It's barely September but my instagram is filled with delightful autumn scenes, cozy mugs of tea, pumpkin bread... Everyone is making soup! Huzzah!
Honestly? I love it. All of it.
I love autumn. I want the soup. I want the sweaters. I want to go apple picking and watch scary movies and stock up on cinnamon. I'm here for it all.
But I've also been thinking about how easy it is to let the internet's version of a season become everybody's version of the season.
We see other people's traditions, bucket lists, perfectly planned outings, elaborate corn-stalk-pumpkin-laden porches, beautifully decorated mantles, and without really noticing, we're all kind of doing the same thing.
When I started making my own bucket list it just started looking so....conventional.
So, to move in a slightly new direction, this year's Analog Autumn Challenge comes with an assignment:
Make it weird.
Well maybe not weird for the sake of being weird. Make it different. Interesting. Unique. Make it yours.
We love this season at our house, and over the years we've collected our own autumn traditions.
- We have an ever-changing, carefully curated and ranked list of classic horror movies we watch every year
- We make this pumpkin bread
- We make these cookies
- We make this spaghetti sauce.
- We know the best places to hike to see the most mushrooms.
- We have our favorite fall puzzles.
But this year we're going beyond our tried and true traditions and trying out some new things, like a few of these below:
- Host a Classic Halloween Movie Festival. Bonus points if you serve themed snacks.
- Invent your own signature autumn meal
- Take the same silly photo every October
- Make a halloween time capsule.
- Go somewhere seasonal (pumpkin patch, farm stand, haunted house, scenic hike) that you've never been before.
- Create a bespoke cocktail/mocktail with a funny name.
- Start an annual soup potluck with a fun theme.
- Create a menu for a dinner party and give every dish a sinister name.
- Take a fall day trip with no destination in mind, just to explore.
- Make an autumn themed mixtape.
- Give Your Jack-o'-Lantern a wacky biography.
- Invent a Local Halloween Legend for your town.
What I love about this challenge is that it makes the season YOURS. What funny, goofy, deadpan silly things just speak to your sense of humor? What is the oddly specific thing that will make your Halloween awesome, but no one else really gets? The annual outing that you invent. The meal you create that becomes a tradition. The movies you watch when the weather changes.
I love the idea of making autumn a little quirky and personalized instead of trying to recreate a Pinterest board.
So go apple picking. Make the soup. Wear the sweater. And then make up something completely off the wall. Make it weird.
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