Autumn in Austin, TX

Fall is definitely my favorite season but it's always bittersweet because I detest winter, all six months of it as it seems sometimes. Anyway, it's been a transition to see what fall is like here but the end of October and November so far have been amazing. We sleep with the windows open and wake up to crisp mornings but by the end of the day, it's sunny and in the upper 70's (sometimes unseasonable 80's). The leaves don't change as dramatically here, again something I miss, but they're bright yellow and the sky is vivid blue almost every afternoon so it's still got an autumn feel to it.

My friend Sharon and I decided this year to exchange autumn gifts instead of birthday presents. Sharon has a lovely, sensible June birthday but mine is an unreasonable December date coinciding with the Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice/New Year/Everything holidays. Anyway, Sharon sent me a very cool wine bottle candelabra that also comes with the added incentive of getting a really nice bottle as an excuse for making the perfect candelabra base. It's a little hard to describe so I'll let the picture be worth a 1000 words.



Another thing I enjoy about this time of year is cooking. Austin and I hosted Thanksgiving a few times when we lived in EC and loved practicing different side dishes. One thing I always wanted to perfect was a pumpkin flan since I had one years ago that was so good, I still think about it. I never found a recipe that worked and this past weekend, tried one from Cooking Light. It was a flan flop once again! However, it looked delicious.



My last autumn note is that the geranium that our neighbor left us upon moving is starting to blossom- in November! This seems to be a good trade off for the hot summers.