Easily my favourite season – still warm enough to spend time outside, crisp enough to need your best layers, inside it’s time to snuggle up and get cosy. Unfortunately, this year I’m cutting it short to go to Australia in November – not sure I’m ready for the seasonal dissonance of crisp autumn to early Aussie summer to Christmas, but it’s happening! – so I’ve been soaking it up as much as I can over the last two months, doing all my favourite autumnal things.

I’ve brought my coats back out and have been on many walks to take in the colours of the trees and revel in the crunch of the leaves. My highlight walk was at Dalkeith Country Park, it was a lovely sunny day, we had the longest yap and spotted the most perfect tiny acorns.

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a pick-your-own farm. We went to Craigie’s and came back with an abundance of apples and some pumpkins then turned it into Sunday dinner. We had roast pumpkin and garlic rigatoni, pumpkin-spiced cinnamon buns and pickled apples. On another day, we made pumpkin soup, fresh bread and apple crumble.

On the topic of cosy cooking, we hosted a few lovely Sunday dinners. A French-themed one with slow-cooked coq au vin and chocolate mousse, and an Italian one with Ottolenghi’s ultimate traybake ragu, homemade tagliatelle and my friend Hope’s yummy salted caramel brownies. Away from home, there’ve also been loads of lovely dinner dates with my friends and very long catch-ups.

I’ve also been loving moving my body, getting into more of a regular routine. Weight lifting and strong yap sessions with B at the gym on Mondays, silk and trapeze challenges at aerial on a Wednesday, and swimming on a Friday. Plus some choreography and dance teaching to add a bit of panto magic to my autumn. The only downside was pulling my calf muscle and working my way to recovering from that and I’m almost there.

There have been loads of cosy times on the sofa, blanketed up watching movies, cuddling the kitty, or watching the rain and reading. Particularly, I’ve been reading spooky, dark, thrilling and horrific books for the season. This year it’s been:

• The Talented Mr Ripley (Patricia Highsmith)
• The Lightning Thief (Rick Riordan)
• Private Rites (Julia Armfield)
• Wrong Place Wrong Time (Gillian McAllister)
• Boy Parts (Eliza Clark)
• I Who Have Never Known Men (Jacqueline Harpman).

This month, we’ve been using the Inktober prompts for writing poems every day. I’m really enjoying getting to play with words every day, even if they’re not really for sharing with anyone else.

I’ve also been getting crafty! After watching Over the Garden Wall we were inspired to make hats for our Halloween costumes. I’ve finally finished a home decor project over a year in the making, and I’m totally obsessed with it. As is classic in Edinburgh buildings, I had a random, wonky bit of wall that stuck out, and I wanted to lean in rather than pretend it wasn’t there. I got custom-sized tiles made and got each of my loved ones to paint a little picture on them for me, so now I get to see a symbol of all of my favourite people.

I have loved revelling in my favourite season and feel very grateful and satisfied that I did all of this in the space of two months. I’m ready for one more cosy week before heading to the southern hemisphere!