Happy 1st Saturday in October! We are finally seeing much cooler weather in Phoenix and fall tree colors in the mountains. Hard to believe last Saturday I was on a ship in the Bahamas, with hot and humid conditions. It’s nice to finally get into the fall mood and today, we will be pumpkin hunting at Willis Family Farm in Snowflake, Arizona. Welcome to Saturday Meanderings where we chat about all good things this week.

Fall Styling Workshop

This is the last opportunity to sign up for the Fall to Holiday Styling Workshop, being held at our home on two dates, October 20 and October 21st. We have only a very few spots left and would love for you to join us. I am so excited to be sharing our home and the expertise of Chloe Crabtree, from Celebrate and Decorate. We will be closing registration soon, so come and be part of a lovely day of learning, friendship and delicious food. For more information, click here.

Autumn in the Mountains

Typically when you think of Arizona, hot weather and desert come to mind. But we have beautiful mountains and lakes here. Being born and raised in Connecticut, I have such fond memories of the gorgeous fall colors in New England. School, back then, started in September which meant new sweaters and shoes.

It is tradition now that we come up to the mountains the first weeks of October to experience a bit of fall. Though our leaf peeping is not as colorful, we do have lots of yellows, rust and browns. The skies are a deep blue and the air is crisp and clean on sunny days; moody and dark when it rains.

It is also a time where we haul all our geraniums back to the Valley and let them enjoy winter is a milder climate. Every year it seems a bit more daunting as the geraniums are huge and the pots seem heavier….must be us getting older!

With such a large variety of pumpkins and gourds, Willis Family Farm is our #1 choice for pick your own. I believe they are open all of October and you can get so many pumpkins at a price far less than the local grocery store chain. Not only does the farm sell pumpkins, but they have many fall activities for families such as a corn maze and a train ride.

Have you Been on a Cruise?

The very first cruise I ever went on I won at a charity event with the Phoenix Symphony back in 2001. For a $100 raffle ticket, it was for a 10-day trans-Atlantic cruise on the Queen Elizabeth II with Cunard Cruise Lines, all expenses paid. It was right after 9/11 and the world felt like a scary place. But it was practically free and after securing appropriate childcare, my husband and I flew to London and then took the Orient Express to Southhampton, where we boarded the ship.

Quite honestly, I hadn’t given much thought to going on a cruise, being busy with 3 small children and a major house renovation. Since then we have taken only one other cruise with the entire family, touring the Baltic Sea in 2008. The QE II cruise was quite elegant, formal with most passengers on board were adults.

Holland America did an excellent job touring the fjords and many countries in the Baltic. The children still share their fun stories from that trip.

Last week I experience my first 3-day Disney cruise to the Bahamas with dear friends. My, ships have certainly improved and gotten bigger in 15 years! The Disney ship, The Wish is a new one and beautifully appointed. I didn’t have any feelings of claustrophobia as the halls are wide and brightly lit. Since COVID, Disney does an excellent job of providing sinks at the entrances of each restaurant and require each passenger to wash their hands prior to entering.

Of course, the best part of the trip was spending it with fabulous girlfriends. I hope to write more about this in detail in the future, as I am still processing all the information about this cruise, our destinations and amenities.

Making Quick Breads

Especially in October, everywhere you go you see pumpkin flavored items~from lattes to breads. There are so many good pumpkin quick bread mixes available so it isn’t necessary to make one from scratch.

My favorite go-to pumpkin muffin and bread mix is from Trader Joes. However, there are so many on the market. King Arthur has a gluten-free one here.

Though I haven’t tried this, I always have good luck with Krusteaz products. You can find this one online here.

Adding More Flavor and Texture to Your Bread

I rarely just use the mix and bake. Have fun experimenting with adding chocolate chips, nuts, dates, dried fruit such as cranberries and raisins. Occasionally I will make a mixture of cream cheese and sweetener (sugar, honey, agave) and swirl it through the bread. Be creative!

Use a Pretty Pan

If you bake it in a pretty pan, well, it just looks that much more impressive.

I don’t recall where I bought this pan as it was many years ago. But here is Harvest Bounty loaf pan that is similar.

If you are seeking mini loaves, this one has a harvest theme as well.

Happy Baking! I am so ready for those wonderful smells in the kitchen. What an easy and perfect recipe with an afternoon cup of tea.

