those stormy fall nights. These months are a perfect excuse to get a few extra cuddles in before you're both icicles and cuddling does no good. Unfortunately for you, I do have pictures for this one. ;) 

5. Bake a pie. 

I guess it would be fair for you to bake just about anything, but there's something about a pie  that seems especially great in the fall. ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY (yeah, two especiallys, that's some serious business) an apple pie. Yum. Too bad I finished all the apple crisp grandma dropped off the other day. Four girls who love sweets and one container of homemade apple crisp....48 hours was all it took. I'm getting off-topic. What I'm really saying here is... bake me a pie! Please? 

I wanna say thank you again to Sabine for letting me demolish her blog with my crazy today. If you kinda don't mind the crazy, seriously, stop by and say hi! If you like the crazy when you get there, stay awhile! I've got some fun stuff coming up for the second half of September. 

{GuestPost} Design by Shaylee Ann

Hello, lovelies! I'm so thrilled to be guest-posting for Sabine today! She's so sweet to have me do this! :)

Alright, so introductions! I'm Shaylee Ann. I'm nineteen. I'm single. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I blog at Mother {at} Heart. I'm short, quietly loud, and a lover of all things mommy and baby. And that pretty much sums me up!

Today I'm going to tell you all about something of a passion that I have: DESIGN.

I have an immense love for fonts, colour schemes, and HTML tags. When I was about sixteen, I started my first blog. Amo Vita was simple, bright, and boring. I used backgrounds from sites like The Cutest Blog on the Block. Their backgrounds are darling, but the border around the header was ugly, and the lack of personality gave me no desire to ever post. How could I post when it looked so . . . horrid?

So, I rolled up my sleeves and googled everything I could about blog design. I began by using MS PowerPoint as I made the transition from Amo Vita to Simple Elegance,  

I created my own header with my own images and cute fonts, and hello, I was in heaven. After a while I learned how to create my own headers, sidebar titles, post dividers, favicons, and signatures.

They weren't adorable by any means, but they were a step towards becoming a self-proclaimed designer. Once I realized that I could personalize my blog even more, I taught myself how to read basic HTML by watching tutorials on YouTube. I practiced, and practiced, and practiced some more. I gave my blog more makeovers than I can count. Then, once I felt comfortable enough to share my new skills with others, I began Simple {&} Elegant Designs. I designed half a blog before finding the need to close shop, due to a busy life and not enough time to spend designing. I continued to design my personal blog, transitioned from Simple {&} Elegance to Mother {at} Heart,

and by Spring of this year, my designing was taking off. I started out simple, with just fonts and colours, then moved on to create my own graphics and tweak every bit of code I could get my hands on. I went back to using at program that I have tried out before, but hadn't really been converted to, yet - Paint.Net. Three blogs later, I was on my way to starting up my own designing business - Dream 65 Designs - this time sticking with it, and going all out.

Now, I create email stationary from scratch;

I design blogs for friends and fellow bloggers, and I offer my newly-acquired design knowledge to anyone who asks. I love what I do, and I love that I can earn money from doing what I love.

Because I love Sabine’s readers, YOU, I'm offering the first person to read this post, to become a follower of Mother {at} Heart via GFC, and to email me, a free custom email stationary!

Would you like that?

I thought so. ;)

Thanks again, Sabine!! :)

Rope swings, donut holes, and mosquito love

“Today Lindsey will be telling you about her childhood summer vacation. Check out my childhood vacation ”


Trying to remember your favourite part of childhood summer vacation is like trying to remember what your fifth birthday or the first day of school in the fourth grade was like. It's like trying to redevelop a photograph you were in that lays dusty in grandma's big wooden chest at the end of her bed. Most of the details are vague, but there are parts of the photo you remember distinctly -- like certain smells, or particular colours, or maybe the weather that day.

You take all those small pieces and you lay them on the table trying to fit them together to create something a little more whole -- a full memory. And then maybe you notice there are patterns in the pieces. Maybe there are attributes that are reoccurring -- like consistently bright colourful surroundings, upbeat music, or warm fuzzy feelings. This might tell you that the memory you are trying to reconstruct is a good one, a happy one.
All the pieces of half memories I have of my childhood summer vacations are like that. They are happy and fun and adventurous. The main characters are always my cousins and I. We planned out our vacation days meticulously, maybe the way grown-ups plan out their budgets or grocery lists. We woke up every morning with a sense of urgency not wanting to miss the day.

