"Fungi are the grand recyclers of the planet and the vanguard species in habitat restoration"

When we hit this time of year I feel a little more at one with the world. The temperature drops to how I like it, the autumnal colours are amazing and the fungi starts popping everywhere. There's something so satisfying about stomping through the woods and being greeted by something beautiful growing from the ground, on logs or high up in trees. Opeie started showing an interest in fungi after we spotted a bright red toadstool one afternoon about 5 years ago, we had no idea what it was and needed to know more. Then a couple of years back we read 'The Grim Grotto', one of the books from Lemony Snicket's 'A series of unfortunate events', which got him hooked again and it kickstarted an ongoing Mycology project that we add to every autumn.

After turning over rotting logs and crawling around on our knees may-september looking for beetles, its nice to change it up a little on the build up to winter time and we are never disappointed by what the autumn months have to offer. I thought I'd share some of the great fungi we have found...

I love these outdoorsy projects that we start because they are never ending, we're always spotting new fungi and Beetles meaning we can keep popping back to the Entomology and Mycology projects to add our finds. I really feel like revisiting these projects is great for Opeie's development as he is looking back on how he was covering the work last autumn and he can see his own growth which is really satisfying for  him (and me).

We're still not confident enough to eat what we find but the excitement of finding new ones is more than enough. Now to try and identify the ones we don't know for a Popes and Twink video.

"I Will Be Haunted By My Actions Forever, Hoot Hoot!"

 It was a lovely build up to Halloween this year, For once Popes knew exactly what he wanted to dress up as and we had plenty of time to make the things that he needed. It's been all about Owl House over the last few weeks so he decided he wanted to dress as Golden guard. The mask and props meant there was plenty of need for fun sewing activities, which has been our favourite thing to do together now for quite some time.

I had big plans for what I wanted to make for my costume but that went out the window because of other craft things that I had going on, so I decided to work with what we had going on around the house and went with 'zombie hockey player'. 

Popes decided he wanted to do my make up so I lay on the floor and let him go wild, I think he nailed it. Hotdogs and excessive sugar at our friends, a little sweet swapping and a spooky woodland walk and that pretty much summed up a perfect all hallows eve. For me, this will always be my favourite time of year.