From the Internet

Rachel from The Ponds Farmhouse is always so creative and full of ideas. Decorating for the fall doesn’t need to be expensive. Her post, Autumn Decor with Elements from Nature, is filled with foraging from nature and how to display in your home.

Fall Bucket List

Do you have a Fall Bucket list? Elizabeth from Pinecones and Acorns shares 25 ways to make this fall extra special. Personally, I have never made a Fall bucket list, but I am inspired by her post. You can see it here.

Well that’s a wrap for our first Saturday Meanderings in October! Getting ready to plan and plant the fall garden. Stay healthy and be safe out there.

Greetings from the Orlando Airport! Even though it is early October, it is still hot and humid here in this part of Florida. With a long wait until my flight to Phoenix departs, I am at the Admiral’s Club overlooking the tarmac with multiple planes coming and going under the heavy and moody Florida sky. So what better way to get into the Fall/Autumn mood than sharing some of my favorite images of the season.

Pinterest~Front Porches

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest. For me, once I get on their platform, it tends to be a bit of a rabbit hole. However, you can find SO many ideas and tips that the love part outweighs the other. If you don’t follow me on Pinterest, consider doing so as I have over 200 images saved in my “Everything Fall and Autumn” folder (@lifeatbellaterra).

I love looking at other peoples’ homes and can’t get enough ideas from some of these exterior front door shots. There are so many ways to gussy up your front entrance in the fall. The added bonus is that I keep my fall decor up until Thanksgiving (unlike most bloggers who are already onto Christmas).

With that strong pop of color from the red chrysanthemums, isn’t this entrance just magical? The corn stalks perfectly draws your eye right up to the front door.

Pinterest~Food

With Halloween occurring this month, there are many ways to theme your snack boards or charcuterie trays with some spooky touches.

A simple spider web design onto of your dip or guacamole, can transform a typical snack tray to something spectacular. For more seasonal trays, click here.

Fall is the time of year to enjoy seasonal squashes~like this Maple Pecan Roast Acorn Squash.

After a long and hot summer, I love turning on the oven and filling the kitchen with wonderful cooking and baking smells. It’s time to prepare roasts and use seasonal ingredients in abundance such as apples and apple cider. I always find great recipes from Tieghan from Half Baked Harvest like this Fall Harvest Cider Roasted Chicken with Walnut Goat Cheese and Grapes.

Do you have a favorite fall recipe? My recipe for Apple Cider Donuts is our way to celebrate the start of fall. Baked and full of apple cider goodness, these are always a special treat on the weekends.

Favorite Autumn Photos

It’s hard to believe I took this photo on my old iPhone during a morning walk in Simsbury, Connecticut in 2019. It is not enhanced~ just plain old gorgeous fall colors!

On that same trip we toured many towns in New England, which allows me to capture all these seasonal photos.

Poland is on the travel bucket list, and look how magical this park is in the fall in Lodz, Poland.

The link to this photo doesn’t work, but this is a classic, autumn photo I’ve seen many times on the internet.

As I wind up this wonderful trip with good girl friends, I am reminded of how life is full of blessings. Can’t wait to get home and see my family, sleep in my own bed, pet my cat, feed my chickens and reminisce about the laughter and love I experienced on this trip.

What a week! Back to being busier than ever, I reflect back and long for the cool, relaxing summer days at our cabin. Oh well. Life does get in the way, doesn’t it? As we near the end of September, I hope you are experiencing touches of fall weather and hints of pumpkin and spice. Thank you for joining me this morning for another edition of Saturday Meanderings, where we chat about all good things this week.

Fall Styling Workshop

October is just around the corner and it’s time to get new and exciting ideas on holiday decorating. Chloe Crabtree, from Celebrate and Decorate who has over 10 million monthly views on Pinterest, will be in Phoenix showing you all the tips and tricks of her amazing table and mantel decorations.

Here is one of Chloe’s fall tablescapes. Isn’t this elegant and beautiful? Truly, Chloe is so talented and her brain never stops working. I, personally have learned so much from her, and now you can too!

We will be having hands-on demonstrations of both fall and Christmas decorating ideas! The Fall to Holiday Styling Workshop will be held on two dates, October 20 and October 21st from 10:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m. so sign up with this link. We look forward to seeing you then!

Importance of Friendship

Lucky me as September is filled with great friend experiences. During the last Saturday Meanderings, I just returned from a 5 day trip to Newport Beach, California with my dear friend, Christine.