Summer vacation meant weekend camping trips. There is one camp ground, we called it May Field, but real names of camping grounds were a non-important detail in comparison to the perfect location for our tree fort and how to best roast maple leaves over fire. May Field seemed like a world away from home, our own Narnia. It was the best part of every summer weekend where we indulged in camp-fired hot dogs and marshmallows, biked up and down treacherous hills, conquered the waves on the wakeboard, checked out the rope swing....

Oh, the rope swing. May Field had a secret rope swing hidden back in the river. It was old, a little ancient looking. The river was a mean deep green, not like the rest of the lake. I never actually went on the rope swing, I was afraid I might forget to let go at the right time. Plus I was a little kid, I always stood at the end of the rows in class because someone decided all rows of children should be organized shortest to tallest. None of this made me the typical rope-swinging type. But I watched my older brother and his friends swing from it. Dad did it once, too. It was mesmerizing. Like standing in the store front of your favourite downtown shop just wishing you could buy those shoes.

There was a candy store at the end of the camp ground, just past the swimming area and blue slide, over the hump in the road, about where the big log was. Mom and dad would only let us ride our bikes to the log and back, any further was off limits. We'd pretend to be good kids all day so that by the afternoon we could beg mom and dad for spare change we could "trade" at the candy store. Fifty cents could get me a popsicle, a dollar for an ice cream cone, and with two dollars I could buy several smaller treats -- those candies that you dip in a pack of flavoured powder, a ring pop, maybe a pack of nerds and some tootsie rolls.

Big brother and I back in the day. I must’ve started liking those ice cream bars young.

My most favourite treat from the candy store were the donut holes. And if I had enough dollars to get those, I could bring one home for dad because I knew they were his favourite, too (this always helped get an extra 50 cents from dad). Dad is a special character in all my childhood memories. In the memories of summer vacations he was like our team captain along with his role as navigator, tent extraordinair, and pyro-technics master.

He wore another hat, too. A baseball hat. I may have forgotten to pack a swimsuit, but I never forgot to grab our mitts and a softball. Dad was the only one who could play catch with me, sports weren't our family's most beloved pastime when we could BBQ. I loved playing catch with dad because he had a way of making me feel really good. Like if there was a contest for who the very best 12-year-old pitcher in the world was, I could win it with sheer charm alone. If that plan failed, my curve ball would make up for it.
The mosquitoes were always really respectful to everyone's else's skin but mine. In fact, they were nice enough to not even bother other people until the night time. We'd maybe just arrived to the camp ground 20 minutes ago but I already had at least four mosquito bites. Mom used to tell me it's because I had the sweetest skin. By the end of every camping weekend the other parents at the swimming area thought I had chicken pox.

There wasn't enough room in the motor homes for all us kids. So the best cousins and I usually volunteered to sleep in a tent. It gave me a title of flexibility that I hoped my parents caught onto and could pull back out at just the right moment (like maybe when I turned 16 and needed a car), and it made me feel more like a real camper. I slept through the rain a lot and only woke up because dad would come get us from outside. In the mornings I'd always go to Aunt Mel's camp site first, because I knew she was up. Her and some of the other grown-ups woke up early in the mornings to ski on the lake while it was still flat and looked like glass or ice. She always had a fresh pot of coffee and that yummy French Vanilla creme.

Maybe that's why I still like that coffee creme... because it's nostalgic of a childhood I'd relive over and over if I could. I swung from my first rope swing sometime as a teenager, a feat I was I proud of. Years later we went back to May Field and I saw that the candy store was really just a tiny shed, now closed and boarded up. I was bummed for the kids who were there with their families -- they're childhood summer vacation memories won't include the ice-fried popsicles. Neither dad or I play catch any more, but I think because we both realised we were so bad at it. The mosquitoes still love me. And I prefer hotel rooms over tents now.
Even still, my memories of summer vacations are sweet, like the cinnamon sugar on the outside of the donut holes. And my favourite part of childhood summer vacation? All of it.

   And a more recent family vacation in the last 6-7 years… a story for another time.

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Lindsey and Sabine are exchanging blogs for the day as part of the 20-something bloggers blog swap on favourite childhood summer vacations.