early november

or maybe end of october? my memory fails me. 

anyway.

since fall wasn't completely over natalie and i decided to give ourselves the gift of autumn every chance we got until it decided to really leave us. 

it mainly happened at mount auburn cemetery atop this tower that overlooks all of boston

 it was absolutely lovely. 

 ..so we went back the next morning before work. the clouds!

so. many. trees!

we also attended our vecna conference at dave and busters. this included dressing like adults and watching all the people we work with forget they were adults as they went crazy over all the video games. i was in charge of this conference (for over 200 people!) and felt like a stress case the whole time and am way glad it is over and already feel stressed about the one i will be over in twenty thirteen. 

as soon as the conference ended i dashed (yes. dashed!) to south station to get on a bus to new york. 

saturday the three of us (our friend felipe joined us) walked and walked and walked. we went to chinatown to get wintermelon tea and dumplings then walked over to little italy, soho, and washington square park. after a weird few moments in a bar to visit some coworkers of felipe's we rested for a bit and then went to some random ysa halloween party or something. i didn't really love that but i did like that we were near times square so we walked through it (all the while playing ellie goulding's hit single "anything can happen" very loudly on my phone) and ended the night with accidentally eating at the snazziest mcdonalds i've ever seen. it was a very laid back ny day which i'm going to go ahead and say was enjoyed by all! 

sunday was kind of a crazy day because everyone was freaking out about hurricane sandy (including myself) and much of the day was spent trying to figure out how i was going to get home since most buses cancelled all of their trips going in and out of new york. i finally found a bus that left around 5 so we were able to still head over to grace and dave's for a quick meal before i went back to boston. it was nice john stayed so close to where they live! one of the many (and by many i definitely mean few) out of town boyfriend brightsides.  

i should have known the chinatown bus would pull through when all other buses failed me. since it left from chinatown we went a different route than i usually go and it was the luckiest because i got to see this great cemetery in the foreground/city skyline in the background moment happen above. 

 and thennnn this was my life the next week so i'm glad i got to and from new york safely and wasn't stuck there for days!

fall maaaagic

 just going through all these photos made me so sad. 

how did fall come and go so quickly?!

anyway. i could feel fall slipping through my fingertips so i requested that john and i have a saturday dedicated to doing fallish and new englandy things. saying he is a little burned out from all the summer excursions i dragged him on would be an understatement buuuut he consented and i was thrilled.

we decided i should just walk/take the t (subway) to his house since head of the charles (supposedly the world's largest two-day rowing event) was going on and traffic would be bad. this was actually a genius idea because then i got to walk through all of the head of the charles festivities and feel like i saw and did even more than originally planned for the day. 

somehow i missed the turn onto john's street and found myself at nathan tufts park. 

the thing about this park is that i drive past it every monday when i go pick up healthy snacks for my work and every time i pass it i tell myself i need to go there because it always looks great. well, it never happened until this day when i accidentally stumbled upon it and i was so happy to have the detour. the park is just magical. 

so two hours later (whoops) we were headed to an orchard i found that was on the way to our main destination. it was the prettiest drive with a million beautiful fall trees (and boston temple!), we couldn't get enough of it.

we then arrived at autumn hills orchard! there are lots of different orchards in massachusetts so i spent a good while researching which ones were better than others and i think we made a great choice. we were pretty much the only ones there since it was near the end of apple picking season so it felt like we had the orchard all to ourselves. one thing i liked about it was that it was set up on a hill so we could see a lot of northern mass (which is rare since it is pretty flat most of the time). i also liked that the trees were kind of wild and unkept, they felt very dr. seussish. it made for a picture perfect place to take a million photos/annoy john. he just loves it when i bring my camera places!

it turns out neither of us really like apples so after walking around we picked like two and then bought a few that looked nice and called it good. i also bought apple cider which was only $1.50 a quart! i also added in the picture above in case you wanted to see the last photo taken of me with a nice long pony because a few short days after the pony died. 

and thennn after apple picking in the woods time we drove up to new hampshire to attend the keene pumpkin fest - which happens to be the biggest pumpkin festival in america. our crazy friends we met at the topsfield fair told us about it and i decided right then and there that we were going to go because i guess i'm obsessed with superlatives 

anyway. we got there (by there i mean ten minutes away because we had to take a school bus shuttle into the town) and there were literally pumpkins eeeeverywhere. when we stepped off the bus i felt like i was in the town that hocus pocus was filmed in for some reason and just loved everything about this keene, new hamphsire place. we couldn't find any pumpkin themed food for awhile which made john thoroughly upset but luckily we found the guy some pumpkin chili, pumpkin cornbread, and a few other edible things which made everything right in the world again. give us food, festivals, and fall time and we are happy! 

 if everything else had failed us, seeing this gal would have been worth going

it was fun to see all the pumpkins lit up everywhere and now we get to say we went to the largest pumpkin festival in america! which we all know is the part i care about.

the night ended with us standing in line for a half hour to get back on a school bus to take us to our car. ..which i actually might have enjoyed and fulfilled some of my junior high dreams of sitting by a boy who liked me rather than some random person haha