Personally, I’ve been holding on to some vague notion that summer isn’t over for another couples of weeks and there’s a heat wave round the corner. Sadly, the skies of Edinburgh seem to disagree with me and as I sit and type – it is once again raining.

In many ways, I am actually ok with that. I have a lovely wardrobe of knitwear, candles ready to be lit, and a great stew recipe. We also do live in a beautiful place in Autumn and it is a lovely place to wander as the leaves begin to fall. But… there’s no denying that we need to spend more time indoors at this time of year.

A few weekends ago – with the heavens open and falling upon us – I headed to The Centre Livingston with the older kids to try and stock up on some things for the shorter days ahead. We’re trying a new thing this school year where we have no classes or activities at the weekends; there’s things we can drop in and out of if we want and obviously the usual array of kid’s birthday parties – but we really want a bit more time as a family to just be.

We really enjoyed our camping trips this year just to switch off the gadgets and appreciate a bit of a slower pace – even for just a short time. I want to be able to find that speed indoors this Autumn as well – so I definitely had a few things I wanted to stock up on.

Firstly, new books! We’re not hoarders of books but I do want the kids to love reading as much as I do. There is nothing I like more than discovering new books and escaping for an afternoon into imaginary lands. It was wonderful to browse Waterstones and to be able to spy books from authors we had encountered at the Book Festival this year as well as discover new ones.

Taking our time to just go with the flow, we grabbed some lunch together in the M&S café not only to enjoy our new books but also to just spend some time watching the people below. Thomas happily munched away through his little picnic box, whilst Ben and I could chat about the people shopping below – imaging where they might be going and what they would buy that day.

I knew that I wanted to find some new wet weather gear for Thomas – Cotswolds Outdoors is such a safe bet – but flicking through Maggie’s Mittens gave me an idea for a wee craft activity we could do together given the rain really was not stopping…

We used to make wee paper bookmarks when I was in primary school, so I thought it would be nice to make some monster themed ones as all it would really require was some sticking and colouring in from Thomas! There’s loads of different versions you can do – but it’s been fun leaving a selection in random places at work to make people smile too!

Embracing Seasonal Change | With the leaves starting to change and the cold weather arriving it is time to admit that the seasons are changing and fall is here. Instead of mourning the end of summer we are getting busy doing things to get in the spirit of the season. Family autumn activities www.edinburghwithkids.com

2 thoughts on “Appreciating Seasonal Change”

  1. It’s not over yet. I’ve heard its going to get warmer again this week, although it may not be warmer up your way! Fingers crossed for some final summer sun.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *