Top Ten… Things I Love About Fall (2025 Version)

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I told y’all last week that my fall home tour post would be up today, but sadly, we had a ton of rain come in and I wasn’t able to get good photographs of the house Thursday or Friday since it was so dark.  The post should hopefully be up Wednesday, so be sure to come back then if you’re looking for it.

Instead, today I’m going to bring y’all another post in my Top Ten series.  I had hoped to do several of these this year, but I’m pretty sure this is only the second one.  Whoops!  Since fall is officially here, I decided to share my favorite things about fall, and I wrote the entire post before realizing that… I literally did a top ten favorite things about fall post last year.  Hahahaha.  Since this post was mostly done when I discovered I’d already written about this subject, I just decided to roll with it, and we’re just going to call this one the version updated for 2025.  You can see my original post from 2024 here if you want to compare the two and see how my responses changed.  It’s funny how little they changed, though!

Working backwards from #10, let’s goooo!

 

10.  The Time Change – I’m going to start with the most controversial of them all… one of the things I look forward to the most in the fall is returning to standard time!  I know so many people hate standard time (I mean, it is the actual real time, though), and you much prefer daylight saving time when we get more sunlight at the end of the day, but I am one of those who looooves falling back in November.  I love when it gets dark earlier during the fall and winter because it makes the evenings so cozy.  The twinkle lights, candles, and fires in the fireplace have more opportunity to shine, dinner is cozier, and time seems to slow down a bit.  When the sun sets later, I always find myself working longer into the evening trying to squeeze in every second of productivity, and then before I know it, it’s 9 PM and I have no free time because it’s time to start winding down for bed.  But when it gets darker earlier, time seems to slow down… which means I’m more inclined to slow down, too.  And instead of spending my evenings being productive, I’ll spend them working on our fall puzzle, reading books, or just… hanging out.  I’ll also indulge in a mid-week glass of wine more often during the fall and winter because it feels more luxurious when it’s dark outside.  But I think the most important thing of all is – FEELING LIKE I’M SLEEPING LATER.  I have never been a morning person, I don’t think I will ever be a morning person, and I LOVE TO SLEEP IN so waking up at 6 AM every morning is devastating to me.  But when those clocks fall back one hour and my alarm goes off at 6 AM, but it feels like 7 AM – IT IS GLORIOUS.  Amen.

 

9.  Soup Season & Slow Cooker Meals – I could eat soup, stew, or a hearty slow cooker meal every single day during the fall and winter.  I love it all.  I’d actually eat it year-round, but it just doesn’t have the same appeal when it’s 95 degrees outside.  Therefore, we have to reserve all of our hearty meals for the cool weather months, which are few here in the south.  A few of my favorites – white chicken chili, lasagna soup, sausage and tortellini soup, ranch chicken pasta, and beef stroganoff.  My mouth is watering just thinking about these!

 

8.  Halloween – I’ve always loved Halloween, but it has been so much more fun since we had kids (although Brian and I had a lot of fun with it before we had kids, too).  We’ve had the same Halloween traditions for years… we go to Spirit Halloween to shop for costumes and look at their creepy animatronics, the kids decorate haunted gingerbread houses, we carve pumpkins under the twinkle lights on the back porch, we decorate the house with bats and ghosts and our big skeleton, Dead Fred, I assist with Trunk or Treat at the kids’ school on Halloween morning, and then we have our traditional Halloween dinner of mummy dogs, Cheetos Bag of Bones, candy corn fruit skewers, etc. before heading out to trick-or-treat around our neighborhood, usually with friends.  Our neighborhood goes ALL OUT for Halloween and people drive in from all over to be here for it – everyone sits out on their porches and driveways, some have haunted houses for the kids, some hand out Jell-o shots or beers for the adults, and it’s just such a fun and festive night every year.  We end every single Halloween night with a viewing of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and then we all go to sleep on Halloween night knowing that when we wake up… BOOM, we can officially start listening to Christmas music!  Yes, we are those people.  Hahahaha.

 

7.  Fall Fashion – Fall and winter is my favorite time to dress because there are so many more options than there are in the summer.  Here in the south, it’s HOT all summer, so you have no choice but to stick to tanks, shorts, dresses, and sandals, but during the winter you can wear chunky sweaters, tall boots, long cardigans, leggings as pants, sweater dresses, flannel shirts, tunics, ballet flats, and aaaallll the layers.  So.  Many.  Options.  Yes ma’am. 

