5 Cozy Mystery Shows I Love Rewatching Every Fall

 

I grew up in a place where all four seasons feel very distinct, and I think that’s partly why I’ve always had such strong feelings about them. Early fall is one of my favorites. There’s something especially lovely about it.

I was born in the middle of August, and even around my birthday—or at least by the beginning of September—you can already feel that something is changing. The air smells different. The intense summer heat starts to disappear. And a little later, all that green slowly turns into gold, orange, rust, and yellow.

I love everything about it: the colors, the nature, the smell of the air, the comfortable temperature, and, of course, the cozy feeling that comes with the season.

And this is also the time of year when I start reaching for mystery shows and movies again.

I’ve always loved detective stories in pretty much every form, but there’s a particular kind of cozy mystery that has an almost calming effect on me. The crime itself is obviously not very cozy, but everything around it somehow is: the small towns, beautiful houses, bookstores and cafés, changing leaves, quiet streets, and amazingly scenic locations.

They’re the kind of mysteries I want to watch curled up under a blanket with something warm to drink.

So these are five of the ones I keep coming back to.

1. Aurora Teagarden Mysteries

Image courtesy of Hallmark Media

Of course I have to start with Aurora Teagarden Mysteries.

This is probably the series I associate most strongly with this particular cozy-mystery feeling. Candace Cameron Bure plays Aurora, a librarian with a serious interest in true crime who somehow keeps finding herself in the middle of real murder investigations.

But a huge part of why I love rewatching these movies is the setting.

Although fictional Lawrenceton is presented as an American town, much of the original series was filmed around British Columbia, including Squamish, Langley, Abbotsford, and the Vancouver area. The building used as Lawrenceton Public Library is in Squamish, while several of Aurora’s homes and other recurring locations were filmed around Langley and Abbotsford. Even the waterfall that appears in the opening sequence is real: it’s Shequaga Falls in Montour Falls, New York.

And British Columbia really works for this series. The greenery, mountains, forests, houses, and small-town streets give it exactly the atmosphere I want from a cozy mystery.

Some installments become even more scenic. A Very Foul Play, for example, used locations around Whistler and Kelowna, while Honeymoon, Honeymurder includes Vancouver Island and the area around Cowichan Lake.

Honestly, I could probably rewatch this series for the locations alone.

2. Ainsley McGregor Mysteries

A scene from Ainsley McGregor Mysteries: A Case for the Watchmaker

If you like Aurora Teagarden, this one feels like a natural next watch, especially because Candace Cameron Bure is back in the main role.

Ainsley McGregor is a former criminologist who returns to the fictional small town of Sweet River, Texas, opens an artisan market, teaches criminology, and, unsurprisingly, starts getting involved in local murder investigations. The first movie, A Case for the Winemaker, revolves around a murder at a winery.

Despite the Texas setting, the first movie was filmed in Victoria, British Columbia, which explains why I immediately loved the scenery.

Victoria has that combination of historic architecture, greenery, quiet residential streets, water, and slightly old-fashioned charm that works so well for this kind of story. Later movies in the series have continued filming around Victoria and other parts of British Columbia.

3. Emma Fielding Mysteries

Image courtesy of Hallmark Media

Emma Fielding Mysteries has a slightly different atmosphere from the others, and I think that’s why I like it so much.

Emma is an archaeologist rather than the typical librarian or bookstore-owning amateur sleuth, so the mysteries involve digs, history, old buildings, and secrets from the past.

And again, the locations are a huge part of the appeal for me.

Site Unseen, the first movie, was filmed around Sidney and Metchosin in British Columbia. Past Malice used Victoria and the beautiful Hatley Castle in Colwood, while More Bitter Than Death was also filmed around Vancouver and Victoria.

Hatley Castle in particular gives Past Malice such a gorgeous, almost old-world mystery atmosphere. It’s exactly the kind of setting where you expect someone to discover an old letter, a hidden room, or a family secret.

This series feels a little moodier than Aurora Teagarden, which makes it especially good for fall.

4. Fixer Upper Mysteries 

Image courtesy of Hallmark Media

Then there are the Fixer Upper Mysteries, starring Jewel as Shannon Hughes, a contractor and expert in restoring historic homes.

The whole premise is basically made for me: old houses + renovations + hidden secrets + murder mystery.

