NOVEMBER Moodboard - Worth a Pause

Jonathon Engelien
Nov 27
2 min read

LATE NOVEMBER — A SEASON UNFOLDING

I’m finally posting this November moodboard I’ve been sitting on for the last month.

There’s always this particular hinge at the end of November when the air changes before the calendar does. The trees have finished their final exhale, the fields are bare, and the light slips away before you’ve even managed to drink an afternoon coffee. And yet — this stretch isn’t quite winter. If one is diligent, it’s not fully holiday-touched either. It’s its own little country in the year, and I always feel it deserves a visual vocabulary that isn’t drowned out by the inevitable December tide.

Thanksgiving lives here, in this narrow season with its own tone and timbre. A holiday built from warmth and pause, from chopping root vegetables, from gathering in sweaters you’ve owned for a decade or plan to spend the next decade wearing, from steam lifting off stockpots and quiet drives through the countryside.

This moodboard tries to hold that: the buttery browns, amber glasses, wool tweeds, the quietness of smoke rising in a valley, and the deeply domestic pleasure of warm pastries cooling on a counter.

THE TEXTURE OF THANKSGIVING

Instead of rushing toward red-ribbon winter, I wanted a palette that honors the way Thanksgiving feels: earthy, heritage-toned, built from the objects and rituals that have carried us into early adulthood and beyond.

There’s the cream cotton bedding, heavy and honest, the kind you sink into after your family leaves. A warm, glass lamp, glowing after the sunset. The amber glass, a small but steady reminder that this season is meant to be savored.

I tried chestnuts for the first time this month. They were annoyingly difficult, but my wife and I found that they were worth the hype and lore. A nut that tasted like a smokey, buttery potato.

The Dutch oven, the butter-brown ceramic dishes, the slice of custard pumpkin pie—they’re all tactile, storied, and unpretentious. They feel like the Midwest in late November: warm pockets inside a widening cold.