Notes From The West · October
A Love Letter to October
The little pause between one season and the next.
There is something about October that makes us want to pay attention.
The mornings are colder. The light changes. The trees turn almost overnight, and suddenly the blankets come back out, there's a candle burning before dinner, and staying home sounds better than almost anything else.
September is big for us. Round Up fills Pendleton with people and noise and tradition and a whole lot of energy. Then October arrives and everything settles.
And we love it.
It feels like the little pause between one season and the next.
Christmas will be here soon enough. October deserves a little room of its own.
So this month, we're leaning into all of it. Morning walks when the air is cold enough for a jacket. Books beside the bed. Something good baking in the kitchen. Halloween decorations. Family dinners. A candle lit before the sun goes down.
Nothing particularly grand.
Just the things that make a season feel like a season.
A Few October Rituals
A Little Slower
Even if it's short. There are only so many mornings when the trees look like this and you can see your breath without actually being miserable.
Four o'clock is perfectly acceptable in October.
Cookies count. In fact, cookies may be preferable.
Take the drive. Go to the pumpkin patch. Wander through town. Find somewhere you haven't been in a while.
Bring out the blankets. Put something on the stove. Turn off the overhead lights. October is the beginning of nesting season, and we fully support it.
From the Kitchen
The Sugar Cookies
Sugar cookies have been part of our holidays for years, and October is usually when the cookie cutters make their first appearance.
Pumpkins, ghosts, bats, whatever is hiding in the back of the drawer.
Our favorite recipe is buttery, simple, not overly sweet, and sturdy enough for little hands and an unreasonable amount of frosting. We also have a gluten free version, because nobody should have to sit out cookie decorating.
And because the frosting might be the best part, we shared our favorite American buttercream too.
Make them pretty if you want. Or hand the kids the frosting and sprinkles and accept that your kitchen is about to become a disaster.
Both are valid October traditions.
Naturally Colorful
A Better Kind of Color
We've become much more thoughtful about the things we use in the kitchen, including food coloring.
For frosting, we like naturally derived colors from Color Kitchen. Their color guide is especially helpful because you can mix shades beyond the basics, which makes it much easier when you're after a particular rusty orange, muted green, soft pink, or whatever color you have imagined in your head.
What We're Burning
Howdy Autumn
There are fragrances we love all year, and then there are fragrances that belong so completely to a particular season that bringing them back feels like part of the ritual.
Howdy Autumn is one of those.
Every year we wonder why we can't just have it all the time.
And every year we remember that maybe part of what makes it special is that we can't.
It smells like this little window of the year. The leaves changing. Cooler evenings. The house feeling warmer when you walk through the door.
Some things are better because we have to wait for them.
What We're Reading
The Witches of Cambridge
This one is actually in the waiting-to-be-read pile, so no review from us yet.
Alice Hoffman wrote Practical Magic, which feels like reason enough to put her newest book on an October reading list. The Witches of Cambridge takes us to 1950s Cambridge, Massachusetts, and into a story of women, friendship, history and, naturally, a little magic.
We haven't started it yet.
But October seems like exactly the right time.
A Little Nostalgia
Halloween, Before Pinterest
Maybe part of what we love most about Halloween is remembering what it used to be.
Before elaborate front porches and coordinated family costumes and the internet showing us a thousand ways we could be doing it better.
Halloween costumes were homemade.
Sometimes very homemade.
Cardboard boxes. Face paint. Your mom's old clothes. Something sewn at the kitchen table the night before.
And if you grew up somewhere cold, there was another very important design requirement:
Could you fit long johns underneath it?
That was Halloween in Eastern Oregon.
You could have the greatest costume in the world, but there was a decent chance your mother was going to make you put a coat over it anyway.
Maybe that's why those Halloweens are so easy to remember.
They weren't perfect.
They were ours.
Before November Arrives
Thirty-One Whole Days
October always feels generous at the beginning.
Thirty-one whole days.
And then somehow it disappears.
Soon enough we'll be talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas and gifts and gatherings and all the beautiful chaos that comes with the end of the year.
But not quite yet.
There are cookies to make.
There are books waiting to be opened.
There are cool mornings and warm afternoons and candles to light before dinner.
The season is short.
Savor it.
R. Rebellion