The fictional town is called Lighthouse Cove, and the movies were filmed primarily around Victoria and nearby communities in British Columbia. Framed for Murder used locations including Oak Bay, Victoria, Colwood, and the Fisgard Lighthouse, while Concrete Evidence includes Victoria’s Fisherman’s Wharf and a historic bed-and-breakfast used as Shannon’s home.

The houses might actually be my favorite part of this series. There are so many Victorian exteriors, old interiors, coastal views, and little details that make you want to pause the mystery and just look at the architecture.

Hallmark only made three of these, which I still think is a shame.

5. Family History Mysteries: Buried Past

Image courtesy of Hallmark Media

The last one is slightly different because it isn’t really a series—at least not yet. It’s a single Hallmark movie called Family History Mysteries: Buried Past.

And I wish there were more.

The story follows Sophie McClaren, a genealogist who uses her research skills to investigate a family mystery, so it has that combination I always enjoy: present-day investigation mixed with pieces of the past.

It was filmed in Ottawa, Ontario, and I think the location is part of what makes the movie feel so cozy to me.

There’s something about Canadian cities and towns on screen that works especially well for this genre: the older architecture, tree-lined streets, changing seasons, and that slightly quieter visual atmosphere.

And this one has exactly the kind of mystery I like watching on a slow fall evening. It's interesting enough to keep me guessing, but comforting enough that I don’t finish it feeling stressed.

My kind of fall evening

I think that’s ultimately why I keep returning to these movies.

Yes, I like the mysteries. I want to know who did it. I like following the clues and trying to figure everything out before the characters do.

But sometimes I don’t need a complicated, dark crime drama. I just want a mystery, a beautiful setting, a blanket, and an evening when nothing particularly demanding is expected of me.

For me, that feels very much like fall.

What’s your comfort show when the weather starts getting cooler?

xoxo,
Sveta

5 Cozy Mystery Shows I Love Rewatching Every Fall

September 23, 2026

Where Is My Energy Going? The Not-So-Obvious Energy Drains

Creating my dream life starts with something much less glamorous than vision boards and big goals. It starts with something very basic: my energy. Not how to get more of it. And not how to become more productive. But simply: Where is my energy going?

I think we often assume that when we feel tired or drained, we need to add something. More rest. More motivation. More supplements. More routines.

But sometimes the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough energy. It’s that we’re spending too much of it on things that are gradually draining us.

So one evening, I sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and asked myself: What takes my energy away?

I divided my list into a few areas. And this is what I got.

Chores & routines

The first one was pretty obvious: cooking, cleaning, laundry, and all those repetitive things that keep a home running.

It’s not that I hate doing them. Actually, most of the time cleaning or cooking feels almost meditative to me. 

But when the same things need to be done over and over again, they can still become exhausting.

It made me realize that even things I don’t necessarily dislike can take more energy than I think.

Food & alcohol

I specifically wrote down alcohol along with food.

I don’t drink much. Mostly when meeting friends, celebrating a birthday, New Year, or something similar. And it’s usually wine or beer.

For years, I associated drinking with relaxation, but alcohol is a depressant (surprise, surprise), and for me the “relaxing” part doesn’t always seem worth how I feel afterwards. I simply don’t like the aftermath anymore. Even after one glass of wine, I can feel more down or anxious the next day. And because that’s exactly the kind of feeling I try to have less of in my life, alcohol is on my list.

I also wrote down sugary, refined foods.

From time to time I’ll reach for waffles, cookies, chocolate, ice cream, and whatnot. And while they feel good in the moment, they don’t always leave me feeling particularly energetic afterwards.

Again, this isn’t about deciding that certain foods are “bad.” I’m just trying to pay more attention to what gives me energy and what seems to take it away.

Thoughts that drain me

This section was probably the most important one.

Some of the biggest drains on my energy aren’t things I do. They’re thoughts I keep returning to.

The first one is relocation.

I currently live in Georgia, but it’s definitely not my final destination. I have a few countries in mind, but haven’t decided where to move next. And every time I start thinking about it again I can feel, almost physically, how draining it becomes.

Then there’s the thought of having my own home.

I have an apartment in Russia, but here in Georgia I rent. And I really miss having a place that is fully mine—somewhere I can decorate, change things, and make it feel completely like home.

