Sunflower Picking at Anderson Farms

Summer break came to an end for us a few weeks back, and the season itself definitely feels like it's coming to an end for another year. The day time temperatures are still pretty hot here in Colorado but evenings and early mornings are nice and cool and our backyard is suddenly covered in golden leaves. Fall is on its way! 

While I'm super excited that my favorite season will be here soon, there are a few last minute Summer activities that I've been wanting to squeeze in. One of these was visiting a farm to pick sunflowers and we did this last Thursday at Anderson Farms in nearby Erie. 

Like Summer break, the sunflower picking season at Anderson Farms has now come to an end, but I still wanted to share my pics from our outing - you know, as inspiration for next year, not at all because I'm behind with posting! 

Fall Harvest Time: Pumpkins

Less than 10 days until Halloween so it's time to get cracking with the preparations. The first thing on our list? Carving jack-o'lanterns! But before we can carve said jack-o'lanterns we needed to find the perfect pumpkins for the job.

Last year we arrived in America less than a week before Halloween. By the time we got over our jetlag and were somewhat settled in we had little time to go all out with the Halloween preparations. We made sure to carve jack-o'lanterns, however as we had left it so late we were left with the dregs of the season's pumpkins at our local supermarket. This year I was determined that we wouldn't let that happen again. We decided to get in a little earlier with the pumpkin selection and rather than just walking downstairs to our local Trader Joe's supermarket we hopped in a Zipcar and headed to the countryside. Dotted all around the countryside at this time of year are pumpkin patches. You don't need to travel very far out of an urban area to find them. In fact, there are even pumpkin patches within cities. I thought we'd go for the slightly more authentic option and get out of the city.

So on Saturday we headed to Petaluma, almost an hour north of San Francisco. Here we visited Petaluma Pumpkin Patch for our Fall harvest time fun. We started by selecting our pumpkins: Two medium sized pumpkins, three mini pumpkins and one swan gourd - a gourd that looks like, you guessed it, a swan!

Here's a look at our day of pumpkin fun!

Rolling pumpkins is easier than carrying them when you're little