This week I am spending time with my gal friends in Florida. Yesterday we had an unexpected trip to Epcot where we walked 12 miles! Lots of laughter and fun memories as we visited the various countries of the world. I cannot stress enough the importance of having good friends. Making friend time is balm for the soul.

Annual Tomato Sauce Project

Two weeks ago, I finally tackle the 60 pounds of Roma tomatoes I purchased the previous week from a local farmer. The kitchen was beginning to smell a little organic so it was time to act. Most of the tomatoes are in great shape but a few were starting to show signs of deterioration. Making tomato sauce from scratch is easy with my friend, Rick’s tomato sauce recipe. You can see it here.

The time consuming part is prepping all those tomatoes (removing the seeds, core, cutting into smaller pieces) and cooking them down with olive oil, garlic and salt. Once that is cool enough to handle then it goes through a food mill to remove the skins and any seeds I missed.

The strained sauce goes back into the pan and then gets reduced to a thicker consistency. Processing tomato sauce is very important for healthy consumption and preparing it took all day Sunday. As much work as it is, it is very therapeutic ~all alone in my kitchen, listening to music and making tomato sauce that will last us for the next year.

Canning is not for everyone, and I am certainly glad it’s finished!

Peaches and more

Naturally, any time you are leaving on vacation or out of town, it seems to be a scramble before departure. This week, we receive a 65 lb. box of Utah peaches from a friend. Not only are the peaches delicious (Utah and Idaho peaches are best this time of year), but I know they will not stay fresh while I am gone.

Last Sunday, I spend the entire day making peach preserves, peach salsa, and a peach pie. The remaining peaches are cut in half, frozen and then stored in Ziplock bags. Albeit exhausting, it is a worthwhile effort!

For my fresh peach salsa recipe, click here. I am done with canning this year!

Favorite Shows to Watch

We just started watching, on Prime Video (also on PBS Masterpiece Theatre), The Durrells on Corfu. In this British comedy-drama, Keeley Hawkes stars as an intrepid widow decamping from dreary England to a sun-drenched Greek island with her four recalcitrant children, ages 11 to 21. There are 4 seasons but we’ve only completed the first one and so far, it is a winner.

Why Women Kill details the lives of three women living in three different decades: a housewife in the ’60s, a socialite in the ’80s, and a lawyer in 2019, each dealing with infidelity in their marriages. The series examines how the roles of women have changed, but how their reaction to betrayal – has not. Though the title is a bit daunting, I can assure you this isn’t a violent, bloody and disgusting show.

The setting is a gorgeous house is Pasadena. The same house is used through the different decades~1960s, 80s, and 2019 with 3 different families. If you love costumes and vintage attire/decor, this is the show for you. First season is very different than the second, but I found both interesting, enlightening and clever.

Recipe I Want to Try

I certainly don’t mean to make this post all about food, but it is finally nice to turn the oven/stove back on. Over the hot summer, we tend to eat cold food so I love fall which equals lots of cooking/baking.

Ambitious Kitchen is one of my go-to blogs for different, healthy recipes. Doesn’t this Ultimate Spicy Cheddar & Apple Fall Veggie Sandwich sound delicious?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend! Goodbye, September and looking forward to a cooler and exciting October.

I love my dining room and having an oriental rug with shades of pink, claret, beige and greens does create obstacles when decorating for the colorful fall season and holidays. But I love a challenge and what better way to dive in than taking those colors and transforming them into fall decor. With white walls, white slipcovered chairs, and a mahogany dining table, I have some neutral pieces to work into the scheme.

The Dining Room Rug

As you can see, this 9’x12′ rug anchors the space under the table and chairs. The dark claret border looks especially nice against our Canadian beech hardwood floors. See how typical autumn colors would clash with this?

Getting Affordable Fabric

We have a great fabric superstore, SAS here in Phoenix with a huge fabric selection at good prices. I select a toile, and soft yummy fabrics in the rug colors for handmade fabric pumpkins.

As you know I am not a big DIYer, but in 2020, a bug infestation ruined many of my purchased fabric pumpkins. Forced into making more of my own, I find that this DIY task is very easy, and I wrote a blog post about it. If I can do it, anyone can!