But this is connected to the relocation question. So it doesn’t really make sense to make decisions about a house. I know that logically. And yet my mind keeps coming back to it.

Another recurring thought is about the future and my parents.

They’re doing well and living their lives, but sometimes I start thinking far ahead—about them growing older, about whether they’ll need more help one day, and about how complicated that can become when you live in different countries.

Nothing is wrong right now. But my mind can still spend energy trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist yet.

And then there’s one more habit I noticed: being hard on myself.

If I skip a workout, don’t finish something I planned, wake up later than I wanted, or simply don’t have a very productive day, I can criticize myself. It’s subtle, but it takes energy too.

Lifestyle

The last section was lifestyle.

The main thing I wrote down here was lack of sleep.

It doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes I go to bed too late. Then one of two things happens: either I wake up late and feel bad about that, or I wake up early and feel exhausted during the day.

Neither option feels particularly good. And again, it sounds obvious. Of course lack of sleep affects energy. But seeing it written down together with everything else made it feel much more concrete.

So, now what?

I’m sure I’ll come back to this list, cross things out, add new ones, and probably notice things I completely missed the first time. But that’s the point.

For now, I want to take each area separately and ask myself what I can actually change.

• How can I make cooking and housework take less energy?
• What do I want my relationship with alcohol and food to look like?
• How can I stop spending so much mental energy on decisions I can’t make yet?
• How can I be less hard on myself when I don’t follow a plan perfectly?
• And how can I protect my sleep a little better?

That’s the next step.

Have you ever done an exercise like this? What are your biggest energy drainers?

You can find me on Instagram and share your thoughts there. ♡

xoxo, Sveta 

Where Is My Energy Going? The Not-So-Obvious Energy Drains

September 21, 2026

Creating My Dream Life. The Beginning

There’s something incredibly liberating about finally deciding that I’m going to create the life I actually want. It’s 2026. I’m here in Georgia, almost two years after relocating, and for the first time in a long while, I feel like I’ve finally decided to settle — not in the sense of staying in one place forever, but in the sense of stopping and asking myself: Okay, what do I actually want my life to look like from here?

This thought has been following me for a while. But this year, something finally clicked.

No one is going to build my life for me.

And more importantly, I don’t want to simply build a life. I want to create one I genuinely want to live.

Not a life based on what everyone else seems to be doing. Not someone else’s version of success. Not goals I picked up somewhere along the way because they looked good on paper or because everyone around me seemed to want the same things.

I want to look inward instead.

What do I actually want?

What kind of days do I want to wake up to? What do I want my home to feel like? What kind of work do I want to do? What do I want to spend my time on? What do I want more of? And what am I ready to leave behind?

I think that’s partly why this blog exists.

I want it to become a place where I document that process honestly: the things I’m trying, the ideas that inspire me, the routines and tools that help, the things that work, and probably the things that don’t.

Lately, I’ve also been thinking a lot about how easy it is to lose yourself online.

There are millions of creators now, and sometimes it feels like everyone is making a slightly different version of the same thing. The same reels. The same aesthetics. The same advice. The same ideas repackaged again and again.

And I get it. Algorithms reward certain things. Trends work. We see something doing well and naturally think, Maybe I should do that too.

But the more I see it, the less I want to follow that path.

The more everything online starts to look the same, the more I want to ask myself whether any of it actually has anything to do with me.

Do I really want that goal?
Do I actually like that aesthetic?
Would I still choose this if no one else could see it?
Would I still want to create this if there were no algorithm to please?

Those questions have become much more interesting to me than figuring out what I’m “supposed” to be doing.

We only get this particular life once—at least in this body, at this moment, on this planet. And I don’t want to spend mine trying to become a slightly edited version of somebody else.

I want to find out what my own life looks like.

Maybe I won’t know the whole picture right away. I probably won’t. But I think that’s part of it. I don’t need a perfect five-year plan before I begin. I just need to keep paying attention to what feels like mine, and start creating from there.

So this is the beginning.

And if any of this resonates with you, I’d love for you to come along. You can follow my journey here by subscribing to the newsletter for new posts, or find me on Instagram.

xoxo, Sveta

Creating My Dream Life. The Beginning

September 20, 2026