If you’ve been following along on Instagram, we spent a quick 36 hours in Rocky Mountain National Park last weekend. On Saturday we took an ambitious hike – click through to see more photos and details.
Happy Monday! I had originally planned on sharing my gear essentials for rainy days, but I realized it’s REI dividend season, which means 20% off one full-priced item and 20% off one REI garage sale item until April 9th! We aren’t sponsored or affiliated with REI in any way, but we do love supporting the store and using the great gear we buy there. With that in mind, I thought it was a good time to run through all my essential pieces of REI gear incase you were looking for something to spend that dividend on.
If you’re not one of REI’s 17 million members, you should seriously consider it. It’s a one time fee of $20 that will repay itself time and time again. Below are links to my favorite items and what I use them for. Of course, I own so many more items than this, but below are my ultimates, pieces I use pretty much every week and never leave home for an international trip without. Let’s start from the feet up..
Happy last day of the first month 🙂 Hopefully, 2018 came about gently, without too much hesitation. I find I can become overwhelmed at the beginning of each year. So many possibilities and dreams and wants, where to start, ya know? I only had a few days like that this January, but each time I felt overwhelmed I turned to my meditation practice. Meditation allows me to put some space in between my thoughts and emotions and myself. It’s my mental health medicine and I cannot thrive without it. If you’d like to join, I send out a Meditative Monday email each week with a guided meditation. Sign up here. But, back to the images…
You can upload one or all of these photos to use as your desktop background or even as phone and tablet wallpapers. Katie captured all of these in Colorado this past month. To use the images, simply right-click on the photo, save it, and set it as your background. Enjoy!
We’re only five days into December, and I feel like it’s been here for ever. It must be the Christmas invasion.
December can create such a mix of emotions in us. There’s the obvious joy and celebration of the holidays, but there’s also the hustle and bustle leading up to Christmas and New Years. There’s the cozy feeling of evenings in front of the fire, but also the pent up energy and angst from short days and not enough time spent outside.
Just reading that probably gave someone the shivers. Sorry.
Gah!
I’ve been sitting here for 10 minutes trying to start this post. Sarah made an attempt yesterday, but stalled.
We had a little chat, and I know exactly what our problem is – our minds are going in a million different directions. I find that it often happens at this time of year. We’re trying our best to live in the moment, to enjoy these beautifully crisp fall days, plan a delicious meal with fresh farm share produce, and knit by the fire in the evenings with a mug of cider.
BUT!
But then our mind starts to wonder to the holidays. We start scheming up the gifts that we want to make and special traditions that we want to continue. And since we’re spending so much time inside, let’s think about redecorating that corner of the house that’s been ignored. Then we’re stuck in the Pinterest hole… and well, GAH!
The best thing that I can do for myself is to always make sure that I’m doing *something*. I may chip away at gifts one day, do a bit of cleaning and rearranging another, write plenty of lists to keep my thoughts organized, and bit by bit a clear signal of where life is going rises above the noise.
If your November is off to the same start as ours, I hope you’ll take some time today to get mentally organized and set your intentions for your day/week/month. We love to start by looking back at previous Novembers as we think about how to make the most of the month ahead.
Today I noticed that this is our forth November writing Live Seasoned! You can see what we were talking about during 2014 and 2015 by clicking those links.
In 2016 I think we were feeling the weight of the political climate (I’m sorry to even bring it up!). We didn’t write a Welcome post for the month and after the crazy presidential election, we took the rest of the month off! A clear sign that we needed to turn our energy inwards, comforting and quieting our minds and souls. A year later, I still can’t believe the craziness that has unfolded over the past year, but the elections this past Tuesday have me feeling so hopeful.
November is when we first opened our Etsy shop. Which reminds me that we have to post a few of our most recent potions (they are the best yet!). Look for those soon.
I have to admit that I’m a sucker for the long dark evenings in the house. We’re all about hygge. For me it means an afghan on every couch, cozy slippers, candles, and a warm toddy in my hand. I’m also looking forward to:
As much as we love our time inside, it’s also good to get out and celebrate the season with others. We love visiting markets at this time of year to pick up gifts for the holidays and to get inspired with ideas for future craft and food projects.
If there’s a festival or craft market that you love – leave a note in the comments!
Welcome, November. Today we’re sharing our joint view. While Katie explored the mountains of Colorado, I biked the streets and swam the cenotes in Mexico. You can upload one or all of these photos to use as your desktop background or even as phone and tablet wallpapers. Simply click on the download link below each photo and save the image. Enjoy!
Today we’re sharing some photographs and info about our hike to the top of Deer Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park. If you want even more info when planning a visit, leave us a comment, check out this post about winter camping in the park, or pick up this hiking guide (it’s super detailed and our favorite).
If you’ve been following the blog or our Instgram feed for any length of time, then you know that we love a good hike. Just put us outside with a good pair of boots, a snack, and a hat, and we are ready to go!
