Maybe it’s the cooler air, maybe it’s the way the light softens and lingers, but suddenly I crave to make again. To collect, to shape, to craft little rituals that bring warmth not just to my days, but also to my sense of self. Fall doesn’t only call me outdoors to see the leaves turning, it also calls me inward, back into my own hands, back into my notebooks, back into the quiet corners where imagination waits.

Take bag charms, for instance. They might seem like tiny things, but the act of adding a ribbon, a charm, or even a clay bead to a bag makes the ordinary extraordinary. Suddenly, my morning errands aren’t just another routine, they feel like a moodboard I get to carry around. A piece of self-expression dangling from the side of something I use every single day. I love the reminder that even the most practical items in my life can hold magic, if I let them.

And then there’s clay. Clay has this way of slowing time down. You can’t rush it. You can’t scroll past it. Clay asks you to sit, to sink your hands into something raw, to shape it into whatever form feels right. In fall, that might be a lopsided mug for tea, a candle holder for the evenings that are coming quicker, or a bowl that holds chestnuts and memories. The beauty is in the imperfections: the thumbprints, the uneven lines, the little quirks that say: You’ve made me yourself! Every mark becomes evidence that you were here, that you touched something and left your trace.

But maybe my favorite way to bring creative expression into this season is through DIY self-care. There’s a special intimacy in stirring bath salts with eucalyptus and lavender, pouring them into a jar, and knowing that a future version of me, tired after a long day, will thank me for the gift. It feels like making medicine, but also like writing poetry. Scrubs, oils, even something as simple as whipping up a thicker body butter for colder days, all of it becomes a ritual when I remember that self-care isn’t just about consuming products. It’s about crafting comfort, shaping softness, and deciding what I want my rest to smell and feel like.

And then, there’s the diary. A place where I can press words into paper the way I press leaves into books. Fall asks me to make time, to block an evening off, light a candle, pour tea, and sit with pen in hand. To journal is to gather threads of thought, to scrapbook is to hold fleeting fragments of life before they disappear. Some evenings, I write pages and pages. Other times, I glue in a train ticket, a dried flower, or a photo that doesn’t belong anywhere else. In a way, my diaries become containers for memory, as much as clay bowls are. They hold me. They witness me. They remind me that even my inner world deserves a home outside of my mind.

There’s something sacred about deciding that tonight is for creating. Not for scrolling, not for rushing, not for productivity. Just for expression. I block off an evening the same way someone reserves a table at a restaurant, but instead of dining out, I’m dining in with myself. I open my diary, I scatter pens, I reach for scraps of paper, polaroids, pressed leaves, and ticket stubs, and I let them find a place on the page. Scrapbooking in fall feels like weaving a tapestry of my days, cozy walks, overheard conversations, the exact shade of orange I saw in the trees. It’s less about perfection, more about preserving the fleeting.

Fall, in so many ways, is about collecting. Collecting leaves on a hike, collecting books for a reading list, collecting little objects that will hold me through winter. But it’s also about collecting myself, pulling back the scattered parts, gathering the threads, and finding expression in places I didn’t look before. Creative rituals like journaling and scrapbooking give me a place to gather the unseen things too – my thoughts, my moods, my quiet moments of awe.

Creative expression doesn’t always have to be loud, or perfect, or meant for anyone else to see. Sometimes it’s in the bag charm that makes your commute sweeter. Sometimes it’s in the clay mug that holds your morning coffee. Sometimes it’s in the jar of bath salts waiting for you on a rainy night. And sometimes, it’s in the diary tucked on your nightstand, or the scrapbook that no one else will ever flip through, but that holds your whole season between its pages.

This is how I’m romanticizing fall 2025: with hands covered in clay, ribbons tied to my bag, salt and oil jars lined on my shelves. With diaries filling up, scrapbook pages unfolding like leaves, evenings reserved only for me and my imagination. Proof that life isn’t just about passing through a season, but about shaping it, detail by detail, ritual by ritual, page by page, into something I’ll remember.

Love,
Meer