 

6.  Fall Music, Movies, & Shows – Oh, there is nothing better than the sweet sound of old standards like Michael Buble, Steve Tyrell, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, or Rod Stewart’s songbook classics wafting through the house while I’m cooking or working on a puzzle with the family.  And I also love some contemporary songs for fall, too, like Autumn Leaves by Ed Sheeran, This is What Autumn Feels Like by JVKE, and so many more… I guess I need to share that play list sometime!  And we definitely can’t forget our Halloween playlist… that one is always super fun for October.  And the movies – oooohhhh the movies and shows!  You’ve Got Mail, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Hocus Pocus, Casper, Stepmom, Father of the Bride (mostly because of the music), Gilmore Girls… I could go on and on.

 

5.  Cinnamon & Pumpkin Everything – Cinnamon is my favorite scent (aside from a good men’s cologne and the tops of my newborn babies’ heads – you can see my Top Ten Scents here), and I love nothing more than putting those first drops of cinnamon and pumpkin spice oil in the diffuser after a long summer of lime and vanilla.  It’s warm and spicy and so inviting, and it brings me instant peace when I smell it because in the blink of an eye it brings back all of the sweet memories from holiday seasons past.  And not only do I love cinnamon and pumpkin scented things, but I love to eat and drink all the cinnamon and pumpkin things, too – my beloved Harney & Sons Hot Sunset Cinnamon tea that I drink year-round tastes 10 times better this time of year, and I just want to eat and drink all the pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin donuts, pumpkin cream cold brews, pumpkin pie, and my Aunt Joy’s famous cinnamon muffins – it’s all so delicious. 

 

4.  Cool, Crisp Air – It is HOT during the summer here, y’all, and our summers are known to continue well into October some years – I would say we have about eight months that are HOT and only four or so that are cool or cold.  So, we truly covet those rare cool, crisp fall days when the heat finally retreats but the bitter cold hasn’t settled in… and by bitter cold, I mean, like 40 degrees.  Haha.  I love to be cozy, so nothing brings me more joy than that first chill in the air when I can finally pull out the heated blanket, light a fire in the fireplace, turn on the seat warmers in my car, and put on my fuzzy socks, slippers, and pajama pants. 

 

3. The Décor – Fall foliage, fall foliage, fall foliage.  I have faux fall foliage all over the house right now and it makes me so happy!  I also love my pumpkins, and eventually my ghosts, bats, and skeletons when October comes.  Fall décor is just so dang cozy.  And the best fall décor of all, of course, is God’s fall décor – all of those leaves of red and gold and maroon and burnt orange… He is the ultimate designer.

 

2.  College Football – If you’ve followed for any amount of time, you know that we are die hard University of Georgia fans and we are obsessed with college football!  (I love it so much, I wrote this VERY lengthy post about it with so many fun throwback pictures three years ago after we won our first National Championship since 1980.)  There is nothing better than a college football Saturday in the fall!  Whether we’re there in person tailgating and then screaming along with 92,000 other fans under the stadium lights or if we’re snuggled up on the couch watching ESPN College GameDay and football for 15 hours on a Saturday surrounded by all of our fall décor and cheers-ing with craft beers, I am ONE HAPPY GIRL.  I LOVE college football – we live for this season – and fall would not be fall without college football.

 

1.  Thanksgiving Week and the Anticipation of Christmas – While I love Christmas break, I’m always kind of sad when Christmas Eve and Day are over, so I actually think Thanksgiving break is my favorite because we still get to do Christmas (and Thanksgiving) things while still anticipating the actual Christmas season.  The kids get an entire week off for Thanksgiving, and we spend it relaxing, watching Christmas movies, enjoying our Christmas decorations, gathering with family, crossing various holiday traditions off the list like watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and soaking up the season.  And when the week is over, we go back to school and work knowing that in just a mere few weeks we’ll have two whole weeks off to celebrate my favorite holiday of all – Christmas!

 

And that’s it, y’all!  Hopefully I’m not forgetting anything.  Wishing you all a joyful fall with the ones you love!

And if you want to see any of my other Top Ten posts I'll link them below!

Top Ten... Favorite Scents

Top Ten... Favorite Shows

Top Ten... Things I Love About Fall

Top Ten... Songs of 2024

Happy Wednesday, y’all!