Some of my most memorable hikes have happened in the fall. Of course, the brisk weather and colorful foliage make for beautiful memories. But there’s also something about the shorter days anticipation of a long, cold winter indoors that makes the need to get outside even more urgent at this time of year.
Happy October, friends. Autumn is here and so is the full harvest moon! Set aside some time today to gaze up at that big astronomical body. If you’re familiar with monthly moon names, you may be wondering why it’s the harvest moon instead of the hunter moon, which normally falls in October. The harvest moon isn’t confined to September. It is actually the full moon that falls after the autumn equinox, which we celebrated on September 22. The harvest moon fell in October in 2009 and will land there again in 2020, so it’s rare, but definitely not unheard of.
What else is happening this month? As always, but possibly more apparent this month, are all the changes taking place in the woods. I always think of October outdoors as a month of transition. We experience the leaves, nuts, and seeds falling from trees and traveling in the breeze. Mushrooms are springing up after the first fall rains, while flowers are both blooming and going to seed. Bees are still buzzing (and stinging me), while squirrels and chipmunks scurry around securing their own harvest.
This is quite possibly the most comfortable month to be out and about in the woods. Sunshine, cool breezes and barely any bugs make every hike a great one. I’m spending the week working in Asheville, North Carolina, an area that absolutely explodes with leaf peepers, especially on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Tens of thousands of people flock to western North Carolina during October and November to watch the autumn colors slowly emerge starting with higher elevations and trickling down the mountainsides. The elevation range in the Great Smokey Mountains basically ensures that fall color will stick around for at least three weeks each year. There are websites dedicated to tracking the changing fall foliage and it’s impossible to miss the influx of visitors as traffic can be bumper to bumper on the blue ridge and hotel rooms impossible to find.
It’s that time of year when farmer’s markets in my area transition from two days per week to one. I know, I’m spoiled, but sometimes it’s hard to wake up on a Saturday and when that’s the case, what’s a girl to do? I had to make a quiche this week with store-bought mushrooms, WTF. Joking aside though, I love the market at this time of year. The weather is sunny, but the air is cool. I can sip on cider or tea while strolling by each vendor as I slowly make recipe plans and ingredient decisions. In contrast, during the summer, I’m gulping down iced coffee and wanting to put down my bags, take off my tank top, and pass out from heat exhaustion. No chill.
This is the time of year when those crops that require the full summer growing season are finally ready for harvest. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I’m still seeing watermelon and tomatoes along with elderberries, grapes, peppers, and eggplants. Apples, okra, corn, potatoes, pumpkin, and other winter squash are abound as well.
The coolest thing at my market right now though? Soup subscriptions. How freaking neat. Short Winter Soups, a company established by Tova Boehm in 2010, provides each subscriber with a quart of soup every week for eight weeks. The soup ingredients are sourced locally from over a dozen farms. I love this idea and the thought of Tova pouring stirring her heart and soul into delicious soup recipes each week. Growing up, our mom made a lot of soup. Momma Schu’s soups were a staple during family gatherings, soccer games, snowstorms and weekends on the farm. Soccer concession stand fans would actually refer to her as the soup queen. All hail the soup queens among us.
If you’re not feeling the farmer’s market, October is the month to head straight to the fields. Hayrides and pick-your-own patches are some of my fondest fall memories, not just as a kid, but up until a few years ago too. I feel like I’ve traveled the past few falls because I can’t remember the last time I carved a pumpkin or balanced an apple on my head (holy shit that was seven years ago), what a shame! If you need any inspiration for your fall harvest, we have a full pumpkin archive, with a few main dish recipes as well as an apple archive that includes more alcoholic drinks than you could make all weekend. I dare ya.
How do we hang on to enchanting autumn as long as possible? Take some photos! The time lapse of our apple antics is still one of my favorite photo sessions with the Schu sisters. I can still remember how much we giggled when those were taken seven years ago! I like to balance out the silly with the serious though. I think the film portrait of our sister Kristin, shown above, captures her spirit perfectly. Add that it’s taken on the road that leads to our family farm and you have an iconic photo that will surely be shared for generations. As each season passes, I find it more and more important to take photos of family and friends and what better backdrop than a carpet of freshly fallen leaves? Here’s a tutorial on photographing fall and photographing landscapes in general. Even if you fail to preserve fall on film, I hope you capture it in your heart. Cheesy?! IDGAF.
Ask most photographers what they truly want to shoot and the answer is almost always landscape and travel photography. If there was a viable way to make a living from nature photography, we would all be doing it. It’s not impossible, but it usually comes with the goal of selling something, a product, a place, an agenda, it’s never just a nature shot. That doesn’t stop us from taking our cameras to the woods though. There are landscape shots and then there are landscape shots. Here are a few tips to elevate your game.