There’s something about fall that makes me want to do all the things. The second the weather starts cooling down, I’m ready for blankets, cute fall outfits, pumpkin patches, changing leaves, and every excuse possible to turn an ordinary weekend into a memory.
But before I get into these fall bucket list ideas for families, let me say this: I haven’t forgotten about the classics. You already know to drink the apple cider, pull out the sweaters, and take the obligatory picture with a pumpkin. I love those things too, but you don’t need another list telling you to do those things.
The traditional activities that actually give us an experience, still have a place here. I’m just not counting every tiny piece of fall as its own activity so I can turn this into a list of 50, 75, or 100 ideas of things you already know. Because, that’s not what you’re searching for, right?
And the good thing is, no matter what your family structure looks like, even if it’s just you, you’ll be able to enjoy everything mentioned. Pick what work, make them your own, and most importantly, have fun!
Save this list for later, then keep reading for all 30 ideas and how to make each one happen this fall.
1. Go on a Fall Photo Scavenger Hunt
Instead of a traditional scavenger hunt where you collect things, grab your phone or camera and take pictures of everything that makes fall look like fall. Before you head out, make a list of seasonal items to find and photograph, like a perfectly red leaf, a scarecrow, a giant pumpkin, a decorated Halloween porch, a cornfield, hay bales, a jack-o’-lantern, an acorn with its cap still attached, a tree showing several colors at once, or the biggest leaf you can find.
You can try to photograph everything on your list in one afternoon or keep the scavenger hunt going throughout the entire season. Families can work together, friends can compete to see who finishes first, couples can turn it into a fall date, and you can absolutely do the whole thing on your own. The only rule is that you have to find each item in real life and take the picture yourself.
And don’t delete those pictures when the scavenger hunt is over. Save your favorites because they’ll come in handy for another activity later on this list.
2. Take Fall Photos With the People You Love
While you’re already outside hunting for beautiful fall scenery, get yourself in some of the pictures too. You don’t need to book a professional photographer or coordinate everybody in perfectly matching outfits. The point is, to get some real pictures of this season of your life.
And please include the pets. If your dog is part of the family, get that baby in the picture too. Even if somebody blinks, the dog looks in the wrong direction, and one child has decided smiling is no longer part of their personality, take the pictures anyway.
3. Create Keepsake Art With Fall Leaves and Flowers
This is one of my favorite fall bucket list ideas for families because you get an activity and a keepsake out of it. Go outside and collect beautiful fallen leaves, flowers where picking is permitted, little pieces of greenery, and other interesting things you find in nature.
Bring everything home and turn your finds into pictures. Kids can create animals, people, trees, patterns, or completely abstract designs using the leaves and flowers. Once everything is arranged, preserve the artwork by pressing or laminating it when appropriate so you can keep it instead of watching your masterpiece shrivel up on the counter three days later.
4. Build a Giant Fall Leaf Maze
Jumping into a pile of leaves is a classic, but I wanted to give it a little upgrade. Instead of immediately raking everything into one pile, use the leaves to create a giant maze first.
Make winding paths around the yard, add dead ends, and see who can make it through the fastest. If you have enough people, divide into teams and see who can build the better maze. And when everybody is finished? Rake it all into one enormous pile and jump into it anyway. And there you have it, two activities in one.
5. Create a Fall Flower Arrangement From Nature
Take a walk and see what fall gives you to work with. Look for interesting branches, dried grasses, colorful foliage, and other natural elements that would look beautiful together. If you visit a farm or pumpkin patch that allows you to pick seasonal flowers, even better.
Bring everything home and make your own fall arrangement or centerpiece. This is different from simply buying flowers at the grocery store because finding the pieces is part of the experience. You can even use the finished arrangement on your Thanksgiving table later in the season.
6. Make a DIY Fall Wreath
Now that you’re already paying attention to all those gorgeous fall textures, make something for the front door. You can use artificial materials and keep the wreath for years, or incorporate natural elements like pinecones, dried flowers, small branches, and other seasonal finds where appropriate.
Make one together or let everyone create their own smaller version. There is no requirement for this thing to look like it came out of a home décor catalog. Half the fun is seeing what everybody comes up with.
7. Decorate Your Home for Fall
I know, decorating for fall itself isn’t groundbreaking. But instead of buying an entirely new collection of decorations every year, use some of the things you’ve already created.
Put out the flower arrangement. Hang the wreath. Display the kids’ preserved leaf artwork. Bring out the pumpkins and cozy blankets you already own. One of the things I love about these is that several activities actually produce something you can use in the next one.
8. Make Your Own Fall-Scented Candles
Instead of simply lighting a fall candle, make one. Choose scents that remind you of the season and experiment with combinations you might not find already sitting on a store shelf.
Depending on the ages involved, adults should obviously handle the hot wax and any other parts that require extra care. Once they’re finished, use the candles around the house, give one as a gift, or save one because I may have another use for it at the end of this list.
9. Decorate a Halloween or Thanksgiving Tree
Christmas does not have to have exclusive rights to the tree. If you have an artificial Christmas tree, bring it out early and turn it into a Halloween or Thanksgiving tree.
For Halloween, think bats, ghosts, skeletons, black-and-orange ribbon, mini pumpkins, spooky ornaments, or whatever fits your style. For Thanksgiving, you could use fall-colored ribbon, leaves, acorns, family photos, gratitude notes, and handmade ornaments. You can even create some of the decorations yourself using natural materials you’ve collected during other activities.
10. Spend a Day at a Full-Experience Fall Festival or Farm
Instead of simply finding the closest pumpkin patch, see if you can find a local farm, orchard, harvest festival, or pumpkin patch that turns the visit into an entire fall experience. Look for pumpkin picking, corn mazes, hayrides, farm animals, apple cannons, games, seasonal treats and drinks, flower picking, and whatever unusual attractions are offered near you.
My family found one last fall that had pumpkins to pick, a petting zoo, seasonal ice cream and drinks, an apple cannon, and even a monster-truck ride through the field. It was so much more fun than simply walking in, choosing a pumpkin, and leaving.
Your local place doesn’t need to have all of those things. Maybe the farm near you only offers a corn maze and hayride, or maybe your area has something completely different. The point is to look for a place where you can settle in and make a whole fall day out of it.
11. Go Apple Picking
Some classics absolutely deserve their own spot, and apple picking is one of them. Find an orchard, grab a bag, and spend some time actually choosing your apples from the trees.
Take pictures, explore whatever else the orchard offers, and let everybody hunt for the perfect one. Just try not to eat them all on the ride home, because you’re going to need a few for the next activity.
12. Make Caramel Apples
Now put some of those apples to work. Set up melted caramel and toppings like crushed cookies, chocolate chips, nuts, sprinkles, candy pieces, or anything else that sounds good and let everybody create their own.
13. Have a Fall Dessert Bake-Off
Instead of everybody making the same thing, turn dessert into a competition. Each person or team chooses a fall-inspired dessert, and everybody gets to judge the finished creations.
You could use apples from your orchard trip, pumpkin, cinnamon, maple, pecans, sweet potatoes, or whatever flavors say fall to you. Create award categories if you want: Best Overall, Most Creative, Best Looking or Best Tasting.
14. Create Your Signature Fall Drink
Pull out the cider, hot chocolate, coffee, syrups, spices, whipped cream, caramel, and whatever else you want to experiment with and see what you can create.
You can make this another competition or work together as a family until you land on one drink everyone loves. You can make it again every fall and make it a new tradition.🤎
15. Make Homemade Hot Chocolate Bombs
Hot chocolate is expected. Making the actual hot chocolate bombs is the activity. Experiment with different fillings and decorations, then save them for one of those first genuinely cold nights when everybody suddenly realizes summer is definitely over. You can also make extras to package as small seasonal gifts.
16. Have a Pumpkin Decorating Competition
Bring home those pumpkins from the farm and let everybody decide what they want to do with theirs. Carve them, paint them, add craft supplies, turn them into characters, make them spooky, make them ridiculous, anything goes.
