Scenes From A Sunny Autumn Day

Today was a fairly gloomy and chilly day, enough so to make our sun-worshipping chihuahua, Pete, who hates inside days, spend hours pouting and whining to himself as he stared forlornly out the patio door. It made me glad that I kept my promise to myself to stay off of the computer on Saturday and spend time outdoors enjoying the glorious weather. I'm sure we don't have too many more just-right sunny days left in the year, so we got out and made the most of it, starting with a visit to the nearest pumpkin patch.

The pumpkin patch was fun, but it was the sort of place that's only really fun if you either have kids or are a kid. So of course it was filled to the brim with small children, and watching them examine pumpkins and feed animals at the petting zoo was pretty bittersweet, albeit really cute. We found ourselves a couple of just-right pumpkins and managed to restrain ourselves from buying up every decorative gourd in sight, although we did grab a few. My favorite were "fairytale" pumpkins that looked like they were drawn by Disney artists. I would have loved to decorate my front porch with a couple of them, but this place overcharged for everything as it was, and these specialty pumpkins were way out of our budget.

Cinderella's former coach

After the pumpkin patch we hit up Home Depot to stock up on some grilling supplies. Matt's been reading How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques, and he's feeling ready to get his grill on. Which makes me ready to get my eat on, natch.


After we hauled everything home, I took a break and had myself a picnic in the back yard, with Matilda and Pete keeping me company. It turns out that I don't have any problems eating a sandwich and keeping a close eye on Matilda at the same time.

Actual Size

While I waited for Matt to put the grill together, I pulled out my Halloween decorations and added them to the knitted pumpkins I made earlier this month. Since then I've been growing my knitted Halloween collection to include ghosts, a bat and a pair of spiders (ghost pattern here and the spider pattern here. I can't find the bat pattern. Sorry.).

 

Once the house was thoroughly Halloweenified, we put on the movie Halloween while we ate our fill of grilled pork chops and au gratin potatoes. Full and satisfied, we all crawled into bed to cap off the night with some Netflix, where a sleepy Pete finally held still enough to have his picture taken.

As Saturdays go, this was definitely one of the better ones.