{nostalgia}

It happens to me every year. Usually twice a year or so. My mom called it "change of the seasons" {but I think she was also referring to the runny noses that happened at the same time}. I've started to call it "nostalgia" the past few years. 

It seems to hit me when the weather changes. When the days get warmer as Spring comes around, but most especially when the mornings and evenings cool down drastically after summer when Autumn makes its appearance. It also seems to get stronger the older I get.

For instance, within the past week we've risen to a house that's 63 degrees because we forgot to turn down the swamp cooler and air conditioner. And this means that Fall has come to the desert {even though it's still been in the high eighties during the day}. 

And all I can seem to think about are those good old days when I was still in school, when we went on field trips with Aunt Robin and Danny and Katie, dressed in sweaters and sweatshirts and sometimes coats and scarves. We went to places like Gettysburg and hiked around looking at memorials with the leaves swirling around and that crisp smell in the air. I remember going to Kitchen Kettle Village a few times and getting warm in the fudge kitchen, and going to Ashcombe Farms and taking a hayride, and seeing marigolds grown in a giant pattern on the side of a hill. And going to the York Fair every year and looking at the biggest vegetables, and the arts and crafts barn, and the chicks that were just hatching in their warm incubator. And I remember my Katie and I especially loving the petting zoo where you could hold baby bunnies.

This year it seems to have hit me a little differently. I feel creative, I feel like finishing projects and starting new ones all at the same time, I feel like organizing and de-cluttering, I feel like rearranging, and I especially feel like decorating my house in browns and tans and burnt oranges; plums, creams, and mustard yellows. And making home smell like apples and cinnamon and such.

So I've done what I can in all those areas. I'm almost halfway done hand-quilting a quilt I started almost two years ago, and a scrapbook of my siblings that I started last year. But while I'm "finishing" those, I've made a thin crate out of pallets for decoration, and a toothbrush holder out of a mason jar for the other bathroom in our house. And speaking of that bathroom, Mechanic Man has been busy fixing it up because that will be occupied soon by us, so that's helped my de-cluttering and rearranging moods. And to reorganize something, I moved all the clothes in my closet around so they're hanging by color. 

I haven't done too much in the way of Fall decorating because I really don't have fall decorations, but I do need to root through my boxes and see what I do have so I stop craving all the things I see at the store in the aforementioned colors. But I've got a little time yet. And as for making the house smell like apples and cinnamon, the best candle I've found in my life is called Apple Pumpkin, and it's Walmart brand! It smells just like Christmas Tree Hill back home...

Ooh, Christmas! 

So maybe nostalgia happens to me three times a year...Spring, Fall, and Christmas-time. 

Anyway, to end my ramblings, I think I'm getting to the point of enjoying nostalgia. It's good to almost relive my childhood because the memories are so vivid in my mind. It's good to look back and realize what a blessed life I've had. It's just good to reminisce.