Happy First Birthday, I Love You, Pumpkin Spice: One Year of Fall, Family and Love

10 minutes ago

2 min read

One year ago today, I Love You, Pumpkin Spice made its way into the world! There is something especially sweet about watching a children's book have a birthday. A year ago, it was brand new, and today I get to think about all the children and families who have opened its pages, read it together, given it as a gift, or perhaps made it part of their own fall traditions.

I wrote I Love You, Pumpkin Spice to celebrate so many of the things I love about fall, but underneath the pumpkins, colorful leaves, cozy days, and everything we love about this season is something much more important: love. The kind of love children feel when they know they are safe, cherished, and surrounded by people who adore them. Sometimes the simplest words are the ones we can never say enough: I love you.

I also love the way children remind us to appreciate this season. Adults see leaves that need to be raked. Kids see a pile that obviously needs to be jumped into. We see 47 pumpkins at the farm that look remarkably similar. They somehow know there is ONE very specific pumpkin we absolutely cannot leave without. 😂 They remind us that ordinary things can still be exciting, and that some of the smallest moments become the memories we keep.

So today, I'm wishing this little book a very happy first birthday and saying thank you to everyone who has bought it, gifted it, shared it, reviewed it, or read it to a child during its first year in the world. It means more to me than you know.

Here's to another season of pumpkin patches, crunchy leaves, cozy sweaters, bedtime stories, and telling the people we love just how much we love them.

Happy first birthday, I Love You, Pumpkin Spice! 🎃❤️

A First Birthday Gift: Free Coloring Pages! 🎃

And because birthdays should come with presents, we're celebrating the first birthday of I Love You, Pumpkin Spice with something special for our youngest readers!

Illustrator Irina Prisacaru created these adorable coloring pages featuring our favorite friends from the book, and we're sharing them for families to print, color, and enjoy together.

Grab the crayons, colored pencils, or markers and make them your own. And if your pumpkin ends up purple and the leaves are bright blue, even better. Around here, creativity gets to make the rules. ❤️