I cut various sizes of fabric circles and start making custom color pumpkins during a weekend at our cabin. Saving pumpkin stems from the previous year’s real pumpkins, I glue them onto the fabric pumpkins using a glue gun for a realistic look.

These are so quick to make and it takes no time to end up with a rather hefty crop of fabric pumpkins. Running out of real stems, I use short branches for the smaller pumpkins’ stems.

The Mantel

Starting with a blank canvas, I remove everything from the dining room mantel (and do a little dusting too!). The walls are painted a Cottage White, providing a creamy background. Our sweet youngest child, Elisabeth is 3 years old at the time and the subject of the oil painting. Holding her favorite chicken, the colors of her dress and background go well with this room.

I start adding back some elements that I love~this orchid pot from Dear Keaton to anchor one side of the mantel.

On the other side of the mantel, I use faux antique-looking books, with my vintage Virgin Mary statue under glass. Adding dried hydrangeas at the base of the statue ties in with the color scheme.

Adding the Pumpkins and Candles

I have fun playing with the different sized pumpkins and where to place them. It seems a little bare with just the pumpkins and some seasonal candles, right?

Greens and Faux Flowers

By adding some green and pale pink eucalyptus, faux burgundy hydrangeas, and a few magnolia leaves, look how lush the mantel looks now!

Here’s an overhead view and you can see how this fabric combination works so well against the dining room rug colors.

Fall Decor that lasts until Thanksgiving

What I love about this color combination is that you can leave it up from September to November. It’s seasonal, yet timeless. I am able to incorporate these colors into my Thanksgiving tablescape and the decorations become easy on the eye.

I realize many people decorate for the fall in neutrals and whites. Do you use bright autumn colors to decorate? Truly I never thought shades of pink and green would work but I love taking the plunge to use other colors enhances this room in particular.

The fall decorating is happening ever so slowly this year. But it always comes together sooner or later.

If you enjoy this post, please share on Pinterest.

Even though I try to eat well most of the time, every now and again I long for something homemade with the ingredients of the season.  With my husband being a cherry fan, I decide to make this cherry cobbler (and realize I have never made one before). There is something comforting about baking a decadent cherry dessert in the fall, when the weather is starting to cool.

The Recipe

After doing some research on the BEST cherry cobbler recipe,, this one is originally from Cooks Illustrated, an American cooking magazine published every two months by America’s Test Kitchen Limited Partnership in Brookline, Massachusetts.. However, a subscription is required to get the recipe directly from them.

Being resourceful, I am able to obtain this same recipe from GroupRecipes.com.

The Ingredients

Canned cherry filling doesn’t do it for me~~way too sweet with an unnatural thick, gelatinous consistency.  However, it is difficult to find fresh fresh sour cherries from the local grocery store.

The Morello cherry, also known in English as griotte (its French name), is the best-known variety of sour cherries. Since the recipe calls for Morello cherries, Trader Joe’s used to carry them and I understand they have been discontinued. Aldi has them in stock. Walmart has sour cherries, but not Morello.

I would imagine you can substituted sour cherries in this recipe and they can be found here online. However, for this recipe, I did use the ones from Trader Joe’s.

Making the biscuits and syrup

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and then the butter in a food processor. I like my Cuisinart, but if you don’t have one, then use a pastry dough blender and cutter. Add buttermilk until the dough comes together.

The recipe says to use a spring loaded ice cream scoop to measure out the biscuit dough, which I do not have.  A regular ice cream scoop or large spoon will do. Is there anything better than homemade biscuits?

While the biscuits bake, make the cherry syrup using the cherry juice, wine, cinnamon stick, sugar, cornstarch and salt.  If you want to minimize the red wine flavor, use less wine or just boil it down longer.  My syrup has a distinct red wine essence, which I really like.  Pour the syrup over the drained cherries.

Arrange the biscuits in 3 rows of 4 over the filling.  Bake the cobbler until it is bubbling and the biscuits are golden brown.

Serving it up!

I serve it with freshly made whipped cream (another indulgence!).  If you do not have a whipped cream dispenser, it is a must. Making whipped cream with a dispenser is SO easy.

For an extra kick, you can drizzle it with Chambord, which up until this post I thought was a cherry based liqueur~~it is actually a black raspberry liqueur, but works too!!

Not only is this a beautiful dessert, but so delicious too. The recipe makes 12 individual servings and is perfect ending to a fall meal.

If you enjoy this post, please share on Pinterest.