Our magical and cozy autumn days

How my children and I spent this autumn so far with doing our favorite autumn activities...

When it comes to beauty, autumn and spring are my favorite seasons of the year.

I just can't get enough of these firey, saturate, warm colors and the many different shades of yellow, green, orange and red...

So, I'm all the more happy that this year we've had (and are still having) a quite long autumn season. And thanks to the much rain we've also had, many, many mushrooms sprouted here and there.

Since I love mushrooms, I was thrilled about all these many different little, big, round, filigree, tall, small, cute, beautiful mushroom buddies of all forms, shapes, and sizes popping up almost everywhere you look, outdoors.

So here are some of my favorite mushroom shots of this year:

Besides picking mushrooms we also collected autumn leaves.

My daughter Jamina needed them for school to make an artwork with it. I remember that I had to do this when I was in school, too. And I think that's a very nice activity!

I love those typical seasonal activities, when you appreciate what nature is offering you and use it either to eat/drink it or to make something decorative out of it.

I think seasonal activities help us to reconnect with nature.

The whole process of going outside to look for certain materials/fruits/nuts/mushrooms etc, and then collecting them, bringing them home, holding them in the hands to process them... all these actions connect us with nature and make us feel more as being a part of it, instead of being separated from it.

Something you can use very well for handcrafting is chestnuts. On one day my children Noah and Jamina collected many, many chestnuts. And since it was an inedible kind, they used it to make little handicrafts out of it.

They really enjoyed working with these natural materials

Another wonderful experience these days was to go for a walk around a little lake in a nearby forest. I've wanted to go to see that lake for a long time already, but somehow - I don't even really know why - it never happened until then.

So, I'm very happy we finally went there (my children and I), because it's a very beautiful and magical place and immediately after we arrived there I declared it to be one of my favorite places in the area.

Here are some of the pictures I shot there as a slide show:

These days I have also tried 'kulning' for the first time.

Kulning is an ancient Nordic herding call to call home cattle from the meadows where they grazed during the day. Women in Scandinavia used melodies with high pitches, so the animals would hear them over far away distances.

I first heard kulning from the Swedish artist Jonna Jinton in one of her videos and fell in love with it. And since we have a herd of sheep and goats and one cow, I thought I could just give it a try and look at what would happen...

And as you can see in this little video, the cow and the sheep immediately came to me when I started with kulning.

And that was really funny and fascinating for me because I didn't have any food for them with me and normally they aren't just coming like that. Only if they see that there is something to eat for them. But I didn't bring food intentionally, because I wanted to see if the kulning really works. And it does!

So this first little video was just taken with my phone and it's completely raw, unedited and was very spontaneous. A bit later I brought my camera and tripod to catch this again, a bit more professional:

So, now you're 'up-to-date' with what we've been up to, these days...

I hope you all had a wonderful, magical and cozy autumn-time, too!?

What did you do during autumn, so far? Do you have any favorite activities in autumn, any traditions, rituals, celebrations?

I would love to hear/read about your autumn activities, this year!

So if you like, just share it with me in the comment section, below.

If you haven't seen it already, here is my latest vlog, fitting to this blog, showing you what we've been up to, this autumn, so far:

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog!

I'm wishing you a wonderful rest of autumn, or beginning of winter (depending on where you are) and hope that you stay healthy and happy in spite of the cold, wet and dark days..!

Much love to you,

Sarah

Lost in the mountains of Switzerland

This year in late summer my children and I have been to Switzerland to visit my sister and her family.

My children Jamina, Noah, and Soraya (in the middle) and their little cousins

We went there by car and had to drive about 450 km South, which took us about 4,5 hours.

My sister lives with her two children and her boyfriend in the middle of the mountains (the Swiss Alps) and we stayed in their apartment while we were there, for about one week. And it was a wonderful week!

Every day we went outdoors to go hiking and explore the surrounding nature.

One day we've been to a beautiful waterfall, that was close to the village.

Although it was very windy and cold we really enjoyed this raw, beautiful nature!

Another adventure was to go up a mountain in the neighborhood.

We took a gondola to go up the first 2000 meters.

And from there we started hiking and exploring the mountain landscape...

The children even found some snow here and there and they enjoyed it very much to dig around in the snow and to have a little snowball fight in summer.

Here are some photo shots of our hiking tour in the mountains:

So, as you can see, it's really worth to visit Switzerland and go hiking in the Alps!

This day could have been a fully wonderful day IF there wouldn't have happened something that suddenly turned the good mood into fear and stress...!

So what happened is that my son Noah climbed up a mountain and then just disappeared behind that mountain. My sister and I had been so busy with the smaller children that we hadn't realized how far he had already gotten.

When we saw that he was quite far away we called him to come back, but he didn't want to listen and just went further on.

Noah climbing a mountain on his way to find more snow

So I went after him while my sister stayed at the same place where Noah had left, with the rest of the children.

I walked and climbed as fast as I could and called out Noah's name many times as loud as possible, but I didn't hear any answer, neither did I see him anywhere.

I was very frightened that he could fall down somewhere. In the mountains, it can be very dangerous! There are canyons and glaciers and if one isn't very familiar with these surroundings, it's quite possible you can fall down somewhere and that indeed would have been the worst case!

So I didn't even want to think about it!

I just hoped and prayed that everything would turn out well in the end, that Noah would find his way back and that he would arrive back, safe!

And, thank God, after a long half an hour my sister called me on my cell phone and told me, Noah was back. Puh!

That was a day - my oh my!

After this experience, would Noah said he would never go up a mountain again, haha!

So the next day we really took it slowly and went just to the garden of my sister and to a playground, which was nice, too.

All in all, we had a great time in Switzerland and I'm happy we went there to make some beautiful memories to remember still in many years...

I also made a vlog about our trip to Switzerland.

If you'd like to see it, you can just click here:

Thank you for reading my blog and accompanying us. Have a blessed day!

See you soon, again!

Much love,

Sarah