Create categories like Funniest Pumpkin, Spookiest, Most Creative, Best Carving, and Best Overall so there are plenty of opportunities for bragging rights. And if anyone decides to carve theirs, do not throw those seeds away.
17. Roast Pumpkin Seeds in Different Flavors
Clean and roast some pumpkin and experiment with several flavors instead of making one giant batch exactly the same way. Try sweet, salty, spicy, cinnamon-sugar, savory, or whatever combinations sound good to you. My favorite is ranch. Put everything out for a taste test afterward and see which flavor deserves to come back next year.
18. Build a Pumpkin Fairy Village
This is where all those mini pumpkins, gourds, acorns, twigs, pinecones, moss, leaves, and other little fall treasures can become something completely different.
Create tiny houses, paths, fences, miniature pumpkin structures, and whatever else your imagination comes up with. It can be whimsical and adorable for younger kids, elaborate enough to keep older kids interested, or honestly just a really cute fall project for any who like miniatures.
19. Have a Flashlight Pumpkin Hunt
Hide mini pumpkins around the yard after dark, hand out flashlights, and let the hunt begin.
For younger kids, keep the pumpkins relatively easy to find. For older kids, teens, or adults, make it harder and turn it into a competition. Number the pumpkins and assign different point values, hide one special pumpkin worth bonus points, or create clues that lead to the next hiding place.
This is one of those fall bucket list ideas for families that takes something familiar and makes it feel completely different simply because you’re doing it outside, and in the dark.
20. Build Your Own Scarecrow
Instead of buying another fall decoration, make a scarecrow yourselves. Find some old clothes, stuff them, create a face, give your scarecrow a personality, and decide where this new family member is going to live for the season.
Make it funny, cute, creepy, traditional, or completely bizarre. And don’t put it away too quickly, because it can become part of the setup for the next activity.
21. Have a Spooky Backyard Fall Campout
Backyard camping isn’t inherently a fall activity, so we’re not just pitching a tent and calling it autumn. Make this one specifically for spooky season.
Set up your tent, bring out the scarecrow you made, add carved pumpkins, skeletons, battery-operated lights, fake spiderwebs, lanterns, and whatever Halloween decorations you already own. Make s’mores, use flashlights, tell age-appropriate spooky stories, and spend the night outside if the weather allows.
If you’re doing this with younger kids, “spooky” can mean silly ghosts and glowing pumpkins. If you’re doing it with teenagers or adults, turn the creepiness up accordingly. The point is to create your own little Halloween campsite at home.
22. Have a Fall Bonfire
A bonfire deserves its own moment separate from the campout. Invite friends or family over, bring out blankets, put on some music, and spend an evening around the fire.
This can be as simple or elaborate as you want. You don’t need an itinerary or twelve coordinated activities. Sometimes the activity really is gathering everybody together on a cold fall night and staying there talking much longer than you expected.
23. Go All Out With Your Halloween Costume
Halloween is the one night of the year when you can become practically anything you want, so don’t let the kids have all the fun. Pick a theme and actually commit to it this year. Coordinate costumes as a family, dress up with your partner or friends, match your pet, recreate characters from a favorite movie, or come up with something completely ridiculous on your own.
If you’re celebrating with a group, turn it into a costume contest and create categories like Most Creative, Funniest, Best DIY Costume, Best Group Costume, or Best Overall.
And take the pictures. Even if you normally stop dressing up once you’re “too old” for trick-or-treating, Halloween doesn’t have an age limit. Sometimes the adults committing way too hard to the theme is what makes it fun.
24. Attend a Halloween Dog Costume Parade
The pets deserve an actual fall experience too. Check your area for Halloween dog parades, pet costume contests, trunk-or-treat events that welcome animals, or other pet-friendly Halloween celebrations.
And yes, if costumes are involved, commit. If your dog is willing and comfortable wearing one, this is not the time for a halfhearted bandana 🙄. Take the pictures, enjoy all the ridiculous costumes, and let your pet participate in the season too.
