{"id":42657,"date":"2019-08-27T18:00:47","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T23:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/?p=42657"},"modified":"2019-08-27T16:20:04","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T21:20:04","slug":"fall-preparations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/?p=42657","title":{"rendered":"Fall Preparations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s blog post is about the fall preparations that I am doing to get our house ready for autumn and dare I say it…….winter.<\/em><\/p>\n

I almost gagged a little when I wrote that headline.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong……Fall is my favorite season, but life is just happening too fast.\u00a0 They say the days are long, but the years are short, and I totally agree with that.\u00a0 Mike left for his walk across Spain and will actually have his first day on the trail today.\u00a0 It’s definitely one of the hardest days because he will be crossing the Pyrenees mountains.\u00a0 Today’s walk is 19 miles and over 6,000 feet of\u00a0 climbing.\u00a0 He will start his day in France and end his day in Spain.\u00a0 Since I will be joining him in a few weeks for the last 200 miles, I need to get started on our fall preparations.\u00a0 After all, we will be deep into fall by the time we return home, and I want to be ready before I go.\u00a0 And besides that, Sept. 1 is the first day of fall in my brain, no matter what the thermometer is saying.\u00a0 These are some of the things I have on my list:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Make Pillows<\/h2>\n

\"Cute<\/p>\n

I love changing out the pillows with the seasons.\u00a0 It’s one of the advantages of having neutral furniture.\u00a0 I bought some really colorful fall fabric last week and will use it to make at least two pillows.\u00a0 I also bought a cute pillow for the porch and will pull out my other fall pillows to mix in with the new ones.\u00a0 To learn how to make the fall pillow in the photo, go here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Clean the Courtyard<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The courtyard is looking tired right now.\u00a0 The annuals have suffered from the high heat and low rain, and leaves have been falling.\u00a0 In fact, a few times each week I have to sweep dry leaves that are dropping from the huge trees that surround our house.\u00a0 They started falling in early August.\u00a0 Is that happening where you live?<\/p>\n

Schedule Lawn Treatment<\/h2>\n

\"Townhouse<\/p>\n

Our lawn was fertilized in the spring, but it hasn’t been treated since then.\u00a0 Since it is new sod, we need to stay on top of watering and feeding it so that it will thrive.\u00a0 Lucky for us and our grass, we had a wet winter and spring which gave it a good start.<\/p>\n

Clean My Sweaters<\/h2>\n

\"Sweater<\/p>\n

I store my sweaters in a cedar closet that we had built in our basement.\u00a0 Instead of taking them to the dry cleaners, I clean them in our dryer.\u00a0 I wrote about it in this post<\/a>.\u00a0 It will be nice to have clean sweaters stacked in my closet and waiting for cool weather when we get home.<\/p>\n

Schedule Fireplace Maintenance<\/h2>\n

\"Townhouse<\/p>\n

We learned the hard way about the importance of having our fireplace logs cleaned each year.\u00a0 You can read about that here.<\/a>\u00a0 Of all the chores that need to be done for fall, this is one of the most important.<\/p>\n

Clean the Dryer Vent<\/h2>\n

\"Laundry<\/p>\n

As a way to prevent fires, this is also an important task to have done once a year.\u00a0 I just like to have our dryer vent cleaned in the fall when I am dealing with all of the other maintenance tasks.\u00a0\u00a0 Plus, companies often are running specials in the fall.\u00a0 So, I will schedule this to be done before I leave, too.<\/p>\n

Switch Out Accessories<\/h2>\n

\"Fall<\/p>\n

I will switch out our summer accessories for autumn items before I leave.\u00a0 Of course, I am not going to purchase pumpkins and gourds yet.\u00a0 I will do that later.\u00a0 Also, I am not going to plant mums and pansies before I leave.\u00a0 If it’s dry while I am away, then they could die from lack of water.\u00a0 We hope to have an in-ground sprinkling system installed next year.<\/p>\n

Clean the Fountain<\/h2>\n

\"Courtyard<\/p>\n

I will give the fountain a good cleaning before we leave and cover it with a tarp.\u00a0 That will protect it from more falling leaves and rain water while we are away.<\/p>\n

Clean the Kitchen Runner<\/h2>\n

\"Kitchen<\/p>\n

Even though it does not show dirt, I know that our kitchen runner is hiding stuff I don’t even want to think about.\u00a0 Before I leave, I am taking it to our rug cleaner so it can get a deep cleaning.\u00a0 Now let me tell you that I have also considered using my new power washer on it.\u00a0 I read a blog post about using the power washer to clean her living room rug, and the writer had great results.\u00a0 Have any of you tried this?<\/p>\n

Make Apple Butter<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And there’s just one more thing. I like to make jam or apple butter in the fall.\u00a0 It’s kind of like a squirrel collecting his nuts to store away.\u00a0 It gives me comfort to know that I will have 12 pint jars of goodness to slather onto my morning bagel or biscuit.\u00a0 It makes me happy.\u00a0 Here’s the recipe for slow cooker apple butter<\/a> that I use, but here’s one for peach jam<\/a> and blackberry jam<\/a>.\u00a0 They are all delicious and really aren’t hard to make.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s my list of fall preparations.\u00a0 Looking at it makes me tired.\u00a0 I better get started.\u00a0 Do you have chores that you do for fall?\u00a0 We would love to know them.<\/p>\n

Take care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s blog post is about the fall preparations that I am doing to get our house ready for autumn and dare I say it…….winter. I almost gagged a little when I wrote that headline.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong……Fall is my favorite season, but life is just happening too fast.\u00a0 They say the days are long, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42657"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42657"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42663,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42657\/revisions\/42663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}