25. Make Homemade Fall Treats for Your Dog
After taking your dog out for Halloween festivities, bring the fall fun home. Make a simple homemade seasonal treat using ingredients that are appropriate and safe for your particular pet.
This is technically another food activity, but I’m giving it a pass because this one isn’t for us. It’s a way to include the pets in the season rather than having them watch everybody else eat caramel apples and pumpkin desserts while they get the same old biscuit.
26. Experience Fall Foliage in an Unforgettable Way
Going for a drive to look at changing leaves is beautiful, but for this one, see if you can take in the season from a completely different perspective.
A hot-air balloon ride over fall foliage is definitely the big bucket-list version, and I’ve actually done a hot-air balloon ride before. If you ever have the opportunity to see autumn from above, that’s an experience worth considering. But you absolutely do not need to climb into a basket floating through the sky to make this one count, especially if you’re afraid of heights. Although apparently being afraid of heights has never stopped me from doing questionable things in the sky.😂
Look for a scenic train ride, go horseback riding along a wooded trail, take a foliage boat cruise if that’s available near you, or find another experience in your area where the changing landscape becomes the main attraction. Choose the version that works for your location, budget, comfort level, and sense of adventure.
27. Plant Spring-Flowering Bulbs for a Spring Surprise
I love this one because fall gets to leave you a present for another season. Depending on your climate and the plants you choose, this is the best season to plant many spring-flowering bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, crocuses, and hyacinths.
Let everyone choose what they’d like to plant, mark where everything went, and then wait. Months later, when those first flowers start appearing, you get a little reminder of something you did together.
28. Create a Thanksgiving Gratitude Tradition
Instead of gratitude being something everybody briefly mentions at the Thanksgiving table, make it something you build throughout the season.
There are so many ways to do this. Keep a gratitude pumpkin and have everyone write something on it that they’re thankful for. Create a gratitude garland with little notes. Make a collage. Find beautiful fallen leaves and write something you’re grateful for on each one with a marker, then use them as Thanksgiving decorations. You can display them on a wall, string them together, incorporate them into your Thanksgiving table, or preserve appropriate leaves afterward as keepsakes.
You can also collect gratitude notes throughout the season and read them together around Thanksgiving. It doesn’t matter if someone pulls out a note they didn’t write. If your daughter picks up yours and reads, “My mom is thankful for her family,” that’s part of the beauty of it. The goal is to make gratitude visible in your home rather than treating it like one question everybody answers before dinner.
29. Create a Fall Scrapbook
Remember those scavenger-hunt pictures from #1? The family photos? The preserved leaves, little notes, farm tickets, funny pictures, and memories you’ve accumulated throughout the season? Give them somewhere to live.
Create a scrapbook specifically for this fall. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or perfectly designed. Add photographs, little captions, drawings, ticket stubs, pressed or preserved natural pieces when appropriate, and anything else that tells the story of your season. You also add season appropriate stickers to elevate it a bit.
On the last page, you can even add a sealed envelope marked “Open Next Fall.” Write down your favorite memory from this year, something funny that happened, and one thing you absolutely want to do next fall. Pack the scrapbook away with your seasonal decorations so you’ll actually find it again next year.
30. Fall Into Gratitude: Give Someone a Little Extra Love
Most of this list has been about making fall memorable for ourselves. For this last one, I wanted to focus on community.
The holiday season can be difficult for a lot of people, so think of someone who might appreciate a little extra love, encouragement, or simply knowing they were thought of. Put together a small fall surprise for them. It could be a candle, seasonal treat, mini pumpkin, coffee gift card, flowers, or a heartfelt note. It doesn’t need to be expensive or elaborate.
Sometimes showing someone they’re loved, appreciated, or simply remembered can mean more than we realize. If you have a chance to make somebody else’s season a little brighter, take it.
Fall goes ridiculously fast, so make the most of the moments that feel worth remembering. Whether you try one activity or all 30, I hope something on this list becomes a memory or tradition you look forward to doing again next year.
Here’s to making enough little memories that this fall doesn’t feel little at all.
Thanks for doing life with me,
— Lexi 🤍
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